Friday, November 18, 2011
City of Vancouver & Capilano University Strip Hundreds of Poor People of Right to Vote
When Carnegie and Capilano ban people, they are well aware that they are creating a barrier to voting. Carnegie is a standard polling station, for all elections: civic, provincial, and federal.
A man banned from Carnegie said he talked to a security staffer last week and was told that they were not allowing banned people into the building on election day. That's a lot of people, when you consider that they have banned hundreds of people a year from Carnegie, usually for freedom of expression, totaling thousands of people by now. Many never go through the often humiliating process of having their barring overturned. Many don't know there is such a process.
Even if security personnel were instructed to back off for a few minutes while a banned person entered the building to vote, many banned people are uncomfortable going back to Carnegie as they were often verbally or physically abused or humiliated during the process. One woman told me that she left the building trembling the night a security guard assaulted her; he was angry that she had been making waves about the undemocratic banning process so he banned her. "When I got my voting card and it said I had to go to Carnegie to vote, I started getting flashbacks," she told me.
And what about the guy who was banned after being thrown to the ground by three security staffers, including the head of security, because he verbally protested when they blocked him from returning his books to the Carnegie public library in a tiny pull cart. Do you really think he wants to return to cast a vote?
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
City Staff at Carnegie Go on Name Calling Rampage
Monday, March 15, 2010
One Small Step for Skip Everall, One Giant Step for Carnegie Membership
Last week, this monitor threatened to call security on this photographer when a disagreement arose. She didn't actually carry through with the threat on that occasion, but she has previously, so he lodged a verbal complaint with Carnegie Security Co-ordinator, Skip Everall.
The photographer did not know that he was not the first person to lodge a complaint about the use of the threat at Carnegie to "call Security" as a substitute for communicating with Downtown Eastsiders. This substitution was previously brought to the attention of City Manager Penny Ballem in writing in 2009 and during a meeting in January 2010. The photographer used a term that others have used though, to describe this substitution: "bullying".
Monday, February 8, 2010
Better Dead than in the Red
Last week, a longtime Carnegie Centre volunteer was eating a meal at the Carnegie cafeteria and began to choke on his food. The volunteer, who is paralyzed on one side, made his way to the counter where staff sell food, and collapsed.
A young metrosexual with long blond hair who operates the cash register, always with an undercurrent of resentment, acted quickly. He left his cash register and performed the Heimlich manoveur, putting his arms around the choking man and thrusting his rib cage upwards, twice. Then he went back to working the cash registrar. He didn't miss beat: the cash, the Heimlich manoveur, the cash. But the choking man wasn't improving, so a volunteer working alongside the cashier dishing up food, a huskier, physically stronger man, performed the Heimlich manoveur one more time, more forcefully. The food in the choking man's throat came gushing out onto the floor.
Life saved.
Roughly five minutes after the choking began, Skip Everall, head of Carnegie Security strides into the cafeteria, putting on his rubber gloves. Everall reprimanded the volunteer and the metrosexual multi-tasker. “You shouldn't have done that,” he scolded. “You're not qualified to do that.” Not qualified? To get hired at a City Community Centre cafeteria, an applicant has to have Basic First Aid.
“They don't want to get sued”, said a witness.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Fight Breaks Out in Carnegie Kitchen
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
City Management at Carnegie Accused of Fraudulently Manufacturing 15 Witnesses
City of Vancouver staff are accused of faking witnesses in the barring of a woman from the Seniors Center on June 18, 2008. Carnegie Security boss, Skip Everall, barred the woman after Devor, a notoriously abusive coffee seller, asked him to. The woman says Devor had yelled at her and swung his arms at her to push her out the door, resulting in her raising her voice and telling him that she had been taking his abuse for ten years and she was "fed up" with it.
Everall barred the woman based on Devor's version of events; he never spoke to the woman even though he saw her twice that day and she remained in the building. When a staff person allowed the woman a peak at the Incident Report that Everall had written to justify the barring -- Everall and Whitty refused to show it to her -- she noticed that he had claimed that there were "witnesses". During her appeal meeting for the barring on June 23, she told Everall that she didn't believe witnesses existed. Certainly Everall could not support the existence of such witnesses. "When I asked him for their names, he told me, 'The only witness that counts is Devor'". She also asked him what these witnesses had said. He couldn't identify anything, not even generally, what they had said.
When neither Everall or his boss Ethel Whitty would give the woman a copy of the Incident Report, she exercised her right on June 18th to request one through the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. The City has 30 days to respond to such a request. It has now been 2 1/2 months and the woman has not received a response. But a photocopy of the Incident Report was leaked to the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog and shown to the woman. She was outraged at what she believed to be retroactive evidence tampering.
Everall was now claiming that Devor's version, albeit a cryptic version, of events entered in the Incident Report had been “corroborated by 15 patrons in the lounge at that time.” The woman says there were nowhere near 15 people in the Seniors Lounge that day. “You won’t find 15 people in the Seniors’ [Lounge] on any Saturday afternoon when the sun’s shining,” says the woman who Everall identified in his report as a “regular in the seniors lounge”. “I went down there that day to use the computer ‘cause I knew the place would be deserted. I got a computer right away; usually there’s a waiting list.”
Not only did Everall and Whitty come up with 15 mysterious unnamed witnesses, they avoided questioning another witness who came forward in this case, one with a name and a face. This witness was a regular Carnegie volunteer who could contradict Everall’s claim that there were 15 witnesses in the Seniors that afternoon. The volunteer regularly goes down to the Seniors Lounge to buy green tea and was there when Devor and Everall were discussing barring this woman. “I tried not to listen,” he said, “I didn’t want them to think I was eavesdropping.” A few minutes later, Devor announced to the volunteer that the woman had been barred. The volunteer passed the message on to the woman later that day, which prompted her to approach Richard, a Security guard, to ask if this was true.
The volunteer/witness estimates there were “four or five” people in the Seniors Lounge that day. He did not see Everall speak to anyone other than Devor. Both Whitty and Everall were given the full name of this witness just after the incident while memories remained fresh, a fact that is confirmed by taped conversations. Whitty stated clearly on tape that she would talk to this witness. The volunteer says Whitty did subsequently bump into him at Carnegie but asked him only “about my music”, not about what he had seen in the Seniors. Since the incident, the volunteer/witness has dropped into Carnegie every day and says Whitty and Everall regularly say hello to him but never ask him what he saw – or didn’t see — in the Seniors Lounge that day.
City Manager Judy Rogers has for years known that staff at Carnegie are subjecting members to fraud and human rights abuses. It is unseemly for a woman with a history of condoning such practices to have been chosen to welcome the world as a member of the 2010 Olympics Organizing Team. Time for Premier Campbell to remove -- let's say "bar" -- her.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Caught on Tape! Security Boss Using City Powers for Personal Retaliation

Photo: Carnegie Seniors Lounge
There have long been stories from people barred from Carnegie Centre that when they didn’t grovel during their appeal process, they were instantly told that their barring had been extended. Exhibiting confidence or knowledge of one’s rights is considered insubordination in this "residential school" environment, an observation made by William Simpson who was barred from the building after getting elected to the Board. Finally, there is taped evidence that Carnegie Security boss Skip Everall and security guard Ted Chaing are engaging in such human rights abuses.
The tape capturing Everall and Chaing abusing power was made on June 22, 2008 while a woman was meeting with them to appeal her barring from the Carnegie Seniors Lounge. She had been barred for raising her voice at a notoriously abusive coffee seller, Devor, who was yelling at her. The woman believed she had a right to know the name of the Security boss who had barred her. She did not at the time know Skip Everall's surname and she couldn't be sure that "Skip" wasn't a nickname. When she asked him twice for his name, her barring from the Seniors Lounge in the Carnegie basement was extended to the entire Carnegie building.
Transcript:
Woman: (speaking to Everall in a soft tone, almost a whisper) What is your real name by the way? You’ve made a decision about me and you’re not telling me your name. I’m asking you your name Skip. [She remained polite.]
Chaing: We call him by Skip.
Woman to Everall: What is your name, your last name?
Everall: It doesn’t matter.
Woman: You barred me….
Skip interrupts: My name is Skip, alright?
Woman: But if I want to appeal it to the City I have to know your name….
Skip: I’m sorry, you’re going to be barred from the building. [speaking forcefully] The meeting’s over!
[…]
Woman: I’m going to be barred from the building because I asked you your name?
Skip: We’ll just discuss the matter some other time.
Woman: Am I barred from the building now?
Chaing [as Everall listens]: Yes, yes.
When Everall responded to the woman asking him his name by barring her from the entire building, Chaing added that she was also being barred for raising the issue of sexism. Chaing was referring to her earlier statements that she believed Security had been sexist not only in barring her from the Seniors Lounge for talking back to a man, but for assuming that only the man’s version of events needed to be obtained before a decision was made to bar her from the Seniors Lounge. She claims Everall saw her twice after the incident but didn't speak to her,and that she remained in the building for the remainder of the afternoon, a fact that is supported by her signature on the sign-in sheet in the 3rd floor computer room.
Transcript:
Woman: Am I barred from the building?
Chaing [as Everall listens]: Yes, yes. I’m sorry, I don’t want to do that. [uses broken English here] Because you’re not in an appropriate behavior to talk. All your head is sexist, male and female. And then the name; we pay him by that name. What’s the problem here; it’s you, not us.... All you’re thinking is the name and then the male and female thing....Next time, I hope you change a little.
The woman hopes Judy Rogers changes a little. Rogers, in her role as City Manager, has over the last decade allowed human rights abuses in the barring process at Carnegie Center to become an epidemic.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
"Missing Woman" Traced to Ethel Whitty
Whitty, Director of the City of Vancouver's Carnegie Center, made an example of the woman. Through this woman, Whitty sent a message: A woman talking back to an abusive man will not be tolerated.
This woman has now been banned by the Whitty administration for over six weeks from the Carnegie Senior's Center for daring to talk back to the notorious Devor, a tyrannical coffee seller from Croatia who Whitty unleashes on Carnegie members at least once a day in the basement Seniors Center. When Devor went into his usual rant one Saturday in June and then pushed the woman who dared talk back out the door by taking swings at her (although not actually making contact with her body), Whitty made certain the woman was punished. The fact that Devor was yelling much louder than this woman was of no concern to Whitty.
Whitty will not be out done by former Ottawa Mayor Charlotte Whitten known for saying, "A woman has to be twice as good as a man to be considered half as good." Whitty's rule of thumb is that a woman has to raise her voice half as loud as a man to be considered twice as bad.
As the woman's banning from the Seniors Center had reached five weeks last Saturday on July 19th, she went to Carnegie Center to deliver a letter to Head of Security, Skip Everall, insisting that he inform her in writing when the banning would be up. "He wouldn't take the letter," she said as she sat outside the Waves coffee shop next door today. "He ran upstairs to get Dan Tetrault [Whitty's Assistant Director]." Tetrault came downstairs with Everall and the two jointly refused to sign for the letter "unless I let them read it first". She told Tetrault that as a City of Vancouver administrator he was required to acknowledge receipt of a letter and not screen it out if he didn't like the content. She explained to Tetrault that if she could afford a courier, he and Everall wouldn't have the option of reading the letter before deciding whether to sign for it. But the two were intransigent on this point so she allowed them to read the polite, brief, letter. Tetrault then gave Everall "the go ahead". Everall photocopied the letter and signed, using only his initials. [At an earlier date, he refused to say whether "Skip" is his real name.]
Yet another week has gone by and the woman has received no response to her letter, even though she provided her home address on it. "I think a City lawyer is helping them write a response," she said.
Every day that the banning is extended, this woman is deprived of access to public computers in the Seniors Center. She is essentially deprived as well of access to the computers on the third floor of Carnegie because Whitty and Everall have created such a hostile environment that she feel uncomfortable going there. "I don't know what they'll do next."
When delivering her letter, this woman also asked Tetrault and Everall whether they would ban her from the entire building if she gave an interview to the media. She reminded them that they had banned William Simpson, a duly elected Board member from the building for being merely associated with media. "Tetrault winced", she recalled. Tetrault evaded the question, turned his back and walked out of Everall's office. She followed him. She asked him again if she would be banned and he responded, "No." Everall would not give her that assurance.
She also asked Tetrault and Everall to tell her who had taped the meeting she had with Everall. (Everall had met with her after she served her initial sentence of five days, Saturday to Wednesday.) Tetrault said the meeting had not been taped. But she told him that a tape was circulating and she had been contacted to confirm it's authenticity. Everall did not say much. "I'd like to hear the tape," she says, "because I want to use it against them. They've been lying."
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Skip Everall Hit on his Bike
Here's a tip for ICBC. Don't believe a word Everall says.
Everall has been caught lying in a barring case of a female Carnegie member from the Seniors Lounge for standing up to the notoriously abusive coffee seller, Devor, who has been yelling at her for ten years. The Enquirer will be reporting on this issue later. This woman, who was sitting on the Carnegie patio sipping green tea when she learned that Everall had been banged by a car, said, "I wanna talk to ICBC....They should look at his history of lying."
In addition to this woman's barring, Everall has become notorious for personally supervising the barring on fraudulent pretenses of William Simpson from the Carneige Learning Center by Co-ordinator Lucy Alderson. Everall demonstrated that he was not a man of integrity when he refused to provide Simpson with the reasons for the barring in writing.
The woman sitting on the outdoor patio at Carnegie today -- that would be the woman mentioned above who was barred from the Seniors -- was wondering out loud if Everall had been wearing a helmet when he got hit. She saw Skip on the day she was barred (he had evaded telling her she was barred but she suspected something was up); he was talking to Carnegie receptionist Dan Feeney on Main St. and when he saw her, she recalls, he averted his eyes and took off on his bike, going west on Pender. "I noticed he wasn't wearing a helmet."
She said repeatedly between sips of tea that ICBC should not accept statements by Everall or give him a pay out without first examining his history of lying.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Skip Skips Woman's Rights
We have learned his last name, "Everall" from a commenter on this blog and confirmed from other internet posts that a "Skip Everall" does work at Carnegie. But is his first name really Skip? Some of the security guards who work under him don't believe it is. But Skip won't say.
The most recent incident in which Skip Everall acted in a legally questionable manner occurred on Saturday. Everall barred a woman after she spoke up about Devor, a coffee seller in the basement who has been shouting at her for years. Literally hundreds of people who go to Carnegie, both men and women, have stories of abuse by Devor. Many have lodged complaints only to be ignored.
When one man finally punched Devor in the nose a couple of years ago, leaving his nose bleeding, after being verbally abused by him over and over again, Downtown Eastside resident William Simpson pointed out in writing to members that staff had seen that coming for years. But staff at Carnegie, through their actions, have demonstrated that they essentially condone abuse.
The woman who was barred on Saturday had lodged her first complaint against Devor in writing ten years ago after he repeatedly hounded her to go home with him and watch pornography when she would try to buy a coffee or use a Vancouver Public Library computer in the basement of Carnegie. He also instructed her to loose weight and dye her hair so that she would be more attractive to men. Even though he had also asked a female Board member to go home and watch pornography, Carnegie staff made the complainant's life miserable. There is evidence that City Manager Judy Rogers resorted to a cover up, even fraud, in that case which she claimed in writing to be overseeing. Rogers is accused of essentially giving a green light to the denigration of this woman by Devor at Carnegie. (A separate post will be made when we get the paper trail on Rogers.)
On Saturday, the same woman was targeted again. Skip barred her without notifying her that she was barred. He wrote an "incident report" while making no attempt to get her side of the story. It's not as though Skip hadn't had an opportunity to speak to her; she had approached him outside his office immediately following Devor's abuse, saying, "This abuse has to stop". Skip simply brushed past her and went downstairs with Devor. He listened to Devor's rantings and based on that, wrote up a one-sided report. The woman remained in the building for the afternoon, raising questions about why Skip avoided getting her side. She even saw Skip outside the building when she left but he reportedly averted his eyes and took off on his bicycle.
The woman learned through hearsay that she was barred from Vancouver Public Library computers in the basement of Carnegie.
Today the woman asked a security guard, Richard, whether she was barred. Richard looked in a log book, found the incident report, and confirmed that she is in fact barred from Vancouver Public Library computers in the basement of Carnegie Center, a City of Vancouver community center. (She had actually spoken to Richard when she had wanted to buy a coffee in the basement of Carnegie and had asked Richard to accompany her as she was scared Devor would become abusive. Richard did accompany her.)
But here's the kicker. Skip is requiring that this woman serve her four day sentence BEFORE she can even speak to him to appeal on Wednesday. That is typical Carnegie policy: make a person serve their sentence before they can appeal, and often before they are even told why they are barred. She was told by the guard that even if she speaks to Skip, there is no guarantee he will grant her access to the VPL computers again.
Carnegie members want answers. Why is the Vancouver Public Libary allowing this harassment of a woman who speaks up about abuse? This is not the first case. Why is VanCity funding Carnegie while they engage in chronic civil liberties abuses? Why is Skip working at Carnegie when he has engaged in civil liberties abuses previously and even other security guards feel that he is performing poorly in the job? Why is Judy Rogers on the Olympic Organizing Committee when there is a paper trail indicating that she has condoned the denigration of this woman and other low income members of Carnegie?
More to come on this case. This woman is an acquaintance of Bill Simpson and we're hoping we can get an interview with her.