Suicide prevention training being offered in Pemberton, August 16-17 In the seventeen years that Nada Shureih, now 34, has been living in the Sea to Sky corridor, she has been personally affected by at least a dozen suicides. The most recently released figures from the BC Coroners Service, (from a summary of suicide deaths between…
Category: the velocity project
Across the Divide
When I saw the book on Emma Gillis’ desk, I laughed so hard, I snorted. “Shall I put your name on it?” asked Pemberton’s Library Director, in her fantastic Irish brogue. “Sure.” When I pick it up from the Holds Shelf a few weeks later, I sneak it into the house and hide it under…
Breaking Points
Once, when I was really under pressure, blocked by my own ambition, I plagiarized. I stole an entire paragraph of someone else’s writing and offered it up as my own. The story ran in the newspaper. I was sent a cheque. And cashed it. No one ever found out. Except my mother, who was suspicious…
Mindless
What would a food journal or time tracking app tell you about your habits of consumption? On Friday, February 16, at 2:30pm, I downloaded the Moment app to my phone. I’d been reading about the rise of addictive technology and thought I should see where I stood. It’s been running in the background of my…
Stucum Wi: Wanosts’a7 Dr. Lorna Williams walks in wisdom, Part 2
My son heads off to kindergarten in September. Game-changer, friends say. You don’t get as much time as you think, say others. I can’t wait to learn to read, he says. What just happened to the past five years? I think. He will catch the school bus, from our driveway, through Mount Currie, to school….
A warrior for Wisdom: talking with Wanosts’a7 Lorna Williams, Part 1
When Mt Currie’s Xetólacw Community School was created in 1972, it was only the second Band-run school in all of Canada. Starting a school was literally a groundbreaking move for a First Nations community. Lorna Williams was one of a handful of community members, many of them parents with small children, many of them survivors of…
Don’t Chase Happiness
“Try to swing your arms more vigorously when you walk,” says my husband. I scowl, and curb a desire to inflict violence on him. I hate when he tries to optimize me. He’s read an article that says you can trick your mind into feeling happier by moving your body in happy ways. Like swinging…
Mortal Shock
Navigating death and aging and injury, the tricky slippery pathways toward having more compassion for our bodies For one summer, the year I turned thirty, there was a deck on the house I lived in. It was torn down by the fall, for being too close to the lot line. We moved out that October,…
Eat Your Way Home
Canada’s Godfather of Indigenous Cuisine, David Wolfman, reveals the way food transforms us – not through rigid definitions and diets, but as a path into a great big interconnected web of life and stories. I asked Chef David Wolfman if he thought eating an all-indigenous diet would transform me over time, and he laughed. Wolfman…
Inside the Carver’s Tent
Ryan Scoular is in the final stretch of creating a six metre totem pole for Whistler home. I had the chance to peek in on his process this February, and wrote about it for the Pique newsmagazine. Photos by Ed Witwicki. Ryan Scoular stomps through the snow and zips the tent closed behind us, against…
Lisa Richardson Bylines 