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Housing woes in Vancouver

As housing prices in Vancouver continue to rise, people will have to be creative about, and flexible in, their living arrangements. (photo by Cynthia Ramsay)

Until recently, Naava Smolash was living in a collective house in East Vancouver with five roommates. The combined monthly rent for the 100-year-old character house, with high ceilings, fir floors and stained glass windows, was $2,700 and, though the inhabitants have changed over the past decade, Smolash has been a constant since she moved from Montreal 10 years ago.

What’s a collective house? “It’s people sharing spaces,” she explained. “We cook together, share our food and have a house bank account to which we all contribute money. It’s a small urban commune but the difference is that the members tend to be older, with families and professionals living together.”

Smolash’s fellow roomies, all in their 30s, included a scientist, a lawyer, an artist and a law student, while Smolash herself is a professor of English literature at Douglas College. In her spare time, she manages the Vancouver Collective House Network’s Facebook page. She estimates hers was one of 50 collective houses in the city, and that the residents of at least 10 of them are being evicted. Hers included.

Things changed this past summer when her house on Victoria Drive was sold for more than $2 million. A young family will be moving in and Smolash is stuck for a place to live. “There isn’t anywhere else we can afford,” she said. “This neighborhood is changing so quickly that only wealthy people can afford to live here, and I don’t think that’s what we want.”

She’s been talking with the Waterfront Consumers’ Cooperative, which suggested she and her roommates put in proposals for buying a house. “The problem is the co-op can’t buy a million dollar house and, even if they could, the mortgage would be $5,000 a month, which would make it unaffordable,” she said.

Smolash is feeling the panic. “We’re older, we can’t just keep moving,” she lamented. “And co-op houses tend to be rented to families, while a collective home has changing inhabitants.

“What we need is more cooperatively owned collective houses. We’re hoping that people who bought houses in the 1970s or 1980s will step up and sell it to the co-op for an amount the organization can afford. In so doing, they could create a legacy of affordable collective housing that’s cooperatively owned in East Vancouver.”

Michael Geller, a Vancouver architect, planner and developer, is sympathetic to her plight. “I think there’s a need for collective housing, and there’s a real problem here. But maybe this group should look at that $5,000 per month mortgage payment as a good way to go. While we’d like to think there’s some benevolent person in the community who might be willing to donate or reduce the price of a property, it’s been very difficult to achieve that in the past.”

Susana Cogan, housing development director at Tikva Housing Society, has a budget of $75,000 this year (down from $90,000 last year) to help subsidize the rent of those in the community who need it. “Right now, we’re helping 46 Jewish people,” she said. “Being Jewish is not a condition – we house low-income people, giving preference to Jews, so if there are two families with the same need and one is Jewish, we’d subsidize the Jewish family first.”

In February 2014, Adam M (not his real name), 57, and his wife moved to Vancouver from Montreal and the two, both shomer Shabbat, struggled to find jobs and affordable rental accommodation near the Jewish centre. Eventually, they found a one-bedroom apartment near Oak and 17th for $1,200. Tikva Housing is helping subsidize 38% of the monthly rent.

“People don’t like to ask for help,” Cogan said. “But, due to circumstances, they sometimes end up having to take it. Most of the needs arise because of unforeseen things – an illness, a divorce.”

In Adam’s case, the couple had arrived in Vancouver with some resources but depleted them before they were able to find affordable accommodation.

“Our rent subsidy program is supposed to help people for the short term, while they bridge their problems,” Cogan said, adding that each case is different, but one to one-and-a-half years is the average period of assistance.

Adam is grateful for help from the Jewish community in Vancouver but said more resources from donors are necessary. “I know a lot of religious people that would want to come and live in Vancouver with their families because of the lifestyle out west. The problem is, living close to the Jewish community is too expensive.”

Cogan said we definitely should not be encouraging people to come and live in Vancouver if they cannot afford it. Subsidies are scarce, she stressed. “We can’t assist everyone who comes here and we turn a lot of people away, only assisting those who have the most need.”

Right now, there are at least 50 people waiting for Tikva Housing’s help.

“Maybe next year we’ll have even less resources,” Cogan speculated. “But our goal is that if people come here and run out of resources, we don’t want them to be living on the street. We’ll help them find affordable accommodation.”

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond, B.C. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.

Survivors living in squalor

Survivor Mitzvah Project’s Zane Buzby, centre, in 2012 with Abramas and Malka Dikhtyar, the last two Jews in Bazaliya, Ukraine, the birthplace of Buzby’s grandfather. (photo from Survivor Mitzvah Project)

It is officially autumn and British Columbians are nesting, settling in for the cozier, slower season to come. For impoverished Holocaust survivors living in shocking squalor in eastern Europe, the impending winter is a time of danger and scarcity.

Like most people, Zane Buzby initially had no idea that there were thousands of destitute, aged survivors of the Holocaust living in subhuman conditions across the former Soviet Union. After she first encountered some of the poorest of the poor, she returned to her California home and searched for organizations that help them.

“I thought a lot of them must be doing this, even the big organizations that have Holocaust survivor programs,” she recalled recently. “I called every single one of them, [asking] specifically what are you doing? It’s nothing. They’re not helping people financially. No one was doing with this.”

The Claims Conference, which was created by the German government to aid survivors of the Holocaust, has proven useless to most of these individuals.

photo - Survivors Isak and Galina in hospital
Survivors Isak and Galina in hospital. (photo from Survivor Mitzvah Project)

“If you were in a concentration camp – and the Germans kept really good records – if you survived Auschwitz, they have your name … [even so], most people have to hire an attorney,” Buzby said. The survivors she helps don’t have records, partly because the Holocaust in the east was typified by on-the-spot mass murder by Einsatzgruppen killing squads rather than concentration camps. And the few survivors in eastern Europe today do not have the resources to apply.

“They don’t have computers, they don’t have people advocating for them, there’s no lawyers out there,” said Buzby.

photo - Survivors Isak and Galina in their younger days
Survivors Isak and Galina in their younger days. (photo from Survivor Mitzvah Project)

In many cases, they also don’t have the money to pay for heating fuel, let alone medications or doctors. Some may have a pension of $10 a month, others have no income whatsoever. Food can be very scarce and many of the survivors are the last, or among the last, Jews in their villages, making their final years bleak and lonely.

Buzby took it upon herself to help. She formed the Survivor Mitzvah Project in 2001 and has helped thousands of the most desperate, destitute survivors. (See also jewishindependent.ca/oldsite/archives/may08/archives08may02-01.html.)

“This is the last generation of Holocaust survivors and we are the last generation who can say that we helped,” she said. “Everyone turned their back in 1939 but today we can do something to help them and we should.”

The Survivor Mitzvah Project (SMP) doesn’t try to create the infrastructure of social services or initiate major projects. The goal is simple. Get some money into the hands of the most destitute Holocaust survivors as quickly as possible.

“We try to give them between $100 and $150 a month to get food, heat and medication, so it comes out between $1,800 and $2,000 a year per survivor,” she said. “Of course, we don’t have the money, we don’t bring in enough money, we don’t have enough donors to help everyone every month and that’s the sad part. That’s why this is really a call to action. There is no tomorrow for these people. They need money now.”

Buzby, an actor and TV director before she became obsessed with helping destitute survivors, finds recipients through word of mouth, traveling to villages and asking around for Jews or looking for signs of Jewish life. Often, she said, survivors lead her to others. She recalled a particular example.

photo - Some survivors are living in huts – “no running water, no heat, broken windows.”
Some survivors are living in huts – “no running water, no heat, broken windows.” (photo from Survivor Mitzvah Project)

“When I went there, to this little village, it was in such poverty, it was unimaginable, unbelievable poverty. No bathroom, no running water, no heat, broken windows,” she said. “A lot of these people made the huts they live in themselves out of mud and straw bricks after the war. It needs to be refurbished every year but now in their old age they can’t do it, so ceilings fall in. I gave [a woman] $800 and, on the way out, she pulls on my jacket and says to me through a translator, ‘Can I split this was someone?’ And I said, ‘Who are you going to split it with?’ ‘There is a woman down the road who is much worse off than I am.’ And I thought, how could anybody be worse off than you are, so I said come with us and take us to this woman. So we went to see the second woman and she was very bad off, so she was put on the list, and that’s how it goes.”

The Jews in these villages are often surrounded by non-Jews who are also destitute, said Buzby.

“There’s always poor people to help, God knows,” she said. “But for the Jewish people who survived the Holocaust, not only were their families decimated and murdered, their communities were obliterated, especially if they were in the east, they were burned to the ground. There’s no community, there is no rabbi, there’s no Jewish community, there is no shul, there’s no sister, brother and uncle, there is no support system. So, these [non-Jewish] villagers, even though they are also poor, they have large families, they have maybe a church, they have community. These [survivors] have no community. There is absolutely nothing supporting them.”

photo - Basya Kreyn with her prewar photo, Belarus
Basya Kreyn with her prewar photo, Belarus. (photo from Survivor Mitzvah Project)

Holocaust survivors in eastern Europe have one thing in abundance, Buzby clarified. Antisemitism.

“Rampant. Terrible,” she said. “There’s more antisemitism now than there’s ever been.”

In places, neo-Nazis march openly on the streets. Fascistic parties are gaining strength across eastern Europe. In Vilnius, Lithuania, kids dress up as “Jews” in masks with exaggerated features that are perceived as Jewish and trick-or-treat, demanding money. War-era Nazi collaborators are being rehabilitated as national heroes, she said.

The relationships between the few surviving Jews and their neighbors is additionally fraught because of the high levels of collaboration between the Nazi invaders and the native populations in the east. The almost complete destruction of the Jewish communities of Lithuania – an estimated 95% of the Jews there were killed – is credited to the assistance of Lithuanians. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre has said that Ukraine, for example, has never initiated any investigation into collaboration or prosecuted a perpetrator.

The Survivor Mitzvah Project gets almost no institutional help. Buzby said she routinely contacts major foundations but they demur, saying they support various organizations that assist survivors. But the survivors Buzby has tracked down have fallen through the cracks of whatever institutionalized assistance might be available.

What they do get is support from some of Buzby’s show biz colleagues. Buzby’s acting career includes turns in some of the classic comedies of the 1970s and ’80s, including Up in Smoke, National Lampoon’s Class Reunion and This is Spinal Tap. As a director, she worked on sitcoms including The Dick Van Dyke Show, Golden Girls, Newhart and Blossom. She has brought entertainment figures together for emotional events in which luminaries including Valerie Harper, Ed Asner, Frances Fisher, Elliott Gould, Lainie Kazan and Chris Noth read letters from survivors SMP has helped, who speak about their hardships and the difference the assistance has made in their lives. A powerful video of one of the events is online at survivormitzvah.org.

SMP has hit the $1 million a year mark, but Buzby estimates she needs $2.5 million to meet demand.

“This is an opportunity for people to change the course of history for the survivors,” she said. “Everybody has monuments and raises money for and builds museums for remembrance of those that perished, which is absolutely as it should be. But what about those that survived?”

The coming of the cold winter adds urgency to Buzby’s work. So does the obvious march of time, she said, as the remaining survivors near the end of their lives.

“It’s a time that’s never going to come again,” she said.

For more information or to donate, visit survivormitzvah.org or canadahelps.org.

Commenting with cartoons

Attendees at the opening of the Avrom Yanovsky exhibit in Winnipeg in September. (photo by Stan Carbone)

The Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada (JHCWC) and the United Jewish People’s Order (UJPO) are co-hosts of an exhibit in Winnipeg of the political cartoons of Avrom Yanovsky (1911-1979).

photo - Anna Yanovsky, the cartoonist’s widow, speaks at the exhibit opening
Anna Yanovsky, the cartoonist’s widow, speaks at the exhibit opening. (photo by Stan Carbone)

The exhibit opening took place Sept. 17 at the Asper Jewish Community Campus with guest speakers Ester Reiter, associate professor, School of Women’s Studies, York University; and Anna Yanovsky, the artist’s widow. The evening concluded with a performance by the North End Jewish Folk Choir.

With the event, Stan Carbone, director of programs and exhibits at JHCWC, said, “we attempted to provide a composite picture of Avrom Yanovsky placed within an historical and cultural milieu in which his Winnipeg years were critical in shaping and defining his intellectual development and his passion and commitment for social justice.”

According to a 2006 article by David Abramowitz in Outlook Magazine, Yanovsky was born in Ukraine “and came to Canada at the age of 2 with his widowed mother, her parents and his infant brother. They settled in Winnipeg, where Avrom attended the I.L. Peretz Shule. His 1925 graduating class included the late Nechama Gemeril, who later became his wife. The school provided an excellent grounding in the Yiddish classics and revolutionary politics, which stayed with Avrom throughout his life. His mother, a seamstress, and an active Bundist in the Old Country, became a labor Zionist and emigrated to Palestine with Avrom’s brother in 1931.”

Yanovsky was part of a generation of Jews arriving in Canada in the first decades of this century. He was old enough to remember the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike. He lived through and saw the suffering during the Depression, he witnessed the repressive government of the day in Canada, the rise of Hitler and rampant antisemitism.

Reiter said, “Those who knew him commented that had he just a bit of the capitalist in him, his enormous talents would have made him a very rich man … [he was] a rich man, but not in dollars.”

For a time, Yanovsky served as art director for a Yiddish children’s magazine, called Yungvarg (Youngsters), published in New York; for each issue, he did a cartoon story of one of the many Yiddish writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the late 1930s, Yanovsky began exhibiting with the Canadian Society of Graphic Artists, at the Art Gallery of Toronto, and was president of that organization for a number of years. His editorial cartoons appeared in many English and Yiddish publications, including the Vokhnblat, Canadian Tribune and Outlook.

“One of the cartoons you’ll see is that of the premier of Quebec, [Maurice] Duplessis [1890-1959], with a big padlock representing the padlock law,” said Reiter. “That enabled any person or organization deemed subversive [undefined] to have their house or building padlocked for a year.”

At one point, she said, Yanovsky was hired by a pest-control factory to create a mural. Even this, Yanovsky managed to politicize, using the theme to apply not just to the animal but to the human pests.

“He commented through his art on all aspects of the world, from labor to Canada’s increasing subservience to the United States, the struggle to make ends meet, and the concern for peace and human rights,” said Reiter.

“He targeted not only fat capitalists, but the CIA, the Mounties, antisemites, racists, fascists, fascist sympathizers, and most of Canada’s prime ministers.”

Reiter said, “Avrom was known to be a man of integrity and principle. He lived his politics, sharing his talents for not very much monetary gain. His art was tied to the life and daily experience of working Canadians. He made us laugh in his drawings and in real life.”

The exhibit now on display in Winnipeg was first shown at York University and originally curated by Dr. Anna Hudson of York with the title Free Discussion is the Key to Peace – The Political Cartoons of Avrom Yanovksy. It was remounted at Toronto’s Ashkenaz Festival and then at the Varley Art Gallery in Markham, Ont., together with his mural honoring Dr. Norman Bethune (1890-1939). It was hosted in Vancouver by the local UJPO in 2013.

“The exhibit is of his later cartoons, from 1950 to 1972,” explained Reiter. “And you can see … for him, his art and his politics were really one in the same. He used his art to express his politics. The cartoons that you’ll see, those particular cartoons, don’t give a sense of his profound commitment to Yiddish stuff, which he was profoundly committed to. His stuff was related to labor, to politics, to peace, stuff like that.”

photo - The opening concluded with music from the North End Jewish Folk Choir
The opening concluded with music from the North End Jewish Folk Choir. (photo by Stan Carbone)

Reiter was asked to speak at the event, as she is writing a book on the history of the Jewish left in Canada, which should be out in the spring. She wanted to be involved in the showings of his art because of her interest in history and the left. “He was so famous, certainly among the left,” she said. “People spoke adoringly of his work.”

While Hudson went through some of Yanovsky’s work with Anna Yanovsky for the exhibits, Reiter provided the context.

“The ink drawings on display here, with their collaged and corrected compositions, are just to give an idea of the range of Avrom’s work,” said Reiter. Quoting from Hudson’s notes from a previous exhibit, she pointed out, “You will recognize ‘a cast of easily recognizable characters: the moneybag, the banker, the capitalist and the politician,’ with his sidekick, the police or military. ‘We can laugh at the tragedy of economic inequity because Avrom speaks to us personally to remind us of our humanity, our common ground, and our collective strength.’”

Said Reiter, “He was a communist and he was a Jew with a deep love and respect for Yiddish language and culture.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

CAMERA counters mistruth

Canadian-Israeli Sidney Shapiro addresses the CAMERA conference in Boston last August. (photo from CAMERA)

Sidney Shapiro had finished his Israel Defence Forces service just weeks before he arrived on campus at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ont.

“I walked into the door of the school and there is a huge poster of a kid, a Palestinian kid, in the shadow of a field box and some Israel apartheid whatever,” he said, referring to a familiar cartoon employed by Canada’s anti-Israel movement. “So I wrote an email to the professor who put up the poster, saying I just served in Gaza for two years, I know a lot about it, I’ve seen from my firsthand experience. I’d like to talk to you about it. Not debate or try to convince you, just tell you what my experiences were. And he [replied], ‘I don’t talk to baby killers.’ That basically set the tone for the rest of my university experience.”

Shapiro, whose family made aliya from Canada when he was 10 years old, joined the Jewish Students Association at Laurentian and now, while working on his PhD, is president of the club. Over the years, he told the Independent, his club has had tremendous support from the Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA). In August, Shapiro was a guest speaker at the organization’s largest-ever campus advocacy conference.

While primarily an American organization, CAMERA has been a powerful resource whenever the Zionist students at Laurentian have called on them, Shapiro said.

“We started working with them four years ago,” he said. “We went to various U.S.-based organizations, as well as Canadian ones, and the most responsive one was CAMERA.”

CAMERA differs from other advocacy groups in that it focuses attention specifically on promoting more accurate, balanced and complete media coverage of Israel and the Middle East.

“We don’t have a Hillel, we don’t have a Chabad and we’re extremely isolated in terms of responding to Israel advocacy problems on campus,” Shapiro said. “So, while we have some support from the Federation, from CIJA, from other organizations, we don’t have anybody on campus. CAMERA, of all the organizations we ever worked with, is the most responsive, has the most resources and has been a really good partner when we have a frustrating situation on campus, picking up the phone and actually helping us dealing with it.”

The Saudi government sends about 500 students a year to Laurentian, but Shapiro said that is not where most of the trouble comes from. The small band of anti-Israel activists tends to be far removed from the realities of the Middle East. The more common image of a “pro-Palestinian” activist, he said, is “somebody who grew up in the [Canadian] north and has never been exposed to this except that [Israel is] the evil empire and everything that has to do with Israel is merely propaganda. People are incredibly brainwashed,” he said.

Shapiro, who spoke at the conference on the topic of Israeli history, Zionism and Jewish identity, was one of eight Canadian students at the event.

“The most important outcome of the conference is networking,” he said, “meeting many other students. Whether they go to big universities or small universities, we are in exactly the same position.”

A senior CAMERA official countered the idea that the pro-Israel side is losing the battle for minds on campus.

“There’s a misconception that Israel is losing terribly on American campuses,” said Gilad Skolnick, CAMERA’s director of campus programming, in a statement. “In fact, it’s the anti-Israel side that’s losing most of the time.” Of the 44 BDS campaigns [boycott, divestment and sanctions], only 12 have passed BDS resolutions, and over two dozen have failed.… That isn’t to say students don’t face extremely difficult challenges in a lot of places. They do. So, we have to train them as much as possible for whatever comes. Our program provides them with resources and support.”

נעצר שודד הבנקים

ג’פרי ג’יימס שולמן, “הקופץ” (צילום: York Regional Police Service via nationalpost.com)

הפליליסט הקופץ: נעצר שודד הבנקים הקופץ הכי מבוקש בתולדות קנדה שעל ראשו הוצע פרס של מאה אלף דולר
שודד הבנקים הכי מבוקש בתולדותיה של קנדה נעצר לאחרונה דווקא בשוויץ. הפרקליטות הקנדית בפתחה בהליכי הסגרתו המסובכים והמורכבים, ואם יורשע הוא צפוי לשבת שנים רבות בבית הכלא הקנדי. איגוד הבנקים הקנדיים הציע פרס של לא פחות ממאה אלף דולר למי שימסור מידע על השודד, והצו לתפיסתו פורסם בכל רחבי העולם. משטרת ג’נבה עצרה את ג’פרי ג’יימס שולמן בן החמישים ושלוש, שמחזיק באזרחות כפולה (אמריקנית וצרפתית) בעת שנהג ברכבו באזור הדאון טאון שבעיר. המשטרה המקומית קיבלה מידע מוקדם על מיקומו של ג’יימס והוא נעצר על ידי שוטרים סמויים.
בחמש השנים האחרונות (מאז פברואר 2000) בהצליח שולמן לשדוד עשרים ואחד בנקים קנדיים שנמצאים בשני מחוזות: אונטריו (שנים עשר מהם באזור יורק) ואלברטה (ארבעה בקלגרי). הוא זכה לכינוי “הקופץ” כיוון שנהג להיכנס לסניפי הבנקים ולקפוץ מייד מעבר לדלפקי הטלרים, ובאיומי אקדח לשדוד את הכספות. בסך הכל הצליח שולמן לשדוד כמות גדולה מאוד של כסף, וזו הסיבה שעל ראשו הוצע פרס כל כך גבוה על ידי איגוד הבנקים. במשטרה הפדראלית (האר.סי.אם. פי) מסרבים בשלב זה לציין כמה כסף הוא גנב בסך הכל. שולמן “שעבד” לבד היה נכנס לבנקים כשהוא חבוש בכובע, ולעולם לא הפעיל אלימות נגד העובדים מלבד האיומים. העובדים מציינים שהיה לו מבנה גוף אתלטי למדי, ולפעמים היה אף מברך אותם לקראת החגים, ולאחר מכן מייד נעלם ברחוב הסואן. במשטרה מוסיפים עוד כי לשולמן היה סורק משטרתי והוא ניהל תחקיר מקיף ביותר על כל סניף של בנק (כולל שעות פתיחה, היכן יושבים הטלרים והיכן ממוקמות הכספות) בטרם שדד אותו.

הפליליסטית המזייפת: אישה זייפה מסמכים למימון הגדלת חזה ושאיבת שומן מהבטן
ברנדי בלור יכולה להתגאות בשדיים הגדולים שיש לה ובבטן השטוחה הסקסית שלה. אך היא לא תוכל להתגאות באופן שבו מימנה את שני הניתוחים הקוסמטיים, להגדלת השדיים, מתיחת הבטן ושאיבת השומן. בלור בת השלושים ותשע מהעיר קמלופס גנבה רישיון נהיגה של קשיש בן שמונים ושלוש, ובאמצעותו השיגה הלוואה בהיקף חמישה עשר אלף דולר, למימון שני הניתוחים. לחברת ההלוואות אשר מימנה השיגה את המימון לניתוחים היקרים, היא סיפרה שהקשיש הוא הסבא שלה. הקשיש קיבל מכתב מחברת ההלוואות בגין התשלום עבור הניתוחים. הוא הבין מייד שמדובר במעשה הונאה ופנה לתחנת המשטרה המקומית. לאחר שנתפסה על ידי המשטרה הודתה בלור בחקירתה במעשה הרמאות. כיוון שיש לה כבר עבר פלילי מפואר, שופט בית המשפט המחוזי שלח אותה במהירות לרצות תשעה חודשים בבית הכלא. היא קיבלה בנוסף גם עונש על תנאי למשך שנתיים. וכן היא תאלץ להחזיר לחברת ההלוואות שבעה עשר אלף דולר (שכוללים אף ריבית והצמדה).
בינתיים התברר שבלור לא נחה לרגע ובמקרה אחר היא גנבה אבנים יקרות בשווי של אלפיים וחמש מאות דולר, מחנות תכשיטים שממוקמת באחד הקניונים של קמלופס. הדיון בתיק הזה התקיים בבית המשפט לפני מספר ימים, כאשר בלור שוהה כבר בבית הכלא. ולכן מצלמת ווידאו הוצבה בתאה. השופט הוסיף לבלור עוד שלושה חודשים נוספים בפנים, והאריך את העונש על תנאי בשנה נוספת. כן הוטל על גברת בלור המכובדת להחזיר לחנות התכשיטים אלף דולר, שזהו המחיר הסיטונאי של רכישת האבנים היקרות. לא בטוח כלל שזה הפרק האחרון בסדרת המעשים הפליליים של בלור.

May on foreign, domestic issues

Green party leader Elizabeth May. (photo from Elizabeth May’s office)

“Let’s face it, Israel is a miracle in the world – in innovation, and science and technology, solar energy!” Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May told the Independent in an interview last week.

While the Green party passed a motion last year against the expansion of settlements in Israel, which they claim are illegal and pose an obstacle to a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, May noted that there is a Green Party of Israel, and shared some of its accomplishments. She said her party supports Israel and the collaboration of Canada with Israel, particularly on science, technology and climate change.

She added, “I think that it really needs to be stressed that world peace depends on Canada playing a role where we command respect from a lot of different communities and support for the state of Israel has never marginalized Canada in the world, never. But, aligning ourselves with only one of the political threads of the Israeli body politic, basically being a pro-Likud country, reduces our influence in the world, for sure. And our influence in the world is needed for many things, including striving for peace in the Middle East – real, durable, sustainable peace, so we don’t have Israeli children or Palestinian children fearing for their lives.

“The Green party has always condemned Hamas, we condemn Hezbollah, we also want the response [to their actions] to be proportional, so it’s a very difficult issue and I don’t think it helps in our democracy when we can’t discuss it. I’ll clearly say that we draw a very strong line [between] any campaigns that criticize Israel, I think that’s legitimate, [and] any campaign that criticizes Israel but has at its base an even hidden agenda of antisemitism. I think we can spot that pretty quickly, and we’ve always condemned those.”

While prime ministers Stephen Harper and Binyamin Netanyahu opposed the Iran nuclear deal, May said, “We think it’s a good thing. We think that you can’t risk having Iran have nuclear weapons. You can’t take a chance on missing the opportunity for diplomacy to give you inspections – they are real. They’re not even going to implement the lifting of sanctions till Iran shows good faith and allows for inspections…. I think it’s important to say trust but verify.

“We also recognize that, if we’re going to solve the crisis in Syria, we have got to start making more alliances in the region and Iran could play a significant role. I think, obviously, that was on [U.S. President] Barack Obama’s mind in pursuing an agreement with Iran … we do not have enough natural enemies of ISIS [the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] and extremism. Leaving Libya as a failed state was a mistake in the region, so we’re very concerned with the big picture, and maybe you have to take some water in your wine sometimes.”

If there were a Green government, May said she would consider deploying Canada’s military in action on foreign soil with a United Nations sanction, “which makes it legal under international law. We’re global, we have Greens in 80 countries around the world. We believe that you act within international law, with a UN approval. That’s one of the tragedies with the Libyan engagement, of course, was that we used the responsibility to protect with a UN sanction then, midway through, changed the mission to regime change, and we really contaminated the usefulness of responsibility to protect for future missions.

“… I could see Canada participating now in a mission that involved troops on the ground if it was to fortify the border between Syria and Turkey to stop the flow of black marketability. ISIS is funding itself in the millions through black-market operations, both its sale of black-market oil and its sale … of antiquities from the archeological and culturally significant sites they are looting. We should be using all of the tools at our disposal to stem the flow of money to ISIS….”

“But, for instance, I could see Canada participating now in a mission that involved troops on the ground if it was to fortify the border between Syria and Turkey to stop the flow of black marketability. ISIS is funding itself in the millions through black-market operations, both its sale of black-market oil and its sale … of antiquities from the archeological and culturally significant sites they are looting.

“We should be using all of the tools at our disposal to stem the flow of money to ISIS, but the recent figures – I saw today in the press that the number of recruits to ISIS has grown and, I have to say, of course! That’s why they wanted the West to come at them. If the West comes at them, that’s their best recruiting tool…. What they’ve done in terms of recruiting youth through social media tools, what they’ve done through brutal, sadistic and public murders, it’s unprecedented historically. Their brutality is not unprecedented historically but their techniques, like social media, are, so you have to ask yourself, why are they putting beheadings and tortures on YouTube? They want to recruit from the West and they want to excite Western nations to retaliate.

“And,” she added, “I think we have to ask ourselves, what’s Saudi Arabia doing? There’s certainly a lot of concern that Saudi Arabia is actually supporting ISIS. We need to have a significant effort involving all regional governments to end the war in Syria. If we have the focus on ending the war in Syria, shutting down ISIS becomes one of the many objectives.”

On security domestically, including Bill C-51, May said, “I supported that community and Jewish schools and facilities should have additional funding for security and that it should be government funded. C-51 is in another category altogether because C-51 actually makes us less safe against terrorists in every way.”

In 2012, with Bill C-38, she said, “Stephen Harper’s administration eliminated the inspector general for CSIS [Canadian Security Intelligence Service]. In 2015, they bring out C-51, which says CSIS can now – [with] what was in C-44 in December – is CSIS can … operate overseas and domestically, can collect intelligence and can act … [with] access to something that doesn’t exist in any other democracy anywhere around the world, which is access to a private, secret hearing to get a warrant for constitutional breach.”

With C-51, she said, there is no oversight. “It’s not a question of inadequate oversight,” she stressed. “Zero oversight of the RCMP, zero oversight of CSIS, zero oversight of the Canadian Border Services Agency, zero oversight of CSEC [Communications Security Establishment Canada]…. You take this together and – what a former MI-5 agent testifying to the Senate said was that – Canada has created a tragedy waiting to happen. If C-51 had been drafted as the legislative tool to implement the recommendations from the Air India inquiry, it wouldn’t look anything like it now looks. It would be about your intelligence agencies having pinnacle control, somebody know[ing] what everybody else is doing. Israel would never put in place a zoo like this. This is a three-ring circus with no ringmaster, and it’s dangerous.”

“We opened up our doors to ‘boat people’ from Vietnam. You could have made the same case – you could have said, there could be communist sympathizers who are sneaking into Canada. Now, the reality of the situation in Syria is that people are fleeing Syria because you can’t live there. The extent of the violence, there are very few areas of the country that are untouched by it.”

With respect to the refugee crisis, and balancing the acceptance of more immigrants with security, given that these refugees are coming from countries that inculcate antisemitism and anti-West views, May said, “We do apply security screens when people come to Canada. We always have. We opened up our doors to ‘boat people’ from Vietnam. You could have made the same case – you could have said, there could be communist sympathizers who are sneaking into Canada. Now, the reality of the situation in Syria is that people are fleeing Syria because you can’t live there. The extent of the violence, there are very few areas of the country that are untouched by it.

“I’ve helped some Syrian families reunite and I’ve known the extreme fear and terror that young men live under if they do not want to be captured by any one of the rival forces and forced into servitude,” she continued. “The military in Syria – whether it’s Bashar al-Assad’s forces … [or those that] oppose Bashar al-Assad – they’re all looking for people for their army. These young men that are fleeing, these young families that are fleeing, older people, are trying to get away from a war zone, and they are legitimate refugees. That said, we have a security screening process. They get interviewed before they come to Canada. We can create a situation where we know [through] ongoing surveillance and interviews for anyone. And, within the community itself, there’s a strong degree of networking that would not want someone coming here who posed a threat to them. We really can put in place effective security.

“Stephen Harper announced in January that we would accept 10,000 Syrian refugees and, having worked to try to bring refugee families to Canada, I absolutely say this is a system that was designed not to work. On one hand, he promised 10,000 refugees would be able to come to Canada; with the other hand, he made it impossible to accept them, which is devastating and tragic. I understand the fear, I’m not discounting it. I’ve been so impressed with the number of Jewish communities and religious leaders within the Jewish community who’ve called for us to accept more refugees. I think it matters. We call on accepting more but, obviously, not without security checks.”

May and the Green party have had to be innovative to get their ideas across during this campaign. When May was not invited to the Globe and Mail’s leaders debate on Sept. 17, for example, she countered with Twitter. Figures from North Strategic were cited in the media: “May was mentioned in 1,799 tweets in a 24-hour period leading up to the Calgary debate. That was about 300 more than NDP leader Tom Mulcair but fewer than Conservative leader Stephen Harper and Liberal leader Justin Trudeau.” May apparently gained 5,000 Twitter followers after the debate.

“… this may be the least fair election yet because the public expects to see all the leaders in a national televised leadership debate before the election is over, and … we are unlikely to have a single additional English language debate, and none that are broadcast nationally.”

“In terms of the fairness of the elections,” she told the Independent, “this may be the least fair election yet because the public expects to see all the leaders in a national televised leadership debate before the election is over, and it hasn’t been really explained in the media that, as things now stand, we are unlikely to have a single additional English language debate, and none that are broadcast nationally.”

In responding to a question about her party’s approach to the economy, May eschewed labels.

“Our solutions, and our view is, too, that we are not left or right,” she said. “If there’s a solution to a problem that comes from what we might say is a free-market, right-wing toolkit of solutions, like a pricing mechanism, we’ll use that, if it works. But, if you need a regulation, we’ll use regulation.

“So, our fee-and-dividend approach is less free market than Tom Mulcair’s cap-and-trade – he says the market will determine the price for carbon, I heard him say that the other night…. We’re pragmatic more than anything else. But, Greens around the world, where Greens have been in government, the kinds of programs we put in place really work…. We’re the only party left that opposes free-trade deals if they include investor-state agreements.”

As an example, she gave the Green party’s opposition to the Canada-China investment treaty. “It amazes me that it didn’t ever really get understood by the media, we never had a vote in Parliament on it, and we are trapped in the Canada-China investment treaty till the year 2045 without any real discussion of it and what it means to have the People’s Republic of China have the right to sue us for decisions we make they don’t like. I’m hopeful that, after this next election, with a minority Parliament, we can bring forward some legislation to require transparency, so that when China complains, there’s an obligation on governments to make that public, to make it known.”

The Independent has interviewed Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, Minister of National Defence and Minister for Multiculturalism Jason Kenney and has an invitation out to NDP leader Thomas Mulcair. The federal election is on Oct. 19.

Ullmann’s last work

Viktor Ullmann, 1924. (photo from Arnold Schoenberg Centre Los Angeles)

The memories of City Opera Vancouver’s production of The Emperor of Atlantis in 2009 still resonate. Written by Viktor Ullmann (composer) and Petr Kien (librettist) in 1943-44 at Theresienstadt concentration camp, its stirring score and lyrics, both of which, remarkably, reflect hope for a positive future, stay with you. No doubt, Project Elysium’s Cornet: Viktor Ullmann’s Legacy from Theresienstadt will have a similar effect.

In two public performances (and one private), the group Elysium will present Cornet, the last work that Ullmann finished before he was deported to Auschwitz on Oct. 16, 1944, and killed there two days later. Set to excerpts from Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Lay of Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke, it tells the “tale of a young soldier who experiences love and death in a single night.”

Combining recitation and piano, the piece will be performed by pianist Dan Franklin Smith, who is also music director of Elysium, with Gregorij H. von Leïtis, who is the group’s founder (in 1993) and artistic director, among other things. The evening will include Ullmann’s Piano Sonata No. 6, Op. 49, written in Theresienstadt in 1943, and a lecture by Michael Lahr, Elysium program director and executive director of the Lahr von Leïtis Academy and Archive. Project Elysium was created by Vancouver performer and producer Catherine Laub to bring Elysium to Canada.

“In honor of the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII, Elysium – an organization focused on performing music of composers persecuted during the Nazi regime – is coming to Canada for the first time to present a concert of Viktor Ullmann’s music. One of the concert dates will be the actual date 71 years ago that Ullmann arrived in Auschwitz from Theresienstadt and was immediately put to death,” Laub told the Independent. “The focus of the endeavor is not to dwell on the suffering and death of this artist but to celebrate a man who created beauty during an intensely painful time, and be uplifted by artistry that justly survives his shortened lifespan. In Michael Lahr’s words, ‘The adamant will to live, the unshakable hope that good will prevail no matter how horrible the attempt to crush it – this is the message of Ullmann’s music from Theresienstadt. Elysium offers Ullmann’s music as a powerful symbol of hope.’”

In addition to being a performer, composer and teacher, Laub has been a concert producer since she moved to Canada from the United States in 2006. She founded the Erato Ensemble, with William George, and has been involved on the production side with various other ensembles. Since the creation of the monthly Sunday concert series at Roedde House Museum in 2012, of which she is artistic director, she said, “I have started to focus more energy on being aware of which artists and which projects are poised to bring important gifts to audiences and communities in Vancouver. Project Elysium is the largest-scale project I’ve been involved with from an organizational standpoint, and it’s unique in that I’m not wearing my performance hat at all.”

The Project Elysium concerts, she said, “have been in the works since December 2013, when I reconnected with Gregorij von Leïtis and Michael Lahr on a trip to Munich. I first worked with them when I was fresh out of graduate school and participating in their young artist program. In the years since, I had become more familiar with the second part of their mission statement: ‘… fighting against discrimination, racism and antisemitism by means of art.’ It inspired me that here were people with a clear artistic mission as well as a humanitarian focus. In today’s world, where we all expect quick sound bites and instant gratification, it has to be clear why live performance and the arts – beyond big-budget Hollywood – are relevant and important. This seems like a clear answer to me, and it’s never been more important to be reminded of what happens to the world when we don’t listen to such messages.”

image - Drawing of composer Viktor Ullmann by Petr Kien, graphic artist, Theresienstadt inmate and librettist of The Emperor of Atlantis
Drawing of composer Viktor Ullmann by Petr Kien, graphic artist, Theresienstadt inmate and librettist of The Emperor of Atlantis. (image from project-elysium.org)

“Never forget.” This was one of the reasons that City Opera Vancouver decided to produce The Emperor of Atlantis.

Artistic director Dr. Charles Barber first encountered Ullmann’s music when he was in graduate school at Stanford. “I had made friends with Lotte Klemperer, daughter of the great conductor Otto Klemperer,” Barber told the Independent. “She and her father knew his work, and she introduced me to Ullmann’s broken life and unbroken promise. We listened to recordings together, and Lotte told me about his music and its time.”

Barber also knew Ullmann’s work through violin teacher Paul Kling. “He had played Ullmann’s music, knew it intimately, and was imprisoned with him at Theresienstadt. Prof. Kling considered Ullmann one of his teachers, and strongly believed in his genius.”

While Ullmann and Kien did not survive the Holocaust, Kling did, and, said Barber. “I felt an obligation to help maintain, in his name, the music that might have been.”

The choice of Atlantis, said Barber, had to do with “its unique story, its historical context and its relevance today.” City Opera presented it “in partnership with the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, and they were wonderful collaborators in bringing this British Columbia première to the Rothstein Theatre.

“City Opera specializes in chamber opera: the small forms, the intimate eloquence, the affordable advantage. Atlantis met all of these criteria, and more. The music is wonderful, the libretto is bold and vivid, the voice is favored and the audience was moved. It’s what we hoped to achieve, and it’s what we tried to honor.” (For more on the 2009 production, visit jewishindependent.ca/oldsite/archives/feb09/archives09feb06-01.html.)

While Barber, unfortunately, won’t be able to attend Elysium’s Cornet concert – he will be in Quebec City with COV, conducting its opera Pauline – he put the program into context. He said, “It highlights Ullmann’s gifts: concision, wit, superlative technical accomplishment, daring, and a strong foundation in European musical traditions.

“Ullmann’s significance in musical history is, alas, limited. He was one of the great lights in a musical generation destroyed by the Nazis. We will never know what his place would have been; we only know what it might have been. In his 46 years, he seems to have composed as many works. Only 13 survived him after he was killed at Auschwitz.

“His music works for me, and I think will for the audience coming up, because of its eclecticism. Ullmann was an authority on many sources, he drew widely upon them, but found a voice that was unlike others of his day. He was not an academicist. He wrote for real people, and presumed in them a shared awareness of musical and cultural traditions, and a desire to advance them – playfully, skilfully and imaginatively.”

“While it isn’t possible to rewrite history,” said Laub, “this project functions as a kind of musical ‘rescue mission,’ bringing recognition to a brilliant composer whose work was nearly lost to us. His story and his music allow us to make a more personal connection to a time that is almost too overwhelming to contemplate. This connection is essential as it helps us not only mourn but learn.”

Echoing these comments, Barber said, “These concerts will not be a funeral procession. Ears will be challenged, knowledge will be deepened, and awareness will be empowered.

“According to my teacher Paul Kling, the real Ullmann was a witty and profoundly learned man who delighted in sharing knowledge and in jolting listeners. What an irresistible combination.”

Cornet will take place Oct. 16, 8 p.m., at the Cultch’s Historic Theatre, and Oct. 17, 8 p.m., at Pyatt Hall. Tickets ($30/$20) are available from the Cultch box office, 604-251-1363, and tickets.thecultch.com/peo.

Help save us from zombies

Alien Contagion: Rise of the Zombie Syndrome tasks audiences with finding a downed UFO that has crashed on earth. Virtual Stage’s interactive adventure runs to Nov. 1. (photo from Virtual Stage)

For anyone who has dreamed of saving the world, now’s your chance. All you have to do is take part in Virtual Stage’s Alien Contagion: Rise of the Zombie Syndrome, which runs until Nov. 1.

Several shows have already sold out, with people keen to take on their mission. “This year, audiences are tasked to respond to a highly confidential NASA report about a downed unidentified flying object that has crashed on earth. The exact location is unknown,” reads the promotional material. “To add to the mystery, the alien pilot is reportedly injured, has escaped and is hiding in Vancouver. Furthermore, every NASA official sent to locate the UFO has returned in a zombie-like state … brave and adventurous audience members must find the downed spacecraft, quell the nearby zombie uprising and, ultimately, save the human race from the brink of extinction.”

This is the fourth annual interactive, smartphone-enabled theatre experience produced for the Halloween season by Virtual Stage.

photo - Zombie Syndrome series creator Andy Thompson
Zombie Syndrome series creator Andy Thompson. (photo by Rob Gilbert)

“The idea originated four or five years ago after I went to the West End in London, England, to see a bunch of theatre,” creator Andy Thompson told the Independent. “I saw all sorts of plays in many different styles of venues. I went to very fancy theatres. I went to small, edgy, Fringe-type theatres. I was even lucky to witness rare performances including Kevin Spacey playing Richard III, as well as the ‘real-life’ theatrical event of Rupert Murdoch getting pied in the face in the British House of Commons.

“The most engaged I felt as an audience member, however, was during an interactive play called The Accomplice. It took place on the streets of London and involved the audience being endowed as key figures in an adventure to recover stolen loot. It was so much fun! The piece was basically a crime drama, but I wondered how a horror-genre show could use a similar format. Add to the mix my interest in technology and smartphones and I quickly developed an idea for a smartphone-enabled, site-specific, roving, zombie-themed theatre adventure with audience members tasked with saving the world.”

Thompson said the series, which premièred in 2012, wasn’t meant be an annual event. “It was a huge creative risk ‘one-off’ event and I thought it could easily flop,” he said. “Needless to say, it came as quite a pleasant surprise when the show was so well received, selling out almost shortly after we opened. People just loved it. After I realized the popular appeal, I looked at how it could be designed as an annual series that is completely new each year.”

This is not Thompson’s first foray into science fiction. The Jewish community member’s credits include – but are in no way limited to – the three previous Zombie Syndromes, SPANK!, 1984 (an adaptation of George Orwell’s novel) and the sex-comedy musical Broken Sex Doll, which featured original music by fellow Jewish community member Anton Lipovetsky, as well as episodes of TV’s Fringe.

“It is so much fun to imagine the seemingly endless possibilities in the universe,” said Thompson about his interest in science fiction. “I often contemplate our reality on planet earth, which often feels like a far-fetched science fiction story idea. Consider: we are on a small planet, whipping through space, revolving around a star. Our star is merely one of billions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy. And, if that’s not all, there are billions of galaxies in the universe. So, by my rough math, that means there are at least 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the universe. Earth and our existence seem extremely small when put into this perspective. And that’s just when we look at ‘third-dimensional’ reality. I am convinced that there are tangible, intelligent realities on other vibrational frequencies that we are unaware of. Like the sound of a dog whistle, humans are just not currently attuned to be aware of them. Without a doubt, what Shakespeare said in Hamlet is certainly true: ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’

“Life is pretty mind-blowing when you really think about it. Science fiction allows us to imagine the possibilities. And, half the time, because our existence is so vast, we get to explore far-fetched ideas that cannot be definitively refuted. To me, it’s a great deal of fun.”

And a great deal of work. Alien Contagion: Rise of the Zombie Syndrome features “about 45 performers this year, as well as about a dozen crew and designers,” said Thompson. “The logistics are mind-numbing, but we have a great team and a lot of experience under our belts. We generally start planning the show a year in advance. Things progressively kick into higher gears over the spring and summer. The storylines are often collaborative. This year, my stepson Finn [Ghosh-Leudke] co-authored the story with Tyler Clarke and myself. I then wrote the script based on that story.”

The show is fully wheelchair accessible. However, it is rated PG-13 because of the subject matter, and children under 13 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. For tickets and more information, visit thevirtualstage.org/tickets.

Adaptation beneficial

Camille Legg as Romeo, left, and Adelleh Furseth as Juliet share an intimate moment in Studio 58’s Romeo and Juliet. (photo by David Cooper)

Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is such a well-known play, done so many times on stage and on screen, it’s hard to imagine an original interpretation, but Studio 58 of Langara College manages to shine new light on this ageless tale.

This production marks the beginning of the studio’s 50th season and director Anita Rochon has incorporated that into her vision of the play, setting it in 1965, the year Studio 58 was born. Music from the 1960s – the catchy tunes of Velvet Underground, Rolling Stones, Turtles and others – permeates the show. Older audience members will recognize their youth in these songs, as well as in the clothing, but these are only frills. The core of the play remains unaltered – the immortal and tragic love story between Romeo and Juliet.

However, there is one profound adjustment to the classical version: Romeo is a girl. Accordingly, the pronouns are switched in the text, and a son becomes a daughter. Other than that, the text is more or less authentic, albeit abridged, for the student performance, and the young actors handle the 500-year-old verses with professional panache.

The change benefits the show. For most people in 21st-century North America, family feuds – to the death, anyway – are the stuff of legend, while parental resistance to their kids’ gay or lesbian inclinations is still all too real. Some experience it firsthand or have friends who did; others are on the parents’ side of the equation or know someone who was. But everyone in the audience could relate to this aspect of Romeo and Juliet’s forbidden love.

Everyone could also feel the wonder, the breathtaking discovery of their first encounter. Highlighted by the expressive and inventive choreography of Jewish community member Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, the first meeting of the lovers felt almost like a ballet, a lyrical and beautiful duet, with the corps providing a counterpoint. The visual echoes from such classical ballets as Giselle or Swan Lake were unmistakable.

On the other hand, the fight scenes by David Bloom, who also happens to be a Jewish community member, were ferocious, with some really scary moments, especially when Mercutio swings a broken bottle at Tybalt. Both young actors, Conor Stinson-O’Gorman (Mercutio) and Kamyar Pazandeh (Tybalt), infuse their stage duel with energy, but all I could think about was, What if someone missteps and hurts his friend? Fortunately, no accidents occurred, and both combatants expired safely.

Of course, the two female stars of the show deserve mention – both acted brilliantly.

Camille Legg, who played Romeo, excelled in her part. Her Romeo was young and naive, a girl on the brink of adulthood, and her wide-eyed innocence made her character’s belief in the power of love plausible. Romeo’s love is radiant and boundless; her grief, all-encompassing.

Adelleh Furseth as Juliet, while strong overall, lacked enough of the child-like nature that I attribute to the character. She portrayed a more mature, more sexy Juliet, more a woman than a girl. At times, she struck me as a character actor or comedian, funny rather than naively exuberant.

The humming chorus during the play’s last scene, the young lovers’ double suicide, was inspired and poignant.

In the director’s notes, Rochon writes: “… there are real people all over the real world who are falling in love as you read this, in spite of all kinds of opposition arising because of their gender, nationality, political affiliation or otherwise. Familiar stories, but each with its own beating heart.”

Romeo and Juliet runs at Studio 58 until Oct. 18. For tickets, visit langara.ca/studio-58.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].