The Community Edition: February 2017

VOLUME 5, ISSUE 5 • FEBRUARY 2017

STATE OF THE ARTS SPENDING

RACISM AND REFUGEE HOUSING

ALMOST HALF OF EMPLOYEES AT THE REGION’S PILLAR CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS MAKE LESS THAN $40,000 ANNUALLY. WHAT DO THEIR EMPLOYERS MAKE? READ MORE ON PAGES 8-9.

MENSTRUATING WHILE POOR

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Volume 5, Issue 5 Next issue: March 1, 2017 75 University Ave. W Waterloo, ON N2L 3C5 519-884-0710 x3564 Advertising All advertising inquiries should be directed to Care Schummer at 519-884-0710 x3560 care.schummer@wlusp.com THE COMMUNITY EDITION TEAM Editor in Chief Jesse Bauman jesse.bauman@wlusp.com Publisher Lakyn Barton lakyn.barton@wlusp.com Social Media Editor Sarah Pouramn

General Inquiries info@communityedition.ca Web Manager Care Schummer care.schummer@wlusp.com TCE Radio Megan Nourse

CONTRIBUTORS Josh Barkman Alexandra Bissley Emily Gleeson James Gowland Meg Harder James Howe Stacey Jacobs Allison Leonard Zainab Mahdi Montana Mellett Marco Pedri

John Roche Kat Rogers-Hern Eva Rucki Dylan Siebert Matt Smith Nick Stanley Dani Stock Dave Thomas Cara Vandermey Karlis Wilde

WLUSP ADMINISTRATION President Executive Director Advertising Manager Treasurer Vice-Chair Director Director Director Corporate Secretary

Meghan Roach Lakyn Barton Care Schummer John Pehar Abdiasis Issa Mynt Marsellus Maddy Cutts Matthew Burley Taylor Berzins

The Community Edition is an alternative monthly intended to engage and inform the community.

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The staff of the Community Edition shall uphold all commonly held ethical conventions of journalism. When an error of omission or of commission has occurred, that error shall be acknowledged promptly. When statements are made that are critical of an individual, or an organization, we shall give those affected the opportunity to reply at the earliest time possible. Ethical journalism requires impartiality, and consequently conflicts of interest and the appearance of conflicts of interest will be avoided by all staff. The only limits of any newspaper are those of the world around it, and so the Community Edition will attempt to cover its world with a special focus on the community of Waterloo Region. Ultimately, the Community Edition will be bound by neither philosophy nor geography in its mandate.

The Community Edition has an obligation to foster freedom of the press and freedom of speech. This obligation is best fulfilled when debate and dissent are encouraged, both in the internal workings of the paper, and through the Community Edition’s contact with the community. The Community Edition will always attempt to do what is right, with fear of neither repercussions, nor retaliation. The purpose of community press is to act as an agent of social awareness, and so shall conduct the affairs of our magazine.

Who should be responsible for cleaning sidewalks? TCE weighs in on page 13. MATT SMITH PHOTO

FEATURE

8-9 THE STATE OF ARTS SPENDING IN WR

INSIDE 3 4 5 5 6 6 7 7 10 11 12 12 13 13 14 14 14 15 16

IN BRIEF ROACHES, RACISM, REFUGEE HOUSING SLEEPING CONTAINERS MIGRANT WORKER VICTORY MARCHING FOR FEMINISM MENSTRUATING WHILE POOR HOCKEY PLAYERS AND THE PATRIARCHY TIME FOR FREE EDUCATION KENT MONKMAN AT KWAG COLLECTIVE IDENTITY’S ART WHAT IS HAPPINESS? TCE REVIEWS UTOPIAN FICTION WHOSE JOB, SHOVELING? LOCAL HOPS IN LOCAL BEER THIS ISSUE WAS THANKS, FRIENDS POWERED BY: CORPORATE WELLNESS WOES • ALLISON LEONARD (COVER ART AND SO FALSE KNEES MUCH MORE) OONA MOON, CHAPTER THREE • LAKYN BARTON • MEGAN NOURSE DTK PLANS FOR 2020

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IN BRIEF

NEWS

ARTS

URBAN

HOPESPRING CLOSES DOORS

MOVIE MAGIC IN KITCHENER

IMPROVING ION ROADWAYS

Kitchener cancer support centre, HopeSpring, is closing its doors after 21 years, due to a lack of funding. In 2016, 1,500 people accessed their services, which included yoga classes, parent and child support and nutrition and sleep workshops.

HopeSpring relied completely on donations, which slowed significantly in recent years.

Locally produced film 3 Dead Trick or Treaters will have it’s first and only hometown screening at the Apollo Cinema on February 16. Directed by Torin Langen, the film follows a small town paper boy who discovers handwritten horror stories on the graves of three murdered trick-or-treaters. Scary shenanigans ensue, we assume.

Construction begins this year on roadway improvements along the ION tracks on King street between Erb and University. Design features include segregated bike lanes. A pre-construction public information centre was held at the end of January for residents to view the designs, learn construction timelines and provide comments.

FIRST WOMEN’S KW LITTLE THEATRE 50 YEARS OF FOOD DRY HOUSE OPENS IMPROV SHOW AT VINCENZO’S Kitchener wants to know what you want Kitchener to look like in 2020 and beyond. Read more on page 16. MATT SMITH PHOTO

Vera’s Place, Waterloo’s first dry house for women, is opening soon. The project has been more than a year in the making — Emmanuel United Church first announced the project with a funding goal in November 2015.

Dry houses provide stable, substance-free living for residents trying to maintain sobriety.

Rooms at Vera’s Place will be rented at below-market rates.

30 Seconds to Improv is back with their annual fundraiser for the KW Little Theatre, called Write After Valentine’s Day. Audience members are encouraged to bring stories, poems, essays and the like, which the improv team will use to guide the show.

Did you just rediscover your middle school diary? Want to share it with the world? Bring it!

Tickets are pay-what-you-can.

A favourite sandwich stop for many Waterloo Region residents, Vincenzo’s is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Back in 1967, the Caccioppoli family opened the then-small and specialty food store in their Bridgeport road home. Celebrate half a century of this KW staple with one of their famous sandwiches and some artichoke caponata spread on specialty imported crackers.

SHORE GIVING UP AFTER TRUMP

KPL GETS NEW STRATEGIC PLAN

RARE GARDENS UP THEIR PRODUCE

The SHORE centre has reported their November and December fundraising campaign brought in $52,000, a 37 per cent increase from last year. Executive director Lindsey Butcher says the increase may be due in part to the recent US election and increased support of Planned Parenthood in the United States, which has seen a large rise in donations.

The Kitchener Public Library unveiled their new four-year strategic plan in January. The KPL spent $28,000 developing the plan over several months, surveying more than 4,000 people. Themes in the plan, which can be viewed at kpl.org, include accessibility, intellectual freedom, expanding the idea of literacy and providing barrier-free customer service.

After expanding their gardens, the rare Charitable Research Reserve nearly tripled their organic produce grown and donated to the Cambridge Self-Help Food Bank in 2016. rare donated 6,708 lbs of fresh produce, according to their most recent newsletter. Their garden remodel included building new beds and expanding into previously unused space.

WATERLOOP TESTS WINTERLOO FOR HYPERLOOP POD WINTER LOVERS

FAMILY BUSINESS OPENS NEW RESTO

The University of Waterloo student design team, Waterloop, recently tested their commuter pod at the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition. Waterloop is working on a pod that would allow travellers to go between Toronto and Montreal in 30 minutes. SpaceX designs and manufactures rockets and spacecraft.

Another restaurant will soon make its way into the Tannery. In the space formerly occupied by the Firkin at the Tannery, local hospitality group Bingemans will open an establishment in midspring. The Bingeman family first entered the food industry with a dairy bar in the 1930s. They now own a conference centre, water park and campground.

The annual uptown Waterloo festival, Winterloo, is taking place February 24-26. The festival celebrates the winter season and the uptown community. There will be ice sculptures, skating and dog sled rides. If you like winter, you might want to check this out. If you hate everything to do with winter, maybe skip this one.

FEBRUARY 2017 // @THECOMMUNITYED

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RACISM AND ROACHES IN REFUGEE HOUSING

HOUSING SPECIALIST SAYS AFFORDABLE HOUSING IS A PREREQUISITE FOR MEANINGFUL COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT JESSE BAUMAN EDITOR IN CHIEF Roughly one in 10 of the refugee families Vida Dehgansaie works with face discrimination when they try to find adequate housing, due especially to their race, language abilities and family size. Plus, she adds, because “the money families receive is so limited, and the market price is so high,” many families are cramped into dirty and bug-infested apartments.

Dehgansaie is a housing specialist, meaning her job is to find government assisted refugees permanent housing in Kitchener Waterloo. It’s a difficult job. She faces pressure from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, who pay for the hotel rooms that refugees call home until they find housing; from landlords, who know that her clients are desperate for housing; from her clients, who arrive with unpredictable and sometimes unrealistic expectations about the Canadian Dream; and from her own family, who she admits do notice when she works until 10 p.m., as she did the night before we talked.

“At least we don’t work all weekend, now,” she says, smiling but entirely serious. Last year Reception House, her employer, settled five times their usual caseload of government assisted refugees.

To help me understand the layers of discrimination her clients face, Dehgansaie tells me a number of stories.

She tells me about a couple from Syria whose first nine lease applications were rejected, last year. The man shared a first name with an infamous terrorist, now deceased, and so on their tenth application Dehgansaie chose to apply under the woman’s name. They were accepted.

She tells me a story, also from last year, about a tenant who greeted her and the refugee family she brought to an apartment with expletives and threats.

“I don’t want Syrians here, because it’s my money they’re taking … if you bring any more Syrians to this building I’ll force them out,” Deghansaie remembers the tenant yelling, in her face.

“You cannot imagine how many bad words I heard from this man,” Dehgansaie adds. In the following months, she says he banged on their walls, left broken glass on their doorstep and used his dogs to intimidate the family.

He was eventually evicted, after multiple run-ins with the police, but “this was still the family’s first impression about life in Canada,” she says.

As she tells me these and other stories, Dehgansaie is also careful to reiterate that discrimination is the

exception in her work, and pales in comparison to the overwhelming support Reception House continues to receive from the broader community.

Dehgansaie also emphasizes, in various and multiple ways, that while refugees often experience discrimination because their skin is not white and their first language is not English, their housing struggles have a great deal in common with other families living on a low income.

“Maintenance is horrible,” she says, and then tells me another story. “This Dec. 23 we placed a family of three, a mother and her two teenage daughters, into what seemed like a nice and clean apartment, close to amenities.

But then on Christmas day I got a call from the mom, saying that the apartment was infested by roaches.”

“With all the lights on, the roaches were hiding, but as soon as the family moved in and brought food, they started coming out of every place, even the toilet tank was crawling with roaches. The building management was on vacation until Dec. 29, and the super wouldn’t pick up his phone, so our staff – on Christmas day – did their best to chase the bugs out while I argued with the landlord to spray the apartment or move the family to a different unit.”

The landlord eventually relented, and moved the family instead of paying to spray the apartment.

“You cannot imagine how many units have bedbugs,” she adds, telling me that most people – refugees or not – living on a fixed income cannot afford housing that I would consider adequate. A single refugee with no dependents receives a monthly rent allowance of $376, which is the same as a single person receiving welfare.

Government assisted refugees also receive a monthly “national housing supplement,” worth $75. According to Deghansaie and many others I have spoken with in the last year, the cheapest – and consequently, hardest to find in good condition – room in a rooming house is $500 a month.

If they can find a landlord willing to rent (Deghansaie says it can take months to place a family of eight or 10 or 12 people), families with many kids are in some ways better off, because they get a larger Ontario Child Benefit.

The OCB has been fairly celebrated as a necessary lifeline for the lowest income folks, and a way to improve children’s quality of life, but most of the families Dehgansaie supports must immediately use the benefit to pay rent – not for violin lessons or hockey camp or groceries.

But whether structural racism, outof-reach rents, cockroaches, or some

combination of the three, barriers to securing adequate housing have deeper and broader consequences for new families and for Kitchener Waterloo, says Jennifer Dean.

“Housing is not just shelter, it’s about home,” she tells me over the phone. Dean is an assistant professor in University of Waterloo’s school of planning, and has conducted research with and about refugees and immigrants for many years.

Shelter, as Dean writes, “is only the tip of the iceberg for how housing impacts our lives.”

“Housing is one of the primary barriers to full settlement for refugee families,” Dean tells me, referring throughout to her own research. “If refugees can’t find an adequate place to live, it impedes their ability to find employment, to register for services, to get their kids in school. Until they’re actually rooted in a community, it’s very challenging to meet the rest of their settlement needs.”

Many refugees have or will soon join the many thousands of people waiting for affordable housing in the region.

Dehgansaie tells me that because many of her clients wait six-plus years for affordable housing, one of her first tasks with clients is getting them into the housing queue.

Elsewhere Dean writes that “inadequate housing is correlated with many social disadvantages such as poor education outcomes in children, food insecurity and reduced quality of life.”

Those at the highest levels of our regional government appear to understand those basic facts. In 2012 the region adopted a Homelessness to Housing Stability strategy, a policy document that is also a commitment to ending homelessness in the region.

One of the strategy’s five key principles is “seeing adequate housing as a right.” The document points to a large body of evidence illustrating that “community programs in general are more effective when provided to people who have adequate housing,” which in our regional context means we need more affordable housing, a goal we can pursue through some combination of building or subsidizing or policy.

Housing is a key determinant of health and economic wellbeing, but as the evidence for that fact continues to grow, affordable housing construction does not. So while we have commendably scrambled to provide shelter for many desperate families, a great deal of work remains to make this region home.

FEBRUARY 2017 // COMMUNITYEDITION.CA

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SLEEPING OUTSIDE THE SHELTER

WORKING CENTRE TURNS SHIPPING CONTAINERS INTO SAFE SPACES

JAMES GOWLAND CONTRIBUTOR This is the second winter since the Out of the Cold program in Waterloo Region folded, and it has taken approximately the same amount of time to have “bunkies” approved as optional temporary shelters for people who sleep rough on WR’s streets.

Those who might once have slept in churches through the OOTC program can now choose to spend the night in one of The Working Centre’s converted shipping containers.

“The reality is that every night in large cities, there are 10 or 20 people that are sleeping roughly, for different reasons,” says Joe Mancini. “Some choose the street, some don’t.”

Mancini is incredibly hard to get a hold of, but by the time the co-founder of The Working Center returned my call, I could see that his loyalty is to the many people his organization serves.

The project’s original roadblock was a zoning rule that no accessory building should be used for human habitation, and here Mancini says the City of Kitchener played a large role in the bunkie project’s fruition. The City passed a temporary zoning change for a three year term, with the option for renewing for another three years.

“If there are no issues or complaints, I couldn’t forsee why we wouldn’t

renew it,” says Craig Dumart, who is a junior planner at the City. “It’s definitely a unique project.”

Money was also an issue. Since this temporary by-law was considered a zone change, it cost $5,000 for the City of Kitchener to consider and then enact it. The housing division of Waterloo Region Community Services paid this fee, as part of their commitment to finding alternative and creative ways to address homelessness, and the Region provided $28,000 to purchase and retrofit the bunkies.

Fire safety requirements also challenged the project. After insulating the units, Mancini was informed that he would have to remove that same material temporarily to meet other safety needs before he could continue in the building process.

“Both levels of government were supportive in passing a temporary bylaw,” said Mancini.

When shelters are full, the Region will pay for hotel rooms to cover overflow, but Mancini says that “certain individuals do not want to be part of the shelter system.”

“That’s not part of what they do.”

During the summer, tents are popular. In winter, some individuals try to find a warm vestibule, doorway or stairwell.

There are many different reasons why people “sleep rough,” according to Mancini.

“I wouldnt want to box people in,” he says, noting that individuals with addiction and/or mental health issues may have limited choices.

So far, one shipping container has

been cut in half, and each section renovated to provide basic necessities.

Each unit, roughly 10 by eight feet, has one small window and a bed. Running water and toilets are close by inside St. Johns Kitchen, where there will be staff on hand 24 hours a day.

“We had wider hopes at the beginning of this process,” says Mancini.

“Something more livable as an entity.”

Mancini suggests that the slow progression with these units has less to do with money and more to do with the “enforcing of middle class standards.” “[Zoning rules are] very structured to limit the creativity of families, individuals or organizations from creating secondary units,” he says, arguing the current rules are meant to prevent a situation where you “have this neighbour whose allowing someone to live in their backyard.”

The Working Centre’s outreach worker Joe Bauman says certain types of individuals will especially benefit from this project. The hope is that this can be a starting point for individuals looking to eventually secure long term housing.

“The exciting thing for me is that there is quite a bit of flexibility, so we’re hoping that people can move into them and those barriers into normal housing won’t be as stark,” says Bauman.

Mancini thinks these units could become stepping stones toward steady and structured housing down the road, allowing new beginnings for “fiercely independant and resilient people.” At least there will be a few more people out of the cold.

The Working Centre has renovated shipping containers into temporary shelters.

JAMES GOWLAND PHOTO

GOOD ENOUGH TO WORK, GOOD ENOUGH TO STAY

MIGRANT WORKERS SUCCESSFULLY WIN ROLL-BACK OF LAW THAT UNFAIRLY LIMITED WORKING TIME IN CANADA MONTANA MELLETT CONTRIBUTOR A border is a line separating one country, state, or province from another. For temporary foreign workers, borders determine whether and where you have a job, and whether you are able to provide for yourself and your family. Borders are politically charged, tied up in life or death.

Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) was introduced in 1973 to help Canadian employers obtain skilled employees from other countries when qualified Canadian citizens were not available to fill so-called highly-skilled job positions, and to ultimately assist in building a stronger Canadian economy. The TFWP was created to address critical labour shortages in particular sectors.

If an employer cannot find a Canadian to do a certain job, it can ask Ottawa’s permission to contract a temporary worker from abroad. This is an arrangement that has been usually presented as ‘win-win-win’ for Canada,

employers and employees.

The number of migrant workers in Canada has tripled from 101,100 to 300,210 over the past decade. But in contrast to “high-skilled” workers who are recruited for permanent residence on arrival, or allowed to apply for permanent residency after living and working here, until this December “lower-skilled” migrant workers were required to leave the country after a maximum four year stay on work permits, and were ineligible to return and work for another four years.

The rule – know as “4-in/4-out” – represents the unfairness of Canada’s revolving-door system of worker exploitation, which made temporary foreign workers easily replaceable, or disposable, shipping them home just as started to put down roots.

And so it was a huge deal when, in early December, the government pledged to reverse the 4-in/4-out rule.

The decision was the result of many years of organizing by migrant justice groups.

While 4-in/4-out was in some ways the most blatantly racist and unfair aspect of the TFWP, the program still makes migrant workers vulnerable. By law they are categorized differently than workers who are Canadian citizens or permanent residents, and are deprived of many rights that Canadian workers take for granted.

For example, migrant workers are tied to a single employer, which creates an extreme power imbalance between employer and employee.

They usually live in housing provided by their employers, which is not quality controlled, and must pay into Canadian social programs they are not legally entitled to access.

The roll-back of the rule provides a solid stepping stone for campaigns to come. This is only one of the many gains that migrant justice groups and allies have fought for, and now the Coalition for Migrant Workers’ Rights Canada is working on a campaign that demands permanent resident status upon arrival for migrant workers.

Migrant workers and their allies are arguing that if we aren’t thinking about the conditions in which workers are being treated, we aren’t being conscious of the myths we are perpetuating. “Good enough to work, good enough to stay” is a common refrain from those folks, who regularly point out that our society could not function without the food, care, and service they provide. Recall here that migrant workers are only allowed through Canadian borders if no Canadians can be found to do the work in question.

Similarly, the labour that they perform is not temporary. The agricultural worker program is in its 51st year, with some workers, and now their children, in the program for decades.

The domestic worker or caregiver program has been around in one form or another since the late 1800s, with no sign of a universal child and elder care program in sight. And the so-called low-skill – now low-wage – program has remained in high demand in some form since the late 1880s when

Chinese railroad workers first arrived in Canada.

The structural inequalities built into temporary foreign worker programs depend on the presence of borders. From this perspective, borders seem to be one of many tools for maintaining unequal relationships of political, economic, cultural, and social dominance in our society.

Borders are part of global systems of power and repression.

As Min Sook Lee, a long-time activist and filmmaker said in a rabble interview, “when people talk about buying organic, buying local, I think it’s a really short-sighted viewpoint because it doesn’t factor in who is doing the work.”

Many Ontario farms depend on migrant workers, who successfully organized to defeat a rule that arbitrarily limited the time they could work in Canada. MATT SMITH PHOTO

FEBRUARY 2017 // @THECOMMUNITYED

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MARCHING FOR HOPE & JUSTICE

WE DIDN’T ELECT TRUMP, BUT WE’RE NOT AS NICE AS WE CLAIM WE ARE

TCE’s far flung correspondent marched in New York City to protest The Donald’s inauguration. EMILY GLEESON PHOTOS

EMILY GLEESON CONTRIBUTOR There were groups of people chanting “not my President!” There were children holding signs, sitting atop their parent’s shoulders. One little girl’s poster asked me what my superpowers were and I got a little misty-eyed.

There were waves of cheers that sent shivers through my body, as they rolled through the crowd like an emotionally charged version of the “wave” at a sports game. There were activists and students and old women and young men alike and they were all colours of the rainbow, joining together to send Donald Trump a message the day after his inauguration.

And yes, there were pink “pussyhats” everywhere.

The Women’s March on Washington and its sister rallies successfully spanned all seven continents (penguins marched in Antarctica!), including 60 different countries, with zero arrests. I had the opportunity to attend the event in New York with a friend who lives there, and later heard that we walked among half a million others. Washington hosted another half-million, and 60,000 marched in Toronto.

Altogether, 3.2 million human beings mobilized around the globe holding sings like “Women Just Wanna Have Fun-damental Rights,” “Love Trumps Hate” and “I’m With Her.” We used hashtags like #whyImarch and the responses were abundant and at times complicated, but the underlying message was that women’s rights were human rights, and not just for Americans.

“A lot of people think that feminism has already been successful,” says Shannon Dea, professor of philosophy at the University of Waterloo, “but women are underrepresented and

underpaid across virtually all sectors; violence against women remains endemic, and secondly, when people say that we have equality, they are excluding a lot of folks from that ‘we’.”

“Feminists also fight for non-binary people and for men who are socialized in a system with oppressive gender norms,” she adds.

On why we might care about the marches, Dea explains that Trump’s election will have devastating consequences globally, and “since Canada and the U.S. are so close — not just geographically but culturally, politically, economically — Canadians feel the Trump election really keenly.”

Interestingly, since “The Donald” was elected, donations to the SHORE Centre (formerly Planned Parenthood Waterloo Region) have increased 37 per cent. Executive director Lyndsey Butcher says the community sees it as a way to support human rights in K-W, and to “ensure that women have the information and support they need to make an informed choice.”

This rings particularly loudly, as just one day after the march, news alerts informed us that Trump signed an executive order to reinstate the “Global Gag Rule,” which, lovely as it sounds, bans non-governmental organizations that perform abortion services and those that provide information about abortion from receiving foreign aid or federal funding.

“Women would lose access to accurate information and non-judgmental support when they experience unplanned pregnancies,” says Joan Tuchlinsky, public education manager at the Sexual Assault Support Centre of Waterloo Region. She attended the women’s march in Toronto “to reaffirm my commitment to end gender-based violence,” adding, “I felt like my work had been set back decades.”

Tuchlinsky says that in 2015 – two years before the inauguration of a President of the United States who brags about grabbing women “by the pussy” – there were 658 sexual assaults investigated by the Waterloo Regional Police Service. The majority

were against women. Because less than 10 per cent of survivors report incidents, the number could be more like 6580. Sadly, one in three women will experience some form of sexual assault in her lifetime, and 99 per cent of the time the accused perpetrator is male.

The point of those figures and the marches is not to damn all men, but to find ways to address and eradicate threats of sexual violence against anyone.

“We need men challenging other men’s sexist, racist and homophobic words and actions,” Tuchlinsky said.

“We are happy to provide our male allies workshops, [which] can help boys and men to articulate these challenges and live out a healthier version of masculinity.”

Lyndsey Butcher also suggests checking out NextGenWR.com, a new grassroots movement website that acts as a portal to those wanting to find other positive community-building experiences. She says getting involved with local organizations like SHORE, SASC, the KW Multicultural Centre and SPECTRUM will help support those who are most impacted by the culture of fear and hate.

“Being able to resist the negativity with a message of hope and action is incredibly important. We don’t need to wait for a threat as extreme as Trump to take action,” Butcher adds.

Though most local politicians are pro-choice and for women’s equality, a super-rich bombastic businessman cum-reality-TV star did just enter the Conservative leadership race, and the professor Dea reminds me that “Canada produced and continued to elect the Fords and Harper.”

She leaves me with a final warning: “We’re not as nice as we like to claim that we are.” And that is just one of the reasons #whyImarch.

CYCLES OF OPPRESSION: PERIOD POVERTY

TAMPON TUESDAY IS NEW LOCAL PROGRAM THAT FUNDRAISES TO MEET HEALTH NEEDS OF WOMEN AND GIRLS

ALEXANDRA BISSLEY CONTRIBUTOR Ever wonder what it’s like to menstruate without being able to afford tampons? Yeah, me neither. Add “feminine hygiene products” (but could we please change the name to something a little less debased?) to the long list of things I am privileged enough to take for granted.

Let’s save the deconstruction of why it is exactly that women have to shell out however many dollars a year to support the rhythms of their reproductive cycle (ahem, patriarchy), and the fact that it wasn’t until 2015 that the feds removed GST from tampons and pads, releasing our collective uteruses from an estimated $36 million in tax (ditto) for another time, though it

factors into the issue at large: for the many menstruating folks who cannot afford tampons and pads, periods are an especially vicious cycle, confining them to conditions of poverty.

An individual’s inability to purchase their own menstrual products might not seem like that big of a deal, but how would you get through a week of bleeding from your vagina using toilet or newspapers stuffed between your legs? If you only had one or two pairs of underwear and limited, if any, access to laundry? How would you go to school or hold a job? Access community resources and essential services? Be comfortable? It’s no understatement to say that tampons (or Diva Cups or your product of choice) are essential for menstruating folks to be able to live their lives.

Tampon Tuesday is a new quarterly event in Kitchener-Waterloo serving to fundraise tampons and pads for social service providers in the Region.

To date they’ve provided over 200

menstrual products to the YWCA, Women’s Crisis Services of Waterloo Region and the Foodbank of Waterloo Region. Their next event takes place on February 28 at Jack Astor’s and this time they want to fill a cube van with donations.

Local organizer Kelly Dick got involved when she worked as a Labour Service Representative for the United Way, hosting events in Waterloo and Kitchener in August and November respectively. Along with her United Way colleagues in London and Hamilton, Dick developed a national toolkit so that other communities across the country could hold their own events for what she sees as a pressing cause.

She explains, “it’s to give back to the community and — this is such a cliché — to raise awareness of this topic that people don’t think of.”

“When you have a woman in crisis, generally people think of two things.

She needs shelter and she needs food.

They don’t think about the health

needs of women and young girls.”

In the case of reproductive health and providing support to menstruating bodies, it’s not something we think about because it’s not something we talk about. It’s not something we are generally comfortable talking about.

“We have spent a lot of time talking about this as a team. Part of it is that we needed to make sure that everyone is comfortable saying tampons.

Like, can you say that word?” Violet Umanetz, Manager of Outreach at Sanguen Health Centre, asks me.

“We don’t ever want someone to come up to us and be unable to ask for what they need and we want to be able to [verbally] offer it.”

The intimate link between periods, being able to talk about them, and an individual’s overall health is driven home by Umanetz’s experience with the Sanguen Outreach Van, which makes weekly trips in the community to give out harm reduction kits, snacks, socks and “period packs.”

“The conversation starts with tampons and pads … but turns to deeper conversations … about people’s physical health, when they last saw a doctor, when they last had a pap smear, all of those pieces really start to come out once people know you are comfortable talking about those kinds of things,” she says.

“This is not just a ‘woman’s’ problem,” Dick tells me. The repercussions of a lack of access to tampons are far reaching across our health and community resources.

“Is [Tampon Tuesday] a Band-Aid solution? Yeah, and we need to get to the root of it. So, lobbying Parliament Hill? Absolutely!”

Really want to show some lady love this Valentine’s Day? Donate a couple boxes of pads and tampons to your favourite social service provider, or hit up the next Tampon Tuesday on February 28 (www.tampontuesday.com).

FEBRUARY 2017 // COMMUNITYEDITION.CA

7

NOT JUST LOCKER ROOM TALK IN THE OHL? NEW PROGRAM ASKS ELITE HOCKEY PLAYERS TO TALK ABOUT MASCULINITY AND VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

JESSE BAUMAN EDITOR IN CHIEF Elite hockey training is changing, and partly due to the pioneering work of the Sexual Assault Support Centre of Waterloo Region, some of tomorrow’s NHL superstars will start their professional careers with a basic education about the ways their words and actions demonstrate respect for women.

“We want to complicate the idea of what it means to be an OHL player,” Steven Soucie told me over the phone, “and also what it means to be a man.”

Soucie coordinates SASC’s male allies program, and worked with the Kawartha Sexual Assault Centre (KSAC) in Peterborough to create the OHL ONSIDE program. The program aims to meaningfully engage players – as leaders not perpetrators – in efforts to “promote the importance of respectful relationships between young men and women in their communities,” according to an OHL release.

There are many reported cases of sexual violence involving hockey players – in the OHL and beyond – every year, and it was one of those incidents that led to the creation of ONSIDE: after a Peterborough Pete’s player’s sexually abusive Tinder messages were made public, the team reached out to KSAC. Soucie led pilot workshops with the Kitchener Rangers and the Petes, and the two-hour training will be mandatory next year for all players and staff of all 20 teams in the OHL, which remains the primary feeder league for the National Hockey League.

Kitchener Rangers general manager Murray Hiebert said he was especially moved by one workshop exercise that had players compare the traits they associate with the dominant narrative of masculinity – and which are often especially celebrated in athletes – with the traits they observe in their most positive role models, typically their fathers. “[We talked about] society’s view of what a ‘he-man’ should be, and the characteristics he should have, but when you compare that to the characteristics that my players actually view as valuable in men in general … well we talked about [fathers and] support and kindness, which goes to show that these are the things we actually value,” Hiebert said.

The ONSIDE curriculum makes reference to a national study of men’s attitudes about gender based violence, conducted by the White Ribbon Campaign. Researchers found that, while most men know it is important to speak out about violence against women, relatively few feel like they know what or how to say or do the right thing.

Soucie hopes the curriculum will help players notice and resist what social psychologists call “pluralistic ignorance,” where “you think you’re the only one who feels a certain way, when in reality most people feel that way.”

When I asked a male friend for comments, his email reply included the following, which also returned me to many of the hockey dressing rooms of my youth: “In high school, there were always a few real dicks who said vile and violent things about most everything and everyone (especially women), but the rest of the guys were

actually not that bad. But those notso-bad guys, myself included, never questioned the A-holes’ comments, behaviour, actions. Not really. Early in each season, I could always identify a guy on the team who might, one day, be a friend because he was the one that tucked himself away in the corner of the locker room with his head down, not saying much.”

“Most guys think they’re the only ones in their friend group uncomfortable with the expectations placed upon them,” Soucie said, especially about the ways we talk about women and sex. Believing you are on your own makes it harder, for most people, to intervene during particular incidents.

The curriculum also refers to author Jackson Katz, who writes that “individual rapists aren’t just crawling out of the swamp. They are being produced by our culture.” The circumstances that surround OHL players seem especially toxic: pulled from home as barely-teenagers, celebrated by their peers and their community, vicariously hoped-through, these players have been told in different ways for much of their lives that their on-ice performance is what matters most of all.

Despite those circumstances, Soucie said “this conversation lands well because [players] have the lived experience of how this dominant narrative of masculinity impacts them, and not only physically, but when a coach tells them not to be a pussy, or to man up.”

“While male athletes receive privilege and power … their bodies are often disciplined and pushed to the limits. They are rushed back from injury or hide injury. They sacrifice their bodies, and so a lot of these young players recognize how those dominant messages have led them to jeopardize their own health,” Soucie said.

The imperative to “man-up” seems especially weighty in a league like the OHL, where players are basically working for free, for profit-seeking organizations like the Rangers, in a for-profit league. The overwhelming majority of players will never play in the NHL. Which is to say that the OHL is a big business with a brand to protect and improve upon. Casual fans help to fill up the Kitchener Auditorium every Friday, but might choose to take their dollars elsewhere if their boys in blue show up in police reports instead of box scores. The OHL must also fight to keep attracting players who could play at American colleges or, like last year’s first-overall draft pick Auston Matthews, professionally overseas.

Parents must trust the OHL to take care of their kids.

But no matter the reasons the OHL is making this program mandatory, Soucie said, “there is a real appetite in the dressing room for these conversations.”

“We’re just planting seeds … that might not materialize, maybe not ever or not for 15 years when these men start to have families of their own,” he said. “But seeing young men willing to make themselves vulnerable and willing to share what they’re afraid of, what they’re struggling with, what pressures they’re facing, that’s powerful to see.”

Near to the end of our conversation, Soucie shared one last quotation, this one from the abolitionist Frederick Douglass: “it is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

Kitchener Rangers player Dylan DiPerna holds a sign to promote the OHL’s new program that aims to help players better understand the ways their words and actions demonstrate respect for women. COURTESY KITCHENER RANGERS

TIME FOR FREE EDUCATION

NEW GRANT IS GOOD, BUT NOT AS RADICAL AS IT MIGHT APPEAR

ZAINAB MAHDI COLUMNIST Last February, when the provincial government introduced a new Ontario School Grant (OSG) designed to provide free tuition to post-secondary students from low-income families, many of us considered it too good to be true. It sounded almost make-belief, like the “fake news” we’re so accustomed to hearing about lately.

A few weeks after the official announcement, a friend of mine informed me that he had withdrawn from his university’s engineering program. As the eldest child in a single parent, low-income family of five, he routinely spent more time at his parttime job than he did on campus, and contributed more of his paychecks towards paying for household bills than towards his tuition.

My friend wasn’t alone in his decision. I have since heard stories of many students from low-income families temporarily postponing their post-secondary studies until “free education” kicks in.

But what does this new grant really entail? Starting in the 2017-18 school year, the OSG will provide enough grants to cover the average cost of tuition for students whose parents

make an income of $50,000 or less a year. Though it is still unclear how this funding will actually roll out, the promise of more affordable education has elicited a lot of buzz.

Some might call this a major step forward in the laborious fight against school fees. Others consider it a token attempt at progressivism. As a post-secondary student who will likely benefit from this new grant system, I have some thoughts regarding this new financial aid.

THERE IS NOTHING RADICAL ABOUT THE OSG Amidst all of the excitement around the OSG, there is seldom any mention of where the money is actually coming from. According to the Ontario Ministry of Finance’s website, the new funding is more or less an amalgamation of existing grants into a “single, major upfront grant.” Little if any new government funding appears to be added to the mix.

So while it’s lovely that these grants target students with the greatest financial need, there is nothing radical, in my opinion, about rearranging an existing pot of money and offering a bit more of it to the students who need it most.

FREE TUITION IS NOT FREE EDUCATION Free tuition is not equivalent to free education, nor should it be misconstrued as such. Under the OSG, many

disadvantaged students – especially those in higher-cost university programs – will still likely have debt to repay. Free education in the absolute sense wouldn’t even provide the option of grants, because there wouldn’t be any expenses to worry about in the first place.

FREE EDUCATION IS NOT A MYTH I often hear the argument that free education is the type of absurd demand that can only be expected from a generation as entitled as ours, a generation that does not value hard work and is therefore unwilling to contribute a penny towards their own education. Anyone who truly believes this logic should take a moment to reflect on the amount of privilege it takes to share such sentiments.

Education is a human right, not a commodity to be commercialized and occasionally discounted for those who can’t afford it. Free education already exists in certain places around the world, so why shouldn’t it be a reality here?

Ultimately, I don’t believe that anyone should have to put their education on the backburner for the sake of affordability, especially individuals coming from already marginalized communities.

I refuse to be satisfied with new “affordable education” programs until free comprehensive education is recognized for all.

@US? @THECOMMUNITYED

SALARY DISPARITIES IN WATERLOO REGIO WORDS & DESIGN BY ALLISON LEONARD In recent years, the cultural organizations dubbed “pillars” in Waterloo Region – THEMUSEUM, The Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, The Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, The Grand Philharmonic Choir and The Canadian Clay and Glass Museum – have been at the forefront of public discussion.

In 2015 – amidst the demise of the Creative Enterprise Institute – THEMUSEUM, the Symphony and the Art Gallery all requested fast-tracked funding from the City of Kitchener to aid with cash flow and planning. Later that year, all five organizations were under external review of municipal funding for cultural institutions. Following the release of the review, the organizations spoke to the regional council, lobbying for funding to increase with inflation over time.

In November of 2016, the groups became subject to new accountability rules under their municipalities,

which required each organization to sign documents outlining their goals for the money allotted. The Region of Waterloo initiated a working group comprised of regional, City of Kitchener and City of Waterloo staff to review the estimated $1.7 million granted to the organizations in 2014 (in-kind and capital assistance not included).

Most recently, Lucille Bish, the Region’s cultural services director, and all of the pillar organizations except the Grand Philharmonic Choir, addressed council to note their financial struggle while trying to maintain quality programming, attract talent and make cultural contributions to the community.

Given the attention offered to the five pillars in recent headlines, we thought we’d break down exactly what supports these pillars. With data from the Canadian Revenue Agency, we’ve illustrated salary distribution, full and part time staff fluctuation and overall revenue from the region’s pillars between 2011 and 2015.

THEMUSEUM Forty-five percent of THEMUSEUM’s revenue was allocated to staffing costs in 2015, although staffing dropped from 84 people in 2011 to 46 in 2015. Those staffing changes followed declines in annual revenue, which, in 2015, was down about $700,000 since 2011.

While THEMUSEUM saw the second largest annual revenue of all pillars in 2015, seven of the 10 highest paid employees made less than $40,000. Since 2013, the highest paid staff person at THEMUSEUM has been two full salary brackets, or a minimum of $80,000, above the next highest paid staff person. No other organization includes such a large pay gap between the highest paid staff person and the next in line. THEMUSEUM does, however, generate a higher percentage of its own revenue than any other pillar organization. In 2015 this figure accounted for 61 per cent of all revenue. Most recently, THEMUSEUM hosted exhibitions including “QUANTUM: The Exhibition,” and “Nature

Unleashed,” and they celebrated 10 years with current CEO David Marskell.

THE KITCHENER-WATERLOO SYMPHONY With the largest staff base of the pillars (depending on the year and musical talent required, the number of part time musicians fluctuates immensely), it makes sense that the Symphony doled out upwards of $3.4 million for staffing costs in 2015 – 62 per cent of its annual revenue. Of the 10 highest paid full time staff members, the Symphony steadily increased the number of employees within the $40,000 to $79,999 bracket, moving from four to nine employees in five years. During this period, the highest paid staff member remained in the same salary bracket, only making the jump over $120,000 in 2014 before sliding back down in 2015. This was the same year that the Symphony marked its 70th anniversary (and received a $70,000 donation to match), went through its first year

TOTAL 2015 REVENUE BY SOURCE $2,443,651

THEMUSEUM KW SYMPHONY

$5,606,121 $2,342,201

KW ART GALLERY GRAND PHILHARMONIC

RECEIPTED DONATIONS NON RECEIPTED DONATIONS GENERAL REVENUE GIFTS FROM OTHER CHARITIES GOVERNMENT FUNDING

$411,205 $1,012,485

CLAY & GLASS

9

7

6

5

4

3

2

LESS THAN $40,000

$40,000 - $79,999

GRAND PHILHARMONIC CHOIR

KITCHENER WATERLOO ART GALLERY

KITCHENER WATERLOO SYMPHONY

THEMUSEUM

CANADIAN CLAY AND GLASS GALLERY

GRAND PHILHARMONIC CHOIR

KITCHENER WATERLOO ART GALLERY

KITCHENER WATERLOO SYMPHONY

THEMUSEUM

GRAND PHILHARMONIC CHOIR

KITCHENER WATERLOO ART GALLERY

KITCHENER WATERLOO SYMPHONY

0

CANADIAN CLAY AND GLASS GALLERY

1

THEMUSEUM

NUMBER OF PEOPLE WITHIN EACH SALARY BRACKET

8

$80,000 - $119,999

SALARY DISTRIBUTION OF THE TEN HIGHEST PAID EMPLOYEES AT EACH OF WATE

ON’S PILLAR CULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS under Andrew Bennett’s direction, moved all of the 10 highest paid employees to a salary above $40,000, saw a $380,000 increase in revenue after two years of decline, and vowed to pay down a deficit marked at 18 per cent of the Symphony’s revenue.

$40,000 brackets. KWAG’s revenue make-up is very different than that of the other organizations. In 2015, one year shy of KWAG’s 60th anniversary, 60 per cent their revenue came from receipted and non-receipted donations and only 15 per cent came from revenue.

of a higher percentage of gifts from other charities and non-receipted donations than any other pillar organization. Recently the choir’s conductor, Mark Vuorinen, was awarded the Leslie Ball Award for choral conducting.

THE KITCHENER-WATERLOO ART GALLERY While the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery’s 2015 revenue was just shy of THEMUSEUM’s, they spent around 26 per cent of their annual revenue on 29 staff people, 19 per cent less than THEMUSEUM’s 45 percent of revenue on 46 staff. Total staffing at KWAG has remained steady, but the revenue has increased incrementally since 2011, breaching the $2 million mark for the first time in 2015. The highest paid staff person at KWAG sat in the median bracket, $80,000 to $119,000, and has stayed there for all five years in question.

The remainder of the ten highest paid employees are divided fairly equally in the under $79,999 and under

THE GRAND PHILHARMONIC CHOIR The Grand Philharmonic Choir operates on a relatively miniscule budget and one staff person; while they are regarded as a valuable cultural contribution, they’re considered differently when it comes to municipal and regional funding decisions. News readers will notice that they often aren’t part of the pillar-based council discussions or headlines, but they were addressed in the 2015 review of arts funding. The Grand Philharmonic has not reported more than one staff person since 2011, and in 2015, this person moved from full to part time. While the Grand Philharmonic revenue was only $411,205, this number was actually made

THE CLAY & GLASS GALLERY The Clay & Glass Gallery’s revenue, made almost entirely of government funding and general revenue, sat at just over $1 million in 2015. And while their revenue is roughly half that of THEMUSEUM or KWAG’s, about 39 per cent was eaten up by staffing costs for 10 full time and six part time staff. In 2015, seven of those ten employees found themselves in the lowest salary bracket (on par with THEMUSEUM that year). Encouragingly, part time positions appear to have been replaced by full time positions over the years. In 2016 the Gallery received over $1 million in combined federal and municipal funding to foot the bill for renovations.

TOTAL FULL TIME EMPLOYEES BY YEAR

THEMUSEUM KW SYMPHONY GRAND PHILHARMONIC KW ART GALLERY CLAY & GLASS

25 20

This article highlighted a few notable trends in funding for, and decisions within Waterloo Region’s pillar cultural organizations. Compare the data below with what your favourite institutions offer and the value they contribute to this community. Do the numbers align? Let us know at @TheCommunityEd.

Disclosure: Allison Leonard worked at THEMUSEUM from September 2015 to February 2016. It’s possible that her salary for that period is included in the 2015 “less than $40,000” bracket of the salary distribution graph, but the CRA does not release individual names.

Note: Since 2016 data was only available for two of the five organizations, we chose not to include it.

TOTAL 2015 STAFFING COST THEMUSEUM

$1,107,027 KW SYMPHONY

$3,450,804

15

KW ART GALLERY

$607,682

10 5

GRAND PHILHARMONIC

$26,408

0 2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

CLAY & GLASS

$398,316 TOTAL PART TIME EMPLOYEES BY YEAR

THEMUSEUM KW SYMPHONY GRAND PHILHARMONIC KW ART GALLERY CLAY & GLASS

120

ALMOST HALF OF THE 10 HIGHEST PAID EMPLOYEES ACROSS ALL FIVE PILLAR ORGANIZATIONS MADE LESS THAN $40,000 ANNUALLY FOR THE LAST FIVE YEARS.

100 80 60 40 20 0 2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2011 2012 2013 2014

$120,000 - $159,999

ERLOO REGION’S PILLAR ARTS ORGANIZATIONS

$160,000 - $199,999

CANADIAN CLAY AND GLASS GALLERY

GRAND PHILHARMONIC CHOIR

KITCHENER WATERLOO ART GALLERY

KITCHENER WATERLOO SYMPHONY

THEMUSEUM

CANADIAN CLAY AND GLASS GALLERY

GRAND PHILHARMONIC CHOIR

KITCHENER WATERLOO ART GALLERY

KITCHENER WATERLOO SYMPHONY

THEMUSEUM

2015

CANADIAN CLAY AND GLASS GALLERY

IN BRIEF

FROM 2013-2015 THERE WERE TWO FULL SALARY BRACKETS BETWEEN THEMUSEUM’S HIGHEST PAID STAFF PERSON AND THE NEXT HIGHEST PAID STAFF PERSON, A MINIMUM GAP OF $80,000.

IN 2015, THE SYMPHONY SPENT $3.4 MILLION ON STAFFING, BUT ALL OF THEIR 10 HIGHEST PAID EMPLOYEES MADE MORE THAN $40,000. THEY EMPLOYED 99 PEOPLE IN TOTAL. IN 2015, 60 PER CENT OF ALL KWAG REVENUE CAME FROM DONATIONS. ONLY 15 PER CENT CAME FROM GENERAL REVENUE. FROM 2011-2014, THE GRAND PHILHARMONIC CHOIR ONLY EVER HAD ONE FULL TIME PAID EMPLOYEE. IN 2015, THAT PERSON BECAME A PART TIME EMPLOYEE. 2015 WAS THE FIRST YEAR THAT THE CLAY & GLASS GALLERY HAD 10 FULL TIME EMPLOYEES.

FEBRUARY 2017 // COMMUNITYEDITION.CA

10

FOUR CONTINENTS TOGETHER AT KWAG

MONKMAN EXHIBIT IN ONE PLACE FOR FIRST TIME

Kent Monkman’s The Four Continents thrills at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery until March 12. Meg Harder encourages you to see it, in focus. MARCO PEDRI PHOTO

MEG HARDER CONTRIBUTOR Last fall, the Kindred Credit Union Centre of Peace Advancement hosted an artist panel on art and activism.

Speaking about the contemporary art scene, local playwright and activist Johnny Wideman lamented that so much art is like “junk food.”

“It is sort of fun and exciting but our brains need more substance to chew on,” he explained. With Wideman’s analysis echoing in my mind, I looked upon the The Four Continents by Kent Monkman at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery. Monkman’s skilled revival of pre-modern representational painting and dizzying conceptual depth, may be the cultural sustenance we seem to be craving.

The Four Continents is a contemporary reinterpretation of Allegory of the Planets and Continents by the 18th century Venetian old master Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. At his artist talk at KWAG on Jan. 13, Monkman explained how historic paintings can reveal much about the narrative believed

by European and settler cultures and how, through reproduction, these stories can be told anew.

Each panel by Monkman separately tackles four different continents.

Excitingly, this is the first time that all four appear together, allowing for a clearer reading of Monkman’s social and political perspective. For one, it is more clear that Monkman is framing his reinterpretation of Tiepolo’s masterpiece from a Cree worldview by aligning each of the four paintings with the four directions.

Behind each panel the four walls have been painted either red, white, black or red to demonstrate each continent’s connection with one of the four directions. The four directions is a way of organizing knowledge and practices in some indigenous communities of North America, the meaning and use of which is culture and time specific.

The reunion of the four continents

also emphasizes the symmetry between each of the compositions, allowing viewers more opportunity to explore relationships and contrasts in Monkman’s analysis of the state of the world. Indeed, there are many moments within each panel and seemingly endless possibilities for interpretation and analysis, and The Four Continents demonstrates technical skill, keen analysis, and an authentic voice — the kind of artistic mastery born of years of dedication and uncompromising self-awareness.

In conversation, Monkman cautioned me about what he called “pop art,” not unlike the “junk food art” described by Wideman, and talked about artists chasing after fleeting trends to achieve brief amounts of fame.

That type of art making, he explained, doesn’t reflect the time and energy required to produce something that uses the full force of what art is truly capable of giving to the world.

The Four Continents began 10 years ago as a failed proposal for the Venice Biennale, and once he actually started painting, it took him five years to complete.

Monkman started his career as an abstract painter, and worked in that style for 12 years before he found his current artistic vision. His first forays into representational work addressed colonialism and homophobia by reproducing 19th century paintings with subversive scenes of seduction and sexual conquest. Emboldened, his work took on increasingly complex issues and compositions, incrementally making advancements toward The Four Continents.

Monkman said in his talk that satire and humour have been an accessible way for him to enter into conversation with heavy and complicated topics, but he said he feels his artistic journey has equipped him to more seriously address colonialism in Canada.

In light of Canada’s 150 year anniversary, Monkman’s most recent painting will depict what the last 150 years have been like for many Indigenous peoples in Canada, in all its horror and beauty.

I can’t imagine a better candidate to reveal this truth to the ages.

Kent Monkman’s The Four Continents demonstrates technical skill, keen analysis, and an authentic voice — the kind of artistic mastery born of years of dedication and uncompromising self-awareness, writes Meg Harder. Excitingly, this is the first time that all four large panels appear together.

At the KWAG until March 12. MARCO PEDRI PHOTO

FEBRUARY 2017 // COMMUNITYEDITION.CA

11

COLLECTIVE ARTS

ARTISTS CREATE CHANGE FROM THE OUTSIDE

KARLIS WILDE CONTRIBUTOR “Iä! Iä!” screams an acrylic typewriter, its keys assaulted by the enormous tentacles of an octopus-like beast beaming from the centre of a small, square painting.

“It’s based on Lovecraft,” explained D.H. McKee, co-creator of the mixed-media painting, “Non-Euclidean Poetry,” currently on display at THEMUSEUM. The phrase is taken from “Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn”: a call used to summon an elder god.

It’s an arresting visual, but it calls into question what sort of cohesion this work plays into as part of the show, especially when contrasted against pieces like the enormous, free-hanging, deconstructed painting, “Memory and the Temporal Exchange.” The work is another intriguing piece that depicts, in vague, fragmentary strokes, its own inception. To expound on this theme, “Exchange” is fastened with hinges, making it easily transportable. Amber Pacheo, co-creator of the piece in a first-time partnership with James Nye, described it as nomadic.

“It’s always a part of you, no matter where you go,” she said.

The works continue in this random, disconnected vein. Two films are projected on either side of the gallery — the most popular of which had its screen intentionally obstructed by props, including a large, white star jutting from the wall.

A line of 14 rectangles create “Linear Conversation,” each decorated with a dynamic gradient of chaos, highlighting the only discernible words, ‘Speak

Up’, in the resolute centre.

The theme of the show matches its title: #Exnovation.

It’s an unofficial word, absent from the Oxford English Dictionary, that connotes the inversion of innovation.

Described by the collective, it’s when “a person from outside of the team creates changes.”

To align with this concept, every piece on display, cultivated by 36 artists from within the region, was co-produced. The ideology was then extended, first to THEMUSEUM CEO David Marskell, whose exnovative effort was in allowing an exterior group to have their way with his gallery, then to the audience themselves: a chalkboard sits along the edge of the exhibit urging anyone to write down what they think and see.

Perhaps what’s most striking about the exhibit is in what it lacks, rather than what it actually is: the malleable theme, instead of uniting the final product, absolutely eliminates cohesion. Artists with a similarly local background are dispersed between different genres and modalities, expressing their own self-contained ideologies. This absence of a consistent artistic theme highlights an ultimate lack of acute, local, cultural identity.

Fortunately, this inconsistency of identity doesn’t detract from the superlative nature of the work. The group of excellent artists behind the display, Collective Identity, was founded two years ago by Terre Chartrand and Jennifer Gough. Chartrand plans to continue the group’s relationship with THEMUSEUM into the foreseeable future, and hopes to arrange annual exhibits. Describing her vision, she said she wants “to continue to give a novel platform for artists in the Waterloo Region.” #Exnovation will be on display at THEMUSEUM until February 26.

#Exnovation is not a real word, but it’s a real exhibition of local artists at THEMUSEUM until February 26.

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FEBRUARY 2017 // COMMUNITYEDITION.CA

12

DON’T WORRY, BE HAPPY, AND OTHER BULLSHIT

MENTAL MATTERS

JOHN ROCHE COLUMNIST What do Taylor Swift, that guy whose best attempt at romance was to send you a picture of his junk, and bell hooks have in common? Well, if we managed to look past the catchy lyrics, the nauseating brocabulary, and the penetrating eloquence, we’d see that they all just want to be happy. But what is happiness, anyway? I know it seems like a question for philosophers,

but as a therapist I’ve learned that how we define happiness actually has serious implications for our mental health.

Most of us grow up believing that happiness is the emotion we feel when things go our way. Good grades, good relationships, good job, good health, that sort of thing. Most basically, it’s about the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain. This concept of happiness is so normal that it seems weird even to think about it.

The bad news is, this happiness has a serious dark side. For starters, it’s actually impossible to control things so that we only feel pleasure and never feel pain. Built right into gain, praise, pleasure and life are loss, blame, pain

and death; trying to cling to one side of the coin while rejecting the other is like, well, trying to cling to one side of a coin and reject the other.

The other problem is that when we try to cling to pleasure and avoid pain, we tend to act in less than awesome ways. Addiction, abuse, neglect, deceit, manipulation, people-pleasing and even more macro level issues like economic exploitation and environmental destruction can all be traced back to a fundamental attachment to pleasure and avoidance of pain.

The worst part? Even when we do manage to grab onto this happiness, it tends to be pretty superficial, and it disappears all too quickly.

In summary, the conventional

brand of happiness kind of sucks. The good news is, there’s a competing vision of happiness: not the presence of pleasure and absence of pain, but a life lived in accordance with one’s values.

Our values are what we cherish most deeply – depending on the person, they could be stuff like compassion, adventure, family, love or humour – and, if we want to get really philosophical about it, they’re an expression of our most authentic selves.

The happiness of authenticity has nothing to do with feeling good and not feeling bad. This type of happiness recognizes that humans just sometimes feel shitty and sometimes feel great, sometimes win and sometimes lose. With this happiness, we shift our

focus from that fact – which we can’t control – to what we can control, that is, whether or not to act in alignment with our values regardless of the circumstances. The added bonus is that if we’re not chasing pleasure and avoiding pain, we’re much less likely to be dicks to each other and ourselves.

The best part? Acting in alignment with our values leads to a deep, lasting contentment that makes pleasure and pain seem feeble in comparison.

It also happens to be the foundation of unshakable self-esteem. But don’t take my word for it; experiment with chasing this second type of happiness rather than the first, and see how quickly it changes everything.

John is a Waterloo-based therapist.

NOSTALGIA FOR OUR FUTURE TCE REVIEWS

DYLAN SIEBERT CONTRIBUTOR Just over 100 years ago, the city I live in was known as “busy Berlin.” It boasted homegrown industries that employed thousands and a farming economy that employed thousands more. Electric streetcars shared the roads with horse-drawn vehicles, novelty automobiles and cyclists going to and from work.

A lot has changed since 1916. In present-day Kitchener, the colourful mix of transportation technologies on display during the morning commute has been overtaken by a steady stream of cars, with a few buses and bikes offering alternatives for the less well-to-do. Although technology has advanced, the range of options has narrowed. For most people working most jobs, a car is the only practical way of getting around.

Meanwhile, for a growing number of Kitchener residents, steady employment in the industrial or farming economies has also become a thing of the past. If you can’t land an overpaid tech job or a unionized public sector job, chances are you’re among the thousands in our region competing for an underpaid service job – or several at once. Shouldn’t technological progress have sorted this out by now?

To author John Michael Greer, the link between technological progress and economic constriction isn’t accidental. His latest novel Retrotopia explores a future world in which people have made substantially different technological choices than we have –

with substantially different results.

Retrotopia opens in the year 2065, several decades after a second American civil war has partitioned the nation into several independent republics, each dealing in its own way with the effects of climate change, energy insecurity and a volatile global economy. But don’t shelve this title with the mass of dystopian fiction that’s appeared in recent years: Retrotopia belongs to the venerable genre of utopian fiction. It’s about a society that works.

The story follows Peter Carr, an east-coaster on a diplomatic mission to the midwestern Lakeland Republic, an area known in our time as the Rust Belt. Lakelanders haven’t forgotten their history of economic pain. The lessons learned during the late 20th century have made them extremely reluctant to rely on industrial automation and global trade.

In fact, they’ve made technological change a matter of democratic choice, on a county-by-county basis.

Anyone in the Lakeland Republic can own and use almost any technology they choose, but the county government will only fund and build the infrastructure necessary to use that technology if local taxpayers vote for it. Thus high-tech counties have high taxes and low-tech counties have low taxes – it’s as simple as that.

The result is a colourful mix of technologies old and new. On the streets of Toledo, Ohio, electric streetcars share the roads with horse-drawn taxicabs, novelty automobiles and pedestrians going to and from work. Sound familiar? The difference between our 1916 and their 2065 is that Lakeland law guarantees that none of these technologies receive a free subsidy.

No free subsidies means no government grants for auto factories, no

regionally-funded cycling programs, and no light rail construction without a clear electoral mandate. Take away the subsidies that prop up the various technologies competing for market share in our world, and they’d have to compete on equal economic footing.

But why would anyone voluntarily give up 21st century technology? At this point it’s worth calling to mind a certain group of 19th century English textile workers known as the Luddites, who gained infamy for smashing automated factory machinery. They foresaw, correctly as it turns out, that the new machines would make their skilled labour expendable. Their uprising made the point that technological progress wasn’t inevitable, but rather a choice made by the factory owners and backed up by the British army.

More to the point, it was a choice that was not in everyone’s best interest.

You’ll have to read the book to learn how it all fits together, but it isn’t giving too much away to reveal that in the course of his travels Peter Carr encounters a factory powered entirely by human muscle, an astronomy professor who calculates orbital trajectories without a computer, and the Lakeland Republic’s most popular sporting event: the annual Drone Shoot.

Like most utopian novels, this is neither a character drama nor an extended action sequence; it’s a walking tour of a place you might like to move to someday. That said, there are enough well-timed surprises that by the time things start to heat up in the book’s second half we’re invested and eager to see how Greer’s imaginary country stands up in a crisis.

Retrotopia is the kind of book that makes you nostalgic for our region’s possible futures.

John Michael Greer’s new book Retrotopia made Dylan Siebert nostalgic for our region’s possible futures. The book is available through Founders House Publishing, at Waterloo Public Library, or in instalments on John Michael Greer’s blog, “The Archdruid Report.” COURTESY FOUNDERS HOUSE PUBLISHING

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FEBRUARY 2017 // COMMUNITYEDITION.CA

HOP FARMS BLOOM AROUND CRAFT BOOM LOCAL HOP PRODUCERS WORKING HARD TO BITTER OUR LOCALLY PRODUCED BREWS

KAT ROGERS-HERN CONTRIBUTOR It’s no surprise that the recent flood of small craft breweries in Ontario has led to the rise of related industries. Escarpment Labs in Guelph is Canada’s first liquid yeast lab, and companies like Harvest Hop and Malt and Barn Owl Malt offer Ontario grown grains.

Hop growers are popping up all over the province, too, but breweries have been slower to make the switch to local hops, which are used to add bitterness and aroma to beer.

The challenges of going local are very real. Hops are terroir driven, meaning that elements like topography and climate play a significant role in the development of the crop.

Cascade hops from Oregon are noticeably different from those grown in Australia. Same deal for those grown in Waterloo region.

This can be problematic for brewers who are after the telltale grapefruit characteristic of the American variety.

On a more technical level, it can also impact the amount of alpha and beta acids in the cones, which affect bitterness and aroma. When it comes to brewing, consistency is key. Thankfully, there are workarounds.

Culum Canally, worker/owner at Together We’re Bitter Co-operative

Brewing, explains their system for managing quality: “As far as consistency of the hops are concerned, we will use local hops to a greater or lesser degree and blend them in with hops from more established growing regions like the Pacific Northwest to ensure that we maintain a consistent flavour profile in our beer.”

Most literature on hops suggests that it takes about three years for plants to mature to the point that the cones are suitable for use in brewing. But with nature involved, that certainly isn’t a hard and fast rule. As an example, Kyle Wynette from the Tavistock Hop Company points to the difficulty that growers have had in getting the Centennial varietal established on this side of the continent.

While his alpha acids are consistently within range, yields have been low.

Considering that Ontario is home to over 200 operating breweries, with another 100 in the planning stages, small yields are problematic.

The Ontario Hop Growers Association lists 61 member farms in their directory. Unfortunately, the listing doesn’t provide details about the age or size of most farms, so it’s hard to get an accurate sense of what’s really out there. Of those growers that do list their acreage, many are farming less than a few acres of crop. In the Pacific Northwest of the United States, for comparison, hop farming accounts for over 40,000 acres in the state of Washington alone. We’ve got some growing to do.

With 12 acres planted and more planned, Wynette’s strategy is to work with fewer brewers to make sure that the supply is consistent in terms of quality and availability. This plan speaks to the needs of brewers like Kevin Freer, who emphasizes the challenge of sourcing local hops in a province where the hop supply just can’t meet the demand.

Speaking about his desire to increase the use of local hops at Block Three Brewing Co, where he is head brewer, Freer mentioned the advantage of being able to work closely with growers who are able to plan for the needs of the brewery and tailor their growth accordingly.

This seems to be the key. Local growers offer the kind of personal relationship that can’t be had with hop suppliers south of the border or across the ocean. Wynette and the crew at Tavistock deliver all of their hops personally, and stress the importance of developing close relationships with their customers.

But change has been slow. For the most part, local hops are still something of a novelty, to be used on special occasions and with a specific purpose in mind. Breweries like Innocente and Abe Erb have partnered up with local growers in the past, for example, to brew harvest-season favourite wet hopped ales.

In November, Together We’re Bitter partnered up with the Tavistock Hop Co. to develop a heritage beer that honours the history of hop growing

in Waterloo Region. They were able to use hops that Wynette propagated from more than 100-year-old plants found on the site of the former Preston hopyards, a farm that was active prior to Prohibition.

Later this month, breweries from across Ontario will participate in the fifth annual Great Ontario-Hopped Craft Beer Competition, which partners them up with a local grower.

Among others, Block Three, Wellington and Elora Brewing Co. are slated to compete.

One-off brews are great for raising awareness about local hops but, if the industry is going to succeed, there will need to be a bigger commitment on the part of craft brewers. Thankfully, a few breweries have already taken the plunge. TWB uses Tavistock Cascade and Centennial in a few of their staple hoppier offerings, for example, while Wellington Brewery’s Kickin’ Back Dry-Hopped Session Ale is made exclusively with hops from Clear Valley Hops in Nottawa.

Looking ahead, it’s all about balance. Growers need to take the required time to establish a viable and consistent crop, while breweries need to show support by starting to move away from their reliance on imported hops. If everyone plays their part, we should soon be able to attribute the bitterness of our favourite local IPAs to nearby growers.

From top: field rows at Tavistock Hop Farm, a hop cone at the farm, and hop pellets ready to join a Block 3 brew.

TOP PHOTOS COURTESY KYLE WYNETTE, BOTTOM PHOTO BY KAT ROGERS-HERN.

A MODEST SIDEWALK SHOVELING PROPOSAL WR AND HOWE

JAMES HOWE COLUMNIST Usually when city council makes a decision, it settles an issue. But when Kitchener City Council considered a report on its role in clearing snow off sidewalks, it set off a blizzard of reactions.

You have the idealists and fiscal conservatives who say that if we all pitch in, do our part and be good

neighbours, there’s no reason to spend tax dollars on a new service. And then there are people who think that we must treat sidewalks the same as roads and have the city clear them.

While an appeal to our civic nature might help, anyone who relies on sidewalks to get around knows there are always problem spots. But making the city responsible is not ideal. When I lived in Toronto, which clears sidewalks, I remember regularly shoveling snow because the city took too long.

In Kitchener, side streets often remain snow covered, even after a big storm, because they are the lowest priority.

So the solution lies somewhere in between. Clear sidewalks are crucial to a healthy, walkable community. We

need them to effectively and efficiently get around without relying on cars, but navigating icy, bumpy sidewalks risks health and safety. Especially for older people, falls have serious consequences.

It’s an even more critical issue for people with mobility issues who can be trapped inside for days or weeks when it snows. David Kuhn, who uses a wheelchair, considers clear sidewalks a human right. He chairs KW AccessAbility’s board, and he’s right.

Yet I found myself agreeing with Kitchener Councillor Sarah Marsh when I watched the debate from the gallery. Marsh entered council chambers in favour of the city taking on the responsibility, but ended up voting

against the idea because she had concerns over the quality of service the City could provide. Even if the price is right, how quickly could the City get the job done?

My pragmatic proposal for dealing with snow covered sidewalks would be to have the City take a tiered approach (and limited responsibility), prioritizing sidewalks along Regional roads and major trails, then sidewalks on any part of a street that is used

by GRT buses to make it easy to get to and from public transit, and then sidewalks beside parks and other municipally owned properties.

This tiered approach means people using sidewalks can have predictable, consistently clear sidewalks on high

traffic routes.

Citizens would remain responsible for clearing snow from the vast majority of sidewalks, but we can take action to improve their experience, too.

For example, we could expect sidewalks cleared within 12 hours, but if the city declares a “Snow Event” give the same time to clear sidewalks as the city has for streets. Citizens should be able to use the Pingstreet app to report offenders.

While I expect this won’t satisfy many debating the issue, it would be a huge improvement over the status quo.

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FEBRUARY 2017 // COMMUNITYEDITION.CA

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CORPORATE WORKPLACE WELLNESS WOES

TRUE WORKPLACE WELLNESS REQUIRES SYSTEMIC CHANGES, NOT HEALTHIER SNACKS AND COMFIER CHAIRS

DANI STOCK CONTRIBUTOR Jan. 25 was Bell Let’s Talk day, a day that should, inarguably, be every day of the year. Unfortunately, when it comes to the workplace, 65 per cent of working Canadians would not tell their manager if they had a mental health problem, according to a 2013 Ipsos Reid (now Ipsos) poll.

This reluctance to talk about mental health at work exists, despite the troubling reality that 30 per cent of Canada Pension Plan disability claims stem from mental illness — the number one cause of all claims, according to the Mental Health Commission of Canada.

With greater pressure on employers to respond to these statistics and, in particular, lost revenue from disability leave, the age of corporate wellness programs has dawned. Companies now have corporate wellness personnel. They promote benefits like fitness facilities, wellness lunch-and-learns,

healthy catered meals, nutritious snacks and reimbursement for wellness-related expenses.

These are excellent perks to get workers through a grueling Monday-to-Friday grind. Who doesn’t love free, healthy food at work?

At the same time, workplace wellness programs should be seen for what they are: a symptom of sick workplaces and the exploitative nature of modern day employment.

When we look at the way in which wellness programs are packaged and sold to companies, it’s clear that the real boon is in their potential to maximize profits. Toronto wellness consultants Tri Fit sell their services using marketing language like “Healthy Body, Strong Bottom Line,” and “Better Health, Better Business.” The push for health at work is not primarily about making lives better.

While the profit motive behind these programs is troubling, equally problematic is the concept of workplace wellness itself, specifically the idea that health can be detached from the larger context of a person’s life and isolated to the confines of an office or cubicle.

As reactive (and not proactive) solutions, corporate wellness programs are only capable of pushing superficial change. These approaches are bound to fail unless organizations introduce significant cultural and structural changes to employee work arrangements and performance expectations — or more likely, until those changes are legislated.

The following examples illustrate how it’s quite easy to meet healthy workplace standards from a policy perspective without addressing the root causes of an unhealthy work culture.

Workplace wellness programs can help teach stress management. But unless active measures are taken to eliminate unnecessary sources of stress at work, teaching an employee to respond differently to stress unfairly shifts the burden onto workers.

Workplace wellness programs can provide ergonomic assessments to ensure that work stations are retrofitted to each worker’s body. This change does not address the expectation of sedentary seated work, which, according to recent studies from Canada, Australia and the United States, may

be linked to premature mortality.

Likewise, physical activity programs can help employees negotiate the unhealthy expectation of prolonged sitting. But without a concerted management effort to shift performance expectations, this approach cannot ensure that employees have time to take advantage of these opportunities while meeting the demands of their jobs.

Workplace wellness programs can also encourage healthy eating at work by providing nutritious snacks and cooking classes. They cannot ensure that employees have the time, energy and resources, before and after work, to make nutritious meals for themselves and their families, particularly considering the always-connected nature of contemporary work.

Finally, companies can promote generous benefits like unlimited vacation days. But without addressing a culture where workaholism is rewarded (however subversively), they cannot guarantee that employees will feel free to take even enough vacation time to meet national averages.

When viewed from a policy level, those examples all look like health

promotion. Indeed, such a workplace might even meet the criteria for a Healthy Workplace Award from the Region of Waterloo.

Awards are nice, but without interrogating our current paradigm of what it means to work and have a career, we are only scratching the surface.

Real change requires that Canadians embrace a fairly radical cultural shift that sees workplace wellness holistically — that is, inseparable from the whole picture of individual and public wellness.

We can thank the labour movement for freeing us from the industrial-age servitude of a fourteen-hour work day, but let’s face it: the forty-hour work week is not exactly an innovation in work-life balance. Most adults spend more of their waking hours at work than anywhere else.

If we really begin talking about mental health, as Bell’s campaign asks us to do, we’ll see that the greater challenge lies in making organizational changes.

Sweden’s six-hour work day is one example. These shifts may demand a relatively small financial sacrifice from corporations in favour of true human flourishing.

THANK YOU FOR BEING A FRIEND, MY FRIENDS

SEXPLANATIONS

STACEY JACOBS COLUMNIST Thank you for being a friend. Travel down the road and back again. Your heart is true, you’re a pal and a confidant.

I have always loved the Golden Girls theme song, and the TV show, which aired between 1985 and 1992. I recently re-watched a season or two and was reminded not only of the strong

example of friendship displayed by Dorothy, Rose, Blanche and Sophia but by their ability to accept one another for who they were.

As adults we often get caught up in life, with the stress of careers, romantic relationships, family and children, and forget that friendships may be the most important relationships we will ever have, and often the longest.

Friendships take work, just like other types of relationships do, and should not be taken for granted.

I am lucky and happy to have many strong friendships, some that began in high school. And I admit that there have been times in my life when I have taken these friendships for granted. But as I get older I realize

more and more how important these relationships are to my happiness, my strength and my well-being. They make me feel better about myself, my abilities, my decisions and most importantly my mistakes.

My friendships have strengthened the other relationships in my life.

Friendships have given me an outlet to share my feelings about partners, family members and co-workers in a safe space free of judgement and criticism.

Without the ability to vent, think out loud and discuss my problems I am not sure what I would have done over the years. Possibly something drastic!

Not everyone has the type of friendships I have described above, and I have always felt that as I get older

it has become harder to make close friends. But the more I think about it, the more I think it was me putting up fences to keep new friendships shallow and superficial, not wanting to let new people in. There is no reason that close and intimate friendships cannot begin at any point in our lives. Look at the Golden Girls!

If you are looking for friendship I suggest doing the things you love to do. Join a cooking class, a wine class, go to the library, join a sports team, do yoga, attend community events for causes you are passionate about.

There will be people there that also enjoy those activities, and you may have a lot in common.

Many people are looking for friend-

ship. Take the plunge, invite someone out for coffee, dinner or a movie to get to know them better. Friendship is not unlike dating in this way. Do not worry if the person is the same gender as you, the same age or religion, or has acquired the same education level.

These things do not have to matter if you get along with someone and they make you feel good about yourself.

So I would like to give a shout out to my ladies (you know who you are).

Thank you for always being there for me, crying with me, laughing with me and most importantly, loving me for who I am.

FEBRUARY 2017 // @THECOMMUNITYED

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FEBRUARY 2017 // COMMUNITYEDITION.CA

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MATT SMITH PHOTO

DOWNTOWN KITCHENER MAKES FUTURE PLANS DAVE THOMAS CONTRIBUTOR What will downtown Kitchener be like in the years to come? What do people like about it and how do they want it to change?

Members of the public recently had an opportunity to weigh in through Shape DTK 2020, an effort by the Downtown Kitchener Business Improvement Area and the City of Kitchener to gather community input as they develop a strategy to guide the evolution of the downtown core.

More than 750 people responded to an online survey. Nine roundtable discus-

sions sessions heard from stakeholders in the retail, food and hospitality, technology, development and other sectors.

Two hundred people participated in a community forum held at THEMUSEUM on Jan. 17.

“It was important to ask the community and the stakeholders what you think downtown Kitchener might look like in 2020,” says Linda Jutzi, executive director of the Downtown BIA. “We are compiling all the results. The feedback and ideas we get from the community will be outlined in a discussion paper that will be shared publicly.

The report will clarify the community’s collective aspirations for the future of downtown. From that we will develop new priorities, strategies and action plans to act on those ideas.”

It was clear that the residents attending the community forum are

passionate about the downtown and how they want to see it progress in the coming years.

“What I like best about downtown … is having access to everything I need within a 20-minute walk,” says Anna Beard, who’s lived in the area since 2015. She particularly likes the proximity of transit, fresh local food and entertainment.

“I’d like to see the core intensify more through smart urban development. It would be nice to see a mix of affordable housing, midrise units, and highrises that focus on mixed use. I’d also like to see us keep protecting those communities that are more vulnerable. Community and social services need to be in the core where they’re most accessible. That means we need to keep the core livable for those who need those services,” says Beard.

For Ren Navarro, who just moved to

Kitchener from Toronto a few months ago, the key plus of downtown is its positive vibe. “I like the feel of community, the inclusive and welcoming nature of the establishments. I also love that there are no big box stores in the downtown area,” she says. “Thumbs up for independently owned stores, restaurants and bars.”

One development Navarro would like to see is pedestrian-friendly spaces, similar to the pedestrian Sundays in Toronto at the Kensington Market.

“They close down a large street for the day. Either shut the street down once a week, or create a permanent pedestrian street. Ottawa has a couple of those,” says Navarro.

While BIA staff are still compiling the feedback from the forum, Jutzi said she’s not surprised by the commonalities of the themes that were important to the

participants, such as an emphasis on attractions, events and activities and a strong sense of community.

Ward 10 Councillor Sarah Marsh said that the input will be very valuable in guiding the City’s plans. “Collecting input from a broad range of members of the public is extremely important to our decision-making process,” she said. “In addition to wide-reaching community engagement through this forum and online surveys, we are holding several smaller conversations with groups of stakeholders. All of the feedback will be collected into themes, and will be our foundation for developing our 20172020 strategic plan for the downtown.”

For downtown residents like Beard, it’s important to retain and build on what makes the place special. “Kitchener is gritty and passionate and alive. It has a beat to it you can’t find anywhere else.”

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