Pedestrian Struck in School Crosswalk at 41st and Fraser

"Dad, you hit him." That's what a pedestrian who was struck yesterday afternoon in the crosswalk in the school zone near 41st and Fraser, recalls a teenager girl saying to her father as they gazed down at him. He was lying on the street in front of their car.

There were many witnesses to the accident which occurred around 3:30 or 4 p.m., just after school had gotten out, on Tues, Oct. 2.

The pedestrian says he had the right of way; his light was green.

The driver, with his teenager daughter in the car, had turned the corner into the crosswalk and run into the pedestrian. The pedestrian says, "I can still see the grate coming at me." Upon impact, the pedestrian flew up onto the hood of the car and his hand rammed into the windshield wiper area below the window, leaving him with a serious gash on the palm of his hand. His blood was on the windshield. The impact also injured his knee and left him banged up over other parts of his body. He is walking stiffly and limping badly. His friends have been coming to his aid.

[On the weekend after the accident, the pedestrian told his friend, Tom, that when he woke up one morning, he couldn't see for a few minutes. "Everything was fuzzy." He was lying on his bed looking toward the kitchen and even the fridge was a blur. That's a sign of a concussion, Tom told him.]

The pedestrian is a 53 yr. old caucasian man. The driver of the red car which struck him looked like an Indo-Canadian man in his 40's. The driver "didn't seem like a bad guy", the pedestrian recalls. He speculated that the guy had just picked up his teenager daughter at school and was preoccupied talking to her when he turned the corner into the crosswalk.

Four lanes of traffic were interrupted by the accident. Several people helped the pedestrian. One man pressed on the gash on his hand, which helped stem the bleeding. Another man rolled up a coat and put it under his head, keeping it off the pavement which was wet from an earlier rainfall. Two other people brought blankets to put over him.

The ambulance and firemen arrived at the scene and cut off the pedestrian's clothes as he lay on the street. Then he was whisked to Vancouver General Hospital. There he was given numerous x-rays and scans. They were concerned that he might have broken his neck, but he hadn't. He was in the hospital for about 6 hours. He has no complaints about the treatment he got at VGH Emergency. The supervising physician, Dr. Rubacher, seemed really "on top of things".

Two police officers, one being Constable Peter Campbell, visited the pedestrian at the hospital. They pointed out that he had an umbrella and wanted to know if he'd had it open, if it had been raining. He said there was moisture in the air but it had not been raining at the time so his umbrella had been closed.The pedestrian told the cops that if the driver had killed him, it would have at least been a convenient spot. Why?, one cop asked. "It was next to the cemetery."

Other school-related news:
International Boycott of Vancouver High School Diplomas Concealed By School Board
Vancouver Teachers Demand Recycling in Schools

Insite is Part of Medical-Industrial Complex Eroding Civil Liberties on Downtown Eastside

The following post appeared on the Downtown Eastside Enquirer in April 2006. It is being re-printed because it remains relevant as we await the announcement by the Harper government this week of their new drug strategy, one that is not expected to grant Insite the 3 year extension requested.
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I live a couple of blocks from Insite, the Safe Injection Site on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. I welcome Prime Minister Harper's announcement that his government is not committed to it and will subject it to a review.

I would like Harper to review Insite in the context of the monstrous Medical-Industrial complex of which it is an integral part on the DTES. This complex consists of a myriad of medical organizations interfaced with a burgeoning poverty industry. It constitutes virtually the entire economy in this neighbourhood which is often referred to as a socialist experiment. Those profiting from this medical-industrial complex -- most of whom live outside the DTES and are referred to by residents as “poverty pimps” -- must constantly manufacture case files to attract public funding. The result is a case file economy.

Everyone is a potential case file. First they case-filed welfare recipients, a population prone to accepting dubious diagnoses that could be exchanged at the welfare office for a higher rate. Then they case-filed the junkies. And now they are case-filing you, Joe and Jane average Canadian. Freedom of expression by average people is now routinely medicalized in the DTES, viewed by poverty pimps as yet another case-file opportunity. Try speaking up or writing a letter on a political issue, criticizing a non-profit organization, or even querying a health professional about the side-effects of blood pressure medication. You may find a nurse on your doorstep announcing that you have been targeted for “assessment”, psychiatric or otherwise. Even after you are “cleared”, your new case file remains permanent.

Try complaining about this gratuitous case-filing and a nurse may arrange for a police constable to show up at your home to deter such “harassment”. And you may find that the swarm of street workers dispensing needles to injection drug users have been briefed on your file and encouraged to monitor you.

Show me a spokesperson touting the success of Insite and I will show you someone economically invested in the medical-industrial complex. A regular media spokesperson is Mark Townsend who, along with his nurse wife Liz Evans, is Co-Executive Director of the Portland Hotel Society. In addition to operating Insite, the Portland Hotel Society operates or has tentacles into so many other organizations that the DTES is virtually a company town. Public accountability is not Townsend's strong point though; he has refused to release a special audit by BC Housing on the Portland Hotel Society.

Maybe it is this uncomfortable refusal by Townsend that makes it expedient for Gillian Maxwell to now act as media spokesperson for Insite -- as indicated from her quoted comments in a recent Metro News article -- during the run-up to Harper's decision on whether to shut it down. Maxwell receives a hefty pay cheque in the medical-industrial complex. She has never displayed much interest in the majority of residents in the neighbourhood who saw ourselves in Harper's election promise to start rewarding “people who play by the rules”.

Maxwell's spiel, like Townsend's, is that research into Insite favours preserving it. But how neutral are the numbers? Hopefully, they haven't been influenced by MP Libby Davies' son, Leif Erikson, who was parachuted into the facility to work.

Watching the medical-industrial complex in action has cured myself and several other long term residents of the DTES of one thing, our socialist leanings. I’d like Harper to give civil liberties a shot in the arm and dismantle it.

The Eat-Clean Diet: You Don't Have To Be Fat and Forty-something

Pumpkin seeds are a little like viagra. They’re loaded with zinc which kicks starts the libido. I found that nutritional nugget in Tosca Reno’s book, “The Eat-Clean Diet.”

Pumpkin seeds are just one of “12 Superfoods” Reno discusses toward the end of her book – after she’s finished explaining the basics of how to Eat-Clean and escape being fat. Her slogan is, “Eat more food, not less.”

Eating Clean is not a diet. It’s a lifestyle that has worked for Reno who practiced it for 7 years before publishing her book this year. After the mother of three with a BSc. saw her weight yo yo for years from it’s peak of 200 pounds, she adopted the clean eating lifestyle and became a swimsuit model – after the age of 40. She now has a regular column, “Raise the Bar”, in Oxygen, a women’s fitness magazine. She lives in Toronto but, according to her blog, is often in much warmer places in the U.S. and Mexico attending fitness events.

Reno believes that how your body looks is 80% about the food you put into it. Only 10% of how your body looks is in her view – and this will be a relief for anybody who hates exercising -- about the exercise you do. The other 10% is largely out of your control: genetics.

A key to the Eat-Clean lifestyle, Reno insists, is to eat every 2 or 3 hours. Eat five or six small meals a day. Couple lean protein and complex carbohydrates at every meal. These foods digest slowly and prevent you from getting hungry. And they prevent swings in your blood sugar that leave you with that lethargic feeling – one reason I am now following her advice. Following are a couple of small meals suggested in “A Typical Day” Meal Plan:

2:30 pm – 5 oz. lean cooked chicken breast, ½ cup raw veggies, 500 ml water

5:00 pm ½ baked sweet potato, 1 cup steamed vegetables, 5 oz. grilled salmon, tea and 500 ml water.

Although Reno insists early in her book that you pair up lean protein and complex carbohydrates as “a steady date” at every meal, she gets off to a slow start in explaining exactly what complex carbohydrates are. In Chapter 1, she leaves the reader to infer from the Meal Plan what complex carbs are. The last sentence in the chapter is the closest she comes to explaining what they are: “A serving of complex carbohydrates from fruit or vegetables is a heaping handful, while a serving of complex carbohydrates from whole grains or starches is the size of a tennis ball.”

I mention this because the difference between complex carbs and simple carbs is a source of confusion for many people. I heard the singer, Janet Jackson, tell an interviewer that she ate “no carbs”. No carbs? Surely she eats salads.

It’s not until well into Chapter 2 of Eat-Clean that the difference between complex and simple carbs becomes more clear. When it comes to simple carbs, Reno offers a rule of thumb, “In short, avoid the white stuff!” Reno further tackles this confusion in a section called “Carbohydrate Confusion” in Chapter 5.

That’s a strength of the book, redundancy. But not boring redundancy: every chapter is chuck full of colorful 'shout out' boxes and photographs reminding you of the basics: Eat lean protein and fresh vegetables and fruit. Avoid “white poison”. Drink lots of water. Learn to tell the difference between the good, the bad, and the really bad fats and you’ll notice a difference in your hair and skin.

Tops on Reno’s bad fat list are trans fats (the ones now banned in New York restaurants), which she says could be moving your body in the direction of heart disease and cancer. When it comes to good fats, throwing a few seeds on your morning cereal is a good way to get them. Remember those pumpkin seeds?

But Reno doesn’t gloss over the work involved in eating clean. To eat clean, you have to get organized and make packing your own food a daily habit. That may seem time-consuming, she says, but look at how bad habits that have packed on the pounds have eaten into your time. “Hey, if you made Starbucks your morning habit, didn’t that take some doing? You had to get yourself there, stand in line, order your drink, pay for it, pick it up at the other end once the barista had made it and then get on with your day.”

Reno’s not a fanatic though who will deprive you of a cup of coffee. “I will give up many things to eat clean but I refuse to give up coffee” she says. She allows herself a couple of cups of coffee first thing in the morning, but she’s avoids the fat by no longer putting cream in it. The problem with coffee, she says, is that it drains vitamins and minerals out of your body. In a sample meal plan, she recommends drinking a cup of green tea at both breakfast and lunch.

Reno is not a fanatic with children either. “Choose your battles,” with kids, she says in the “Eat- Clean – Kids” chapter. “Say yes occasionally to unhealthy treats.” Set regular meal times and stick to them “within reason” over the long term.

One way to engage your children in healthy eating, Reno advises in this chapter is to “Take your children grocery shopping.” But in an earlier section called, “Clean Eating – Shopping Clean”, she advises: “Shop solo. You can get in and get out quickly and no one will bug you for a candy bar at the checkout.” Ooops!

Toward the end of the book, Reno includes an “Eat-Clean Recipes” section with entertaining full page color photographs. Most of the recipes are refreshingly simple. Only occasionally did Rosca use ingredients that I knew I would have difficulty tracking down in my local market. One recipe calls for "wild rocket, arugula, or mesculun salad greens”.

This book is not geared to vegetarians – the word vegetarian is not even in the index – but Reno does encourage people to use meatless sources of protein such as beans, lentils, and the ancient grain, quinoa. One thing that appealed to me about her meatless recipes is that they do not rely heavily on cheese.

One of the most fun recipes in her book is the “Ziploc Omelet”.

Ingredients:
Use a Ziploc freezer bag
4 egg whites per bag
½ cup vegetables of choice

Instructions: Separate 4 eggs (large or extra large) and pour egg whites into a Ziploc bag. Shake to combine. Add a variety of ingredients, such as onion, green pepper, tomato or salsa to the egg whites. Make sure to squeeze all the air out of the bag, and zip it up. Place bag in rolling, boiling water for exactly 13 minutes. You can usually cook 6 to 8 omelets in a large pot. For more, make another pot of boiling water. Open the bag and the omelet will roll out easily. Be prepared for everyone being amazed.

Reno’s book is not all about eating though. She hones in on that 10% of her formula for a better body -- exercise. Reno believes that doing a little weight lifting three or four times a week is a must. Her book is published by Robert Kennedy who also publishes “Oxygen: Robert Kennedy’s Women’s Fitness”, a fitness magazine with an emphasis on weight training. That made me immediately suspicious: Was Reno’s book going to be a forum for hawking body building products? It wasn’t.

Whey powder though, a protein supplement widely used by body builders is included in the “Top Supplements” section near the end of Eat-Clean. Reno defers to Kennedy in endorsing whey: “It has virtually no fat but all the nutritional goodness of milk….,” states Robert Kennedy, publisher of Oxygen magazine. “It is the supplement most widely used by all those seeking to trim and define their physique.” I wince at any one-size-fits-all promotion of a dairy product. People who aren’t from Northern European backgrounds – “I’m Dutch,” Reno says in her book – commonly have difficulty digesting dairy products.

It’s Reno’s weight lifting that could buffer her from criticism that she is setting unrealistic Barbie doll standards for female beauty -- although the photo on the back cover of her in a red two piece bathing suit made me wonder how many women could actually look like that. At closer inspection, you can see that Reno has a layer of muscle that it wouldn’t hurt most women her age to strive for, since weight lifting combats thinning bones. Reno is 48 years old and beating path to the gym, while many women her age are on a path to osteoporosis.

Reno actually sounds an alarm in her book about the unrealistic Barbie doll standard of beauty that women are constantly exposed to. She provides a chart which compares the weight of the average American woman to Barbie. Barbie is much thinner in every part of her body, except the bust where she is bigger than the average woman.

Reno cautions that you are at least partially stuck with the body type that is your genetic inheritance from mom and dad. “To some extent you must live with these physical attributes.” But you can make improvements, she says. “A thick waist can be trimmed down to a slimmer version; a saggy backside can benefit from uplifting resistance training and cardiovascular exercise; skinny legs [which she says she had as a girl] can be enhanced by doing specific weight-training exercises to build them up.”

That’s the theme that runs through the entire book: what you can do. This is an upbeat book in the tradition of body builders such as Arnold Schwarzenegger who says he puts his mind not to what he can’t do, but always to what he can do. By the end of the book, Reno has made a convincing case that, to quote the blurb on the back cover, “it’s never too late to get in the best shape of your life.”

The Eat-Clean Diet is available at Amazon and other major bookstores.

BCTF Member Stands in Soup Line

It was the night before welfare day. Last Tuesday night, the Salvation Army Soup truck pulled up as usual to Main St. & Cordova at 9:45 to hand out piping hot soup and peanut butter and jam sandwiches to the poor.

A well-dressed BCTF member who teaches at the Vancouver School Board Eastside Learning Center for adults a block away, lined up for a bowl of soup. Several people saw her; in fact she said hello to a couple of people. She has been a VSB teacher in the neighborhood for years. She is middle-aged, a little on the heavy side, with short blond wavy hair.

"Those people make a fortune," exclaimed Serg, a Downtown Eastside resident, "and she's taking food from the hungry."

A couple of years ago, the media reported discussions in London, England of shutting down food lines for the poor due to widespread abuse. Working people were using them as a convenience, instead of cooking for themselves.

Truth is, virtually everybody you see at the Sally Ann soup truck on Tuesday and Sunday nights in Vancouver looks poor.

Other teacher-related articles on this blog:
Vancouver Teachers Demand Recycling in Schools
International Boycott of High School Diplomas Issued by the Vancouver School Board

Divorced from Reality

A man in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, divorced his wife because he caught her alone in the same room as an unrelated male. The male was on television, hosting a show that she was watching.

In Saudia Arabia, under the heavily patriarchal Sharia law, a man can divorce his wife without going through the courts.

Efforts to introduce Sharia law to Ontario were defeated on Dec. 9, 2005. "I am so happy,” Ms. Homa Arjomand, one of the primary organizers against Sharia in Canada, said at the time.

I came across this story on Covenant Zone.

Vancouver Teachers Demand Recycling in Schools

It was a back flip worthy of the Olympics.

Yesterday, Vancouver School Board Chair Ken Denike said no to teachers insisting that a standard recycling program be set up in all schools. It would be too expensive, he told CBC news on Tuesday, Sept. 25. He said recycling in schools was a volunteer effort, although he admitted that it at times deserved a failing grade. "We have attempted in a number of schools to put in a recycling program," Denike said. "But unless you have a diligent teacher there, or someone really pushing it, it doesn't continue."

But here’s what Denike told the CBC the next day: "It's time to do it." On Wednesday, Sept. 26, he said, "I think it's important to do it fairly soon while we've got motivation and interest in schools. Students have also been pushing for the change.” Denike promised a review by the School Board of the possibility of a district-wide recycling program.


One teacher who put pressure on the School Board to organize a standard blue box program is Michelle Tayler (photo above), a Grade 4 and 5 teacher at Queen Mary Elementary. Tayler told the CBC on Tuesday that while the curriculum emphasizes environmental education, the School Board sets a poor example by discouraging students from actually practicing what they've learned. "Just after lunch you'll see a lot of juice boxes — they're thrown into the garbage cans", Tayler said. "I would have thought by now something would be in place."

Last spring, students from Lord Tennyson Elementary and Lord Byng Secondary made a presentation to Vancouver School Board committees on the topic of recycling and overall sustainability in schools.

Sharon Gregson, the trustee who oversees Lord Byng Secondary School and who last year appeared in the National Firearms Association Journal sporting a gun on the front cover and a tattoo on an inside page, told the CBC that she is keen on recycling. [In fact, after she recycled her husband, Ian Gregson, he accused her in The Tyee news in April 2005 of taking off on vacation to the Dominican Republic with her new boyfriend and saddling him with their joint-custody kids, sabotaging his ability to campaign as a Green Party candidate.]

Gregson told the CBC that it will take time for a standard recycling program to be voted on by the School Board. First funding will have to be found and then the issue will have to be discussed at appropriate committees.

Gregson says the issue of recycling got backgrounded as trustees have been focused on other issues lately, such as “a lack of adequate funding from Victoria, the problem of last year’s lower than expected enrollment, the problem of facilities that need to be seismically upgraded.” She avoided any mention of the international boycott of Grade 12 diplomas that the VSB was accused in the media last week of concealing from parents. The boycott has some parents looking to next year's election, when even a new recycling program may not be enough to save this School Board from ending up in electoral landfill.