Prada Marfa, one of Marfa, Texas' notable artworks. Marfa became a modern art destination when Donald Judd opened a museum there in the 1970s.

When you drive into Marfa, Texas, from El Paso the first thing you come across is a tiny Prada store. No one works there and no one shops there—it’s a sculpture, built in situ by artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset. Marfa, current population 2,121, became an unlikely modern art destination when the famous minimalist Donald Judd opened a permanent museum here in the ’70s.

I came to Marfa not for its art, but for its light. I’m interested in how we see light, how we think about light, and how light behaves. I’ve been working on a collection of poems that use light as their material, and that concentrate on proportion and balance.

About 15 kilometres outside Marfa there is a viewing station where, at night, light behaves in ways that can’t be explained. During the day, this field is flat and the grass is dried yellow. There is so much sky out here you don’t notice anything else.

But at night, balls of light come into this field. They split, hover, move backwards, flash. For decades, locals and tourists have come out here to look and to guess at what these lights are. Some believe this is what happens to lightning after it hits the ground. Others believe it is swamp gas or cars from a nearby highway. The lights look like circles. They flash for a few seconds, or bounce lightly off of each other, or hover by themselves. They pop up nearby or they get close together and split. I don’t know what this is and can’t reason this not-knowing with some theory or study. Were they fireflies? No. They seemed too big and too bright to be fireflies. Was it someone with a flashlight? There was one hovering close but no human figure near it. Was it light from a house far in the distance? Silly—a house wouldn’t move around like that. And the clusters? Are they from an airport? No. Airplanes don’t fly that close together and they don’t move backwards.

None of these things could explain what was out here. I turned to look at the other side of the viewing station. Here. This is light I know. The thing I felt most moved by. Brief flashes of thunder and stars sprinkled across a big dark beautiful wide sky. At first I could only see a few stars, but I kept looking, and in that looking tinier ones made themselves visible between the ones already there. After a while, the stars started to look like tiny needle pins that floated into the night sky, poking holes. Then they started to look like shards of the sun, if the sun could break and had broken into little pieces. The stars. I know what those are. A thin piece of light scrawled across the sky. Lightning. I know what that is too.

Tapping stones together means
you are not a couch potato
memories are dividing themselves
into other memories
atoms of memory
memory of atoms
the yellow of beauty
the groan of wood under your boots
along the boardwalk
echoing across the Thursday lake
to where Andy can feel your heart
unravelling like a giant spool
miles away from your garage
that once meant something to you
but for now there are more amusing things
like parks encased in parks
and ice on your mind
layers of jutting hope along the shore
a discarded subway token
your smile reminiscent of chickens; a proton
positively charged
a streetcar full of moon
quieter hours
and a curb
waiting to congratulate you
while you rest your borrowed ankles.

Zero day

In a place where there is no milk
he blinks
what the rat told him
is true
black is the queen of colours

there is a bend in the road
where the empty shell of his brother lies
blanched and drying
under an alabaster sun
and he says it doesn’t matter
but it is anchored
in his mind
“zeru”
a brother with frosted eyelashes
transparent
through the seasons
ghost
a pearl
pressed against the blackness
of their mother

the breeze undoes him
cracked lips
he approaches the edge
his chest fills with the sounds of the cellist
heard only once
pride comes in waves
as he lifts the little shell to his lips

the first drop is metallic
followed by sweetness
tears find their way into him
there is no cure
for snow in the blood
his brother is gone
taken
for his bird-like limbs

mediators stomp
the dirt complies
bells jingle
bringing on the ecstasy
he watches as the spirit of zeru rides on their shoulders
and wishes his skin was not king.

This: Did you meet McCartney?

Dexter: I did. It was quite a highlight. When you were a kid if someone tells you that you’re going to meet one of the Beatles you probably wouldn’t believe them. My wife and I took a poster from his Venus and Mars album. We asked if he would sign it, which he very graciously did.

This: Are you a music guy?

Dexter: Absolutely. I like a very broad range. I am not a person who is stuck in one genre or another, although my wife will accuse me frequently of having the radio welded on the ’70s station. The other night I went to see Willie Nile, sometimes referred to as the troubadour of New York. He was fabulous. I also went to KISS [recently]; and one of my favourite things to do is to see John Prine.

This: Are you an avid reader?

Dexter: Oh, yes. Right now I am reading The Maple Leaf and the White Cross, which is the history of St. John Ambulance. It might not sound like an exciting book, but is extraordinarily interesting and follows its development in Canada. For quite a while, I was diligently working through all the Agatha Christie books. They are easy to read and I would pack two or three of them if I had a week off.

This: Now I assume you’re reading a lot of briefing books.

Dexter: Yes, I am. This job is like trying to take a drink out of a firehose. It’s a lot of stuff, a lot of material in a short period of time. But I enjoy it.

This: Is there a concise way of telling Canadians what your government’s vision encapsulates?

Dexter: I always find the vision question somewhat trite. Everybody has the same overarching view that you want your province to be a place where people can live in relative comfort and security. [We need to] encourage young people to put down roots and stay. We are going to reach a point in about 15 years when a quarter of our population is going to be over 65. We are already experiencing shortages in some skills groups. We have a tremendous university and community college sector here. I am trying to find ways not only to keep our own young people here, but the [thousands of] young minds coming to our institutions should be a wellspring we can draw from.

This: How would you describe yourself politically?

Dexter: I have always said I am a quality-seeking individual who operates in a very pragmatic and practical fashion. There is a little something we tell our friends around here. For a long time [in Nova Scotia] we had progressive conservatives and now what Nova Scotia wants are conservative progressives. I think people tend to see me in that light.

This: I wonder if there are days when you wake up and think, “I’m the premier, I can’t believe this.”

Dexter: I won’t pretend that I don’t reflect on that. I grew up in a very rural community, a little place called Milton. It’s been a very long journey. My father passed away a number of years ago. I am sure if he was around he would find it unbelievable I have made my way from there to here. Fortunately, my mother, who will be 91 in October, was able to be at my swearing-in. My family knows, all of them, that I couldn’t have made it here without their love and support.

A bitter of angelica & artichoke with carbolic strengthens & pacifies her body.
Or sixpence spent brings up a blood-sweat & blister pops by tonic & suction cups.
She’s not bilious but swollen lymphatic.
Cracked bone cage filled with paraffin & palm spilled salt.
She’s undressed & under wraps — O spirewort! O collywobbles!
A rapscallion pins her down.

Posset of Foxglove

Red stripes & white. Angel strapped to his humbling chair.
Spun & blood-let. Gooseflesh bristling.
Her eyes twitch a dream of the tree killer.
Torn holes & poison poured to roots for a view — trees dying where they grow.
Moon slit slipping in & slipping out of white pine. Star whorl.
Mane whip. Her petticoat in a maiden heap.
Foxglove sleep on a merry-go-round behind barbed fences & ivied walls.

Flower Water of Saffron

Swallows saffron & canary wine. A somnolent myth saves her.
Or entreats an iodine salve—ward against skin tap & fat scraped off bone.
Wakes up a wisp of leaf.
A shrivelled lung.
Lifts her head & weeps.
Wades deep into heavy water & floats her dead man.
Or sinks into his gaping pool.

Tincture of Mandrake

Black bile & melancholy before a sponge soaked with mandrake.
Or hemlock held over mouth & nose.
Before twilight loosens her body. Before spasms—stiffens from an injection.
Barbituate release.
Before Cerletti & Bini & the dogcatcher’s truck.
A dog roped & current through a frantic heart & sectioned brain.

Trust in me.

Surf’s up in Ashkelon. So I hop on the train in Tel Aviv bound for the southern Israeli city with my surfboard bag in tow. The bag, stencilled with Boards Not Bombs, attracts more than a few stares and the interest of Israeli state security at the train station. The bag is scanned, the board is tapped up and down its length, and the question has to be asked:

“You came here to surf in Israel?”

Well, yes.

“And what does this mean,” says the security soldier “Boards Not Bombs? You know we take bombs very seriously here in Israel.”

Don’t I know. I went to Israel in February 2009, during the biggest military operation in Gaza in more than a decade. Israel had launched an enormous offensive reply to years of Hamas bombs on southern Israeli towns like Ashdod, Sderot, and Ashkelon. On January 2, foreigners were ushered out of Gaza. On January 3, Israeli tanks rolled into Gaza to begin a ground offensive. A month later the death toll in Gaza was estimated to be close to 1,000 civilians.

So you can be forgiven if surfing is not the first thing you think of when Israel, Gaza, or the Middle East is mentioned. Neither is peace. But there is a thriving surf scene in Israel and an emerging one in Gaza, and both are part of the global brother- and sisterhood of surfers united by the waves that connect us all.

The members of the Gaza Surf Club

I’m a Jew—but my true religion is surfing. I had come to Israel because I was increasingly disturbed by the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and it was precisely because the situation had become so bad that I felt it necessary to see it myself. I believe surfing and peace are related: surf-ers everywhere know the peace that can come from riding a perfect wave. So I went to Israel in the hopes of delivering wetsuits to members of a loose-knit group of surfers known as the Gaza Surf Club, along with the T-shirts I made with the (now-notorious) Boards Not Bombs phrase printed on them. Call it fun over fundamentalism.

The security guard is still waiting for an answer to his Boards Not Bombs question.

“Ever hear of the Beach Boys?” I ask him.

“Of course,” he says.

“Well, it’s true,” I tell him, breaking into song. “Catch a wave, and you’ll be sitting on top of the world.”

He shakes his head like I’m meshuga and sends me through, anyway.

Once on board the train we travel south for an hour through a jumble of expressways extending out of Tel Aviv, lined by orange groves, the occasional camel, Arab and Jewish villages, and the faint blue line of the Mediterranean and its fickle waves.

On the train I meet Avram, a young Israeli soldier in uniform who is curious about my board. I tell him of my plans to surf in Ashkelon and then, hopefully, Gaza.

“I surfed Gaza,” says Avram, to my surprise. He served there during the second intifada and smuggled his board in on a troop vehicle.

“There were a few soldiers in the water and a few Gazans. Some of us lent them our boards.”

You see? I think, there it is—the aloha spirit! Not so fast. “In Gaza they said we were stealing the waves,” says Avram. “We told them, ‘learn how to surf.’”

For all the laid-back spirit of surfing, there is also a testy localism, a result of limited carrying capacity: too many surfers, not enough waves. Territorial conflict, already abundant in the Middle East, apparently extends to the beach, too. Sometimes I think the Middle East is a case of localism gone crazy—spiralling out from the Old City of Jerusalem divided into its quarters of Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Armenian. Jerusalem is more carved up than Bobby Orr’s knee.

Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz

In 1956, eight years after the formation of the State of Israel, surfing arrived with the American surfer and physician Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz, the undisputed father of Israeli surfing. He brought his 10-foot Hobie surfboard with him. Four years later he returned with six surfboards, each emblazoned with the Star of David. Aiming to repopulate the world with Jews, he raised nine kids out of a 1949 Studebaker and then later in an RV, while chasing waves; his life was recently vividly captured in the feature documentary Surfwise. Paskowitz was like Moses carrying the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai: Thou shalt surf.

The first surfer Paskowitz taught on a Haifa beach happened to be an Arab boy. He’s been trying to bring Arabs and Israelis together to surf ever since.

The sport grew slow and steady in Israel: in the late ’70s, a group of hardcore surfers were centred in Tel Aviv. In the early ’80s, Shaun Thomson, a Jew and world champion surfer, came to Israel to teach a surf clinic. He was treated like a rock star and thousands of Israelis watched Thomson from the beach. The next year Tel Aviv played host to a stop on the World Surfing Tour.

Today there are close to 30,000 surfers in Israel. In Gaza, the scene is much smaller, with perhaps 50 or 60 surfers— equipment being one limiting factor. For instance, Salah Abu Khamil is considered the first Palestinian surfer in Gaza: now in his 40s and working in Israel, he first saw surfing on Israeli TV in the early ’80s and started out on a homemade board he painted himself. Lacking anything else suitable, he used knives for stabilizing fins.

The train station in Ashkelon has a quiet, eerie quality. The city does not see many tourists these days. In early March 2008, rockets fired by Hamas from the Gaza Strip hit Ashkelon, wounding six and causing property damage, marking the first time that Hamas had been able to reliably strike the town. In May 2008, a rocket fired from the northern Gazan city of Beit Lahiya hit this shopping mall in southern Ashkelon, causing significant structural damage and a number of injuries, but amazingly no deaths. Outside the train station is a big-box discount store. Though it’s open, the parking lot is almost empty.

Pulling up to meet me in his Toyota Corolla with a short board strapped to the roof is Chico Maayan. Maayan, now 42, a diminutive former Israeli surfing champ, has lived here in Ashkelon, a coastal community of 120,000, for 30 years. We are off to Delilah’s to check the waves there. Delilah’s is a popular beach named after the legend of Samson and Delilah, which played itself out here on the shores of Ashkelon and Gaza 15 kilometres to the south. We drive through a maze of modern white three- and four-storey apartments with red-tiled roofs separated by patches of green, the building style typical of much of Israel.

Ashkelon’s current slow pace means the waves are not crowded today. That suits Maayan fine for now, but he runs a surf school in Ashkelon, and since the bombing, business has been in the toilet. He tells me about a surf lesson he was teaching a while ago that ended abruptly.

“I was in the army, so okay, I know combat,” says Maayan. “I hear this whistling. I know it’s a rocket. I tell the kids, ‘Get down! Get down!’ The bomb landed 100 metres from us, a mushroom of smoke. We were shocked; this is the middle of summer. All the parents call me and tell me to bring the kids home. Since then it has been a problem.” (In surf lingo, catching a big wave is called “riding a bomb.” So you can imagine that Maayan’s experience brings a whole new meaning to the idea.)

This year the celebration of Purim—the festive holiday where children and adults dress in costumes that commemorate the deliverance of the Jewish people of the ancient Persian Empire from Haman’s plot to annihilate them—was cancelled in Ashkelon. “No one comes here,” says Maayan. “It’s a ghost town.”

Maayan’s parents are from Chile and came to Israel around 1960. They are proud Zionists. “My mother will kill anyone if they say anything bad about Israel,” he chuckles. Maayan served in the army during the first intifada. He describes himself as a patriotic Israeli. “Israel didn’t do enough in its recent war in Gaza,” says Maayan. “Not until we see a white flag from Hamas should we stop.”

And yet Maayan believes in a twostate solution and that Israel should support the more moderate Fatah party in Palestine. I ask Maayan how he feels about the Gazan civilians during the operation going on not far from here. “Really it didn’t bother me very much,” he says. “Sometimes I get a clinch in my heart; it’s a pity, but really, the Israeli army dropped flyers warning people to clear the area. We did our best. Hamas has got a policy that they hide behind their citizens…. Fatah is more reasonable; they recognize Israel. They are more suitable to rule. If not, then it’s like having Iran next door.”

And yet, Maayan is optimistic. “Things will get better. I love Ashkelon, I love the place, the people; I know the beaches, and this is my home.” I tell Maayan that tomorrow I plan to go to Gaza in hopes of hooking up with the surfers there and delivering some equipment. He looks at me and says, vaguely, “So you are like that, I see.”

The next day I plan to enter Gaza. Mohammed Alwayn is my surfing contact there: Alwayn is an agronomist who works for Care International. “When you surf, you don’t think about the situation,” he tells me over the phone. “When surfing, we feel free.” Alwayn and I made plans to meet up and and he’d introduce me to some of his surfing friends. All I had to do was get across the border.

My friend Arthur Rashkovan is to drive me to the Gaza border. Now 30, Rashkovan grew up two blocks from Israel’s famed Hilton Beach, home to some of the best surf in the country, and has lived there his whole life. A former Israeli skateboard champion, he’s a first-generation Israeli whose parents are from Moldova in Eastern Europe. I asked him what brought his parents to Israel and he told me, “The usual: anti-Semitism.”

Rashkovan grew up in what he calls a “mini-California, a surfer’s paradise.” Despite the conflicts, life continues as normal in Tel Aviv. It’s an extremely safe city. With a population of 400,000, street crime and homelessness are virtually nonexistent, children are free to play in the streets and parks by themselves, and women can safely walk the streets late at night in a city that never sleeps.

“Tel Aviv is in a bu-ah, a bubble,” says former Israeli surf pro Maya Dauber, 36. “For me, the last war with Gaza was like a reality TV show. You feel removed.

“You have to understand. This is not the first war we ever had,” says Dauber, who served in the military while being allowed to compete as a surfer in the World Qualifying Series. “Every few years we have a war. Every few years I know a soldier who died or was hurt because of a war. You start to develop a thick skin. You start to protect yourself more and more. You don’t want to hear about it. That’s why Tel Aviv is one of the best cities to hang out in in the world. Because people want to forget. They want to go out and have fun, to drink to clear their minds. Surfing,” she says, “is an extension of that.”

During his youth Rashkovan would “surf my brains out. I lived like a true beach bum. Nothing else mattered.” When he turned 18, Arthur had to serve in the military. “I realized I need to serve my country, and I didn’t want to get out of the army. So I had a goal of getting the best job I could have and keep on skating and surfing.” So he took a desk job not far from home. “My experience in the military was a lot of skate injuries,” laughs Rashkovan. “I broke my arm twice and my ankle from skateboarding. Luckily you get a very long leave to heal up, so I went on two surf trips to San Diego. The third time I got injured the army had no use for me, and they released me.”

After Rashkovan left the army he gradually became one of the prime movers and shakers in the burgeoning Israeli surf industry. In 2004, Doc Paskowitz came to Israel looking to meet some Arab-Israeli surfers. Rashkovan was in a position to help him out. Paskowitz and Rashkovan gave impromptu lessons to Arab kids on the beach between Tel Aviv and Jaffa, a spot where Israelis and Arabs surf together. “At that moment, I realized, hey, why not organize the first surf event for Arabs and Israelis?” says Rashovan. “I thought it would be a good opportunity to show that surfers can overcome barriers such as religion and politics.”

The 2004 Arab-Israeli surf contest was just the beginning. Last year, as part of something he describes as beginning as a “lark,” Rashkovan got together with Doc Paskowitz and surfing god Kelly Slater (who is of Syrian descent) to teach surfing clinics to Arabs and Israelis. They dubbed it Surfing for Peace. Young Arab girls in hijabs and young Israelis with yarmulkes caught waves with Slater looking on. Fun versus fundamentalism.

Then, pushing his luck, Doc Paskowitz, along with his sons David, Josh, and Jonathan, headed for the border to deliver some surfboards to Gaza. Despite there being a total blockade on entry, Doc managed to cajole some border guards into letting him exchange the boards with some waiting Gazans. “Kissing was the secret to getting across the border,” says Doc. “All the guys that want to shoot me, I grab them and kiss them.”

Nobody believes that you can actually bring peace simply through the act of surfing. But you can create moments of peacefulness, create some friendships, and demystify your so-called enemy. Or, as Doc says, “God will surf with the devil if the waves are good enough.”

“That day when we delivered the boards was a very magical day,” recalls Rashkovan. “We were swamped by the media. Everybody was calling me: the New York Times, the L.A. Times. I had newspapers call from Germany, South Africa, Indonesia, Brazil—really everywhere. The funniest part is we had maybe one or two minutes on Israeli TV. People are turning cynical here and indifferent. Because on one side we have war all around and we have gotten a bit insular. You get used to what’s going on around and just get on with it. The whole world was excited and Israel was like, ‘Whatever.’”

Friends asked Rashkovan why he was bothering with Surfing for Peace. “I want to prove that there are large populations on both sides who want to live their lives peacefully,” he says. “The problem is they are controlled by politicians who have other interests. Peace is a political process, but luckily friendship isn’t. Initiating actions on the grassroots level between common people is a much faster way to move things. Surfing as a peaceful way of living is just perfect for this goal. Why not just go out and forget about our worries for a moment? This what the Arabs in Israel do when they go surf, this is what the Israeli surfers do when they go out, and it’s the same for the guys in Gaza.”

Rashkovan is determined to keep Surfing for Peace grassroots and out of politics. “We know there is a huge population in Gaza that wants to live its life quietly, but it’s controlled by extremists,” he says. “I wanted to show the Gazans on the other side that there are a group of people here who want to have the same life. And maybe through the common ground of surfing show the world something else. We just want to make friends with a few guys on the other side.”

As you get closer to Gaza the highway winnows down to two narrow lanes surrounded by farm fields and overhung by orange groves. There is a sweet perfume of orange blossoms in the air. The pastoral landscape is abruptly interrupted by a clearing covered in asphalt and a big sign that reads Welcome to the Erez Crossing. The Gaza crossing looks like a hangar in a mid-size airfield with plenty of parking spaces. There are many people milling about their cars—simply waiting.

The gate has a parkade shed with a gate. At the gate Lior, a friendly, engaging young Israeli soldier, greets me. The surfboard makes him smile. I tell him surf’s up in Gaza and I want to join my Palestinian brothers on the waves.

“Not today.”

“Come on, I heard it’s as big as Indo in Gaza.” He laughs at my reference to the surf mecca of Indonesia. I spend about a half-hour trying to charm and disarm the young soldier, but there will be no getting into Gaza today—or on several other attempts I make. Hamas and Israel are still lobbing bombs at each other and things are just too hot.

Having come all this way from Tel Aviv, we stop at the Arab port of Jaffa instead to visit Rashkovan’s friend Abdallah Seri. An Arab-Israeli, Seri lives with his family in a simple flat with a patio garden. His father, a fisherman, joins us over strong Arabic coffee while a soccer game plays on the TV.

Abdallah Seri with one of the "Boards Not Bombs" T-shirts

Seri, now 28, learned to surf at the age of 12 and is part of the Surfing for Peace project. He talks about his love for Doc Paskowitz and for surfing and how it can bring people together. But then he turns serious. “The people in Gaza are not an autonomous people,” he says. “They don’t know how to think for themselves anymore, and they can’t tell right from wrong anymore. They’re victims of both the Israelis and their own Arab brothers and sisters.”

Seri’s father points to the soccer players on the screen: “Look at these guys. They’re from all over the world, playing together as a team. That is what sport can do. That is what surfing can do.”

Using surfing as an approach to solving an intractable problem like the Middle East conflict involves a leap of faith. In fact, many writers have questioned whether surfing itself is a faith. Does God reside in a double-overhead wall of blue? (The ancient Polynesians prayed over tree trunks to their god of surfing before shaping them into surfboards and built temples dedicated to the sport.)

Rabbi Nachum “Shifty” Shifren, aka the Surfing Rabbi (he wrote a book of the same title), is a deep believer in the divine peace that surfing can bestow. “I think if there is anything that can bring about peace, it’s surfing,” Shifren, a former lifeguard and triathlete, tells me by phone from Santa Monica, California. “What I am advocating is a synthesis between the physical and the spiritual. I believe that surfing is the answer to modern man’s dilemma of stress, of lack of security, of lack of self-esteem, and even in the search for peace. Surfing is a spiritual connector. It’s like a conduit where one could appreciate God and the forces of the world.”

Divine conduit or not, surfing does seem to help individuals overcome barriers to understanding. Despite his selfdescribed hardcore rightwing views, Chico Maayan also took part in the Surfing for Peace operation. “We started Surfing for Peace because we thought of it as not connected to politics—it is connected to the ocean,” he says. “We’re surfing. The Gazans are surfing. We should surf together. It won’t bring peace, but we will see the enemy differently.”

Back in Tel Aviv, I call Alwayn in Gaza to tell him I hadn’t been able to get past the border. He was hardly surprised. “Have faith,” he says.

A week after I got back to Vancouver Island, Arthur Rashkovan emailed to tell me that a German-based journalist had received permission to get into Gaza and took along four of the wetsuits I had left behind. He also took some photos of the surfers unpacking the suits in delight.

So I keep the faith. Searching for waves and peace in Israel and Gaza may be an act of faith, but this is a region, after all, that hosts three of the world’s major religions. Faith is all we’ve got, and surfing is my religion. I do believe that hope resides in a double-overhead wall of blue. Or as Chico Maayan told me, “As long as there are waves, there will be a type of peace.”

Images of the Gaza Surf Club courtesy Alex Klein, director of God Went Surfing With The Devil. Below is the trailer for that documentary:

On the menu: B.C. Farmed Salmon

Problem: Fish Farms

Forty percent of our seafood comes from aquaculture. However, it’s hardly the sustainable solution that many believe it is. Farmed fish are fed wild fish, with four to five kilograms of wild stock being used to produce one kilogram of farmed. Coastal farming also infects wild fish with diseases and parasites. In British Columbia, wild pink salmon are on the brink of extinction from aquaculture sea lice. The disappearance of these fish will impact everything from the grizzly bears and orcas that rely on them for food to local communities such as Echo Bay, which rely on them for jobs.

On the menu: Sharkfin Soup

Problem: Sharkfinning

High demand for shark fin soup in China has led to an explosion in sharkfinning. Thirty-eight million sharks are now being killed annually for their fins, reducing some species by 80 percent over the last 50 years. Losing these top-level predators disrupts the underpinning of the food chain, creating an imbalance that has been linked to the collapse of certain fisheries, such as the Tasmanian rock lobster fishery, where the lack of sharks has resulted in an increase in octopuses, a main predator of the lobsters.

On the menu: Seaweed

Problem:Marine Habitat Loss

The world’s fishing fleets are also negatively impacting such key habitats as coral reefs, wetlands and mangroves. Destroying these environments, and the vegetation within them, sabotages marine reproduction, the ocean’s ability to filter toxins, and, perhaps most importantly, its ability to create oxygen. Seventy percent of the world’s oxygen is produced by a healthy ocean, so we are taking our very breath away with marine habitat loss.

On the menu: Tuna Sushi

Problem: Overfishing

Eighty percent of the world’s fish stocks are fully or over-exploited, including the highly endangered bluefin tuna, a fish prized in the sushi market. If demands are not hampered, the world’s fish stocks will collapse by 2048, causing catastrophic effects on the 170 million people employed in the fishing industry and the 2.9 billion who depend on it for food.

On the menu: Shrimp in Cocktail Sauce

Problem: By-catch

Each year, millions of non-targeted species, such as sea turtles and dolphins, are accidentally caught as by-catch. This “by-kill” is then either thrown back into the sea or illegally traded, further decimating fish stocks and encouraging the trade of endangered species. While by-catch is a problem for almost every fishery, it’s at its worst with shrimp trawling. Of the 5.3 million tons of shrimp caught annually, 35 percent are discarded, usually because the animals are too small or the wrong sub-species.

Illustrations by Sylvia Nickerson

Who's Your Daddy? And other writings on queer parenting, edited by Rachel Epstein

The legalization of gay marriage in Canada has coincided with an era that might be dubbed the first “queer baby boom.” As such, this generation of queer parents and their children have been forced to adopt the ambivalent role of pioneers in a social space in which the model of the “traditional” nuclear family does not apply.

Who’s Your Daddy: And Other Writings on Queer Parenting, a diverse collection of essays and perspectives, examines questions of queer family and identity. In it, queer parents write about the joys of parenthood as well as the nagging ideological concerns (novelist Emma Donoghue, for instance, cites a fear of becoming a “stereotypical nuclear family” or a “Stepford zombie”); while “queer spawn” discuss their experiences growing up outside the norm and express a shared desire to give voice to their fast-growing community.

The politicization of queer identity, in combination with deeply ingrained heteronormative views of what it means to be a parent, complicate the issues surrounding LGBTQ family-forging in ways that require thoughtful discussion, and a forthright treatment of the diversity within queer families themselves. To this end, editor Rachel Epstein succeeds in including perspectives from throughout the broad spectrum of queer families: polyamory, butch childrearing, gay dads, single parenting, familial class issues and trans-racial children are each given their due attention in this important and timely collection.

Out of the country, back into the closet. Illustration by Don Charles.

I am on a gay beach, surrounded by half-naked, toned, tanned, Speedo-sporting gay men. Somewhere a random diva is belting out a dance hit. The tropical sun has ensured all bodies are dripping. At the makeshift beach bar, ice is plunked into orange and incarnadine cocktails, and the bartender screams, “Cheers to queers,” kissing each customer on the cheek.

Except for my own, every body on this beach is black. It’s definitely not Mykonos, Fort Lauderdale, or even Vancouver’s Wreck Beach. It’s the annual gay party on Sierra Leone’s Black Johnson Beach (yes, fitting name) and everyone on it has trekked tricky rainforest paths in order to find this one strip of private blue coastline where they can openly be pink for the day.

I don’t live in Sierra Leone anymore, but when I think back to those days on Black Johnson I can still feel the sand in my toes and the esprit de corps of a group of men who risk their lives in order to be themselves for just one thrilling day. While we Canadians debate the end of our gay rights movement, gay people elsewhere in the world are only just now testing the waters of their own inchoate struggles.

Having spent the last three years working in media development in Namibia, Sierra Leone, and the occupied Palestinian territories, I was forced to climb back into the closet and—for the first time— learn to navigate queer life in some very homophobic places. It wasn’t easy.

Growing up in free-thinking Winnipeg, with Glen Murray (the first openly gay mayor of a major North American city) in power, my coming out wasn’t all that tough. Of course there was taunting in school, the confusing bisexual phase, and all the other requisite boxes most Canadian gays and lesbians tick on their way out of the closet. But, compared to the rest of the world, most of our Canadian stories are rather more Clay Aiken than Matthew Shepard.

Elsewhere there seems to be a sliding scale. Namibia has underground gay bars, but, like most countries in Africa, homosexuality there is illegal and carries a punishment of prison time. In Sierra Leone, life imprisonment is not unheard of. In the West Bank, gay sex acts are also illegal, and the societal taboo surrounding homosexuality is tantamount to life in prison for anyone who dares come out.

Legal implications aside, day-to-day life for a gay person in certain parts of the world is fraught with risk. Gays and lesbians live a hidden life, often marrying someone of the opposite sex to ensure their protection. In the West Bank there are stories of blackmail—gay people forced to pay money if they’re found out. Even online, which seems to be the only tangible gay community in Palestine, gay men often won’t post their pictures on chat sites, and they struggle to find places to meet in a part of the world where there’s no such thing as real privacy. It is a very lonely, isolated existence.

My mom bought me a battery-operated stuffed cat when I moved to Bethlehem last year. It takes two giant D-size batteries and sleeps in a tiny cushion. When working, its stomach moves up and down, making a purring sound. I named it Tammy. My mom told me it was to keep me company. It was really her way of telling her gay son to be careful in Palestine—stay home and pet Tammy. And I did, for the most part, until she ran out of batteries.

It was a relief to know I still had all the internal and external hardware necessary to understand and participate in the system of glances, stares, eyelash-batting, and smiles that facilitate a gay pickup in countries where people get beat up, killed, bullied, raped, and denied access to housing, jobs, and health services because of their sexuality.

It’s a back-to-basics, roughing-it kind of gay life. Having lived in Toronto and London, U.K., where with a hop, skip, and a mince just about anywhere in the city, I could find myself in a gay bar, sauna, bookstore, or pet shop, the Middle East and Africa were a challenge. Being gay in these places felt like an extreme sport of homosexuality. More difficult than getting laid, however, was dealing with the fear that I would be found out. One can never know how people will react, and I lived with a constant, nagging dread, watching every word and gesture.

Being outed would have likely meant I had to leave my job and start worrying about my safety. When homophobic comments were made—and they often were—I had to train myself to keep a straight face, not redden, and keep my mouth shut. I self-censored everything, hesitated to have colleagues to my apartment, and two-stepped around all conversations about my private life.

Even now, I sit in my Bethlehem kitchen, listening to the nearby muezzin calling the Muslim faithful to prayer and contemplating a farewell conversation I’d like to have with my closest Palestinian colleague before I finish my current contract. It’s possible she already suspects, but I don’t have the guts to say anything until the last minute, worried it will completely transform our relationship. I will try to tell her face-to-face, but even if I don’t, I can get on a plane, leave forever, and send it in an email. I might even do it on Facebook, which I’ve had on high security ever since moving to the Middle East, for fear that local colleagues would want to be “friends” only to discover pictures of my gay pride escapades and Black Johnson parties or status updates from my wonderfully raunchy transsexual friend in Montreal.

Sadly, for my African and Middle Eastern gay friends, escape isn’t so easy. The societies in which they live have a lot of work ahead before they can march down the streets waving rainbow flags. The gay denizens of the developing world still mostly live in both poverty and fear. Although I think it’s premature to label our Canadian struggle done and over, if there is any surfeit fight left in liberated Canadians, there are certainly plenty of places to direct it outside of Canada. In the meantime, we must never take our hard-fought battles—and successes—for granted.

My boys on Black Johnson beach would likely give up the sand and sun for just one day of what we have in Canada. Lucky for me, I’m headed back for some of that. A battery-operated cat just doesn’t cut it.

To protect the author’s safety on future assignments abroad, David Logan is a pseudonym

The 38-year-old program has been particularly successful at recruiting high school dropouts, especially those from marginalized communities. But despite its success, U of T is considering merging TYP’s student and academic resources with those of its Academic Bridging Program—a separate effort geared toward part-time students and that, according to critics, lacks the support structure that TYP excelled at.

Each year, TYP takes in 60 first-year students, who take a one-year full-time course load before entering a regular bachelor’s degree program. The majority of these students go on to complete their undergrads, with some even going on to PhD programs.

Jill Matus, vice-provost students at U of T, is quick to stress that TYP is one of the school’s most successful programs, but, she adds, “the whole university is in tough financial shape.” The merger would “optimize the use of resources,” she says, and put the two programs under a single administration, cutting overhead.

TYP supporters and students fear that rolling the program into another department will weaken it or even kill it outright. The merger would slash $65,000 out of TYP’s $120,000 operating budget, and any faculty members who retire from TYP in the near future would simply not be replaced.

“I wouldn’t be able to go back to university without TYP,” says Ayden Scheim, a third-year sociology major who attended TYP in 2006–2007. “I was way behind and I wouldn’t have been eligible for the Academic Bridging Program. TYP really encouraged and supported me as a mature high school student different from the first-year students. Part of the concern is not simply about efficiency and budget, but the politics and values of the program.”

TYP’s current 2009–2010 class will not be affected by the proposals, but the future of the program is in limbo until a decision is made. Matus says that decision could be finalized by later this fall.

Len Dobbin, the most important audience member in Montreal's jazz scene. Illustration by Aislin.

In early fall of 1950, Len Dobbin stepped out of a listening booth on Rue Ste-Catherine in Montreal to find himself confronted by five New York jazz enthusiasts seeking potential founders for a satellite jazz appreciation society. Only 15 years old at the time, Dobbin had never met enough fans to think the project would succeed, but he agreed to give it a shot. As it turned out, there was enough interest in the city to sustain the club for almost a decade, but, more importantly for Montreal, the experience was enough to get Dobbin hooked indefinitely.

He spent the next six decades as a self-described “friend to jazz,” though his tireless enthusiasm as a journalist, photographer, promoter, researcher, and fan—almost entirely without pay—suggests an unusually demanding definition of friendship. His years post-retirement were dedicated to promoting young musicians, popularizing jazz in print and on the air, connecting musicians to one another, and bringing talent to the city. At 74, his stories and encyclopedic memory bordered on mythical: the man had photographed Miles Davis, gone clubbing with John Coltrane, earned a song dedication by baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams, and hosted some 1,500 radio shows.

When Dobbin died in July—after falling ill at his favourite Montreal jazz haunt during the world’s largest jazz festival—the city lost a great player in (surely not coincidentally) one of the healthiest jazz communities on the continent. But it is hard to tabulate Dobbin’s impact. It’s also hard to understand precisely his role: he was a trained accountant, a man who reportedly owned a jazz instrument for only a day in his life, but also, by all accounts, he was an integral part of the music scene.

Perhaps Dobbin’s passion offers us a model. As one of the first widely popularized improvisational art forms, jazz is often cited as a performance by all involved: without a score or conductor to follow, a piece relies on performers to generate its shape and depends on listeners to create its meaning, by becoming aware of the possibilities presented by each shifting cadence and making sense of how they are resolved. Never a musician, Dobbin was, perhaps, the ultimate listener: he heard potential in Montreal’s artists and denizens and did his best to realize its meaning.