Image – Jewish Independent

Community day of learning

Prof. Norma Joseph (photo from Association for Canadian Jewish Studies)

On June 2, the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies is holding a day of lectures in the Jewish community that will be topped off with music from the Vancouver Jewish Folk Choir, the granting of the 2019 Louis Rosenberg Canadian Jewish Studies Distinguished Service Award to scholar and activist Norma Joseph and a talk by Franklin Bialystok on Canadian Jewish Congress.

“We offer a community day every year, and it’s always the opening day of the conference,” co-organizer Jesse Toufexis told the Independent.

“The motivations for the community day are plentiful,” said Toufexis. “Firstly, we receive great support in a number of ways from Jewish communities all over Canada, so this is an excellent way not only to thank them but to show them what the scholarly community is up to.

“Secondly, the Jewish community is interested in the topics we cover, from history to sociology to literature and art. So, coming from fields where we work on such minutely detailed projects, it’s fun to engage with a community that gets excited about the topics we ourselves find exciting.

“Thirdly, I think holding a community day is just part of a tradition that fosters togetherness. We aren’t scholars out in the ether, doing our own thing and keeping it to ourselves. I think of us more as a branch of a much larger Canadian Jewish community that includes all the various roles and aspects of Jewish life in this country, and I think it’s something of a duty to share what we’re constantly learning about our common past, present and future.”

Prof. Rebecca Margolis, ACJS president, praised Toufexis and co-organizer Prof. Richard Menkis on having “put together an amazing community day together in partnership with a team of local organizations that have gone above and beyond to make this day a success: Jewish Museum and Archives of B.C. and our host, the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture. As a member-run organization,” she said, “we value opportunities to collaborate with local organizations in order to produce exciting programming on the Jewish Canadian experience.”

The first panel session of the day is Jewish Space in Literature and Popular Culture, followed by Antisemitism and the Holocaust. At lunch, a panel discusses the topic Archives Matter. The two afternoon panels are Media Studies, and Challenging the Status Quo. Joseph’s talk in this last session is called No Longer Silent: Iraqi Jewish Immigrants and the CJC.

“I’ve been working on the Iraqi Jewish community in a bunch of different ways and my most recent publications are about their food and what we can learn about their cultural history and immigration patterns through studying their food,” Joseph told the Independent in a phone interview from her home in Montreal. “But I’ve also looked at, through the immigration pattern, the traumas they suffered by the expulsion from Iraq and the processes through which they had to escape from Iraq, as well as the ways in which they adapted to life in Montreal.”

It is only in the last decade or two, said Joseph, that Iraqi Jewish community members have “begun to present their memoirs and talk about how awful the experience from the Farhud in 1941 was. So, then I began to gather their stories.”

Joseph is particularly interested in the transition of the community from being unwilling to talk about their experiences to talking about them. “And also,” she said, “in the process of [preparing for] this year’s conference, which is celebrating 100 years of Canadian Jewish Congress, to figure out in what ways did Canadian Jewish Congress help or not help this community migrate or emigrate into Canada, which was, in fact, to Montreal. And that’s where I’m doing research right now. The Iraqi Jews themselves say, oh no, they didn’t help us … we came alone, we found our way on our own and nobody ever helped us. We didn’t ask for help. We weren’t refugees…. End of story.”

This perspective, as well as the larger Jewish community’s focus at the time on dealing with the impacts of the Holocaust, contributed to the silence, said Joseph.

“I wanted to go behind the scenes and say, OK, but in what ways that they [Iraqi Jews] might not have known was Congress working with the Government of Canada to open the doors, because we know that the doors of Canada were closed to Jewish immigration during World War Two but, afterwards, in the 1950s the doors open…. Did anyone in Congress help Middle Eastern Jews come? That’s my question. And that’s what I’m researching now at the archives, interviewing some people.”

Joseph’s interest in the Iraqi Jewish community comes in part from her and her husband Howard’s experiences.

“In 1970,” she said, “we came to Canada [from the United States]. He was invited to become the rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese congregation. He was their rabbi for 40 years. And the congregation has many different communities – it has Iraqis, Lebanese, Moroccan, some Iranians, and we love the diversity of communities, the cultural diversity was so exciting.

“I never thought of studying the communities that we were friendly with and that my husband was the rabbi of, but, eventually, at some point, somebody said to me, why don’t you study Canadian Jews? And I looked around me at all these wonderful, diverse ethnic communities of Jews and I said, oh, this is a great idea, why not study the people I know so well?

“And I was interested in gender. I started asking a lot of questions and I especially focused on the women. And it came out that they were willing to talk to me, especially about food, and food was an entree into learning about their experiences, both in Baghdad and the transitions to Montreal and how hard those transitions were…. They couldn’t find the right foods and they didn’t know how to cook and there were no cookbooks and how were they going to cook and where were they going to find the spices? That was very symbolic of life, the difficulties of life in Montreal for this community that didn’t like gefilte fish.”

Joseph is being honoured by the ACJS for attaining the “highest standards of scholarship, creative and effective dissemination of research, and activism in a manner without rival in our field of Canadian Jewish studies, as well as being a respected voice in Jewish feminist studies more broadly.” Not only is she being recognized for “her mastery of both traditional rabbinic sources and anthropological methods,” but her teaching, her work in documentary and educational film, being a founding member of the Canadian Coalition of Jewish Women for the Get, as well as participating in the founding of the Institute for Canadian Jewish Studies at Concordia University, among many other accomplishments. For more than 15 years, she has written a regular column in the Canadian Jewish News. In one of these columns, in recent months, she recalled a time “when the phrase ‘liberal values’ was not a dirty word.”

“I was raised Orthodox,” she told the Independent. “My grandfather was a great Orthodox rabbi in Williamsburg…. But my parents worked very, very hard to send me to one of the great liberal Orthodox schools. It was called the Yeshivah of Flatbush, where boys and girls study together and we were taught that boys and girls could learn, and girls were included in that equation. It was one of the best schools because I learned fluent Hebrew, which was very rare, and it was a Zionist school, beginning in the ’50s.”

She added, “It wasn’t our liberal values in the 21st century, but it was mid-20th-century values. We learned to love Israel. We learned about justice, we learned about equality in some very interesting ways. We were patriotic Americans, my country right or wrong, which, after Vietnam, we had to rejig, but we were there before Vietnam…. I’ll tell you another thing that’s interesting about my upbringing – we didn’t learn about the Holocaust. At that age, in the ’50s and ’60s, parents didn’t want their children traumatized by stories of the Holocaust.”

Between her own studies of Jewish law and those of her husband, Joseph lauded the insight and flexibility that can be found in Judaism. “My husband always taught me that, if you are a legalist, are in charge of the law … the easiest answer is no, because it means you don’t have to examine and search the law. The hardest thing, but most creative thing, is to find a way to say yes…. We have thousands of years of law – surely in all that precedent you can find something.”

As but one example, Joseph has used Jewish law to argue for the rights (and obligations) of women, and has seen progress on the feminist front.

“For example,” she said, “let’s just take the world of bat mitzvah. In the 1950s, there weren’t bat mitzvahs, for the most part. Even the Conservative and Reform movements didn’t want bat mitzvahs…. Today, 2019, there isn’t a community that doesn’t offer some form of recognition of a girl’s 12th birthday,” including Chassidic communities.

“That’s a transformation because of feminist critique,” she said. “They will never admit it. They will say we always did it. But that’s a big change, on one hand. On the other hand, it’s silly, it’s narishkeit; it’s small, it’s nothing.”

But even incremental change leads to larger change, and Joseph spoke about the “incredible historical research coming out – women [always] had strong ritual lives, but what’s coming out now is the need for public ritual formats for women in all sectors of society.”

For the full schedule of and to register for the ACJS community day, visit eventbrite.ca.

A mind-blowing exhibit

“Sunflowers” by Jocelyne Hallé.

The new show at Zack Gallery, #SeasonsAtZack features Instagram artists. A fundraiser for the gallery, the exhibit is extremely eclectic.

“The theme of the show is based on the theme of Festival Ha’Rikud, ‘Seasons of Israel,’” said Daniel Wajsman, marketing coordinator at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. “Every year, the gallery has a group show to coincide with the festival and the artists submit their paintings to the gallery. This year, we thought: why don’t we do social media instead? These days, everyone has a camera…. We all take pictures with our phones and share them with friends and family. This is one step further. Why can’t we share our photos with everyone? That’s what Instagram does – it is a site where we share our images with the world. That’s what we aimed for in this show at the Zack. We wanted to change the concept of what art is.”

The gallery started with the idea that only artists who have an Instagram account would be featured in the exhibit, but later opened the submission process to everyone, said Wajsman. All of the images from the show will be on the JCC’s Instagram page and prints will be available for purchase in different sizes and formats.

About a third of the photos in the exhibit come from a select group of people: staff members of several Jewish organizations, who went to Israel in April for a professional seminar. The organizations participating in the seminar were the JCC, Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, Jewish Family Services, Louis Brier Home and Hospital, Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre and Nava Creative Kosher Cuisine.

“We work closely together, but we don’t all know each other,” said Wajsman. “Some of us are Jewish, and some are not. The seminar had a double goal: to teach us about Israel and Jewish history and to connect us with each other.”

Regular visitors to the Zack Gallery will be familiar with many of the photographers in the exhibit. Some of the photos are by artists who have exhibited previously at the gallery – like Lauren Morris, Michael Abelman and others – and submitted photographs of their paintings for the show.

Another set of participants includes local masters of photography, such as Jocelyne Hallé, Judy Angel and Ivor Levin. Each one has more than one of their images on display.

Halle’s “Sunflowers” photo was taken recently. The bright sunny heads of the large flowers contrast sharply with the heavy stormy clouds overhead, and the juxtaposition evokes strong emotions. “It wasn’t Photoshopped at all,” said Hallé. “It’s just the way I took it.”

In contrast, Angel’s airy images glow and shimmer with transparent sunlight. They are so light, they seem translucent, able to fly off the wall like magical butterflies.

photo - “Umbrellas” by Ivor Levin — “Umbrellas” by Ivor Levin.

Beside them, Levin’s photos look like drawings, their colour schemes and compositions inspired by the rains and umbrellas of the autumn season in Vancouver.

New artists also have a strong presence in this show. For them, having their names under their art on the gallery walls is a fascinating experience. One of this crowd is Linda Lando, the Zack Gallery director. “I’m not an artist,” she said. “I’ve never displayed anything before.”

One of her photos, the colourful “Ein Gedi Night,” was taken on her trip to Israel, as a member of the seminar. “We visited Kibbutz Ein Gedi late at night,” she said. “It is a beautiful floral oasis in the desert. They have amazing flowers, and this blooming tree was near the entrance.”

Robert Johnson, also part of the seminar and a longtime JCC employee, has a couple of his photos in the show. One of them is particularly memorable: a photo of a camel with a sad expression, lying under a tree. The title of the photograph is “This is Not a Camel.”

“He talked to me,” Johnson said with a smile. “People were riding him all day, and he didn’t want to be a riding camel anymore.”

The variety of the images in the show is mind-blowing: from Israeli landscapes to mud bathers on the shore of the Dead Sea to abstract composition. #SeasonsAtZack continues until June 9.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

Dancers explore new territory

Magic & Remembering opens at Scotiabank Dance Centre on June 1, which is B.C. Access Awareness Day. (photo from All Bodies Dance Project)

The themes in this show range from home and belonging to our collective connection to self, city and architecture,” All Bodies Dance Project co-founder and facilitator Naomi Brand said about Magic & Remembering, a program of dances and films, featuring dancers with and without disabilities, that runs June 1-3 at Scotiabank Dance Centre.

“A lot of ABDP’s choreography highlights the relationship between different bodies moving in different ways,” said Brand, who is a member of the Jewish community. “We try and make work where our differences as dancers are celebrated and exploited for their choreographic potential. We’re always looking for new territory that challenges notions of the ‘typical’ dancer and the typical ways of making dance.”

A similar motivation sparked the idea for this show.

“Magic & Remembering was born out of the desires from artists in our company to lead their own choreographic processes, as well as an idea to explore new territory in dance filmmaking,” said Brand.

The program comprises three dances and three films. Most of the works are new for this production and created by longtime members of All Bodies Dance Project.

“ABDP works in a very organic way as a collective of artists who work through collaboration and improvisation to devise new choreography,” explained Brand. “Each of the pieces came about in a different way through a different creative process. My role has been to act as an ‘outside eye’ to support the choreographers, offer feedback and suggestions; sort of an editor to help clarify the pieces.”

Two of the three filmmakers are local, she said. Martin Borden – who is also a visual artist, woodcarver and educator, and has been documenting ABDP’s work for many years – collaborated with dancers/choreographers Rianne Svelnis and Harmanie Taylor on Sanctuary.

Gemma Crowe worked with Carolina Bergonzoni on Ho.Me. “Gemma is a dancer who has been working in video for a number of years,” said Brand. “As a dancer, she brings a keen understanding of how the camera moves almost as a partner in the dance.”

The third film is called Inclinations and it was created, said Brand, “by our friends and colleagues Danielle Peers (Edmonton) and Alice Sheppard (based in New York) and features a cast of four manual wheelchair users, including Harmanie Taylor from All Bodies Dance Project.”

Quoting from Sheppard’s website, Brand described the piece as one that “contrasts the playful connections when disability esthetics, disability community and a gorgeous ramp meet the institutional histories and discordant inclinations that can lurk just below the surface.”

“We are excited to include this beautiful film in our production,” said Brand, “as a way to connect and support disabled dance artists in our network from outside of Vancouver.”

The press material for the production notes that the films are “of dance works reimagined for the camera.” As to what that means, Brand explained that Sanctuary and Ho.Me were originally created as dances performed live: the former for the 2018 Vines Art Festival and the latter for last year’s Dancing on the Edge Festival.

“We’ve taken those dances,” she said, “and ‘reimagined’ them through the lens of the camera by using the same movement material, but reconfiguring it into a new piece. The camera allows for an intimacy and detailed insight into the dances that opens up whole new possibilities. For example, Carolina Bergonzoni’s Ho.Me, which consists of three personal solos, was shot in the dancers’ own apartments. We get to see these unique bodies and their movements in their private spaces, surrounded by objects of meaning to them.

“Sanctuary is shot in a busy urban location. The duet is accompanied by a soundscore created from the sounds of a typical Vancouver afternoon. Video allows us to take viewers into new worlds and to see the dancers and the dances in new ways.”

As for the dances in Magic & Remembering, Brand said they “use the dancers’ differences in unexpected and evocative ways. For example, Harmanie Taylor and Peggy Leung’s duet, Inflect, was born out of the simple choreographic question, what would happen if both seated and standing dancer used wheels? Peggy dances on a wooden wheelie board that facilitates all kinds of interesting and surprising ways of relating to Harmanie, who is a manual wheelchair user.

“Romham Gallacher’s trio, Re/integrate, delves into some deep and personal territory by exploring the process of bringing trauma-shattered pieces of oneself back together. The piece makes use of some intricate contact duet material between Adam Warren and Peggy Leung. Adam is a wheelchair user but dances the pieces without his chair.

“Cheyenne Seary’s Clove Hitch is a quintet based on themes of identity, individuality and belonging in a group,” she said. “The piece is set to music by Juno-nominated indigenous artist Cris Derksen.”

All Bodies Dance Project has many collaborators and partnerships that make its work possible, said Brand. “For this production,” she said, “we have partnered with the Roundhouse Community Art Centre and the Gathering Place, where we do most of our rehearsals, and are grateful to have received grant funding from the City of Vancouver.”

Magic & Remembering opens on B.C. Access Awareness Day, which is “a comprehensive campaign to raise awareness about disability, accessibility and inclusion,” said Brand.

In line with ABDP’s efforts to remove barriers, “all of the performances are scent-reduced with sliding scale ticket pricing – no one is turned away for lack of funds,” she said. “Our two performances on Monday, June 3, include ASL interpretation.”

For tickets ($10-$25) and more information, visit allbodiesdance.ca.

A wonder-full evening

Illusionist Vitaly Beckman can seemingly change a driver’s licence photo. To witness the feat in person, check out his June 5 show at the River Rock Casino. (photo by Galina Sumaneeva)

“I rarely have a chance to perform in my own town, so it’s a privilege and I am really looking forward to it,” illusionist Vitaly Beckman told the Jewish Independent about his June 5 show, Vitaly: An Evening of Wonders, at the River Rock Casino, which is a fundraiser for Richmond’s Beth Tikvah Synagogue.

Beckman is constantly performing on the road. “My favourite trip was to Puerto Montt, in Chile – I got to perform in a beautiful theatre situated right over a lake and witness some breathtaking views,” he said. “Other recent highlights include doing an off-Broadway run last summer. I was performing eight shows a week for 16 weeks straight. It was surreal to see my own face appear on the Times Square buildings, and was a dream come true.”

Every show is unique, he said. And, in every show, “there are things that do not go according to plan, and I have to adjust and improvise. Especially when I invite audience members up on stage, you never know what to expect. It’s part of the fun and makes it more interesting and memorable.”

This is one of the reasons Beth Tikvah asked Beckman to perform.

“The synagogue wanted to try something unique and different from the usual,” board member Allan Seltzer told the Independent. “We wanted to be able to invite congregants, Jewish community members and the general public of all ages to an exciting ‘evening of wonders.’”

Magician Stephen Kaplan will also perform on June 5.

Noting both performers’ “great stage presence and showmanship,” Seltzer said, “Vitaly emigrated from the former Soviet Union as a boy and has been wowing audiences with his world-class show for over 15 years. Vitaly has appeared on television around the world and recently fooled Penn and Teller on their WB televised show.”

Beckman told the Independent he is always coming up with new illusions, but that he needs to section off parts of the year to actually work on them. “I find that I need no distractions in order to create new material, as the creative process requires an absolute focus and to think of nothing else,” he said. “Oftentimes, I take the summers off to do that, and sometimes find small breaks in between shows.”

As for Kaplan, Seltzer said he “has been performing and entertaining audiences across B.C. for over 25 years. His unique brand of illusions and comedy make him the ideal opening act for Vitaly.

“Both artists are Jewish and are proud to be assisting Beth Tikvah for this special evening,” he said.

Also participating in the evening’s entertainment will be emcee and fellow community member Howard Blank, who, said Seltzer, “is known throughout B.C. for his vast philanthropic work on stage at over 50 galas and events annually … [and] has been bestowed with the Sovereign’s Medal for Volunteers by the governor general in Ottawa. Howard celebrates his Jewish Vancouver roots by donating his time to numerous Jewish events, including the JCC Sports Dinner, Chabad, Talmud Torah and our Evening of Wonders.”

Funds raised from the River Rock show will be put toward Beth Tikvah programs and services, which include a preschool, religious school, social and educational youth programs, adult education, Jewish holiday programming, conversion classes, Israel programming, interfaith panels and lifecycle events, said Seltzer. He added about the youth activities that “many of our participants are Jewish children and youth who are in public schools, and their only exposure to Judaism and the Jewish community is through our youth and religious school program.”

VIP ticketholders will get a chance to meet Beckman after the show and sponsors will be recognized in the evening’s program, said Seltzer.

As for what the audience can expect, Beckman said, “They will witness art coming to life – photos will come to life, drawings come out of a page and even their face will disappear on their own driver’s licences. If they like, the photo on their ID will be replaced by another face, whoever’s they choose. It has never been done before by anyone else. There is also a new piece, dedicated to Salvador Dali, whose work also inspired some of the visuals in the show.”

For tickets to Vitaly: An Evening of Wonders, visit ticketmaster.ca or call Beth Tikvah at 604-271-6262.

Korczak course at UBC

A postcard showing Janusz Korczak in the courtyard of the orphanage on Krochmalna Street in Warsaw, Poland, in the early 1930s.

An unprecedented interdisciplinary event will take place this summer at the University of British Columbia, focusing on the legacy of Janusz Korczak, a pioneer in the area of children’s rights and welfare.

Korczak is perhaps remembered most for his final act of heroism: his refusal to accept an offer of a reprieve, choosing instead to walk with the 200 or so orphaned children of his school as they were sent to their deaths at Treblinka. But it is his legacy as an educator, physician and writer that will be the focus of the 2019 Korczak Summer Institute. The two-week intensive program, called Advocacy in Action: The Legacy of Janusz Korczak, is open to graduate and undergraduate students across disciplines. It takes place July 2-11.

“To the best of my knowledge, there’s never been a university-based course on the work of Janucz Korczak, not in his native Poland, not in Israel, certainly not in North America,” said Rabbi Dr. Hillel Goelman, professor emeritus in UBC’s department of educational and counseling psychology, and special education. The program was developed across disciplines, reflecting Korczak’s range of academic and philosophical work.

“He was a pediatrician by training, so we reached out to the department of pediatrics to get their help and a number of faculty members are going to do Korczak-related activities,” said Goelman. “He was an educator, so the faculty of education were happy to co-sponsor the course with the Januscz Korczak Association [of Canada]. But it would also be open to people studying social work or any sort of child-focused activity. A lot of people at UBC support the whole cause of child activism and child welfare from an interdisciplinary perspective.”

Korczak’s philosophy inspired and informed the United Nations Charter on the Rights of Children. Importantly, his work was not limited to academics or writing, but was devoted to applying his values of child empowerment directly to the real world.

“Children are not the people of tomorrow but people today,” Korczak wrote. “They are entitled to be taken seriously. They have a right to be treated by adults with tenderness and respect, as equals.”

“In the orphanage that he ran in Warsaw, they had a children’s parliament, where children elected their leaders to make the rules and enforce the rules,” said Goelman. “There was a children’s court, where children could complain about their treatment either by the staff or by other students. There was a children’s newspaper that they published. He very much empowered children and he thought it was important to draw on this and give them opportunities to develop their own leadership. I think those are all very important contemporary messages for educators, social workers, pediatricians … and it’s kind of timeless. It’s really relevant to where we are today in terms of child activism, child welfare and child advocacy.”

The institute is designed to help participants transform their working environment to model democratic principles pioneered by Korczak in his writings, pedagogy and governance of the orphanages under his care. It will also encourage participants to adopt strategies to translate the respect for children’s rights into professional practices, including communication with parents and the larger community, and to learn how to help children in developing and sustaining their cultural identity, particularly among those who may struggle with multiple identities.

The course will be taught by Prof. Tatyana Tsyrlina-Spady, an internationally recognized expert on the life and legacy of Korczak and adjunct professor at Seattle Pacific University. She will be joined by a team of international and national invited speakers: teacher trainer and UNICEF consultant Jonathan Levy (Paris, France); founders and leaders in the field of social pediatrics Dr. Gilles Julien and Hélène Trudel (Montreal); researcher and practitioner of Korczak’s legacy Wojtek Lasota (Warsaw, Poland); several UBC professors of nursing and psychology; U.S.-Canadian writer Tilar Mazzeo (Victoria); and a Holocaust survivor and poet, Vancouverite Lillian Boraks-Nemetz.

Promoting Korczak’s pedagogical ideas, as well as their effect on children’s education, is part of the mandate of the Janucz Korczak Association of Canada, which was founded in 2002. The president, Jerry Nussbaum, lives in Vancouver, as do fellow board members Goelman and Boraks-Nemetz.

“His work is very much alive,” said Goelman of Korczak.

The deadline to register for the UBC course is May 28: pdce.educ.ubc.ca/child-advocacy.

Honouring our heroes

Elad Pelleg and his grandmother, Dvora. Pelleg shared his family’s story during the community’s Yom Hazikaron ceremony May 7. (photo from Elad Pelleg)

The sacrifices Israeli families have made for 71 years were marked in Vancouver last week during Yom Hazikaron ceremonies. The tragic losses of life in wars, intifadas and terror attacks were memorialized by hundreds of attendees at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver May 7.

The annual ceremony, led by Geoffrey Druker, specifically acknowledges family members and friends of local community members who have died defending Israel. The impacts of the losses were individualized through the stories of particular families, including numerous who lost more than one member, often across generations and in different wars.

Elad Pelleg, the Dror Israel youth movement shaliach (emissary) to Camp Miriam, shared the story of his grandmother, Dvora Pelleg, a narrative of Zionist longing, loss and rededication.

Dvora was born in Hungary, in 1921, the second daughter in an Orthodox family of seven children.

“As a teenager, she joined a Zionist youth movement, where she discovered a new world, and a new yearning was born: to live in the land of Israel,” her grandson told the audience in the Wosk Auditorium.

He recounted the story as his grandmother had told it to him: “One day, we were invited to see a movie about the chalutzim (pioneers) … I asked my mother to join me, to see for herself what Zionism was all about, and understand my dream of moving there. She came from a very Orthodox family. This was not an easy request for her to fulfil. She deliberated and, in order not to disappoint me, decided to come. She did not want to be recognized, so she disguised herself and joined me for the movie. At a time when antisemitism was rampant, seeing a movie that showed the freedom and spirit of living in the land of Israel brought her to tears.”

Dvora went on to become a Zionist youth leader and received additional training, hachshara, in preparation for aliyah to the land of Israel.

“In the hachshara, she met my grandfather, Yosef,” Pelleg said. “In 1939, the war broke out and their lives changed completely. My grandparents, Dvora and Yosef, decided to move to the capital, Budapest, in an attempt to migrate to Israel illegally. They failed to make this journey, stayed in Budapest and got married in 1942. On the 22nd of August, 1943, their son Michael was born.”

photo - Dvora Pelleg holding baby Michael — Dvora Pelleg holding baby Michael. *(photo from Elad Pelleg)*

When the Nazis invaded Hungary, Yosef was sent to a labour camp, while Dvora fought to survive with baby Michael.

“She had to keep moving between cellars and attics; she suffered from hunger, and ended up surviving only due to her tremendous effort,” said Pelleg. “My grandfather survived a number of labour camps and a death march. After the war, he returned to Budapest to reunite with my grandmother and Michael.”

Dvora lost her parents, Hanna and Yitzchak, as well as three siblings, all murdered in Auschwitz.

“The only thing left from her mother is a single photo she carried on her throughout the war,” Pelleg said. “Being refugees in their own country, they sought a way to Eretz Israel. In 1947, they boarded an unauthorized ship, Geula, with many other Holocaust survivors. The British, who at that time governed the land of Israel, stopped the ship and sent them to an internment camp in Cyprus, where they were held for almost a year.

“It was there, behind barbed wire, that they heard [about] the establishment of the state of Israel, on May 15, 1948,” Pelleg said. “Later that year, they finally made it to Israel, where two sons were born: Shimon and my father, Eli.” The couple Hebraized their named to Pelleg from Pollock when they began working for the Israeli government.

Michael grew up in Israel, graduated high school with honours and served in the army as a combat medic. Following his army service, he enrolled in university and studied accounting. In 1966, he married the love of his life, Ester.

“In 1967, the Six Day War broke out,” Pelleg recounted. “Michael did not receive an army call-up, but his heart commanded him to pack a bag and join his unit. Before leaving the house for the last time in his life, he said to his mother, ‘I can’t stay in the classroom while the army is fighting to defend our country.’

“When he reached his unit, he found that they already had a medic in place, yet he insisted on joining them anyway. On the first day of the war, June 5, 1967, in a fierce battle on the outskirts of Rafiah, his armoured vehicle was hit. Michael Pollock, the uncle I never met, was killed.

“My grandmother had to bear the heavy burden on her shoulders and in her soul, of not only being a Holocaust survivor, but also a bereaved mother. Her family was murdered on European soil and her son died in battle in Israel and, this time, she could not save him.

“When I was born, my parents gave me the middle name Michael, in his memory,” said Pelleg. “Being my grandmother’s first grandson, we have a very special connection and she is a very significant figure in my life. As a child, visiting her in her house, I would ask her many questions: about her family, about the events of the Holocaust, about Michael and why he died in the war. Slowly and with great difficulty, she opened up and shared with me her story, the story of our family.”

When Pelleg was 13, the year of his bar mitzvah, he started participating in Yom Hazikaron memorial ceremonies with his family, and described a typical commemoration.

“We start in the evening with a ceremony at Beit Yad L’Banim, the memorial home for fallen soldiers, in the city of Ramat Gan,” he said. “In the ceremony, they read the names of all the fallen soldiers of the city, sing a few songs and read passages about mourning, bereavement and love that will never be fulfilled. When Michael’s name is called, we light a candle in his memory and listen quietly to Savta crying softly at the end of the row.

“On Yom Hazikaron, the following morning, we meet at the military cemetery at Kiriyat shul. There are thousands of graves there and, around each one of them, a family like mine gathers. We all stand together and listen to the chazzan recite El Maleh Rachamim.”

Despite all this, Pelleg said his grandmother’s story is not only a story of mourning and bereavement but also of strength and resilience.

“In memory of their son, my grandparents decided to dedicate the rest of their lives in service of the state of Israel,” he said. “My grandfather worked first as a civilian in the army, and then in the Ministry of Defence. My grandmother worked in the Mossad, the national intelligence agency, until she retired. After my grandfather passed away, she chose to volunteer at a nonprofit called Yad Sarah, which provides medical equipment for those in need.”

Now 98 years old, Dvora is no longer able to attend the memorial ceremonies. On her 90th birthday, Pelleg told her: “Your life shapes my identity, my choices in life, and is expressed through my middle name, Michael, which I carry proudly.”

The JCC Choir, led by Noa Cohen, as well as Ellen Silverman on piano and Kinneret Sieradzky on violin, provided musical tributes. Rabbi Shlomo Gabay chanted El Maleh Rachamim. Rabbi Philip Gibbs said Kaddish. If’at Eilon-Heiber lit a yahrzeit candle for her friend Yaacov Koma and Samuel Heller lit a candle for his friend Adero Ahonim. Yoni Rechter, who was the featured performer at the next night’s celebration of Israel’s independence day, sang his hit song “Tears of Angels.” The event was co-sponsored by the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver.

Druker marked the end of Yom Hazikaron at the Chan Centre just prior to the beginning of the community’s Yom Ha’atzmaut celebration. The festivities opened with the singing of O Canada and Hatikvah by the King David High School Choir, directed by Johnny Seguin, and included remarks by Karen James, Candace Kwinter and this year’s shinshinim (volunteer emissaries) from Israel, Or Aharoni and Ofir Gady, as well as a video of greetings from previous shinshinim and a call for hosts for next year’s volunteers. The JCC’s Orr Chadash and Orr Atid dancers, under the leadership of Noga Vieman, performed, as did the Juice Band, before Rechter and his fellow musicians took to the stage. The annual Yom Ha’atzmaut celebration is presented by Jewish Federation, with hotel sponsor Georgian Court, media sponsor Jewish Independent and 45 other community partners. For an interview with Rechter, see jewishindependent.ca/israeli-music-icon-sings-here.

ED is a complex condition

Left to right: Pollock Clinics sex therapist Tom Foster and physicians Neil Pollock and Roozbeh Ahmadi. (photo from Pollock Clinics)

While there may be any number of reasons why the frequency of a couple’s intimate sexual contact may wane, it is a critical cornerstone supporting the continuation of a healthy relationship. Often, when a couple is having sex infrequently, or not at all, their relationship becomes vulnerable to anger, detachment, infidelity and divorce. One factor that can come into play regarding a couple and their sex life is erectile dysfunction.

“ED is a medical condition where a man is consistently unable to achieve and maintain an erection that allows for satisfactory sexual function. ED is also referred to as impotence,” explained Drs. Neil Pollock and Roozbeh Ahmadi of Pollock Clinics in an email interview with the Independent. “The Canadian Study of Erectile Dysfunction identified 49.4% of men over the age of 40 with ED (Canadian Urological Association erectile dysfunction guideline 2015). By the time men reach the age of 70, almost 70% of them will experience some form of erectile dysfunction.”

Conventional treatment for ED generally involves blocking the symptoms, with medications like Viagra and Cialis. “If pills are not working, the next step is the injection or suppository forms of medications that patients can inject into the penis or infuse into the urethra prior to having intercourse,” said the doctors. “If these medications are not satisfactory, then there is the option of a vacuum erection device that a patient will need to apply to the penis and get an erection through the vacuum created within the tube. If none of the options is satisfactory, then there is the option of surgery, such as penile implant surgery.

“The issue with pills, injection and pump is the fact that all need prior timing and preparation and, in the case of pills, they can cause significant side effects, such as headaches, flushing, upset stomach and visual changes, which a lot of patients cannot tolerate.”

There are many factors that can cause ED. “These include neurological disorders, hormonal imbalance, structural abnormalities, side effects of medications or surgeries, mood disorders,” said the doctors, but “the most important and prevalent one is vascular disease.

“When a man becomes aroused, the brain releases a neurochemical substance to increase the size of blood vessels carrying blood to the penis and reduce the size of the vessels that carry it out,” they explained. “Twin compartments that run the length of the penis, called corpora cavernosa, become flush with blood that is trapped in the shaft. This causes the penis to stiffen and become erect. If blood flow to the penis is inhibited or the blood vessels are clogged or constricted, erection cannot be achieved or maintained.”

High cholesterol and the buildup of arterial plaque, over time, cause blood vessels to narrow, lessening their capability to carry blood. One of the first places men will notice this reduced flow is with ED, which is why ED has been dubbed “the canary in the coal mine” – it can serve as a distress signal three to five years prior to a major heart attack.

Lifestyle choices and health conditions that can also contribute to ED include smoking, obesity, a sedentary lifestyle and chronic alcoholism and/or substance abuse.

“Sexual wellness is essential to men’s health and happiness,” said Pollock and Ahmadi. “It is an integral part of men’s overall wellness as they age. A great number of scientific studies have shown the many benefits of a healthy and active love life, which include living longer, greater well-being and a happier and longer lasting relationship with your partner.”

Pollock Clinics provides a few treatments for ED.

“In the last few years, there are innovative regenerative treatment options to deal with the root cause of the problem, and not just the symptom,” said the doctors. “These new modalities include low-intensity shockwave therapy and platelet-rich plasma therapy [also known as the PRP shot], and are currently used in many countries around the world.”

PRP is created from a patient’s own blood and is commonly used in orthopedics, plastic surgery and sports medicine. “Studies have shown that this penile injection contains several different growth factors that can stimulate the healing of erectile tissue and is a safe and effective option for penile rejuvenation and improvement of erectile function … by enhancing and increasing the blood flow to the erectile tissue, offering a longer lasting desired outcome.

“ED shockwave therapy,” the doctors explained, “also promotes the regeneration of blood vessels in the penile shaft. That, like PRP, leads to longer and more satisfying erections and is accomplished by directing painless energy waves into the shaft of the penis.”

In addition to these two treatments, Pollock Clinics offers therapy, since ED has both physiological and psychological causes.

“Pollock Clinics also has a certified sex therapist to deal with psychogenic issues that might be affecting a man’s sexual health,” said the doctors. The goal of therapy is to provide “strategies to get a patient’s mind working with him instead of against him in a sexual encounter.”

Pollock and Ahmadi strongly encourage men to talk to their own doctor about any health issues they may have and the treatment options available.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Documentary breaks silence

Prof. Yehudit Silverman’s The Hidden Face of Suicide is helping people talk about a topic still surrounded by stigma. (photo from yehuditsilverman.com)

Concordia University professor Yehudit Silverman’s award-winning documentary The Hidden Face of Suicide focuses on the world of survivors – those who have lost loved ones to suicide – and reveals their remarkable stories.

Wanting to learn the story behind the silence in her own family, Silverman offered suicide survivors a creative way to express themselves – using masks. In the documentary, she highlights the danger of secrets and the cost of silence.

Produced and directed by Silverman, The Hidden Face of Suicide features the Montreal group Family Survivors of Suicide. It has screened at Cinema du Parc in Montreal, Curzon Theatre in London, England, on PBS television in the United States, and at various international festivals and theatres. It was also shown at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, as part of the Seeds of Hope project, and is being used in diverse locations in Montreal as an education tool around the issue of suicide.

At Concordia, Silverman leads a graduate program that trains therapists in three different programs – art, drama and music therapies – with the goal of soon adding dance therapy.

The Hidden Face of Suicide, which was released in 2010, came out of a five-year research project about suicide.

“I was interested in the stigma that surrounds it and the fact that it’s not talked about or mentioned,” Silverman told the Independent. “I did a lot of reading about it. Then, I found the Montreal group Family Survivors of Suicide and I met the woman who was the facilitator, named Caroline, and then she invited me to the group.

“I started attending the group and hearing the stories. They all lost family to suicide. I listened and, after I got to know them … I was there for about six months and I wrote down some of the themes that came up, kind of field research – identifying common themes … and a lot of it was having to hide, having people turn away, having to wear a mask.

“And so, out of that, I asked if they would be part of a film. Then, we started working on the film and part of it was them creating masks, since that had come up for them. So, they created masks, wore them and worked with them. And that became a very powerful tool and also a metaphor for those who are left behind.”

image - The Hidden Face of Suicide facilitates difficult conversations — The Hidden Face of Suicide facilitates difficult conversations.

Doing this research also spurred Silverman to ask her parents about her uncle’s suicide for the first time. She did so on camera. “I was intrigued with the fact that I had never known about this,” she said. “And, why was that … why was there shame and stigma?”

As well, during high school, Silverman knew fellow students who had taken their own lives – and these suicides, too, were never talked about. She felt compelled to learn more about why that was and to create a film to help break the silence.

While the release of the film and its being so well received was a high point, Silverman also noted an article she wrote reflecting on the whole process – called “Choosing to Enter the Darkness – A Researcher’s Reflection on Working with Suicide Survivors: A Collage of Words and Images” – which was published in Qualitative Research and Psychology.

“I wanted the audience to hear the experience of survivors – what it’s like to be left behind – and to also break the stigma and shame around it. And, it has. People in the audience often stand up and share their own stories for the first time,” she said. “I had a woman in one of my screenings and she said, ‘I’m 84. When I was 24, my mother took her own life and I’ve never talked about it until now. I was too ashamed.’ So, for 60 years she held that in.

“So, that was the goal. I feel like it has been helpful in terms of … breaking the silence. It’s also been used a lot to encourage discussion for people to talk about it, and it’s in universities, libraries and all the suicide organizations.”

Silverman contends that using art to broach such taboo topics allows people to confront issues without feeling overwhelmed. This approach fits with her therapy practice in general, as she uses art as a gateway for patients to share emotions they likely would not share otherwise.

“Talking can often just go around and around in circles, where nothing new is actually being discovered,” she explained. “I’m not saying that always happens. But, I think that using art as another tool can be incredibly powerful.”

Silverman has received positive feedback about the film, including from people who said they were feeling suicidal and that the film helped, as it talked about suicide openly and showed the pain of those left behind.

“I think it can be used to initiate a discussion in a safe way,” said Silverman. “It would be great if someone would use it to create an educational kit…. For me, the emphasis is that, if suicide is still surrounded by shame and stigma, it’s harmful for those who are suicidal. If they feel like people are so ashamed that they can’t even mention it, then how can they reach out for help? So, that’s my message. It feels very sad to me that I made the film in 2010 and I still feel like there’s a lot of stigma around suicide.”

On the other hand, Silverman said she thinks some things are slowly getting better; for example, that clergy are discussing the topic more with their congregations.

“Some rabbis, priests and ministers now mention the word ‘suicide,’” she said. “I’ve been to a few funerals where it’s mentioned very sensitively, but honestly, with, of course, the family’s permission. I think that’s helpful for everyone there, because everyone knows.

“I feel like schools are trying to deal with it in a better way, too. We recently had a suicide at Concordia. I was called in to help with the response. And so, I feel like there is a real desire now to be more honest about it and to try and find the best way, because college kids are very susceptible.”

According to Silverman, suicide is the biggest killer of adolescents and people in their early 20s in Canada, though different cultures and populations experience different rates. The elderly are also vulnerable, due mainly to loneliness.

“With the Inuit population, First Nations, there’s a really high incidence of suicide,” added Silverman. “I’ve gone out north and it’s really sad. They’re also doing some wonderful grassroots stuff to address that.”

Silverman’s film can be rented or purchased online. Visit reelhouse.org/yehuditsilverman/the-hidden-face-of-suicide for more information.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Diversity in retirement

For Prof. Michelle Pannor Silver, author of Retirement and Its Discontents, an individual should be the one to decide when they start to work less. (photo from sociology.utoronto.ca)

Not long ago, it was a given that, when you reached the age of 65 or so, you would retire. But, that is no longer the case.

Michelle Pannor Silver, an assistant professor in the University of Toronto’s sociology department and its Interdisciplinary Centre for Health and Society, explores some of the reasons for this, as well as the difference between planning for retirement and the experience of it, in Retirement and Its Discontents: Why We Won’t Stop Working, Even If We Can (Columbia University Press, 2018).

Pannor Silver’s interest in the topic started when she was tasked with helping wind down her father’s office.

“My real initial motivation for studying retirement at all, and really for the book, was my dad’s experience,” Pannor Silver told the Independent. “I wrote about this in the book, that, when I was in my 20s, my dad developed dementia. It became really clear that he was not able to continue seeing his patients. And he was quite active in Jewish Big Brothers. That was something that was a big part of his work as a social worker. That’s the way he identified, as a social worker. He was a psychotherapist.”

This experience led Pannor Silver to the U.S. Health and Retirement Study, and she spent many hours and years examining people’s retirement trajectories. In her dissertation, she focused on, among other things, the relationship between the type of work people did and several different health measures, before and after they retired.

“After spending a lot of time looking at data points, I became really interested in talking to real people about what their retirement was like and, really, to discuss what retirement meant,” she said. In quantitative analysis, you make certain assumptions, she explained, “like how this person works this many hours and, therefore, they are fully employed, versus this person who works that many hours and then stopped … and, so, I’m going to code that one as retired.”

To verify or refute such assumptions, Pannor Silver interviewed people.

“I started really basic – just asking people what it means to them to be retired,” she said. “That helped me realize that, boy, this is a loaded term. It seems so simple, so straightforward, and the media gives us these clues about what it’s supposed to mean – you’ll see these commercials with these people who are retired, but are running on the beach, so retirement must mean running on the beach holding hands. Or, there are other ones that are about saving for retirement, so it must mean that it’s something you do when you stop working.”

A focus of Retirement and Its Discontents is ageism, and what it means to be told by society that it is time for you to stop doing the thing you have probably spent most of your adult life doing. The people she features found that life without work wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

“The people I interviewed, many talked about being pushed into retirement – being told it was time to make room for the next generation,” she said. “Some of them did it of their own volition. They weren’t really forced into it, but they assumed it was time for them to move over. They looked at how old their fathers had been when they retired, and decided that a certain age was going to be their benchmark. It’s really about the fathers who they looked at, and some of them saw their fathers retiring and dying the next year, or very shortly thereafter. And they thought they’d better retire then, too, so they could live a little before the end comes for them.”

The idea of when to retire is influenced by media messaging. Some of Pannor Silver’s Canadian study participants talked about “freedom 55,” the advertisements for it and how that has always been in their mind as the magic number at which to retire.

Pannor Silver’s study included international participants. And, while the magic age may differ, “the thing they shared – whether they were forced by existential pressures or because of their own internal ideas about when they ought to retire – first of all, they ended up living longer than their parents. All the [financial planning] models people generally have are wrong,” she said, “and that has, of course, implications for the public pension systems that are out of whack, too.

“But, my book really speaks to the experience of people facing the norms on a sort of anachronistic or out-of-date understanding of what retirement is and are disappointed by their experiences because of that – because of the expectations … that it should happen at this certain time and should be a certain way that would lighten and free them. Yet, they felt kind of burdened with life without work.”

Pannor Silver hopes that readers of her book will discard the idea that retirement should be associated with a chronological age. She would like to see them open themselves up to the idea that there are many different ways people can experience retirement.

“I think that, for many people, retirement is a bad word they don’t even want to use,” said Pannor Silver. “My point is to share the experiences of varied, different types of people who, for various reasons, retired in traditional ways … and had to find their own way around it … to sort of rewrite and create their own retirement experiences.

“For them, it was very surprising and, hopefully, others take some comfort in recognizing it’s a really challenging transition, a really important time of life. There’s so much attention paid to the early stages in life – finishing high school, getting into university or that initial career transition, and career mobility and trajectory, but very little attention is paid to later career transitioning. And that was my goal – to be able to say, ‘Here’s a set of people’s experiences.’ And, people tell me that these experiences have really resonated with them…. We can’t just assume that, because an employee is reaching a certain age, it means he or she should be passed up for promotion, cast aside or ignored. It ought to be up to the individual to say, ‘I have other things I want to do,’ or whatever the reason is – to make the decision on their own, that, now, they choose to make a transition to working less.”

While Pannor Silver’s target market is people approaching retirement, she is hoping that the book will also influence the employers, managers and others who are deciding – on the basis of incorrect assumptions or ignorance – to overlook certain parts of their workforce.

“I have Olympic athletes who I interviewed for the book, homemakers, doctors and CEOs … it’s a varied group of individuals,” said Pannor Silver. “But, their experiences are all people who were incredibly dedicated to their work. Their work was their life’s work, and the point is to contribute to an ongoing discussion about what retirement is now … what we can assume about it and what we should not assume.”

Pannor Silver’s next book will examine the importance of physical movement in the later stages of life.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Don’t sit in your chair all day

Dr. James A. Levine studies the health benefits of adding more movement to our lives. (photo from James Levine)

We are sitting too much – both at work and in our off hours. And all this sitting is doing us damage. But it’s not only about our health. It’s about how much we could be getting done, both professionally and personally.

When people read health-related articles or listen to health news, they “mentally categorize this information as health information. I think that is a mistake,” said Dr. James A. Levine, president of Fondation Ipsen, which, under the auspices of the philanthropy network Fondation de France, tries to promote scientific knowledge. “This isn’t about health. In the workplace, it’s about productivity: data suggests productivity – widgets produced per hour – improves by about 10 to 15%. In school, academic performance improves by about 10%, compared to kids who don’t engage in these activities and trials. Thinking about this as a health issue underserves the reader. Really, it’s about having a vital, exuberant, productive, happy life.”

While Levine – author of the 2014 book Get Up! Why Your Chair is Killing You and What You Can Do About It (St. Martin’s Press) – is a proponent of movement, he said sitting occasionally is not a bad thing. What is contributing to ill health, he said, is our culture of rolling out of bed, getting into our cars, sitting at an office desk and then driving back home to sit some more. Many of us shop online, order in meals, watch TV, play video games, check texts, email, use social media and go to sleep. Many of us are spending well over half the day, every day, seated.

“I think approximately 28 different chronic diseases and conditions are associated with excess sitting,” Levine told the Independent. “They range from excess body weight and obesity to metabolic conditions, such as diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, to certain types of cancer, such as breast cancer … to mental health issues, such as low mood and depression, to mechanical problems in the body, such as back and joint pain, and all the way through to quite interesting and quite subtle conditions, such as impaired productivity, lower innovativeness, and so forth.”

There is no simple solution. “It’s easy to conjecture that a few simple tricks can solve problems like this,” said Levine. “But, if you think about it logically, if it’s taken society 50 years to get us down onto our bottoms, there can’t just be a few simple tricks to get us up. The modern workplace is actually designed to keep people seated, because it was felt, incorrectly at the time, in the ’50s and ’60s, that, if you kept a person at their desk, they’d be more productive. But, in fact, that’s been proven to not be the case.”

For some, like Levine, getting movement back into our lives means getting a walking desk. For others, it may involve having meetings with colleagues while we walk.

“Our brain neuros are continuously changing through neuroplasticity,” said Levine. “So, in other words, you can take a person with the brain structure of sedentary and convert them, through intervention, into a person who moves more. The reason this occurs is through neuroplastic factors that change the brain’s structure and biochemistry in response to, in this case, intervention.”

The younger a person is, the more neuroplastic their brain is and, hence, more adaptable, he said. The opportunity for an intervention to have the greatest impact is in childhood. As we age, it is harder for us to change.

“We did studies in primary schoolchildren which were fascinating,” said Levine. “We gave them five-minute motion stimuli or games during their lesson and we found that there was a disproportionate response in the children. In other words, if you give children a little nudge, they’ll move a great deal. You just have to give them permission to move. We found that, in slightly older children, ages 11-14, if you give them the same lesson, the children will double their daily activity. If, at the highest level, you alter the structure of the classroom, whereby movement is permitted … children will double their daily physical activity merely by changing their environment.”

For children, he said, the freedom to move will result in a 50% increase in activity; for adults, it will result in a 25 to 30% increase.

A first step to getting on a healthier track includes reading up on the topic, alerting your mind to the need to activate your body. When it comes to action steps, Levine advised people to start small and build on that.

“Look for two activities a day that you did seated, but that you can also do walking – things like weekly meetings with your manager, walk and talk,” he said. “Every lunch time, I won’t sit for half an hour. I’ll eat and sit for a quarter of an hour and walk for the other 15 minutes. I do it every single day. Every week, I’ve watched my kid go play hockey in the arena. Yeah, I’ll be there in the beginning, but I’m going to do a half an hour walk. We’re not talking about adding exercise. We’re talking about transferring sedentary time into moving time.

“My meetings are walk and talk. When I go out with my kids, we always walk and talk. When I go for an evening out with my wife, we walk to the opera or movie, or before dinner. If your evening out is too far to walk from home to, find a place to park your car that is walking distance to the venue. Park there and walk. While standing desks are good, moving while standing is even better. If not possible, consider placing your phone away from you, so you’ll need to get up to answer it and walk around your desk while you talk.

“Then, commit to your plan,” he said. “Yes, you’ve found five opportunities during the week to get up and move. You’ve built environmental cues to remind you to do it – on the fridge, the desk – and check it off on a weekly basis when you’ve met your goal.

“The last and final step might surprise you, because it may seem counter-intuitive, but it’s equally important to the other steps – get a good night’s sleep.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.