Katie Chalmers-Brooks
MEET A GRAD STUDENT COMMUNITY HEALTH SCIENCES STUDENT CLAUDYNE CHEVRIER, 31, ON GLOBAL HEALTH, THE PLIGHT OF SEX WORKERS IN WINNIPEG—AND THE MEANING BEHIND THAT TATTOO Where are you from?
What is ‘stick and poke’?
I’m from Montreal. I moved here three years ago for my PhD so I feel like I have my ‘Winnipegger card’.
It’s done just with a needle. The reason it’s stick and poke is that I wanted it to be imperfect. That’s the significance for me. Imperfection is perfect. And I needed it on my wrist so I see it every day.
Do you miss anything about Montreal? I miss everything about Montreal.
Did anything strike you as weird about Winnipeg? Maybe the weirdest thing is how it grows on you in the weirdest way. Now I love Winnipeg and I get angry when people make jokes about Winnipeg. I’m like, ‘What!? You can’t. You don’t even know.’ It’s funny.
What brought you here? I moved here because I wanted to work with Rob Lorway, who is one of my advisors. My other advisory is Jamie [Blanchard].
You have a tattoo of a circle on your wrist. Can you tell us about that? I actually got it in Winnipeg. Two years ago now, maybe. It’s stick and poke, so it’s imperfect.
In a nutshell, what do you study? I do a lot of things in global health. But for my [research] project, I am doing an ethnography of sex workers in Winnipeg; so I work on access to social services and health services for sex workers in this city. That’s the short answer. But then there’s always questions when I say this to people.
What is the best part of your job? My research project. I changed it maybe a year and half ago so it would better ref lect my values and the work that I do; I’m also an activist.
What sort of activism are you involved with? I’m a sex workers rights activist....
In Manitoba, our humble goal is to challenge the ideas of the sex trade, especially the idea that it’s only sexual exploitation and that it is inherently violent, which is normally the only thing you hear. It’s more complicated than that.... I definitely believe in a harmreduction perspective. Let’s give sex workers the resources they need without judging them.
What do you parents do? Are they scientists? My dad was a helicopter pilot. Well, he’s alive, but he retired from that and eventually he started selling helicopters, which sounds like a lie. But it’s a thing. And my mom is a nurse. So the health part comes from that a little bit. My parents are very adventurous people. They are awesome. They are much cooler than I will ever be. It’s very hard to live with. My parents, for their retirement … were in Vancouver for 10 years and they bought a sailboat and they sailed a boat down to Mexico. And that’s what they do for six months a year.
How do you compete with that? They are winning.
Have you received any good advice from your advisors? Yes, I receive all sort of good advice, although I don’t think I take all of it. What I like about Jamie [Blanchard]… [is that he’s] very pragmatic. He understands complex ideas and I’m an overthinker. It’s kind of my superpower, for better and for worse; it’s what I do. And he’s very good at seeing how that makes sense in the real world. And I love that. My other advisor, Rob [Lorway], helped me out a lot when I was doing my master’s—and one of the things he told me that I repeat constantly to people who are writing is, ‘This is not the work of your life. It’s just words on paper. Just do it. Just do it.’ I love that. It’s true. Because you get stuck. Just do it. Just write words on paper. You will re-work it a million times but just do it. As told to Sean Moore
TeachingLIFE 30