Many people had been asking about Immanence Magazine. We’ve had to take a brief hiatus, but are back in action after the completion of our new office and production headquarters at 4691 Marine Avenue (across from the Jailhouse Cafe). The space is shared with CMG Printing and Neko Rei Music Production, and is open for walk–in traffic Thursdays and Fridays from 10–5pm, and 11–4pm on Saturdays. Come by and have a look next time you’re on Marine.
CMG Printing is a new endeavor of Core Media Group (the production company that designs and prints Immanence and a proprietorship of Corey Matsumoto). A print shop that offers 100% recycled paper as standard stock is an exciting prospect, however a busy print shop means reduced time for the behind-the-scenes work that makes each issue of Immanence Magazine possible. As a result the magazine is moving to a quarterly publication schedule, rolling with the seasons and enabling us to produce a fatter magazine packed-full of well-written, informative articles.
We also have an announcement about an exciting new program called the Powell River Sustainability Stakeholders (PRSS) that rewards local shoppers for working towards local sustainability. All are encouraged to sign up for the program—not only to save money at participating businesses, but also as a way to show support for the local sustainability movement and help keep Immanence Magazine on the fore-front of engaging independent media in Powell River. See page 31 and 32 for more details or visit www.immanence.ca
We hope you enjoy this Fall issue—the largest issue we’ve put out so far.
The Hot Summer Night Market at Willingdon Beach is over for the season and market organizers are very happy to report that their second year was bigger and better. The Market was originally started in 2008 by Karen Skadsheim and Julie Bellian, this summer Julie stepped down and Amber Friedman stepped in as co-instigator. Amber is a fibre artist with a background in coordinating arts events, who moved to Powell River from Fredericton, New Brunswick, in August, 2008.
This summer the market opened on July 16, 2009, with an opening greeting from local MLA Nicholas Simons, and a performance by a local belly-dancing troupe. Throughout the summer, a variety of vendors offered local art, fashion, information, produce, used goods and jewelry to the community. The market was also a meeting-place for people to eat supper, make art, listen to live musicians or do some hula-hooping. Thanks to everyone who came out and made this Hot Summer Night Market such an overwhelming success!
Christmas is approaching fast and Karen and Amber are planning a Cool Winter Night Market on Thursday evenings, beginning Nov. 12, 2009 at the Complex. Check the website for current information www.prnightmarket.wordpress.com If you are interested in being a vendor, contact Karen at 344-0127, Amber at 487-0868 or e-mail prnightmarket@gmail.com
The Winter Farmers’ Market is held every Saturday at the CRC begining at noon. The market is a great source for local, tran-fat free, GMO ingredient-free, meat, fish, eggs, fall produce, sprouted grain baking, farmstead pizza and much more. New farm vendors are always welcome. For more information contact Julie at 604 483-4923.
by Valen Asher
My son and I have recently come to Powell River from the Queen Charlotte Islands. We are the grandchild and great-grand-child of homesteaders to Haida Gwaii, back in the Fifties. But, after sixty years of struggling to grow produce in ‘way too much rain and in far too short a season, our family has conceived an idea I’d like to fine-tune in Powell River.
Here’s the concept: a HORTICULTURAL INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITY HEALING, consisting of a network of passive-solar, warehouse, community-garden greenhouses (giant coldframes).
Here are some thoughts on how this might happen:
• Location: Max Cameron schoolgrounds. The field there could accommodate four of my specifically designed greenhouses, leaving the grounds as community green spaces. The building could house a community kitchen (for teaching food preservation and healthy cooking. Perhaps classroom space could be rented after school to like-minded vendors and practitioners.
• Community garden greenhouses can form an agricultural sharing-and-caring center where community members have a chance to work together, sharing skills and developing new friendships. As little as six hours a week could entitle a member to a fair share of the harvest (enough to feed the family for the week).
• Surplus produce can be sold to local restaurants and grocers, the remainder to be donated to the food bank and soup kitchen.
• Classes in horticulture would be available to our schools, with a full program at Brooks.
• Community elders can have opportunity to teach, passing along almost forgotten skills.
• Why not connect with the Ministry of Children and Families so that recipients could be informed of the opportunity to participate in the project, earning food for the table, learning new skills, and freeing up a good portion of the food budget for a fresh, healthy diet?
• Connect with the Youth Court system. Young offenders could participate in the project, mentored by other community members, learning skills and earning food for the family—this kind of program spells self-respect better than “community service”.
Imagine young and the elders, the rich and the poor, working alongside one another while building community!
• Oh, and don’t forget—create a registered tax-deductible society which anyone can join.
These are just a few of my ideas. Any interest out there in forming such a society?
Email me at valenasher@gmail.com with subject line “GROW WITH ME”
—Valen Asher
This year, the Demonstration Garden at the Community Resource Centre has been productive–and the season’s not over yet! We have planted, grown and eaten and shared salad greens, beans, tomatoes, peas, kale, chard, garlic, broccoli, berries and too much else to mention. The garden is still very new, in only its second year. W e are hoping for even better things next year and thank volunteers for their hard work both in the garden and in the Centre itself. The Garden could not have been successful without their huge amount of work. Of course, we are always looking for new volunteers to join us.
The Centre received funding from The B.C. Healthy Living Alliance to run workshops on gardening and cooking topics such as worm composting, lasagna gardening, seed saving, salad dressings, salsa-making and one-pot budget meals. The workshops will run into next year; participate by donation. For information on upcoming events, call the Centre at 485 0992, and check out our new website at
www.prcrc.org.
Pebble in the Pond Environmental Society proudly announces they have received funding through the Job Creation Partnership Program to carry out the Cloth Bag Program for Powell River. The Job Creation Partnership is funded in whole or in part through the Canada-BC Labour Market Development Agreement and will bring more than $100,000 into the local economy in wages and other business-related expenditures.
Three project coordinators have been hired: Dawn Holmen, Giovanni Spezzacatena, and Aron Strumecki. Cloth Bag Program Supervisor is Karen Skadsheim, one of the founding members of the society.
The length of the Project is 9 months. The staff will encourage stakeholders within the City and Regional District to supply cloth bags to any and all retailers interested in offering affordable cotton shopping bags to customers.
Participants will increase communication skills by direct meetings, written communication, presentations, marketing, and online communications including social media and blogging. They will expand environmental awareness as well as training in aspects of a ‘green’ economy. They will develop networking skills, heighten their professional profiles by establishing working relationships with local businesses, and enhance their capacity for office work. These skills are applicable to the local job market and will assist participants in obtaining long-term employment.
Pebble in the Pond has been actively promoting and educating the community of Powell River about waste reduction, particularly the waste from plastic bags and disposable plastic containers which constitute dangers to environment and health.
Board members include Judi Tyabji Wilson, President; CaroleAnn Leishman, Vice President and Communications Chair; Melissa Call, Special Events Coordinator; Tracey Ellis, Secretary; and Karen Skadsheim, Director.
For more information contact CaroleAnn Leishman at 604 483-6171.
Introducing Solutions for Seniors – a non-profit program linking up caring volunteers with seniors who need a helping hand on arriving home from hospital, or that little bit of help to stay in their own homes.
Solutions for Seniors, initiated by Powell River’s Seniors Citizens Association, is supported by Powell River Community Health. After a survey found that many seniors were returning home from hospital to empty houses without family or friends to look in on them, concerned senior citizens applied for a Smart Fund grant to start up this program, modeled after two very successful ‘Seniors Links’ programs operating in the Lower Mainland.
The program’s aim is to set up seniors with a ‘buddy’, someone the senior can call if needing a hand around the house, a ride to appointments, or simply a friendly face to share a cup of tea. Often seniors returning home from hospital, reports the program’s Coordinator, Devon Hanley, are not eligible for home support. “Many seniors don’t have any family in Powell River. Now we take calls from Powell River Hospital’s patient-care coordinator ensuring there will be someone to drive the patient home, help with the settling in and keep in touch during recuperation.”
Recently volunteer Stephanie Human provided a ride to and from the doctor’s for a senior, and then called a few days later to see how the senior was making out. “This lady seemed a little isolated, so I called back a few times, just to make sure she was okay.”
Many calls are coming in, not just requests but also calls from seniors concerned about other seniors, and calls from seniors’ grown children or who don’t live here or who work fulltime and want to make sure their parents aren’t spending long days alone. “One heartbreaking, common scenario involves elderly couples who can no longer look after each other, when a little help at home would make all the difference,” says Hanley.
Solutions for Seniors needs volunteers. “We need people who can help out for a few weeks, maybe two to four hours each week, assisting seniors when they arrive home from hospital. Or, we can buddy-up a volunteer with a senior who is living alone but would do better if someone could look in once a week and offer a helping hand. It’s all about letting seniors know they are not forgotten or alone, and that their welfare matters to us all.”
For more information, contact Devon Hanley at 604-414-9373.
by Eva van Loon
The Harmonised Sales Tax which is supposed to come alive next summer with a 12% tax on most goods and services is, if nothing else, impossible to figure out.That’s a problem for everybody, but especially for those in business.
HST will cover many more goods and services than PST now does. And that’s a problem, potentially, for a class of business the government apparently hasn’t considered but which we all depend on to fill a wide variety of needs.
I’m talking about microbusiness, the zillions of small operations that don’t even come near the $30,000 annually that would attract GST; so don’t have to worry about GST inputs and outputs or hiring a bookkeeper to do payroll and financial statements—or taxes.
I say zillions because I’ve really no idea how many workers fall into that category in Canada; I just know I meet people in microbusiness all the time.
My own business, fixing learning disabilties, falls nicely into that category. It provides a high-quality product with a hefty price tag, since the therapist has to be highly trained for this work. I don’t do much of this work—maybe half a dozen students a year, but they will all tell you how essential this service was for them. One of the nicer aspects of billing them is that I needn’t charge them any tax, and one of the nicer aspects of my tiny business is that I don’t have to employ someone to do sales tax, or spend long hours doing it myself.
That’s about to change. Try as hard as I might, I can’t get a final answer from the HST website on whether my kind of educational services will be HST-exempt. The nearest to an answer is a requirement for me to find some kind of stamp of approval—who knows what?—from some kind of official educational body—also far from clear.
Great. So, if I have this right, either I get some official educational body to rubberstamp my revolutionary, out-of-the-box, cutting-edge therapy as an “approved” educational service, or I suddenly have to charge my clients $500-$600 more for the course. Oops! How am I going to pay for the bookeeper I’ll need now, or for the hours I’ll spend being the government’s tax collector? Maybe I’ll have to raise those prices even more. Yah. That should work. My clients are going to love that.
The government will suddenly gain a hold over all those lovely little pots of money of the small, independent entrepreneurs and practitioners who, I suspect, are no small fraction of the working poor. Control must be the real reason for instituting this comprehensive system—that, or government job-creation.
How many microbusinesses in our town, I wonder, are in a similar boat?
Cynicism is seldom productive but I find it hard to stay away from thinking that HST will force many to decide between becoming the government’s tax collector or black marketeering. If HST goes through, I plan to close my practice, and Powell River will no longer have access to cognition therapy.All three responses—closing, compliance, or black marketeering—represent a loss to the community of economic diversity and self-reliance.
There’s still time to protest. Rather than promote any one website, I urge you to get online, search Harmonised Sales Tax, and become knowledgeable and active on this issue. Miracles do happen.