Carnegie Staff Thumb Noses at Jenny Kwan

What Jenny Kwan did, Carnegie management has undone.

Last November, Jenny Kwan, MLA for Vancouver East, got a call from a Carnegie member, also named Kwan, who had been unjustly barred from the Carnegie for four months. Jenny said she would help him. He believes she had one of her staff call Carnegie, as his barring was lifted and he wasn't required to go through the usual meeting with Security Coordinator Skip Everall. When Kwan attempted to talk to him, Everall said, "I don't want to talk to you."

Anyone who has ever reported Carnegie corruption to the outside world knows that Carnegie staff retaliate. Kwan said he noticed a young security guard glaring at him (he didn't know that the guard is reportedly the son of Everall.) Then Everall got the opening he needed. "I was feeling good it was New Year's day," says Kwan, who explains that he was joking with some old Chinese guys who sit in the Carnegie lobby and made a sex joke. He made the joke in Chinese and they were laughing, and then he translated it into English. Everall instantly gave orders to security guard Ted Chaing to bar Kwan for a month.

Chaing issued the barring. But Kwan has no hard feelings toward Chaing. "He had to do it; that's his boss; he would have been fired." The exact reason Kwan was given for the barring was that Everall considered him "loud" and "corrupt". Carnegie is an adult centre; you don't see kids around there much, so who is going to be corrupted by Kwan?

Kwan's plan to begin going to the Carnegie Learning Centre this month to improve his English literacy, a plan that he had already run by Learning Centre teacher Lucy Alderson, has now been nixed by Everall. One less student in a learning centre that is already clinically dead.

The barring of Kwan would have been rubber-stamped by Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty and Assistant Director Dan Tetrault. All barrings are rubber-stamped by them.

Funny, Everall, Whitty, and Tetrault didn't see the need for such an extreme response last year when a 50 year old male staffer was having sex with a teenage female client.

Jenny Kwan Helps Man Unjustly Barred from Carnegie

A Chinese man who has been going to Carnegie for 20 years, says Carnegie Security boss Skip Everall told him, "You have a big mouth." The Chinese man who speaks broken English, responded, "A lot of people around here don't like you." Everall barred him.

The barred man's last name is Kwan, like the MLA, Jenny Kwan.

When Kwan was barred, he recalls, "I was really angry." He called Everall a "bully" and an "asshole" .....in Chinese. He said it in both Mandarin and Cantonese, which got the attention of the Chinese people who sit around in Carnegie.

After being barred for 4 months, it was time to have a Kwan to Kwan talk.

Kwan spoke to Jenny Kwan and told her about the unjust barring. He believes she had a staffer call Carnegie. He went back to Carnegie and was allowed in. He tried to talk to Everall who told him, "I don't want to talk to you."

Barring is going full tilt at Carnegie. Kwan says they have now barred a short, middle-aged, Jewish woman, from a middle-class background. The barred woman had been going to Carnegie for years for the arts programs. A woman who sometimes comes to our blogger meetings knows her, and says she's quite assertive which is probably what got her barred. Kwan says the barred woman doesn't want to go back to Carnegie now that she's been barred. It's common for people who are barred to never go back.

"They bar all the good people," says Kwan.

The names of the hundreds of people who are barred each year remain on the membership list though, as they have paid their $1 membership fee and been issued a membership card. They are included in the stats Carnegie gives to the government to justify funding.