nov. 1, 2010
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Nov. 1, 2010 issueTRANSCRIPT
the ubyssey NOVEMBER 01, 2010
• volume 92, number xvii• room 24, student union building• published monday and thursday• [email protected]
I’m a nice bee, not a slutty bee! since 1918
ubc women’s volleyball aim for a fourth consecutive cis championship. page 5
our afghanistan blog can be read at ubyssey.ca/afghanistan. read an excerpt on page 11.
•Downtown bike lanes step on business toes •where will ubC fit into the bike network?•how Does VanCouVer stanD up to other bike-frienDly Cities?•how ubC plans to get you biking pages 6 & 7
piecing it together
2 / u b y s s e y. c a / e v e n t s / 2 010 . 11 . 01
canada Post sales agreement
number 0040878022
printed on 100% recycled paper
november 01, 2010volume xcii, no xvii
editorial
coordinating editor Justin McElroy : [email protected] editor Arshy Mann : [email protected] news editorSally Crampton : [email protected] editorsJonny Wakefield & Bryce Warnes : [email protected] culture editorAnna Zoria : [email protected] editor Vacantfeatures editorTrevor Record : [email protected] editorGeoff Lister : [email protected] manager Virginie Ménard : [email protected] editor Kai Green : [email protected] editorTara Martellaro : [email protected] multimedia editorStephanie Warren : [email protected] editorDavid Marino : [email protected] Blake : [email protected]
Room 24, Student Union Building6138 Student Union BoulevardVancouver, BC V6T 1Z1tel: 604.822.2301web: www.ubyssey.cae-mail: [email protected]
business
Room 23, Student Union Buildingprint advertising: 604-822-1654 business office: 604.822.6681web advertising: 604-822-1658e-mail: [email protected]
business managerFernie Pereira : [email protected] ad salesKathy Yan Li : [email protected] ad salesPaul Bucci : [email protected] Hoopes : accounts@ubyssey,ca
contributors
Marie vondracek Kait bolongaroKarina Palmitesta Kelly hanFabrizio stendardo brian PlattMicki cowan Jon chiangtim blonk Michael ThibaultJenica Kim yu chuahiock
afghanistan front cover photo cour-tesy of us air Force/flickr
legal
The Ubyssey is the official student newspaper of the University of British Columbia. It is published every Monday and Thursday by The Ubyssey Publi-cations Society. We are an autonomous, democrat-ically run student organization, and all students are encouraged to participate.
Editorials are chosen and written by the Ubys-sey staff. They are the expressed opinion of the staff, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Ubyssey Publications Society or the Universi-ty of British Columbia. All editorial content appear-ing in The Ubyssey is the property of The Ubyssey Publications Society. Stories, opinions, photographs and artwork contained herein cannot be reproduced without the expressed, written permission of The Ubyssey Publications Society.
The Ubyssey is a founding member of Canadian University Press (CUP) and adheres to CUP’s guid-ing principles.
Letters to the editor must be under 300 words. Please include your phone number, student number and signature (not for publication) as well as your year and faculty with all submissions. ID will be checked when submissions are dropped off at the editorial office of The Ubyssey; otherwise verifica-tion will be done by phone. “Perspectives” are opin-ion pieces over 300 words but under 750 words and are run according to space. “Freestyles” are opinion pieces written by Ubyssey staff members. Priority will be given to letters and perspectives over free-styles unless the latter is time sensitive. Opinion pieces will not be run until the identity of the writ-er has been verified. The Ubyssey reserves the right to edit submissions for length and clarity. All letters must be received by 12 noon the day before intend-ed publication. Letters received after this point will be published in the following issue unless there is an urgent time restriction or other matter deemed relevant by the Ubyssey staff.
It is agreed by all persons placing display or clas-sified advertising that if the Ubyssey Publications Society fails to publish an advertisement or if an error in the ad occurs the liability of the UPS will not be greater than the price paid for the ad. The UPS shall not be responsible for slight changes or typographical errors that do not lessen the value or the impact of the ad.
events
tuesday, nov. 2
Man Ray, afRican aRt, and the ModeRnist Lens
Man Ray, African Art, and the Modernist Lens brings to light photographs of African objects by American artist Man Ray (1890-1976) produced over a period of almost 20 years. The exhibition raises questions con-cerning the representation, reception and perception of African art as mediated by the camera lens. • 10am–5pm, Museum of Anthropology, $14 adult, $12 student/senior, free for UBC staff, students and faculty.
purple and yellow work party
Volunteers help maintain the fleet of community bikes. No experience is necessary and new volunteers will learn how to do repairs by being paired with more experienced volunteers. Pizza is provided. Wear something that can get dirty. • 6–9pm, Bike Kitchen, north side of the SUB, go to ams.ubc.ca/clubs/bikecoop/p&y.htm for more in-formation.
wednesday, nov. 3
spartacus youth club class series
The Spartacus Youth Club intervenes in social struggles armed with the revolu-tionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. They are host-ing their third class of the year, The Rus-sian Revolution: How the Working Class Took Power. • 6:30pm, Room 212, SUB, e-mail [email protected] or call (604) 687-0353 for more in-formation.
ubc film society screening: inception
The UBC Film Society will be showing Inception, the blockbuster hit directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Leonardo DiCaprio. In a world where technology exists to enter the human mind through dream invasion, a highly skilled thief is given a final chance at redemption which involves executing his toughest job to date. • Runs until Nov. 7, 9–11pm, Norm Theatre, SUB, $2.50 members, $5 non-members.
thursday, nov. 4
ubc film society screening: despicabLe Me
The UBC Film Society will be showing Despicable Me, featuring the voices of Steve Carrell and Julie Andrews. When a criminal mastermind uses a trio of orphan girls as pawns for a grand scheme, he finds himself profoundly changed by the growing love between them. • Runs until Oct. 7, 7–9pm, Norm Theatre, SUB, $2.50 members, $5 non-members.
introduction to adobe indesign
In this course, you get the opportunity to design a print project of your own, with hands-on instruction in the use of this powerful layout program. At the comple-tion of this course, you will have gained an understanding of the basics of colour management, font usage and print pro-duction, as well as a working knowledge of the layout and design tools available in InDesign. • Nov. 4–Dec. 9, 6:30pm, UBC Robson Square, go to tech.ubc.ca for more information.
Don’t forget to send us your events! We publish them every Monday and [email protected]
Utheubyssey.ca
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News editor ARSHY MANN » [email protected] associate SALLY CRAMPTON » [email protected]
micki [email protected]
UBC has sent a robot to Antarc-tica. And although it may sound a little like the Battle of Hoth, the enemy is climate change, not the Galactic Empire.
The UBC-Gavia, an underwa-ter robot intended to gather in-formation on climate change, was deployed by the UBC Au-tonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) and Fluid Mechanics re-search group.
UBC civil engineering PhD student Andrew Hamilton is cur-rently in New Zealand helping coordinate AUV’s deployment in Antarctica. He said that UBC-Ga-via is modeled specifically to the unique conditions in Antarctica.
“Traditional oceanography is conducted from ships that can cover a large area to collect data. In polar oceanography, however, the presence of 2 me-tre-thick sea ice and 100 metre-thick floating ice shelves severe-ly limit our ability to study the ocean over an area. But because UBC-Gavia is small and porta-ble, a small team based on an
ice camp can lower her through an ice hole and she can survey a large area under the ice, some-thing that is not feasible by any other means,” he said.
However, despite the high functionality of UBC-Gavia, there are still concerns with this project. Hamilton said as this was the first time UBC-Ga-via was being deployed in a re-gion with strong currents, the research team would have to be ready to make adjustments “on the fly” for Antarctica’s unique conditions.
“We have had some challeng-es with the ADCP (Acoustic Dop-pler Current Profiler) that acous-tically measures current veloc-ities, as the water is very clear with no algae or suspended sed-iment, so there is very little to backscatter the sound pulses. But we are working on optimiz-ing these settings.”
Hamilton believes that de-spite tricky conditions, Antarc-tica is truly the most suitable place to study climate change.
“The climate system is chang-ing both due to natural cy-cles and as a result of human
interference. The polar regions tend to respond quickest and most dramatically to climate change due to the ice-related positive feedback mechanisms, [but] these feedback mecha-nisms are complicated and not fully understood,” he said.
“Projects such as ours are try-ing to better understand what
role the ocean plays in glacier and ice shelf dynamics so that we can better understand how the whole system will react to climate change.”
The team will be working in Antarctica until November 12, and will continue to analyze the collected data on their return to Vancouver. U
Finklestein pushes for a Palestinian stateIAC criticizes his “junk political science”fabrizio stendardoContributor
“Just be reasonable,” was what Norman Finklestein told a crowd of about 400 people at UBC’s Hebb Theatre on Satur-day night. “If you are reason-able with Palestinians, you can reach a reasonable settlement.”
Finklestein is an American political scientist and the son of two Holocaust survivors. One of the most controversial speakers on the university lecture circuit, he has often been criticized for his scathing remarks towards Israel, which his critics claim are anti-Semitic. He was in Van-couver to promote his new book, This Time We Went Too Far.
During his speech, Finkles-tein was brusque and unapol-ogetic. Asking the audience, “How many people are famil-iar with the excuse that Hamas was using human shields? If you haven’t, you are either suffering from a massive brain deficit or are extensively using mind-al-tering drugs.”
With regards to the future, Finklestein views the peace process as “a meaningless sideshow.”
He remained positive, how-ever, saying, “Jewish minds are changing,” citing that 80 per cent of Jewish people voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 pres-idential elections. Yet Finkleste-in believes public opinion is not enough to resolve the conflict and instead, it “must be turned into a political force that goes beyond watching television.”
Rael Katz, president of the Israeli Awareness Club at UBC, said that speakers like Finkles-tein do more harm than good by creating divisions. “These kinds of events don’t do any-thing to bring mutual respect [between Israelis and Palestin-ians].” He also believes that “uni-versity administration should
be condemning hate speech,” which he believes would include Finklestein’s lectures and “junk political science” ideas.
“He abuses the memory of the Holocaust by equating Israelis to Nazis,” said Katz.
In an interview with The Ubys-sey, Finklestein said that re-duced tensions at post-secondary
institutions are evidence of a change in public opinion. “The battle on college campuses has been lost by Israel or has been won by those who are trying to show what’s been done to the Palestinians is wrong.”
Omar Shaban, president of Solidarity for Palestinian Hu-man Rights, who organized the event in collaboration with Ca-nadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) was critical of Finklestein’s ideas for a resolution. “As a Palestinian refugee, it wouldn’t make sense to accept a two-state solution be-cause my grandma and my dad and I would like to return to our homeland, which is now Israel.”
Justin Guimong, a fourth-year student, thought Finklestein’s ideas were grounded in sound reasoning. “I thought his opin-ions were rational and solid. Public opinion seems to be what affected him most in terms of gains, but he also talks on the level of reaching a political so-lution and reaching a political solution doesn’t just come from public opinion.”
Ajab Khan, a third-year po-litical science student at UBC, was also impressed by Finkles-tein’s analysis.
“The overall mindset that we shouldn’t just think of it as Is-rael and Palestine, two against each other…he emphasized law. He emphasized that it’s not Zi-onism, it’s no ideology we are against, it’s what’s good and what’s wrong, what’s reason-able and just against what’s un-just.” U
Norm Finklestein speaks to students. photo courtesy of garvin lim
news BRIEFS
dean suspends alberta fraternity
EDMONTON (CUP) — The Del-ta Kappa Epsilon fraternity chap-ter at the University of Alberta had its status as a student group suspended Thursday afternoon following allegations of hazing made in a Gateway article pub-lished Oct. 21.
Dean of Students Frank Rob-inson stated at a press confer-ence that the suspension is ef-fective immediately and would last until further notice. He add-ed that it is being implemented because of a concern for the well-being of students.
The suspension of DKE’s stu-dent group status means that they lose the privileges that come with student group reg-istration, which includes the abil-ity to book space at the univer-sity, rent university equipment or use the university name and insignia.
This suspension has no im-pact on individuals within the fraternity.
innocence project running out of funding
The Innocence Project, a UBC group that investigates claims of wrongful convictions, is in danger of disbanding because of lack of funding.
There are currently 10 stu-dents and 24 lawyers working on around 30 cases, but fundraising has been challenging because of the labour-intensive nature of the job and misconceptions about the group’s intentions.
Tamara Levy explained to News 1130, “The way I think people see it is we’re trying to get convicted murderers out of jail, which is not the case. We’re trying to establish whether there are convicted murderers that are actually innocent.”
president toope presents international law book
Prof Stephen Toope, along with Dr Jutta Brunnee, Law profes-sor at the University of Toronto, presented their new book, Le-gitimacy and Legality in Interna-tional Law, at the Liu Institute for Global Studies at UBC.
Toope indicated that the book provides a unique new theory of the creation and sustainabil-ity of the international obliga-tion, revealing that in both treaty and customary law a continuing practice of legality is extreme-ly essential.
Scientists deploy underwater robot to Antarctica
The UBC-Gavia takes off. photo courtesy of andrew hamilton
Frozen continent an ideal environment to study effects of climate change
photo courtesy of dan mckechnie
4/ubyssey.ca/national/2010.11.01
NatioNal editor ARSHY MANN » [email protected] associate SALLY CRAMPTON » [email protected]
lee richardsonThe Eyeopener (Ryerson University)
TORONTO (CUP) — Enrolment rates are expected to drop off in Canada and un-less universities find a way to fill the gap, there may be a lot more empty seats in class.
“Around about now we’re at the max-imum capacity in post-secondary en-rolments, and over the next two, three, four years the number of enrolments will start to decline throughout the sys-tem,” said University of Toronto econom-ics professor and author of Boom Bust and Echo David Foot.
the baby decline
While many universities are looking to ex-pand their campuses and programs, the idea of universities dealing with maxed-out capacity comes from the large num-ber of children that were born out of the baby boom generation. Also known as Generation Y or the echo boomers, these children were born beginning in 1980. The echo generation is thought to have ended in 2001. The peak of echo births happened in 1991, meaning that since 1992 there has been a gradual decline in the number of natural births in Canada.
Those peak births are now aged 19, which means that the rate of enrolment will drop to coincide with the gradu-al decline in birthrates that occurred during the 1990s. Meanwhile, a ma-jority of universities are preparing to deal with an expected growth in enrol-ment figures. But some argue that the
overall post-secondary sector, and not just the sector outside of major cities such as Montreal and Toronto, should be preparing for a drop in enrolment instead of an increase.
Such a drop is already developing in eastern Canada, where the demographic age is around five years ahead of the rest of the country. Following an audit carried out by the federal group of the superin-tendent of financial institutions, a 2008 summary report shows that enrolment figures for both colleges and universities are expected to decline by 216,000 over the next 15 years.
“Demographic trends are long-term trends, so it’s very easy to ignore them in the short term,” said Foot. “If you’re look-ing just to the next year, then demograph-ics aren’t going to be terribly important. The longer you look at the time and the longer you plan, the more important de-mographic trends become.”
border crossing
One way that universities may be able to balance the numbers is to recruit out-wards in order to find international stu-dents. These students could bring addi-tional benefit by bringing a revenue of up to three times that of the average Cana-dian undergraduate student.
“[Ontario] in their last budget has asked all universities to look at increasing inter-national enrolments by as much as 50 per cent, and we are looking to increase our number as well,” said Levy. “We would plan somewhere around a 15 to 20 per cent in-crease over the [next] few years.”
While international students could bring a boost in income to universities, attracting recently landed immigrants may be difficult because immigrants now tend to be older and more experienced. Canada reformed its immigration policy in the late 1980s in an effort to reestab-lish itself as an education-based knowl-edge economy.
Those immigrants, who are established enough to make it through the immigra-tion points system, which rewards career and life experience, generally already have a higher level of education.
“No amount of immigration will com-pensate for this,” said Foot. “Immigrants now are predominantly in their 30s with kids and they’re not settling in the cities anymore.”
This is due to the urban–non-urban di-vide, which essentially states that the in-ner cities of urban Canada generally at-tract younger people than the non-urban suburbs and rural areas. He added that im-migrants are now being drawn to small-er cities like London, Guelph and Kings-ton, Ontario.
“Immigrants are not going to bail out the universities anymore,” said Foot. Such demographics could mean that univer-sities may have to look to cutting pro-grams or increasingly rely on non-ten-ured teaching staff.
“It’s the outsourcing model that busi-nesses have run for the last decade to keep costs under control,” said Foot. “They’ve outsourced to temporary faculty, which I don’t think is a good way to run post-sec-ondary education, but this is the way it’s being run now.”
the DEMoGRAPHIC
dilemma
University enrolment ispredicted to drop due to plunging birth rates since 1992.
Are we ready?
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sportseditor VACANT
kelly hanContributor
At 6’3” and 210 pounds, Doug Plumb is this year’s newest ad-dition to the UBC men’s basket-ball team. Not only is he already a member of the starting line up, Plumb is commanding attention by averaging 14 points and 23.6 minutes per game.
Thunderbirds head coach Kev-in Hanson described Plumb as “a tough and versatile player.”
“He is extremely athletic and makes things happen on both sides of the ball. We knew he was very solid offensively but it’s his dedication to defense that is making him so valuable to our team,” he added.
What makes Plumb stand out from the other additions is his experience. Originally from Pitt Meadows, Plumb moved to Min-nesota after his Grade 9 year to improve his game and gain ex-posure. He played three years for Hastings High School be-fore playing for Minnesota State University.
“Playing down in the States benefited me immensely as an athlete. The level of competition and the coaching was far supe-rior to anything I had previous-ly experienced in Canada, which hugely helped my game,” he said.
However, Plumb was not get-ting the playing time in the NCAA he wanted. At 18, he re-turned to BC and immediately decided to play for the Univer-sity of Fraser Valley. In his first
CIS season, he lead the Cascades with an average of 16 points and 30.8 minutes per game. Unfortu-nately, he was only able to play in four games the next year due to a torn quadricep, which re-sulted in continual issues with his knee. He sat out the rest of that season and the next as well.
“Last year I rehabbed reli-giously and trained on my own; I really tried to work on my ath-leticism and to be productive with the year off.”
While rehabbing, Plumb’s dai-ly routine included 45 minutes of shooting hoops and drills ev-ery morning, followed by either weights, speed or agility train-ing. On the weekends he attend-ed open gyms, and scrimmaged in a men’s basketball league.
“People doubted me. I went from being in the forefront to an afterthought. That was my drive and motivation—to prove that I can get back to and deserve to be at that level,” Plumb explains.
With winning in mind, Plumb joined forces with the Thunder-birds and began practicing with the team in September. Fitting in was never an issue, as he played on the provincial U-15 team with fellow ‘Birds Alex Murphy and Brent Malish and already knew most of the oth-er guys from prior basketball tournaments.
“Everyone is welcoming, there’s no underlying ulterior motives, no egos; we genuinely have each other’s backs on and off the court,” he said.
Despite the lack of ego amongst the team, Plumb looks forward to a season of proving that he and UBC are more than capa-ble of being contenders in the Canada West conference.
“We walk the line of arrogance and confidence. Hard work breeds confidence. When you know other people aren’t working as hard as you are, you just kind of get that confidence in you.” U
marie vondracekContributor
It’s hard to win, but even harder to stay at the top.
Despite that, the UBC’s wom-en’s volleyball team has prov-en capable of living up to that challenge year after year. Fri-day night saw their third con-secutive CIS championship ban-ner raised to the rafters of War Memorial Gym, as the team be-gan its 2010–2011 regular sea-son looking for a fourth straight national championship.
The CIS banner for last year has an updated, modern de-sign—one that validates the Thunderbirds’ transformation
into a modern day winning tradition.
“Seeing the banners up in the rafters does indeed remind us that we are part of a lega-cy,” said fifth-year captain Lau-ren Whitehead after Saturday’s game against the Trinity West-ern Spartans.
After the weekend series, the three banners were put away and out of sight of those inside War Memorial Gym, but the image—and the challenge it represents—will not leave the minds of the players.“We’ll meet as a team and establish a pyramid for success,” Whitehead said.
“At the peak we wil l put our goal of another national
championship and at the base we’ll have the key basics. The lit-tle things like confidence, the im-portance of workouts, discipline, taking care of injuries, knowing that everyone has a role to contrib-ute to another win all the time. Whether on the bench or on the floor, everyone has to know that they are an important part to the process.”
The Thunderbirds will see the return of many stars, including third year outside hitter Shan-ice Marcelle, who led the T-Birds this weekend with 26 kills in two games. But Whitehead knows all members of the team will take on a large role in this year’s pur-suit for another banner.
“It’s all in the preparation, and that’s the way that we’re going to get there,” she said. “We have such amazing first and second-years. They really showed it out there this weekend, just how skilled they really are. Now we have to put it all together by focusing on the process, being there for each other and supporting one anoth-er on and off the floor.”
The T-Birds dropped both week-end games three sets to one to TWU. Though there were flashes of truly brilliant play and flow from UBC, they just couldn’t keep the momen-tum through the whole match. Head coach Doug Reimer kept the early-season loss in perspective.
“It’s just early in the season and with a lot of new players on the court, those are the growing pains you’re going to go through,” he said.
The growing pains will contin-ue, as UBC will be without Kyla Richey and Jen Hinze, both 2010 All-Canadians, for another three weeks, as they will be represent-ing Canada at the World Champi-onships in Japan. The team is hop-ing their absence will allow the youngsters to develop their own confidence and experience. But as the T-Birds prepare for this week-end’s games against the Universi-ty of Alberta Pandas, Whitehead and the team know that adversi-ty is part of the journey to gold.
“A championship title is all in the process,” she said. U
bird DRoPPInGS
one up, one down weekend for women’s hockey
A season-long trend continued for UBC women’s hockey this week-end against the Regina Cougars, as the Thunderbirds came out flying to win 4–3 Friday only to lose by the same score Saturday. While it wasn’t a blowout, as was the case the past two weeks, it marked the third straight time the T-Birds had lost the second half of a double header.
Friday’s game, UBC’s home opener, went into overtime after a top-shelf snipe from Chelsea Laing with eight minutes to go. The game continued to a shootout where an injured Melinda Choy, who was put in midway through the second, stopped ten straight Regina players before the Cou-gars scored—their only goal of the shootout. However, fifth-year assistant captain Kirsten Mihal-cheon responded with a shootout goal of her own,and then potted a second one immediately after for the win.
UBC continued to play well on Saturday, entering the third pe-riod up 3–0 and playing, in the words of head coach Nancy Wil-son, “some of the best hockey we’ve played all year.” However, Regina came out ready for the final peri-od, scoring three goals on nine shots and forcing the game into overtime, where Paige Wheeler scored her fourth goal of the year for Regina, sending the T-Birds to the loss.
basketball teams sweep spartans
Both the UBC men’s and women’s basketball teams swept Trinity Western University in Langley over the weekend.
Friday night saw the lady Thunderbirds finally figure out the formula to earn their first win of the season. They jumped to an early 15-6 lead and used their speed and athleticism to hold a 44-30 lead at halftime. Continuing to hit many long-range shots, they extended their lead to 63-42 at the end of the third, eventually winning 78-67. On Saturday they built on the momentum, jumping to a 33-21 lead by halftime and not slowing down in a 74-45 blow-out. UBC hit 5 of 14 three point attempts, lead by Zara Huntley, who ended the weekend with 21 points.
The men’s team responded to last weekend’s loss to Saskatche-wan with a 91-63 victory on Fri-day. They were led by veteran Josh Whyte, who put in 23 points, and Kamar Burke, who had 18 points in just 16 minutes of ac-tion. Saturday was no different, with UBC making 52.5 per cent of their shots in a 90-77 victory.
Can UBC connect for a fourth straight title?
UBC celebrates during last weekend’s game against TWU. jon chiang photo/THE UBYSSEY
Plumb the ultimate handyman for T-Birds
Plumb in action earlier this year. jon chiang photo/THE UBYSSEY
tim blonk photo/THE UBYSSEY
6/ u bys se y.c a / F e at u r e /2 010 .11. 01
It’s been one year since Van-couver Mayor Gregor Robert-son announced the city’s ambi-tious plan to make Vancouver the “greenest city” in the world. Some said this plan, aimed at reducing the city’s overall car-bon footprint by 2020, was over-ly ambitious. Promoting cycling is one of the key components of this plan, but when the mayor announced the plan in October 2009, the city’s only step toward building world-class bike infra-structure was two lanes across the Burrard Bridge.
Since then, lanes have gone in along Dunsmuir and the via-duct, and bike trips in the down-town core have gone up substan-tially. But for UBC commuters and the majority of residents outside of the downtown core, cycling is no more appealing than it was a year ago. How much closer is Vancouver to becom-ing a bike capital? Where do we go from here? And where does UBC fit into these grand ambi-tions? Today, The Ubyssey takes a comprehensive look at cycling in Vancouver.
”greenest city”
According to the Vancouver Sun, Robertson’s aim is to reduce the city’s carbon footprint from 7 hectares per person to 1.8 by 2020. This would mean that 50 per cent of all trips in Vancouver would take place through walking, cycling or using public transportation in the next ten years.
The city council has been pushing cycling as a trans-portation priority since 1997, when a network of downtown bike lanes was first proposed. In July of 2009, the first of these lanes opened on the Burrard Bridge.
Since then, separated bike lanes have opened along Dun-smuir Street and the Dunsmuir Viaduct. The next piece of this puzzle is a proposed lane along Hornby to connect Dunsmuir and Burrard.
Jerry Dobrovolny, a city engi-neer, says the Dunsmuir proj-ect cost around $1 million and has gone a long way to promote cycling in the downtown core.
“On Dunsmuir, it went from under 500 cyclists a day to over 2000,” said Dobrovolny.
He added, however, that this does not necessarily mean the increase was all new trips. Some cyclists moved over from adja-cent lanes. The Burrard Bridge is more indicative of new riders, he said, because there was no parallel prior to its implementa-tion. That project indicates that cycling into downtown has in-creased by roughly 26 per cent since the bike lanes were intro-duced. These projects are still in the pilot stage.
The city has faced some op-position to this plan, especial-ly from business owners who fear the loss of parking along Dunsmuir will equal a loss of business. The city has relocat-ed much of this parking sev-eral blocks away, but many in the business community have been vehemently opposed to the lanes.
On October 4, the website of the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition (VACC), a cycling ad-vocacy group, was hacked. Ac-cording to The Province, on the eve of a vote on whether to ex-tend the lane on Hornby, cyber vandals hit vacc.bc.ca, causing the website to go down for sev-eral hours. Some suspected business owners along Horn-by of the vandalism. Accord-ing to the article, “Many shop owners along Hornby are upset that the trial [bike lanes] will eliminate about 158 parking
spaces on the east side of the one-way street. They say those parking spaces are quite pop-ular with their customers and that they expect their business-es will suffer if the separated bike lanes are approved.” Days after the implementation of bike lanes along Dunsmuir, graffiti labelling the lane par-titions “the mayor’s political gravestone” appeared, accord-ing to a report by News 1130.
copenhagen as a model?
Copenhagen is often cited as the ideal city for cycling. Their investment in bike infrastruc-ture has resulted in an impres-sive percentage of pedal push-ers: about 36 per cent of Copen-hagen’s commuting population
goes by bike. Only 3.6 per cent of Vancouverites bike to work.
“They are definitely a mod-el,” said Erick Villagomez, a faculty member with the UBC School of Landscape Architec-ture. “They’ve taken a whole bunch of steps towards increas-ing bike mode share.”
The city is roughly compara-ble in terms of population, cli-mate and area. But Copenhagen differs from Vancouver in sev-eral key areas.
“Copenhagen is a lot denser,” said Villagomez, going on to ex-plain that denser cities are a ma-jor reason that biking is more popular in Europe.
Europe’s bike culture in turn has bred motorists who are fa-miliar with sharing the road. “There’s that kind of critical
mass [when motorists begin to understand how to drive near bikes],” said Villagomez.
According to Villagomez, the Copenhagen bike lanes cover about 100 kilometres. Jerry Do-brovolny, a transportation engi-neer with the city, said Vancou-ver’s network covers 400 lane ki-lometres. If you look just at num-bers, it would appear that Vancou-ver’s system is much stronger, but it’s the type of lanes available that make cycling much more appeal-ing in Copenhagen.
“Their bike paths are more often than not separated,” said Villagomez.
Separated bike lanes are parti-tioned from traffic by some kind of barrier. Parts of the most re-cent addition to Vancouver’s network, along Dunsmuir, use
planter boxes and bike parking. These lanes are wider than on-street lanes, and are generally seen as much safer. They account for only 12 kilometres of Vancou-ver’s total network. The majority of Vancouver’s system is made up of neighbourhood bikeways, according to Dobrovolny. These bikeways are the major artery linking UBC into the bike net-work, but poor visibility, steep grades and parked cars have led many to see them as less than ideal.
Copenhagen’s status as the pin-nacle of green transportation is due to the focus on these lanes.
“There’s something relatively simplistic about planning stuff,” Villagomez said. “If people feel safe [biking], they’ll use it more.”
The city also has some lofty goals. “In the next five years they want half of their population on bikes,” said Villagomez.
“hedge trimming”
The designated bikeways that parallel Broadway link UBC
into this bike network. These “Off Broadway” routes are not hugely popular among planners and cyclists.
“[The routes are] better than nothing,” said Villago-mez, but “[They have a] fair share of conflicts in terms of just overall safety.”
“There’s three main problems that I see and they’re all related to visi-bility,” said Eric Drewes, a UBC student and bicy-cle commuter. He said that large hedges and parked cars often block visibili-ty, and that neither motor-ists nor cyclists use round-abouts correctly.
The bikeways are also un-attractive topographically. “A
lot of the main streets are the best to bike on because they’re the flattest,” said Villagomez. “There’s almost a conflict of in-terest there—the ideal routes are the busiest car routes. They’re not that safe.”
Drewes, who lives around Ontario Street, also said the off-Broadway routes are slower. “If I bike on Broadway, it takes me 35 to 40 minutes. If I bike on 10th [Av-enue], it takes an hour.”
According to Erin O’Mellin, a project manager with VACC, safety is the second largest issue keep-ing people from switching to bikes (next to weather). The VACC organizes the bi-annual Bike to Work Week and collects this in-formation from first-time cyclists involved in the program.
“It’s generally just that [cyclists] don’t feel that cars see them or re-spect them,” said O’Mellin.
expanding the network—and a ubc bike lane?
How should Vancouver go about expanding its network? And where could a possible connec-tion to UBC fit in?
Villagomez proposes a tight network of separated bike lanes stemming from the Skytrain sta-tions. He calls this plan HOT-BOD, or ‘hop-on transit, bicycle-oriented development.’
“What the research found is that people aren’t willing to go beyond 200 and 400 metres out of their way to get to a bikeway,” he said.
A bike network that is spaced out more than 500 metres will not increase bike mode share very effectively. Cyclists need to be able to get to a bikeway within five minutes of biking, which is about two kilometres. “You would have [rapid tran-sit and cycling] working in tan-dem. Within those two kilome-tre nodes, you would increase the network, spacing it out ap-proximately every 500 metres.”
What would a fast, safe and effective bike lane to UBC look
build
ing a city of pedal pushers—
the p
olitics of pavemen
t in va
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geoff lister photos/THE UBYSSEY
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copenhagen
like? “If we’re going to aspire to creating more incentives, I imagine one is going to be some-how trying to integrate [the net-work] along these main lines [like Broadway],” said Villago-mez. “The nature of the topog-raphy and their linkages make them that much more attractive for people to ride on.”
The Trek office is committed to working for such a connec-tion, but no plan to do so ex-ists at this time, said Cooper. “We’re constantly looking for those opportunities. It really depends when pockets of fund-ing open up. There’s not always a consistent funding program from the province on bike infra-structure.” He added that a line to UBC would require working with both the City of Vancouver and the Ministry of Transpor-tation, because the roads from Blanca to Wesbrook are not part of Vancouver.
“There is a gap in the bike network,” said Dobrovolny. He
said that the City will update its transportation master plan next year, when new priorities and projects will be identified. “You’ve got a fixed amount of road space, and you have many different users competing for the space,” he said.
O’Mellin said that advocat-ing for the network of separat-ed bike lanes is a high priority for the VACC.
“It’s kind of like a gateway into other cycling for transportation,” she said. “There’s lots of people that have thought about cycling, but they’re just too nervous. The barrier that separated lanes pro-vide gets them out there.”
Villagomez imagines that it is only a matter of time until UBC is brought into the network.
“As long as there’s the political will and backing to do [a lane], it can happen,” he said. “There are a lot of people that do bike in and around UBC, and I imag-ine something like that would be brilliant to do.” U
illustration courtesy of campus and community planning
a network for ubc
According to a 2009 study by Campus and Community Plan-ning, trips by bicyclists account for one per cent of the total com-muter trips to UBC. The univer-sity will update its transporta-tion plan this year, and a cam-pus cycling plan is one of the proposed initiatives.
“We can’t wave our wands and have a lot more buses on campus,” said Adam Cooper, program coordinator at the UBC Trek office, which is in charge of campus transportation. “Cycling is somewhere we can make a real impact.”
The overall goal of this pro-posed plan is to reduce the num-ber of single-occupant vehicle trips to campus, which current-ly account for 32 per cent of all trips. They plan on doing this through investment in bike in-frastructure—lanes, signage and storage. Under this plan, Trek will invest $187,500 to in-crease the number of bike park-ing spaces from 6600 to 9500. The plan also calls for 28 kilome-tres of either separated or mixed -use bike lanes around campus.
Villagomez says this plan is a step in the right direction, but he has some reservations. “Over-all, the plan looks good insofar that the aim seems to be to cre-ate a bike network across the entire campus that connects to the new UBC residential neigh-bourhood in the south, as well as the existing City of Vancou-ver bike network.”
The parking plan, where many of the new racks are concentrat-ed around residences and other campus hubs, is less than ide-al. “It’s great to have [parking] in locations such as the parkades, but people want to ride their bikes directly to the doors of the buildings where their class-es are being held.”
How DoES vAnCoUvER CoMPARE to CoPEnHAGEn?
vancouver
1117 mm (41 inches)
578,041
5335 people/ km2
400 lane km
3.6 per cent
610 mm (24 inches)
531,199
6019.3 people/km2
100 lane km
36 per cent
annual rainfall
population (city)
density
bike network distance
percentage of cyclist communters
copenhagen
Come to our investigative team meetings, 3pm every Friday in SUB 24, to get the inside scoop!
[email protected] Utheubyssey.ca
8/ubyssey.ca/advertiseMent/2010.11.01
2 010 .11. 01/ u bys se y.c a /c u lt u r e /9
culture editors BRYCE WARNES & JONNY WAKEFIELD » [email protected] ANNA ZORIA » [email protected]
food wItH KAIt BoLonGARochard times: eating local in november
Although eating local is conve-nient and easy during growing season, it can be-come quite a chal-lenge in the win-ter months when the summer’s va-riety evolves into
basically three choices: leeks, kale and swiss chard. For most, attempt-ing to cook with these three ob-scure vegetables can be a culi-nary challenge.
First, the leek. A long tubular vegetable that resembles a green onion on steroids, it tastes like a cross between onion and celery. Leeks are usually used in cream-based soups, often with potatoes. But since soup can become mo-notonous after a whole winter sea-son, Gokhan Himmetoglu, a culi-nary expert in residence, recom-mends trying risotto,—a northern Italian rice dish. “Leek risotto is an ideal dish because the leek’s subtle taste comes through,” he says. “It is also great for win-ter, because risotto is warm and filling.”
Next is a bitter green called kale. Being a type of cabbage, it is an an-ti-oxidant superhero, packing more iron than spinach. However, it can be difficult to cook.
Kale chips are an almost no-fail method. Bake bite-sized pieces with salt and olive oil for 12 min-utes at 350 degrees F. The result is a light green, almost opaque chip—a great side for sandwich-es. However, beware of overcook-ing kale as it can quickly turn into a most unappetizing vegetable.
Finally, the swiss chard, whose edible stems range in colour from orange to hot pink. Although it can be eaten raw in a salad if fresh, it needs some serious cook-ing to get rid of its bitter taste af-ter a few days in the fridge. ‘Aged’ chard is best sautéed and is a nice addition to any pasta dish. It has a less obvious taste than cooked spinach and is more palatable. So this is what it comes down to when eating local in November—not much variety in terms of pro-duce. However, by incorporating these seemingly odd vegetables into recipes, you may find that you have created not only edible but appetizing, healthy dishes. U
jenica kim yu chuahiockContributor
“I don’t consider writing a ca-reer. It’s not a career the way ac-counting or dentistry is a career. Things can disappear, your ca-reer can vanish. To me, it’s more a way of thinking about life, and it expresses itself in writing.”
Those are the words of one of Canada’s most renowned au-thors, Yann Martel.
The author of the Man Book-er Prize-winning novel, Life of Pi, and most recently, Beatrice & Virgil, was featured in this year’s Vancouver Internation-al Writers & Readers Festival.
Born in Salamanca, Spain in 1963, Yann Martel became a full-time writer at 27 years-old. But way before his literary suc-cess, he began like any typical university student.
“I started writing in my late teens, when I was in universi-ty,” said Martel. “I studied an-thropology in my first year, then I switched to philosophy, and I wasn’t really happy do-ing that. I didn’t know why I was there and I was losing in-terest in what I was studying. To deal with the tensions of what I should do, I just start-ed writing.”
After graduating, Martel had to try a series of odd jobs, like tree planter, dishwasher and se-curity guard, before realizing his true passion was for writing.
“It just struck me as more meaningful doing that than anything else,” he said. “Even-tually I had short stories pub-lished. I won a prize, then got an agent, and slowly, suddenly, I was a writer.”
International acclaim came in 2002, when Life of Pi won the Man Booker Prize.
“It was wonderful for the book, and for me,” said Martel. “It brought the book to a great-er audience and it made my life a lot busier, with lots of op-portunities, festivals and book launches.”
A Life of Pi movie is set to be released by 2012, with multi-award-winning director Ang Lee. It took eight years for Mar-tel to publish another book, and by April 2010 the highly antic-ipated Beatrice & Virgil finally hit the bookstores.
Martel also has an ongoing campaign to get prime minister Stephen Harper to read books. He started a website called What is Stephen Harper Reading? in 2007, when he and 49 other
Canadian artists were given a poor reception at the House of Commons. It was the Canada Council for Arts’ 50th
anniversa-ry, yet Harper deliberately gave no acknowledgement to Cana-da’s leading artists.
“There’s no doubt that he sounds and governs like one who cares little for the arts,” Mar-tel wrote on his website. “For as long as Stephen Harper is prime minister of Canada, I vow to send him every two weeks, mailed on a Monday, a book that has been known to expand stillness. That book will be inscribed and will be accompanied by a letter I will have written.”
To date, Martel has sent 92 books and letters to the prime minister, but has not yet re-ceived a direct reply.
“If I stopped now that would be admitting defeat,” said Mar-tel. “I think the novel is one of the best ways to explore the hu-man condition. It’s one of the most thoughtful products of hu-man civilization. Do we want a leadership that never delves into that? So what kind of society do we want? That’s why I ask, and that’s why I’ve been doing this.”
The letters from What is Ste-phen Harper Reading? have also
been published as a book of the same title.
Martel’s stories, books and ideology show that he clearly values thought and contempla-tion above all else.
“In Life of Pi, there is one au-tobiographical character: it’s the sloth,” said Martel. “It has very peculiar habits. Instead of rushing around madly like some animals and like many, many human beings, it is like t h is meditat ing monk that just sits up in a tree. Eating little, doing little, just thinking, exactly like a Buddhist monk meditating.”
Martel offered some words of wisdom to any aspiring writers.
“The big lesson is persist but also let go—have passion but be detached. Be reasonable, get a job, but don’t give to that entire-ly, and take your time. It’s a very, very long process. It’s never too late. Right now read, read, read and write, write, write. If noth-ing happens, if you’re not pub-lished right away, then don’t wor-ry. Maybe you’d be published in your late 20s and early 30s, and it’s never too late to go back to it either. After all, it just has to work, and when it does it will be worthwhile.” U
Yann Martel, the meditating sloth Life of Pi writer wants Stephen Harper to read his books
Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi and Beatrice & Virgil. michael thibault photo/THE UBYSSEY
10 / u b y s s e y. c a / g a M e s / 2 010 . 11 . 01
games & comicsphilosophrenic, by rachael freedman
Submit your comics to our website at ubyssey.ca/volunteer/submit-a-comic.
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sudoku (hard)
2010.11.01/ubyssey.ca/oPinions/11
opiNioNs do you care? WRITE US A LETTER » [email protected]
bryce warnes graphic/THE UBYSSEY
letter
opinions
editorial
for a higher discourse on cannabis
On November 2, Californians of legal voting age will be given the option to legalize the posses-sion of cannabis in their state. Should Proposi-tion 19—the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010—pass with a simple majority, it will become legal on a state level to possess up to 28.5 grams for personal consumption and devote up to 2.3 square metres for cultivation.
The sale of marijuana to non-medical users won’t change on the state level, but the propo-sition would give local governments the power to individually legalize, regulate and tax dis-tributors. The bill sets stiff penalties for those who sell or transport pot to people under the age of 21 and maintains current laws against driving under the influence. Consumption will be limited to private residences or licensed establishments.
The federal government does not support the bill and will continue to prosecute marijuana us-ers regardless of the state’s laws. But it is unclear whether they will have the resources to do so.
It is high time—pun intended—that a govern-ment in North America brought this issue to the table. From Henry J Anslinger’s racially-charged crusade against the plant in the 1930s through the scare tactics of the American Drug War in the 1980s, the debate over marijuana has been mud-died by paranoia, disinformation and corporate interests. Level-headed discussion of legaliza-tion’s pros and cons in the media is a relatively recent development.
An Angus Reid poll showed the majority (52 per cent) of Canadians support the legalization of cannabis. So do we. Analysis of the numbers in-volved—of incarceration rates, organized crime revenue and annual expenditures on the “War on Drugs”—leads us to believe that regulation and taxation are the best methods of dealing with this intoxicant on a broad scale. A survey of lit-erature on the subject, from government-fund-ed studies in the 60s and 70s to recent films like Reefer Madness and The Union, should be enough convince most rational citizens that legalization is the best option.
But what will the results of the November 2 vote mean to us here in British Columbia and Canada as a whole? If pot is legalized in Cali-fornia, what gives us cause to celebrate? Prop 19 has the power to set a precedent in other states. If a legal pot market in California does what proponents suggest it will—create jobs, produce tax revenue, reduce the incomes of organized crime groups and take pressure off the nation’s jam-packed prisons—it will make a strong case for legalization in other locales, domestically and abroad. Critics of Canadian legalization have argued that conflict with the USA’s prohibition would create tension and re-quire increased security at the border. This argument loses strength when the prospect of widespread legalization state-side becomes a realistic possibility.
California may serve as a model pot economy. As an oasis from prohibition, the state could be the site of a budding marijuana tourism indus-try. Visitors flock every year to California’s wine growing regions. Cannabis could have a similar draw, especially if the right steps are taken to at-tract visitors and showcase the product. The era of organic cannabis farm tours and yearly grow-ers’ festivals may not be far off.
Canada’s drug policy is decided on a federal level, and the Harper government hasn’t shown any sign of budging when it comes to marijuana. In fact, Bill S-10, introduced in May, aims to in-crease mandatory sentencing for production and distribution of illicit substances, including can-nabis. Would successful implementation of Prop 19 in California be enough to push our elected members towards a more enlightened pot poli-cy in Canada?
Regardless of whether it passes or not, the de-bate has served as the means to a valuable end. By bringing serious discussion of marijuana le-galization into the mainstream media, it has laid bare the absurdities and injustices of prohibition to the public. With the planting of these seeds of truth, we can look forward to more change flow-ering in the United States—and, eventually, at home. U
brian plattContributor
On my second morning here, my trav-eling partner Lauryn Oates, myself, and a 19-year-old Afghan girl named Angela piled into the car. Angela is from an extremely poor family in the Bamiyan province, and the fact that her parents gave her that name is only the first amazing thing about her.
Angela managed to get herself a very good education, is fluently bilin-gual, and studies at a place called the “School of Leadership Afghanistan” (I’m meeting with its founder tomor-row). She’s hoping to get a scholarship to a North American university. Ange-la’s a beautiful person in every way; she filled the car with lively conver-sation and laughter. Today, she was going to be our translator.
Walid, our driver, took the north-eastern road out of Kabul. If we fol-lowed it all the way, it would take us to Angela’s birthplace and then even-tually to Mazar-e-Sharif and Balkh.
It is kind of refreshing to get out of Kabul and into the clean air of the countryside. However, in Afghani-stan you never really leave the pov-erty and trash-strewn ditches. Or the helicopters.
Finally we made it to our destina-tion, a small rural school. We were greeted heartily by a few Afghans standing outside. “Salaam alaikum!” we call out; “Alaikum assalam,” comes the response.
This school was the recipient of a teacher training program adminis-tered by Canadian Women for Wom-en in Afghanistan. All of the teachers had already been instructing classes for years, but had never had any for-mal training. Today they were going to receive their official teaching cer-tificates, recognized by the Afghani-stan Ministry of Education.
The principal told Lauryn, who has worked tirelessly for advocacy groups in Afghanistan for nearly a deacde, “Thank you so much for what you’ve done. Thank you. Thank you. Please keep doing this. We need more of this program.”
It’s important to remember that this is a school in a tiny rural dis-trict. These are supposed to be the backward Afghans, according to the Western media. But there are post-ers, in Dari language, of world geog-raphy and astronomy. Before a couple of years ago, nothing like these were seen in village schools. I saw teachers getting their official certificates. In an
extraordinary moment, which I wish I had pictures of but it felt inappropri-ate to pull out my camera, one man stood up and spoke for a few minutes. Angela translated for us.
“Thank you for this. We thank all Canadians for this. You need to con-tinue this program. Education means peace for our country. It is the most important thing.”
And at least five times over the length of the speech, he exhorted us: “We need physics and chemistry books! Please get us physics and chem-istry!” Lauryn laughed. She’s heard this from so many Afghans.
The school has no heat. Students and teachers alike work in every weather condition, cold or hot, to get their stud-ies done. As if it needs to be said, the school has no plumbing. There is no question in my mind: Afghans value their education way more than the vast majority of Canadians do. We’ve come to take it for granted. It’s embarrassing.
After turning down countless re-quests that we stay for lunch, we got back into the car and returned to the dusty, crowded streets of Kabul. UPlatt is in the middle of a ten-day trip to Afghanistan and is blogging at ubys-sey.ca/afghanistan during his travels.
dear editor:
I was disappointed with The Ubyssey’s editorial, “PETA protest leaves a bad taste in our mouths.” Until publica-tion of your editorial, The Ubyssey had done an admirable job covering what is clearly a hot-button issue. Your re-porting has been largely accurate and I commend the newspaper for its pro-fessionalism. That is why I was per-plexed by the paper’s mischaracter-ization of our recent action.
First, you failed to mention that our demonstration at the Vancouver Art Gallery included both men and wom-en. Second, the male and female ac-tivists were body painted to depict an-imals in a UBC laboratory, animals who are subjected to painful, invasive, and ultimately lethal procedures. We
creatively used body painting, an an-cient, revered art form, to raise aware-ness about the plight of animals at the university.
Furthermore, you neglected to note that the body art was the work of a re-spected local artist who has created very similar body art for a number of clients, including Toyota, Telus, RE-MAX, CBC TV, Vancouver Aquarium, Science World and many more. Obvi-ously, our event was highly success-ful since it was covered by CBC, City, and Global TV, CBC, CKNW, News1130 radio, The Province, Vancouver Sun, and other news outlets. As a result, we were able to educate a large audience about UBC’s experiments on animals.
Your misrepresentation of our dem-onstration does a disservice to Stop UBC Animal Research and to those
concerned about UBC’s use of taxpayer dollars to systematically experiment on tens of thousands of animals ev-ery year. Rest assured, as long as UBC researchers continue to cut open the backs of cats, force saline solution into the lungs of newborn piglets to induce respiratory failure, adminis-ter electroconvulsive shocks to mon-keys, decapitate wild songbirds and expose mice to cigarette smoke, Stop UBC Animal Research will keep sound-ing the alarm.
Sincerely,
Brian Vincent, Stop UBC Animal Research
Have an opinion? Send us a letter at [email protected].
Afghans truly appreciate educational advances
12/ubyssey.ca/advertiseMent/2010.11.01
Dear Students:
By now you have had a chance to settle into the new school-year, finding your classes, meeting new peo-ple and making new friends. I wanted to take this opportunity to welcome all of you back to school. Wheth-er you are a first year student taking uncharted steps into an unfamiliar and exciting new world or a PhD candidate readying to lead in your field; what each new-year brings, is a chance to start fresh and expand your horizons. Filled with the promise of anticipation, knowledge and growth, you as students are matur-ing into the next generation of leaders - not just in British Columbia, but in Canada and around the world.
As I look back on my years at Simon Fraser University and at Dartmouth College, I realize it was those formative years that prepared me for life in so many ways. Whether as a teacher in Africa, as the mayor of Vancouver, as the Leader of the Official Opposition or as the Premier of this great province; the lessons I learned in university, along with the friends that I made and the life experiences I gained helped to solid-ify my career path and the choices that I made.
Undoubtedly, many of you were here to witness the excitement of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Para-lympic Winter Games. While the Games were an unmatched success, where Canadian athletes took a re-cord haul of 14 gold medals (including the unforgettable men’s hockey gold on home-ice), the legacy and momentum of the Games continues to push our great province in new and exciting directions.
For the first time in our history, we had three billion sets of eyes on our province, to witness our talents, cre-ativity, passion and excitement. Three billion sets of eyes were also given a chance to explore what else defines British Columbia and what its people have to offer to the world. Make no mistake -- you are a part of that!
Hosting a number of events at the brand new Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Arena helped to promote UBC as a premium destination for students, faculty and staff – as is evident by the record number of interna-tional students attending UBC this year. Furthermore, investments made in the province today will sow the employment seeds for tomorrow. As you work your way through this amazing time in your life, know that as a government we continue to work as hard as we can to ensure the jobs you have trained for, will be ready for when you graduate.
Since 2001, this government has created well over 400,000 net new jobs and a part of our success has been our investment in you, as well as the post-secondary institutions and facilities in B.C. With 7 new uni-versities, we have added over 36,000 new seats to our colleges, universities, institutes and training schools, providing more students with more opportunities to learn in their own communities and work in their chosen field of study. As the first province in Canada to establish a transit pass for all students, and with the fourth lowest tuition in Canada, we also continue to strive toward keeping education affordable for our students in every region of B.C.
However, I do recognize students will often leave university with some debt built up. If you are someone who is looking for help with your student loans, I encourage you to contact the Ministry of Science and Uni-versities to inquire about the student loan forgiveness program for which you may be eligible. This province also implemented the Pacific Leaders program, a program that offers loan forgiveness as an incentive for indi-viduals such as you to join the BC Public Service. If this is something that interests you, I encourage you to vis-it http://employment.gov.bc.ca/index.php?p=Pacific–– Leaders.
Finally, as your MLA for Vancouver – Point Grey, it is my job to represent you and your interests. I appre-ciate hearing the views of students, faculty and staff from UBC on the issues that are important to you. If you ever have a question or a concern, my constituency office is always willing to help. Staff can be reached at 604-660-3202.
I wish you all the best in the year ahead. I hope you each find success and enlightenment as you pursue your dreams and ambitions.
A Message to StudentsGordon Campbell, MLA Vancouver – Point Grey