Every area of Southwest British Columbia is exposed to some form of natural hazard, warns Nicky Hastings, a physical scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada at Natural Resources Canada, who spoke at Har El’s seniors lunch earlier this month. (photo by meggomyeggo / flickr)
Those who attended Nicky Hastings’ talk at Congregation Har El earlier this month came away with a renewed awareness of the many natural hazards we’re exposed to by living in British Columbia.
Hastings, a physical scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada at Natural Resources Canada, specializes in coastal science and disaster risk reduction. Her Sept. 3 talk at the synagogue’s regular seniors’ lunch was titled Living on the Edge: Geology, Natural Hazards and Risk in Southwest British Columbia.
Nicky Hastings (photo from Nicky Hastings)
Hastings explained that we’re located on the cusp of the Pacific Rim of Fire, an area prone to earthquakes and volcanoes. But we’re also exposed to flooding in the deltas and floodplains, snow avalanches, wildfires and their smoke, storm surges, sea-level rise and the effects of climate change. This means that every area of the region is exposed to some form of natural hazard.
“We know these hazards are here, and things need to be done to address them – and some of that mitigation is happening,” said Hastings. Drive the Sea-to-Sky Highway and you’ll see rock bolts attached to stabilize the slopes and reduce the risk of rockslides, she said. Lions Bay has a spill channel and catchment basin to catch the debris flows caused by intense periods of rain.
Modeling by the Geological Survey of Canada is being done to predict what earthquake ruptures might look like, and who might be impacted.
“We looked at two tsunamis that already occurred, to see how sea level might change if similar events were to recur, and our modeling did not show those big, 20-metre waves we saw in the Indonesia tsunami,” she said. “It’s more the west coast of Vancouver Island that will likely be impacted.”
While those of us who live in Delta and Richmond might feel comforted by the 600-plus kilometres of dykes that protect the shorelines, that infrastructure can give a false sense of security, Hastings said. “Dykes are engineered structures that need to be maintained and updated. They can breach,” she said. The 2021 floods, for example, caused $2.7 billion of damage and claimed the lives of 6,000 animals.
Hastings encourages everyone to participate in the annual Great ShakeOut Earthquake Drills to prepare for earthquakes, which will be held on Oct. 16, at 10:16 a.m.
“Sign up online at shakeoutbc.ca and practise this drill so it becomes second nature,” she said. “In an earthquake, you have seconds to minutes to act to protect yourself, and you need an emergency readiness kit so you can take care of yourself for 72 hours.”
Scientist Nicky Hastings recommends that everyone sign up for the annual Great ShakeOut Earthquake Drills, which takes place Oct. 16.
A new early warning system for earthquakes will send out alerts that can give businesses time to shut down elevators, and cities time to stop hospital operations, open fire station doors and stop trains, she said.
Other monitoring programs and mapping are being done on volcanoes like Mount Baker and Mount Garibaldi. While the last major eruption was in the 1800s, Hastings warned that volcanoes can cause big landslides and volcanic ash can damage aircraft, collapse roofs, cause lung damage and injure animals and plants.
“The seismic monitoring we’re doing creates more awareness – it gives us a chance to mitigate and know how to plan and prepare,”she said.
Hastings’ main takeaway was the need for Southwest BC residents to live with awareness. She lamented that, even with the warnings in place and the research her organization continues to do, communities are still building infrastructure in harm’s way, such as floodplains. Sustainable development in British Columbia, she said, requires striking a balance between growth and an ongoing awareness of the dynamic, hazard-prone landscape we call home.
Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond.
Clean cars humming down quiet streets. Solar panels shimmering on rooftops. A world powered by sunlight and wind, freed from the smoke and pollution of oil rigs and coal plants. The age of carbon, we’re told, is drawing to a close, and a cleaner, greener future is within our grasp. But what if that future lies on foundations just as dirty – and just as deadly – as the fossil fuel era we’re striving to leave behind?
In Power Metal: The Race for the Resources That Will Shape the Future (Riverhead Books, 2024), investigative journalist Vince Beiser delivers an exposé that cuts through the promising façade of the green revolution. As a seasoned journalist and with the narrative drive of a storyteller, Beiser reveals the secret supply chains behind today’s electric cars, wind turbines and solar panels – chains marked by extraction, exploitation and environmental ruin.
The materials at the heart of this transformation – lithium, cobalt, nickel and rare earth elements – are mined in staggering volumes. However, this increase in extraction comes at a cost that far exceeds dollars and cents, according to Beiser.
From the salt flats of Chile to the cobalt mines of Congo, from scrapyards in Canada to geopolitical flashpoints in China and Russia, Beiser introduces readers to a cast of characters who live on the frontlines of the resource race: child labourers sifting toxic waste for cobalt, Indigenous communities resisting mining on their ancestral lands, and powerful nations jockeying for control of tomorrow’s metals.
Beiser also brings to light the often-overlooked complexity of this electro-digital age, where minerals once obscure – like rhenium, crucial for jet engines, or rare earths that enable smartphones – have become linchpins of modern life. The race to secure these metals has sparked environmental havoc, political upheaval and rising violence worldwide, he contends.
In Power Metal, Beiser refuses to streamline or sensationalize. This is not a diatribe against technology, nor a rejection of the urgent need for clean energy. Rather, it’s a sobering reality check. As Beiser bluntly states, “There’s no such thing as clean energy.” The machines themselves may be green, he points out, but the systems that create them remain deeply flawed, still reliant on a resource-hungry, extraction-driven model that mirrors the very industrial forces we hoped to transcend.
If we are serious about building a sustainable future, Beiser argues, we must rethink not just how we power our lives, but how we source, use and value the raw materials that underpin our modern world. Simply swapping gas tanks for batteries is not enough, he says. We face a difficult question about what we’re willing to sacrifice – and which injustices we must confront – in pursuit of the green dream, he contends.
Power Metal challenges readers to rethink the green energy revolution. Beneath the promise of clean power lies a hidden world of environmental damage and human cost. Beiser doesn’t offer easy answers – but he shows why understanding this complex reality is essential if we want a truly sustainable future. For anyone ready to see beyond the surface, Power Metal is an essential, eye-opening read.
Uriel Presman Chikiaris a student at Queen’s University and serves as executive vice-president of external relations at Hillel Queen’s.
Recently, I was in the car with one of my twins and we were discussing how easy it is to accumulate too much stuff. We’d just had a conversation with a neighbour who mentioned that his sibling had moved into their parents’ house as an adult. It was a large, old home, now sadly so full of stacks of papers and other belongings that one had to turn sideways to navigate some of it.
I commiserated with my neighbour, misunderstanding the level of hoarding. I imagined how hard it must be to move, as an adult with a household, into a home already full of one’s parents’ belongings. Alas, our neighbour said, it was a mental health issue. It’s sometimes referred to as a hoarding disorder or Diogenes syndrome. It was serious.
In the car with my kid, we found ourselves understanding how people get to this point. He said, quite astutely, that our society pushes “more, more, more.” We both agreed that it is hard to resist the siren song of acquisition that we’re constantly hearing. Choosing to stop, clean, tidy and cull things and acknowledge what we don’t need is even harder than resisting new acquisitions.
I was faced with my own “hoarding” scenario. My personal, free email account is more than 20 years old. Suddenly, I got a warning about a month ago that the storage on these accounts would be slashed dramatically. I could choose to pay a fee every month or delete a lot of messages. My husband got a similar warning, but his account was not as old or big as mine. Even so, we commiserated, because deleting some of these saved emails felt painful. Save the baby photo elsewhere and then delete the message? One by one, it didn’t seem to make a dent. Eventually, I figured out how to move older messages to a folder on my computer and I didn’t have to delete messages from people I’d loved who have now died; I didn’t have to cull every family photo.
Still, this exercise made us look around. My kids, about to start high school, decided that they didn’t need about 75 books on their shelves, acquired over the years from Scholastic book fairs, PJ Library and elsewhere. They are making plans to sell or donate the books.
Each kid, getting ready for a new school year, worked to empty out enormous middle school binders. They recycled tons of paper. They acknowledged that we no longer needed a Grade 5 workbook leftover from those pandemic days of learning at home. Both kids realized we needed to make space in their backpacks: for new intellectual growth and a new school year.
As my kids grow physically this summer, I’m knitting as fast as I can to make them new sweaters for winter but I’m knitting a sweater now out of “stash” yarns that I acquired when they were infants. Both kids are now bigger than me. The sweaters I make from now on will likely be too big for me when they outgrow them.
This is a balancing act, of course. It’s normal in our household to get some new things for a new school year, even if we reuse the old stuff, too. This celebration of something new even has a word for it in Modern Hebrew. We might say “Tithadash!” or “May it renew you!” when you see someone with new belongings.
At the same time, I’ve been studying the Babylonian tractate of Avodah Zarah. It explores how Jews are to interact with non-Jews or those who might worship idols. One of the concepts it covers is whether one can reuse anything that might have been used by someone who engaged in idol worship. This is a complicated topic. It involves both “decommissioned” idols and whatever was used to sacrifice to the idol. One also must consider whether any of these items might be ever “reused” in Jewish worship or sacrifice, in the days when the Temple still stood in Jerusalem. It goes even farther, examining what one does about an idol created by Jews in the first place, like the Golden Calf. The tractate is sometimes confusing because it’s in so much detail.
That said, I returned to something else the text seemed to be telling us. In some cases, these items can be reused. The underlying message explores what we waste or throw away, versus how we can give things “new lives” even if their first use wasn’t ideal.
Nobody is worshipping idols at our house, but we’re discussing reuse, as well as the acquisition of new things for the upcoming school year. I see 14-year-olds evaluating their lunch bags and considering making themselves new ones. There was a pile of shirts in the give-away pile after we cleaned up today. I even saw a completely tidy sock drawer. This may never happen again!
I’m not sure how to always resist or even push back against our consumerist culture. However, the talmudic debate over physical leftovers from idol worship and what might be used again and/or refurbished made me realize that this struggle isn’t new. Just as we hope our kids are off to learn more with each school year, we also hope they’ll hold onto the good, sweet things that they embodied at younger ages, too. New, shiny ideas and things are tempting, but there’s something powerful and potentially meaningful about reuse, too.
Joanne Seiff has written regularly for the Winnipeg Free Press and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.
Tova Krentzman’s Fire Tower is a documentary about the people stationed high above the ground in the Yukon and Alberta, who are looking for smoke or signs of a wildfire. (photo fromTova Krentzman)
Tova Krentzman’s Fire Tower, a documentary about the people stationed high above the ground checking for wildfires in the Yukon and Alberta, has been covering the film festival circuit. Most recently, it was shown in February at the Available Light Film Festival in Whitehorse, where the director resides.
The idea for the film arose when Krentzman was working as a cook at a firefighting camp one spring. Several lookouts, the people who comprise the first line of defence in battling wildfires, stayed at the camp as they were getting ready to head to their respective towers.
“I had a chance to talk to them and hear their stories. I even got to visit one of them. I was completely fascinated. The seed was planted there,” she told the Independent.
Krentzman’s diverse background includes experience as a geologist, cook, medic and merchant seafarer. She is also a photographer. Initially, she thought chronicling the stories of the lookouts would make an interesting photography book. However, when the pandemic struck, she became increasingly involved with video and turned the subject into a film.
For the documentary, she featured several different types of people who are lookouts, with ages ranging from young adults to seniors. Nonetheless, Krentzman said, they share a certain trait in common: the ability to be with themselves and thrive alone.
She was struck by the ability of the lookouts to climb a 100-foot tower every day, often many times a day, and to stay focused throughout the months they were on duty. In Alberta, where the season can last for six months, from spring to fall, lookouts work long hours without any breaks. In the Yukon, though the season is shorter, the job also requires a particular fortitude.
“It is definitely a certain kind of inner physical and mental strength to be able to do this job. When you are alone, everything you have ever done in your life comes into your mind, all your mistakes, everything,” she said. “You have to be the kind of person who can manage themselves. But these are also people who are able to feel very connected to their surroundings and derive a lot of pleasure of being connected to nature and what they are looking at.”
After spending large amounts of time with the lookouts, Krentzman observed how content they were with what they were doing. There was no drama, no breakdowns. Instead, the film raises the issue of how, in a hyper-connected world, solitude can inspire a different kind of connection with not only nature but community and one’s creativity.
“I think the film does get into what the struggles and challenges are. And so, people reflect on things and have some quiet reflective moments that they discuss and they are personal. I would say, overall, they are pretty satisfied with what they are doing,” she said.
A scene from Fire Tower. To do their fire spotting, lookouts must climb a 100-foot tower every day, often many times a day. (photo from Tova Krentzman)
Krentzman hopes that, through watching the 47-minute film, more people will realize that the towers exist. She also hopes that the film will draw attention to the dozens of people perched in the air on the lookout for potential danger. While wildfire events can blanket the news cycle during summer months, the towers are not widely known and most provinces no longer have them, she said.
“It is important to realize all the steps that go into fire protection and prevention. The lookouts spot many of the smokes and call it in when it is a little wisp of smoke – that is when you can actually prevent it from becoming bigger. The idea is to catch it before it is a big fire,” Krentzman said. “If you can see a fire from a satellite, then it is too big – that is not prevention.
“They are really there to protect, as a first line of defence, and then they call in the fire agencies and there is a back-and-forth going on. It is quite incredible what goes on behind the scenes when it comes to fires.”
In the time since the documentary was made, Krentzman said, the fire seasons have started so early that she likely would not have been able to gain as much filming access to the towers because of liability concerns.
Originally from Montreal, Krentzman has lived in different places, including Israel, where many in her family still live. Yet, she was drawn to the Yukon and has spent several years there.
“The Yukon is one of those places that, as a Canadian, you have to see what it is,” she said.
Fire Tower debuted at the Hot Docs Festival in Toronto last April and has appeared on screens in the United States, Asia and Europe. The documentary was to have been shown in British Columbia last summer at the ArtsWells Festival in Wells, but the event was postponed due to a wildfire.
For more information and to ask about a group screening of the film, visit underwirefilms.com.
Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.
Syd Belzberg, left, founder of Stable Harvest Farm in Langley, and farm manager Kristjan Johannson. (photo by Cynthia Ramsay)
The Jewish Independent visited Syd Belzberg at Stable Harvest Farm in Langley last week, taking a tour of the 65-acre property with Belzberg and farm manager Kristjan Johannson. Much has happened since the JI last visited, in 2021, just a year after the reimagined farm opened.
The land had laid empty for many years, having previously been a horse farm. An organic produce farm for the past four years, its focus is education. (See jewishindependent.ca/hands-on-learning-at-farm.)
About 100 students a day visit from late April to the end of June, then again from the first week of September to the end of October.
“We’ve got it down to a science,” said Johannson. “About an hour-and-a-half a session, two hours. They come in, they get a welcome speech. We have picnic tables up in the main season. We do a 12-station immersive tour, partnered with BC Agriculture in the Classroom [Foundation], so it’s all specific to the curriculum of the province.”
There are elementary and intermediate student groups who do the sessions. Participants receive workbooks and, every six or seven minutes, a cowbell rings and they move to the next station, where another agriculturalist meets them. University students lead the programs.
The farm also runs harvest projects for the kids. “Radishes were a big hit this year,” said Johannson. There were six beds of radishes planted and harvested.
Over the summer, it’s camp, church and other groups that come to the farm, said Belzberg, and they have different reasons for doing so: perhaps to see the bees, or the butterflies. “This summer, we kept the amount of guests down because we are developing and changing so many things,” he said.
The growing process begins indoors. “We’re able to push the season in that way,” said Johannson. “We start all our plants indoors in the nursery tunnel and that way we get a 30- to 60-day head start, and then it allows us, in a short season, to get two crops of most produce.”
Rows of produce are planted alongside rows of flowers, so that the flowers take the brunt of the bug activity. (photo by Cynthia Ramsay)
In addition to the planting beds, there are gardens. Belzberg’s friend David Bogoch, another member of the Jewish community, started the Biblical Garden, as well as a couple of other flower beds, which Bogoch maintains with the Stable Harvest Farm team.
“Rabbis normally spend 20 to 30 minutes in here,” said Belzberg of the Biblical Garden, which features four of the seven plants the Hebrew Bible uses to describe the land of Israel – wheat, barley, figs and grapes. “We can’t grow dates, pomegranates or olives, but we’re working on pomegranates and olives!” said Johannson, referring to a greenhouse that’s under construction.
Johannson also noted that there was a “very happy, healthy ‘Tree of Knowledge,’” an apple tree, but though the “Fujis are looking very good,” the fruit is not quite ready for harvesting.
Vancouver Talmud Torah probably brings the most kids to the farm, said Belzberg. Grade 3 students, for example, may come in and plant vegetables in spring and then they come back in the fall, as Grade 4s, to harvest what they planted.
When students participate in an education tour, they leave with something the farm produces. That might be honey from one of the 30 hives on the farm (1,500 pounds of honey was extracted a few weeks ago by 40 to 50 volunteers) or bee-forage bookmarks with seeds embedded in them.
“You take the bee off [the bookmark] and plant it in the ground and they [still] have our bookmark with all our information on it,” explained Johannson. “Basically, you have a bunch of kids guerrilla gardening, chucking paper and pouring water on it and having plants that turn into bee forage. Then, they also get popcorn from us or they get sunflower seeds, so, if you’ve got a garden at home, you can plant the corn and plant the sunflowers. If you don’t, you can eat the sunflower seeds and pop the corn.”
Johannson and Belzberg have been working together since the retrofit in 2020, when the farm was converted from housing horses to growing produce.
“We do lots of cover crops and set-asides,” said Johannson, standing next to a field (block) that is lying fallow for a year. “That’s how we build fertility here organically. There are three different types of clover … and all this clover fixes nitrogen from the atmosphere in the ground and then all of this down here will be our organic matter for the next season. We’ll do that on rotation. There are five blocks, so this block here was a cover crop last year.”
Farm heritage chickens and Nigerian Dwarf goats, as well as other animals that pass through or unofficially make their home somewhere on the farm, help keep the soil healthy. “They’ll end up eating all this down and then pooping it [around],” explained Johannson.
We drove past some wheat, which is grown especially for Lubavitch BC’s Model Matzah Bakery.
“Originally, we would just supply the wheat and they would do their thing,” said Belzberg. “In the last year, we changed it…. Everything here was planted by the kids in May. They’re coming back Sept. 8 to harvest it. Then we will store it for them and, at Pesach time, they’ll use it … [in] making the matzah with the bakery, so they’ve got the full cycle.”
For the Lubavitch BC program, some of the wheat harvested by the kids in September won’t be put through a thresher, but rather, in the weeks before Pesach, at the Matzah Bakery, the kids will learn how to remove the grain from the chaff by hand. They’ll put the grain in a stone mill and grind it into flour. “For the sake of expedience, we already have the dough ready,” noted Johannson. “And the kids grab it, it goes onto some sheets and then goes into a pizza oven. They are so good, very efficient,” he said of Lubavitch BC. “They’re the same as our [education] project out here, you’re in and out in an hour and 15.”
Stable Harvest Farm has Jewish and non-Jewish community partners. (photo by Cynthia Ramsay)
Stopping at several “tunnels,” in which there are rows of flowers alternating with produce – melons, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc. – Johannson picked some treats for the Jewish Independent while talking about the layout.
The flowers are good for pollinators, but also attract the aphids and other bugs, he said. “We come through when they’re all pest-affected, we bag [the flowers] up and remove the pests out of the game.”
There have been challenges over the years – notably, in 2021, both the heat dome and the atmospheric river – and there have been some less successful crops. Johannson pointed to a field of Phacelia. “It’s still going to flower, but … it was too hot when they went in. A lot of the time, with vegetables, with life, with people, if you don’t have a good start to things, things don’t end up well.” The area will become a different cover crop next year, he said.
And there have been other learning opportunities. “This we called the Coyote Area,” said Belzberg as we passed another part of the property. “But we had to change it about a month ago because we had a group of kids out and they were afraid to come [see it]. Now it’s called Beaver Park.”
Belzberg would like to see even more school groups come to the farm, and he’d like to see multiple events happening at one time. In progress are many significant initiatives, from planting more trees (for birds and shade), to grooming an area of the farm for scavenger hunts and orienteering, to building a nature-based playground, to creating an overnight camping section, to adding a picnic area, and to converting what used to be a riding arena into a place where kids can come and do educational projects when it’s raining.
The education aspect of the farm gives Belzberg the greatest satisfaction and enjoyment, he said. “That’s my passion.”
While all the activities at the farm are at no cost to visiting groups, busing kids out to Langley can be expensive, so the farm takes some of their programs to the schools themselves. Belzberg gave Talmud Torah as an example: a program held at the school can reach 500 kids in one or two days, he said.
As well, Belzberg and his team are trying to get funding for a program that would help schools with the cost of busing. “We’re looking to be able to subsidize some or all of that cost,” he said.
As to what Belzberg gets from all these efforts?
“It’s a work of love,” he said. “It’s coming out here, developing it and seeing it grow and become more beautiful [and], mostly, when you get the kids out here.”
The JFS Moishe Farm Project garden at Richmond Jewish Day School. (photo from RJDS)
Richmond Jewish Day School and Jewish Family Services have embarked on a new initiative, the JFS Moishe Farm Project. At the back of the school, there is now a garden, growing a variety of fruits and vegetables, such as squash, butternut squash and zucchini. The project aims to increase food security in the Lower Mainland by providing fresh produce to RJDS families and JFS clients.
Food security is an essential aspect of this initiative. It means that all people, at all times, have access to nutritious, safe and sufficient food that meets their dietary needs and preferences for an active and healthy life. With prices of fresh food and produce increasing, food security has become an increasingly difficult goal to achieve. Ensuring access to fresh and healthy produce is a fundamental part of this project.
The JFS Moishe Farm Project garden. (photo from RJDS)
Teaching students about proper nutrition and its effects on learning, brain function and mental health is essential. Proper nutrition is not just about having enough food, it’s about having the right kind of food that fuels bodies and minds. A balanced diet rich in fruits and vegetables can significantly enhance cognitive function and overall well-being. By engaging in this gardening project, RJDS is not only providing fresh produce but also educating students about the importance of nutrition, sustainability and community involvement.
Larry and Marcy Vinegar and Glenn Laufer donated the ground cover and irrigation system for the garden, Daniel Garfinkel donated the seeds and plants. Volunteers have planted, harvested and coordinated this project and helped the school use its land to produce and give back to community in sustainable and helpful ways. Through this objective, RJDS students and community can see firsthand the fruits of their labour and understand the value of hard work, patience and teamwork.
RJDS is planning various activities and workshops around the garden. Students will participate in planting, tending and harvesting. They will learn about different fruits and vegetables, their nutritional benefits, and how to prepare the produce in healthy and delicious ways. These activities will be complemented by lessons on the environmental impact of food production and the importance of sustainable farming practices.
The long-term vision for this project includes expanding the garden and increasing the variety of produce. RJDS hopes to eventually supply a significant portion of its community’s fresh produce needs and possibly even create a surplus that could be shared with other organizations.
This project is more than just a garden. It is a symbol of RJDS’s and JFS’s commitment to the community’s health, well-being and future. By working together, a sustainable, healthy and connected community can be created.
Creativity manifests itself in people’s lives in different ways and at different times. For Enda Bardell, various forms of art occupied her for decades, while Mike Cohene discovered woodcarving only a few years ago, on his way to retirement. Their double show, Artistry in Wood and Water, opened at the Zack Gallery on July 26.
Bardell told the Independent that she was born in Estonia. In 1944, when she was a young child, her family fled from Estonia, then occupied by the Nazis, to Sweden. Her mother worked at a paper factory there, and Bardell played with paper dolls she made herself. She also drew all the dolls’ colourful outfits. “I gave the dolls away to other girls, to make friends,” she recalled. “My first attempts at fashion design.”
A few years later, the family was forced to move again. The Russian communist government wanted the return of all the Estonians who had escaped the Nazis during the war, and Sweden was going to comply with that demand. But Bardell’s father didn’t want to live in communist Russia, so they became refugees again, this time ending up in Canada.
“In 1951, we came to Winnipeg,” said Bardell. “I went to school there and I desperately wanted to fit in. To belong. To be Canadian. I participated in many school clubs and activities. Entered an art class, too. My teacher praised me and recommended that I send one of my drawings to an interschool art competition. I did. And I won. I knew then that I was an artist.”
Interested in landscapes and abstracts, Bardell painted a lot as a teenager, but, after her high school graduation, she became deeply involved in fabric art. “I sold my batiks at craft fairs and house parties. People liked them, and someone suggested I should open my own store,” she said. “I did. I designed lots of different textile objects: skirts, pillowcases, aprons, etc. I felt that I needed a business course, in addition to my art education, so I took it. My store was very successful.”
But, as soon as the store achieved that success, running it lost its challenges. “I became bored,” said Bardell. “It was time for a change.”
She sold the store and did many other things in her professional life. “I always want to try something new, something I’ve never tried before. At one time or another, I was a lamp designer. I worked in banking. I was a realtor. I designed costumes for the Vancouver movie industry,” she said.
She also traveled a lot. “I have visited 38 countries. I like adventures, like it when I can’t speak the tongue. Then I have to express myself through body language. I have to be creative,” she said.
Art always shimmered on the periphery of her life, a constant creative supplement to her various commercial careers. First, abstract oils and acrylics, and, later, watercolours. Painting eventually metamorphosed into the focus of her existence. In the past two decades, she has participated in multiple solo and group exhibitions in Canada and abroad. In 2008, she even participated in an art show in her native Estonia, the Estonian Art in Exile exhibition at KUMU, the National Museum of Art in Tallinn. KUMU acquired one of her acrylic abstracts for their permanent collection; another of her paintings is in the Tartu Art Museum in Estonia. Her paintings are represented by many local galleries.
The current exhibition at the Zack is the result of a trip Bardell took to Yukon shortly before the COVID pandemic temporarily closed all travel. “My son lives in Yukon,” she said. At his prompting, she applied and was granted residency for one month at Ted Harrison Cabin in 2018. “We hired an RV and traveled there for two weeks,” she said. “Yukon was amazing: mountains, rivers, lakes. The place resonated with me. I took 1,400 photos during our travels. Based on the selection from those photos, I painted 40 watercolour pieces during my stay at the cabin. It was a privilege to stay in that wonderful place, especially because I had met Ted previously.”
Many of Bardell’s paintings in this series involve rivers and lakes. “I like water,” she said. “I have always lived on the water, except for one year in Winnipeg. I swim year-round here, summer and winter. Sometimes, I have seals swimming with me. It feels magical.”
When she submitted her Yukon series to the Zack Gallery, it was accepted, on the condition that it would be a double show, as gallery exhibitions must have a Jewish connection. Bardell’s Jewish connection became Mike Cohene, a local woodcarver. His colourful carved fish complement perfectly Bardell’s watercolours of Yukon’s rivers and lakes.
Unlike Bardell, Cohene didn’t do anything artistic until 2009. “I had a solid clothing business,” he said. “Awhile back, I started thinking about retiring and selling the business.”
Mike Cohene (photo by Linda Babins)
In the summer of 2009, Cohene visited Steveston Farmers Market. “They had a booth of the Richmond Carvers Society – I thought their works were outstanding,” he said. “I always whittled but I never considered myself artistic. I started talking to the man in the booth, expressing my admiration. He said anyone could learn to do it. He invited me to come to the club meeting in September. I went.”
Since that day, he has learned a lot about the artistry and the technique of woodcarving. His journey began with woodcarving classes at the society. Later, he took a course at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and enrolled in carving workshops.
“My first carving was a bear cub,” he said. “Then I made a dolphin. Then I started carving fish and birds…. I’ve always been a fisherman, but I never studied fish anatomy before. I caught a fish and tossed it into a bucket. Now, I catch a fish and study it: the fins, the tail, the scales, how the colours change. I look at fish from a new perspective.”
In 2017, Cohene participated in his first two-artist exhibition at the Zack Gallery, with photographer Joanne Emerman. Since then, his art has become even more refined. “I learned more sophisticated techniques and tools,” he said. “I got several residencies in B.C. and Oregon.” Three years ago, he began teaching woodcarving to other Richmond Carvers Society members.
To create his wooden creatures as life-like as possible, Cohene uses various reference materials. “Mostly I use my own photographs,” he said. “When other people photograph wildlife, they give it their own interpretation, but I want to follow my own vision.”
His statues of fish include rocks and corals, all carefully carved and painted in bright, realistic colours. “Sometimes, one statue takes up to 20 coats of paint – different wood parts absorb paint with different intensity,” he explained.
He also uses tree branches as mounting blocks – they are not carved, just sawed off, polished and lacquered. “I only use dead wood for my statues. I often walk along the beach and pick up interesting pieces of driftwood. I’ve never harmed even one living tree,” he said.
Recently, Cohene has started exploring First Nation carving. The motifs attract him, and he has several pieces on display at the gallery, including two decorative oars.
He also creates Judaica – mezuzot, chanukiyot and dreidels – some of which can be seen at the gallery. Cohene has been to Israel 34 times. “Once, I brought 12 kilograms of olive wood with me from Israel, and I make many of my Judaica pieces from the reclaimed Israeli wood,” he said. “Olive wood has such a beautiful texture. And dreidels are fun to make.”
Whatever he works on, Cohene always gives it his all. “For me,” he said, “woodcarving is a form of self-fulfillment.”
Artistry in Wood and Water runs until Sept. 5. To learn more, visit the artists’ websites: endabardell.com and mikecohene.com.
Olga Livshinis a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
The Lando family donated to the federal government the islet that is now West Grebe Islet Marine Park. The park will be held in perpetuity for wildlife conservation and is off limits to people. (photo from Barbara Schloss)
Barbara Schloss remembers the day in the 1970s when her father came home and announced, “Guess what I did? I just bought an island.”
Her father, Esmond Lando, was a familiar face in Vancouver’s Jewish community, known to everyone as Bud. Snapping up an island may have been a little out of the ordinary for most dads, but Bud Lando had a finger in all sorts of pies, his daughter recalls.
Neither the father nor, until recently, the rest of the family, though, had any idea of the value of the island – “islet,” to use the precise terminology – he had bought. And, while the tiny West Grebe Islet is located just off West Vancouver’s Lighthouse Park – and, therefore, a short kayak ride from some of the world’s priciest real estate – the value isn’t so much in dollars as in ecological biodiversity. So rich in bird and animal species is the one-third-hectare (about 0.8 acres) island that the federal government was delighted to accept the rocky outcrop from the Lando family through Canada’s Ecological Gifts Program.
The islet is known to some West Van locals as “Seal Rock,” due to the prevalence of the sea mammals hanging about on or around the place. But, according to North Shore News reporter Brent Richter, who wrote about it last year, birders have identified 89 different bird species that either inhabit West Grebe or drop in during migration, including black oyster catchers, turnstones, marbled murrelets and one of the highest densities of surf scoters in the region. A pair of eagles are routinely spotted on the Coast Guard light beacon.
Schloss, who is a longtime resident of Montreal, says she didn’t know the ecological richness of the place when she contacted the feds on behalf of her siblings and the family to offer it to the federal government. Now that she knows, she likes to think her late father had an inkling of the gem he rescued and preserved from development. The family will celebrate their father’s foresight this weekend at a dedication ceremony where a plaque will be unveiled acknowledging Esmond Lando’s contribution to preserving West Grebe.
But, there is a larger story.
The Landos lived in Shaughnessy – Schloss’s sister, Roberta Beiser, still lives in the family home – but Bud had a special connection with West Vancouver. That connection is a tale of discrimination and civil rights in British Columbia.
Jews were not welcome on golf courses anywhere in Metro Vancouver when the nine-hole Gleneagles Golf Course came on the market in 1951. It had been developed two decades earlier and named after the legendary links in Scotland.
Bud Lando and pal Dave Sears snapped up the golf course – and opened it to Jewish players. Golf courses would become a sideline for Lando, but only one of many.
“He really was like a Renaissance man,” said Schloss. “He loved creating, he was very creative. He painted, he sculpted – this was all on the side. At home, we had a kiln. He decided he was going to make wine, so he got a whole bunch of grapes somewhere and went to a distillery somewhere and made sure that that wine had ‘Esmond Lando’ on it. It was just another passion of his.”
Esmond “Bud” Lando (photo from Barbara Schloss)
Lando was a successful practising lawyer, and he partnered with friends in a vast range of entrepreneurial pursuits.
“If anyone would suggest something, he would look it over and, if it looked like a possibility, he was in it,” Schloss said of her father.
With a couple of friends, he launched Queen Charlotte Airlines, she recalled, as well as a box company, a lumber mill in Chilliwack and a trucking company. “He was into everything he could possibly find,” she said.
The golf sideline was important – not just because Lando loved to play, but because the discrimination rankled him. Sears and he soon sold Gleneagles so they could construct the full 18-hole course that is now the Richmond Country Club. Lando then developed courses in Delta and Surrey.
“Gleneagles was a very important purchase for my father, who was very plugged into the Jewish community,” said Schloss. “He was part of Canadian Jewish Congress and was very active in the Jewish community. Plus, he was on a council for Christians and Jews. He was very ecumenical, but Jews were very important for him. That’s why he got involved with Gleneagles.”
Bud Lando came by his entrepreneurial spirit and sense of adventure naturally. Bud was born in England and his parents, Lou and Sara Lando, trundled the family of six off to Prince Rupert, B.C., in 1911, when Bud was a tyke.
“That was supposed to be the metropolis,” Schloss said of the northern B.C. port town. “That was going to be where everything was happening.” She added with a laugh: “Didn’t happen.”
The family moved to Vancouver and got into the fur trade. They opened Lando’s Furs, opposite the Canadian Pacific Railways station (now Waterfront station, where Seabus and Skytrain meet).
Bud Lando graduated from law school at the University of Alberta and practised for decades, becoming Queen’s Counsel. He and his wife, Edith Mitchell Lando, originally from Winnipeg, raised four children. In addition to Schloss and Beiser, daughter Juli Hall now lives in Houston, Tex., and son Barry Lando lives in Paris. Barry was a producer for the American TV newsmagazine 60 Minutes. (Mike Wallace, the late longtime cohost of the program, said that, without Lando, “there would have been no 60 Minutes.”)
The four siblings, their children and grandchildren will gather this weekend at Gleneagles Golf Course to dedicate two plaques – one at the course itself and another a short walk away, from where the islet can be viewed.
“When my father passed away, we each took on part of the heritage of my father, whatever he left behind we divvied up and decided who would be in charge of what,” said Schloss. “I got Grebe. That was one of the things that I was involved with.”
It was Barry Lando who told her about the federal program and that the government might be interested in the property. Indeed, they were. The island was formally transferred to the federal government last year, but under an agreement with the District of West Vancouver, it will be cared for by the municipality and was officially designated as West Grebe Islet Marine Park earlier this year.
The islet will be held in perpetuity for wildlife conservation and is now off limits to bipeds in order to conserve its ecological value. Barry Lando and some of his family members are, therefore, among the few people to have set foot on the place. They once approached by boat and then swam up to the islet but its geography meant it was never a welcoming spot for casual visitors.
“My father would be so pleased and proud to know that he had the foresight to recognize a treasure and to save it from development,” said Schloss, adding that he would be happy knowing that his legacy and the island is preserved forever. “I think it would mean a lot to him to know this.”
On Sept. 9, Dr. David Suzuki will speak at Temple Sholom on the topic We Claim We Are Intelligent: Then Why Are We in Such a Mess? (photo from Temple Sholom)
Temple Sholom has invited Dr. David Suzuki to speak at their annual Selichot program on Sept. 9, at 8 p.m. The award-winning scientist, environmentalist and broadcaster will present on the topic We Claim We Are Intelligent: Then Why Are We in Such a Mess?
Following Suzuki’s presentation, Temple Sholom’s Senior Rabbi Dan Moskovitz will join him in a conversation about our responsibility as people of faith and citizens of the planet to do the Jewish act of teshuvah, return and repair, for the harm we have caused in abdicating our commanded obligation to be guardians of the earth.
The theme of the program comes from Temple Sholom’s ongoing engagement with the environmental crisis through the lens of Jewish moral tradition. A responsibility further amplified by a sermon Moskovitz gave on the issue on Rosh Hashanah in 2019 that sparked a larger effort by the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver.
Suzuki has taught recently that the COVID-19 crisis has had two enormous and related consequences – it brought much of human activity to a halt and it has given nature a respite. Both provide an opportunity to reset society’s priorities and head in a different direction.
Confrontation with the reality of a new epidemic should have subdued political and economic imperatives to scientific reality and the United States and Brazil have shown what happens when science is ignored or brushed aside. In a time of accusations of fake news, deep conspiracies and relentless trolls, scientists should have regained authoritative prominence. People have had to confront important questions about purpose, values, opportunities and constraints in the way we choose to live. The murder of George Floyd in the United States and the outbreak of racist attacks against Asians in Canada have revealed deep-seated racism and inequities that must be dealt with in a post-COVID world.
In this exploratory presentation, Suzuki touches on some of the stark questions and answers we’ve encountered, from our impact on the environment and our ability to change it, to our dependence on the human creation called the economy and the unfair treatment of our elders, Indigenous people, homeless people, and others. Suzuki puts out a call to action for all of us to rethink our priorities and learn the ultimate lesson in front of us – that nature can be far more forgiving than we deserve.
Temple Sholom’s Selichot program on Sept.9 is open to the community. Pre-registration is required via templesholom.ca.
Fourteen people who have made an outstanding provincial, national or international impact will be appointed to the Order of British Columbia, the province’s highest form of recognition and an official part of the Canadian Honours System. Among the recipients is Jewish community member Samuel Leon Feldman.
The Order of B.C. investiture ceremony will be at Government House in Victoria in the late fall. This year’s honourees bring the total membership of the Order of British Columbia to 503. Members have been appointed from all parts of the province and biographies of all the 2023 recipients can be found at news.gov.bc.ca/files/biographiesobc2023.pdf.
Feldman’s biography notes that he might have lived anywhere. Born in Shanghai, China, of Jewish parents whose ancestors had been persecuted in Russia, he and his family moved to the first place a visa was acceptable – Vancouver – in the 1950s.
The Feldmans loved the peace they found in this sleepy Commonwealth outpost. Although young Sam Feldman experienced some degree of antisemitism growing up, this paled in comparison to the positive experience of growing up in Vancouver and the many lifelong friends he has made.
In the early 1970s, Vancouver’s entertainment scene was booming. It was very early in Feldman’s business career that he identified an opportunity and a desire to be part of that musical environment. He established himself by representing and booking musical artists for what became a launch pad for many iconic artists.
Feldman continues to turn that humble start into an international juggernaut, primarily through artist representation by building an internationally known talent agency and management firm that has been responsible for more than 250 million records and countless tickets sold from past and present clients, such as Joni Mitchell, Sarah McLachlan, Diana Krall, Elvis Costello, James Taylor, Tracy Chapman, Bette Midler and Norah Jones. While the numbers are impressive, Feldman measures success through long-standing relationships and the positive musical influence his clients have brought to the community and beyond.
After 50-plus years, Feldman’s involvement in various aspects of the entertainment business is still growing and his legacy is intact. Uniquely, at a time when Los Angeles, New York and London were the epicentres of the music industry, he chose to stay in Vancouver. He has been quoted as saying: “I wouldn’t move elsewhere, as there is no better place than British Columbia to bring up your family.”
Contributing to the culture of this community and beyond is another part of Feldman’s legacy. From Expo ’86 and the 2010 Olympics to countless sold-out stadiums, he’s brought some of the biggest musical acts in the world here to record and perform, and he’s sent some of British Columbia’s biggest stars into the world. He’s proud to have contributed to the excellence of culture here, sharing values he learned from his mother, a high-level concert pianist, and his father, an amateur actor and salesman. His parents were a huge influence on him, and their mid-life immigrant status framed tough times. They urged him to work harder and shine brighter. Having watched their struggles, the lesson was not lost.
In an era when it was difficult for female artists to succeed, Feldman helped female clients through the headwinds of what can only be characterized as a sexist industry, to access what their male counterparts were already achieving.
Having been born in Shanghai in 1949, immigrating to Canada, having a Russian Jewish heritage and building an entertainment empire in a province most people had never visited, Feldman knows firsthand what it feels like to have to work twice as hard to succeed.
To be a successful music business entrepreneur, one must straddle the divide between art and commerce, and treat both with equal respect. Feldman is an interpreter – he has bridged those worlds. This is a skill set he has been able to bring to many good causes, using his connections and resources to support the revitalization of Chinatown, plus many health initiatives particularly targeted at youth.
Feldman has been recognized repeatedly, garnering awards such as the Walt Grealis Special Achievement Award for extraordinary contributions to the Canadian music industry, and the SOCAN Special Achievement Award for contributions to Canada’s music industry and heritage. He has been inducted into the Music Managers Forum Honour Roll, the B.C. Entertainment Hall of Fame and the Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame.
Feldman is a huge believer in the positive change music can bring to people’s lives. It’s in the mission statement of his business and it’s key to his support of the Sarah McLachlan School of Music, Odd Squad Production Society, Zajac Ranch for Children, music therapy for children on the autism spectrum, and many others.
It’s all part of giving back to the province he committed to so many years ago. Celebrity can be exciting, but it can also disappear overnight, unless you build a solid platform through exceptional relationships and hard work. Feldman has demonstrated that by building something honest and sustainable, you can literally change the world.
The Washington Capitals have signed forward Andrew Cristall to a three-year entry-level contract.
The Capitals selected Cristall, 18, in the second round (40th overall) of the 2023 NHL Draft. Cristall was ranked fifth among North American left wings and 15th among all North American skaters by NHL Central Scouting.
The 5’10”, 175-pound forward spent the 2022-23 season with the Kelowna Rockets of the Western Hockey League (WHL), leading the team in goals (39), assists (56) and points (95). Cristall’s 1.76 points-per-game rate ranked fourth in the WHL, while his 95 points ranked tied for sixth. Cristall was named Kelowna’s team MVP and was selected to the WHL B.C. Division First All-Star Team.
During the 2021-22 season, Cristall set a Kelowna Rockets franchise record for goals by a 16-year-old (28) and tied the franchise record for points by a 16-year-old (69). In 129 career WHL games with Kelowna, Cristall has recorded 169 points (69 goals, 100 assists).
The Vancouver, B.C., native won a gold medal with Canada at the 2022 Hlinka Gretzky Cup, finishing the tournament with six points (1 goal, 5 assists) in five games. In addition, Cristall served as an alternate captain at the 2023 Under-18 World Championship, where he registered six points (2 goals, 4 assists) in seven games and helped Canada to the bronze medal.
Or Shalom Synagogue’s new children’s programs teacher is Sammy Fogel, a creative, curious and community-driven educator and facilitator passionate about Jewish education, social justice and mental health. Having grown up at Camp Miriam, and having been a Saturday childminder at Or Shalom as a teenager – and 10 years later as an adult! – Fogel’s connection to the Vancouver Jewish community is longstanding.
Fogel was raised in North Vancouver, had her bat mitzvah at the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture, and has held several roles working with youth at synagogues including Congregation Har-El in West Vancouver and Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom in Montreal. She has a bachelor’s in liberal arts and women’s studies from Concordia University and a master’s in social justice and community engagement from Wilfrid Laurier University. She currently works full-time as the administration and facilities coordinator at the Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention Centre of British Columbia and, in her spare time, you can find her swimming in the ocean, reading her book in the sunshine or enjoying a London fog at her local café.
– from Or Shalom
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From left, FINN Partners colleagues Gil Bashe, chair, health and purpose; Vancouver-native Nicole Grubner, partner and environmental innovation group lead; and Goel Jasper, managing partner. (photo from FINN Partners)
The Israel office of FINN Partners, a global integrated marketing and communications agency, has launched an environmental innovation group. FINN Israel will play a communications role on behalf of Israeli companies in the environmental innovation sector.
Vancouverite Nicole Grubner, partner at FINN Partners, will lead the innovation group. Named “PR Guru” in the 2019 PM360 ELITE Awards as a rising communications leader, Grubner has a decade of experience working with Israeli clients. She will spearhead strategic communications programs for Israeli companies making an impact within the environmental innovation sphere.
“Our goal is to effectively communicate Israel’s groundbreaking, market-ready offerings in the environmental innovation sector, accelerate their growth, and foster meaningful connections with key stakeholders worldwide,” she said. “With more than 100 Israeli companies attending this year’s COP28 in Dubai, we are witnessing Israel’s expanding role in implementing solutions for both climate change mitigation and planetary adaptation to the impacts of our changing climate. Implementation begins with creating awareness that these solutions exist today.”
According to Start-Up Nation Central, there are more than 850 companies in the environmental innovation ecosystem, developing solutions for clean energy, food and agricultural systems, industry, mobility, nature and carbon, water and construction. According to Israel’s climate tech industry group, PLANETech, investments in Israeli climate tech companies between 2018 and the first half of 2022 totaled $6.67 billion.
