The Occupy Vancouver Facebook page has thousands of members.

A Facebook conversation with a friend in Ireland encouraged her to show up to join the people gathered around the Vancouver Art Gallery on October 15.

Her friend was involved in Occupy Dame Street, an Occupy Wall Street support movement in Dublin.

“I like to read other peoples’ streams to find out what’s going on in the world” she said of Facebook.

Erika was one of many spurred to action by the messages they read and shared on social media.

Occupy Vancouver organizers planned for two weeks using Facebook and Twitter before meeting in person.

Experts say this kind of global coordination was only recently made possible through the use of social media tools.

Occupy Wall Street had been planned for months online using social media tools, and groups around the world used social media to plan support demonstrations.

Hash tag #OccupyVancouver

Many at the protest on Saturday said they’d heard about the event online. They followed Occupy Wall Street using social media sources and turned to those sources for information on Occupy Vancouver.

You used to have to go out and find information about things, now when people post, it’s there for you to see.

Twitter users keep an eye on events using the has tag #OccupyVancouver and can receive updates from organizers by following @OccupyVancouver, which has 3,651 followers subscribing to their messages.

For demonstrators, like 22-year-old Sonya William, the Occupy movement’s presence on the streets and online are inseparable.

“You know it as the Occupy Wall Street hash tag, and not on its own,” she said.

Organizers also turned to Facebook to help plan the events.  The group “Occupy Vancouver” has 3,166.

Justine Turner and her friends were among those at the rally. She said social media was “hugely” important for spreading information about the movement.

“You used to have to go out and find information about things, now when people post, it’s there for you to see. You can just glance at it, or you can choose to investigate further.”

She said she often hears feedback from friends on Facebook thanking her for sharing stories they had no other exposure to.

Social media connects movement globally

The protestors gathered around the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Twitter and Facebook push your posts and messages into the news feeds of those you are networked with. The posts then get shared again to those networked with the viewer.

This sharing happens instantly and increases the viewership of each post exponentially.

Twitter users hash tag messages grouping them together to be read as a discussion. All new messages sent by anyone using the hash tag will be added to the discussion automatically.

Media scholar and UBC professor of Journalism Taylor Owen pointed to the importance of social media for creating and connecting a geographically scattered movement.

“Until recently a movement with so many nodes wouldn’t have been effective. Social media allowed these nodes to work as a collective,” he said.

Social media’s use in social movements came into the news this year as protesters in the Arab world used sites like Twitter to discuss and organize demonstrations.

In places where dissenting discussion is not possible in public, organizing using social media may be the only choice. In Vancouver social media allowed planners to act fast and keep thousands up to date with movement news.

Vancouver dancer Suragini Ravindran leads a Bollywood dance lesson

Staff at the False Creek community centre were pleased with the modest turnout of their first ever Diwali celebration, but acknowledged that there have been challenges in measuring the demand for culturally diverse programming in the neighbourhood.

False Creek’s event, held on Sunday Oct. 16, drew a crowd of around 50. It was one of a series of workshops at community centres across Vancouver this October.  By comparison, the first, held at the Renfrew community centre in East Vancouver, drew an estimated 300 people.

Organizers say the small turnout was in line with their expectations for the event.

“For a first time, there are certain things that we can definitely do better,”  said False Creek recreation coordinator Cindy Gulbransen.

“But for the most part people were engaged, informed, and they left with something.” She said there are no plans for similar programs in the near future.

Ahead of the Diwali workshop, Gulbrasen had acknowledged that the centre needed to find out more about the community it serves.

“We have to get ourselves knowledgeable about who we serve,” she said. “We don’t know who our audience is, quite honestly,” adding that programming decisions are based primarily on census data.

Cultural mandate of community centres

At Sunday’s event, the sound of Bollywood music and the scent of freshly painted henna tattoos filled the Granville Island centre.

Parents sipped chai tea while their children painted brightly coloured diyas, earthenware lamps that are traditionally lit during the South Asian festival.  For this reason, Diwali is often referred to as the “Festival of Lights”.

Daisy Chin, the centre’s recreation supervisor, said that residents of False Creek are hungry for more cultural events like Diwali.

“There is definitely an abundance of interest in the community to have culturally diverse programs,” said Chin. “Each community centre tries to reflect and respond to the needs of the surrounding neighbourhood.”

In the past, though, cultural programs at the centre have been narrow in their focus.

“There’s the Euro-traditional: breakfast with Santa, Halloween and Easter, but those are centered around Christian holidays,” said Gulbransen. “This was a chance for us to do something different.”

According to the 2006 census, 35 per cent of False Creek residents identify themselves as being a visible minority. While this is similar to surrounding neighborhoods, it is lower than the average for the city of Vancouver (47.1 per cent) and higher than the province of British Columbia (25 per cent).

Gulbransen says that Vancouver’s community centres should strive to reflect the cultural diversity of the city.

“There’s an awareness, there’s a respect, there’s something to be learned,” she said, adding that one of the goals of the False Creek centre is “to be more diverse and to reach out through events and programs and workshops so we’re inclusive.”

The Festival of Lights

The Diwali workshops are organized by Vancouver Celebrates Diwali, a volunteer group dedicated to sharing the festival with citizens through events like the one at False Creek.

Mehndi artist Zara Haque applies a henna tattoo

“Diwali is not just a Hindu festival or a South Asian festival, it’s for everyone,” said Junita Thakorlal, the group’s workshop coordinator.

Thakorlal believes that in a city as diverse as Vancouver, it is important to promote awareness of traditions and to create links between people of different backgrounds.

“Look around, everyone you see is of different cultures,” she said. “We’ve got all these multicultural initiatives in Vancouver, we want to engage with different communities to get them involved in our community to learn and have fun.”

While the month-long festival is an important time on the Hindu, Sikh and Jain religious calendars, Thakorlal says that these events are designed for people of all faiths and backgrounds.

“You’re not bogged down with all the religious details, you’re just here to learn and experience a different culture,” she said. “It’s just a way to share and create awareness.”

The Ambleside shore inspires Shaver

Shaver is an independent artist who creates rock sculptures. He has been working on Ambleside shore in West Vancouver over the past year.

Public art is a priority in Vancouver, with the city aiming to encourage artists. More than 20 new permanent and temporary public artworks were commissioned for the 2010 Winter Games.

According to Shaver ,an art piece is a way artist tries to communicate with his audience.

“Every human being has something to say and share a thought with people,” he says. “An artist’s way to send that message is art. That is why this sort of work matters.”

Shaver’s balancing act

Shaver has no formal arts training, but he does not see that as a barrier. He likes to work whenever and wherever he wants.

His work is inspired by The Coral Castle created by Edward Leedskalnin in early 1900s in Florida. Leedskalnin made a castle out of stones single-handedly and managed to move it from one place to another.

Shaver started to work on rocks around English Bay in downtown Vancouver five years ago. But waves easily destroyed his art so he decided to move to the other side of the Lions Gate Bridge, the Ambleside shore on West Vancouver.

The local authorities are open to the work of artists like Shaver.

Glenn Madsen, the cultural program coordinator at the district of West Vancouver, said there were no regulations against artistic work in a public place.

“I consider such work as a random act of art, its not public art,” Madsen says. “They somehow spur dialog among people and become a meeting spot for them.”

“If the residents of the community start to complain about it ultimately it can end up with a policy. Other than that I don’t see any problem with it.”

Balancing rocks are dotted around the Ambleside shore

Defining the city

Vancouver has an official public art program that covers a variety of activities. They include public and private sector artist commissions, community art initiatives and citizen donations of artwork.

The city aims to commission art that expresses the spirit, values, visions, and poetry of place that it believes collectively define Vancouver.

Bryan Newson, Vancouver city art program manager, feels that this program contributes to the values of the city.

“It is about creating a place for artists,” he says. “We are interested to bring artists forward and contribute to the values, visions, and the poetry of Vancouver.”

Arts professor Xiong Gu at the University of British Columbia says public art is an attempt to make the environment more pleasant.

“Public art is a broad concept,” he says. “It does give a city identity.”

But others are more guarded. “There is nothing unique about Vancouver,” says John O’Brian, arts history professor at UBC. He points out that the city has less public art than most other cities, like neighbouring Seattle.

Art with a message

The rock sculptures have become part of the landscape in Ambleside.

“It is really nice to see that someone puts all of this effort to build something for the community,” says Feri Amin, a West Vancouver resident.

“I think every person has something to say about life, maybe a message,” she adds. “I believe that creating a sculpture is the way artists use to send us that message.”

Shaver believes that each set of rocks resembles one person and their personalities.

After a minute or two, people find themselves staring at one set for several minutes and just like clouds, they can shape a figure in their eyes.

“When you associate with that stone, you must realize that one day that stone will fall and so you will too,” says Shaver.  “Life is temporary … so enjoy right now.”

The recent Emily Carr University of Art and Design graduate commutes to her studio by bike and works 60 hours a week painting to save enough to buy new equipment and rent a room in a house by Trout Lake, a 20-minute bike-ride from where she paints.

Taralee Guild working in her studio on Union St.

Guild, like many artists, is feeling the pinch of Vancouver’s heated real estate market, and she said the lack of adequate housing may be affecting her art.

Penny Gurstein, director of UBC’s School of Regional and Community Planning, said Vancouver needs more affordable rental options, otherwise the city’s plan to keep local artists from moving away by ensuring studio space will fall short.

“We need a whole range of new policies if we really want to continue to be considered a livable city for everyone,” said Gurstein. “We’re not now; we’ve reached the point where it’s unaffordable and it’s crazy.”

On Oct. 6, city council met to consider the Artist Studio Regulatory Review Implementation Framework, a study which includes several recommendation for improving working conditions for Vancouver artists.

Council is focusing on the recommendation to provide more work-only studio space in industrial areas. This will help artists get the studio space they need, said Gurstein, but it won’t work unless artists can also find cheap, accessible places to live.

Between 1996 and 2006, the number of artists living in Vancouver nearly doubled and attained the highest concentration per capita of any city in Canada, according to a 2009 Hill Strategies Consulting study. But, the study said the number of artists moving to Vancouver slowed significantly between 2001 and 2006 with a growth of only 12 per cent, down from 57 per cent between 1996 and 2001.

Need for rental units

Guild said she would like to have a live-work studio, which are spread throughout the city under the city’s Live/Work program, but they are too expensive.  She said she likes the company and inexpensive work space Glass Onion Studios provides, but dislikes the lack of a kitchen or commons with the room she rents.

Artists like Guild say they want separate work space, because, unlike lofts provided by the Live/Work program, work-only studio space is still affordable and provides a chance to mingle with other artists. City council’s emphasis on sequestering industrial land for studios will help.

Inside Whimsey + Folly Design is a commercial art studio at 1000 Parker St.

“It’s a wise thing to do,” said Jeffrey Boone, executive director for the East Side Cultural Crawl. He said the new plan would help ease the sense of instability caused by Culture Crawl artists often switching studios or packing up when space gets too pricey.

Still, perhaps the biggest challenge for artists living near Commercial Drive, and in Vancouver as a whole, is finding cheap, livable housing near where they work.

City of Vancouver community statistics for 2009 indicate shelter alone ate up 39 per cent of Vancouver artists’ annual income. The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corp considers anything above 30 per cent to be unaffordable.

Vancouver artists cope as best they can on an average annual income $8,000 less than the average BC worker, according to the 2006 Census.

Some artists choose to tolerate cramped conditions and share studio space. Some cut down costs by setting up studios in their home, disregarding city bylaws preventing the practice for fear of noise complaints and fire hazards.

Some get “crappy jobs” to support themselves, says Guild. Still others, particularly young artists, like many young Vancouverites, said Gurstein, get fed up with the prospect of renting until they are 40 and move elsewhere.

Vancouver could lose out

Canada-wide, artistic and cultural production generates $23 billion every year, and has been one of the fastest growing sectors in the Canadian economy.

Actors, directors and choreographers participating in cultural economy form the foundation for Vancouver’s motion picture industry, and according to a 2007 city report, the Vancouver “creative sector” generates economic activity equal to the downtown core retail sector.

Guild plans to keep painting, and said she also plans to one day move abroad.

“It’s not glamorous,” said Guild. “I can’t even afford to buy my own paintings.”

Joseph Posey used to hang out at the Commercial-Broadway Skytrain Station with other native youth in Vancouver.

It’s a drizzling Wednesday night on Commercial and East Broadway Street in East Vancouver. The glaring yellow streetlight illuminates about forty people clustered in loose groups at the Commercial-Broadway Skytrain station entrance.

Seven native teenagers stand at a bus shelter bench tossing jokes back and forth and chatting. Some of them smoke; others pace back and forth gesturing and talking animatedly. People move in and out of the group to buy something at the coffee shop or to talk to someone standing in another group clustered nearby.

“We’re just chuggin’,” said a young native man in a baggy zip-up hoodie when approached. The group around him titters. The young man sways slightly, and steadies himself against the Plexiglass shelter wall. He slumps heavily on the bench.

In Vancouver, ‘chug’ is a racist slang term for people of native (First Nations, aboriginal, Indian status) origin who are heavy drinkers and act rowdy in public places. Young aboriginals are increasingly using the term against each other, a trend some native teens see as further fracturing a community struggling with racism from outsiders.

Joseph Posey ran away from his foster home when he was 12 and lived on the streets for almost a decade.  He hung out with aboriginal gang members on Commercial Drive.

He said that he was one of the young aboriginals that people on the street called a ‘chug.’ It’s a term that he and his friends used a lot on the streets as both a casual slang term akin to ‘brother,’ but also as a racist slur against other native people outside their group.

“‘Chug’ is, I don’t know, from my point of view it’s not really racist. It’s one person saying it to another person, ‘Sup, chug.’ But usually cause we’re on the street it’s more family,” he said.

“More time to use the term ‘chug’ is when you’re goin’ against another person. It’s someone that’s- has- a grudge against you, ‘That chug right there,’ you know, he’s talkin’ shit about this person or that person.”

Negative stereotyping

Posey got sober a year ago for his three children and girlfriend. Since then, he’s learned Japanese jiu-jitsu, plays lacrosse. He  runs and volunteers at Red Fox, a native youth outreach program that combines physical activity and mentorship.

For him, “chug” is a painful reminder of his previous life. He said that he doesn’t want this term passed down to his kids like it was to him. It’s a term that he heard from an early age in his foster home,and a lot on Commercial Drive.

“Kids learn off their parents. They learn off people that they see,” he said. “And the younger kids hear it all the time, and they think it’s okay, so they’re using the word more frequently.”

About half of Canada’s aboriginal population lives in cities, according to Statistics Canada’s 2006 census. A 2010 nationwide study by Environics Canada found that an overwhelming majority of urban aboriginals felt they negatively stereotyped by non-aboriginal people. Three in four felt stereotyped as substance-addicted, unintelligent, lazy and poor.

“That’s why we grew up rebelling, drinking alcohol, fighting back,” Posey said.

Insider language

Deana Reder, assistant professor of First Nations Studies and English at Simon Fraser University, said that ‘chug’ has become an cultural insider term for native Canadians.

“I would put ‘chug’ in the same category as the N-word and ‘queer’ in that it’s an insider word that you don’t use unless you’re inside that category,” Reder said.

In the United States, sociologists and scholars have noted some communities’ reclamation of derogatory terms such as the N-word and ‘queer.’ Emerson College professor Jabari Asim charts in his 2007 book The N-Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t, and Why the reconfiguration of the word as a cultural insider term, particularly in black American hip-hop and rap.

Works by sociologists and cultural studies scholars such as Steven Seidman in the mid-1990s using the term “queer” to refer to sexual minorities that didn’t fit into the mainstream lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender movements of the time.

Similarly, ‘chug’ shifted from a racist slur to a more fluid term used amongst natives, especially urban youth.

Divisions among urban native community

Cheryl Robinson, 34, a youth coordinator at Red Fox and native youth worker for almost two decades, said non-native kids called her ‘chug’ in elementary school. She didn’t hear it between native kids often, until she started hanging out with other native teens and experimenting with drugs and alcohol in the early and mid-1990s.

Shaydean Wilson hears native teens using 'chug' against each other.

“It was more like sarcasm,” she said. They used ‘chug’ as an insult thinly-veiled as jokes.

Shaydean Wilson, a twelfth grader at Britannia Secondary, agreed.

“It’s a racist word that was put onto us, thinking that we’re like drunks and that’s all we do,” she said.

“I know some of those kids, I grew up with some of those kids from my elementary. Some of them do volunteer work and most of them aren’t a bunch of ‘chugs’ like people say they are.”

Wilson skipped school and fell behind in ninth grade, but that changed after she transferred to an alternative program for native youth at Britannia.

These days, she focuses more on school. She volunteers at Red Fox and thinks about her future.

Wilson was born in Bella Bella, a small island town 1,300 kilometres north of Vancouver. She identifies as a member of the Heiltsuk nation.

She lives with her parents in East Vancouver, where her father grew up.  He attended Britannia Secondary, which was as ethnically diverse back then as it is in 2011.

Britannia’s student body reflects the diversity of Commercial Drive. In the last few years, more Middle Eastern and African refugees settled and sent their children to elementary and secondary school in East Vancouver. These children mingle with their first- or second-generation Vietnamese, Italian, and Chinese peers, most of whose parents came in the last three decades. The result: a colourful mix of students in the hallways at lunchtime.

“I see a lot of little couples,” Shaydean said about interracial dating at the school. Her dad loved Britannia, and encouraged his daughter to attend. He had friends with people from different places. There wasn’t a lot of racism at school, a respite from the outside world.

“He doesn’t want his kids to grow up in that kind of environment, he wants his kids to look at different options,” Shaydean said. “And not to be racist.”

However, for Posey this is a difficult lesson to teach to some of the native youth he interacts with on the Drive. It’s difficult to convince them not to use a term that’s so familiar to them.

“The word chug, trying to explain it to them is complicated,” he said. “Just like school, you can’t explain it all at once. Just over time, people change over time.”

Timeless classics in a brand new setting – that’s how Richards describes his latest album, “Dal Richards, Musically Yours.” It will be a vocalist’s compilation, he said, including songs by Jennifer Hayes, Diane Lines, Caroline Markos, Dawn Chubai and Jamie Croil. Richards sings two songs on the album, scheduled for release this May.

Dal orchestrates his big band at the Warehouse studio.

Richards said that his latest release has the familiar big band sound and jazz standards that he is renowned for, but that the material selection and the musical settings are unconventional.

“The singers are singing unlikely songs, you know what I mean?” he said.

Nobody knows big band music like Richards does. At 93, his ear for timbre (albeit with a hearing aid) has evolved through more than 80 years playing the clarinet and saxophone, and leading a 16-piece orchestra at some of Vancouver’s most prestigious venues and events.

For 25 years, he played at Hotel Vancouver’s one-time Panorama Roof and he has performed for over 70 years at the Pacific National Exhibition.

But the indefatigable Richards wants more.

“I enjoy a gig and I’m always looking for the next one,” said Richards at an interview in his downtown studio apartment.

He rattled off memories of his past performances at the Orpheum and the PNE, and upcoming gig at the River Rock Show Theatre. The wall of his apartment is covered with plaques and awards, including the Order of Canada, the Order of British Columbia and the Vancouver Freedom of the City award.

Desire to excel

On one day, Richards had a 7 a.m. breakfast with the mayor, recorded his own radio show over lunch, squeezed in an interview, and then celebrated Vancouver’s 125^thbirthday at the Jack Poole Plaza. This was after spending the previous night recording his latest CD.

He keeps on top of his hectic schedule with some help from his friends and his wife, Muriel. “She’s my guiding star,” he said.

Recording 'Dal's Place' at AM 650 radio.

Richards ran down the winding staircase in his downtown apartment to search for Muriel’s photos. Minutes later he scurried down again to find a copy of his last CD, “Dal Richards and Friends – One More Time.”

“Everyone needs a little bit of luck, as the song says, in life, to help things turn out as they hope for,” he read.

He looked up and smiled before continuing. “Of course there are many other prerequisites, such as desire, energy, and of prime importance, the desire to excel.“

Richards said that he feels lucky to be active at his age, but also that he puts a lot of effort into his performances. He said that he was always competing with himself.

“I want to be able to write, sing, blow my horn, lead a band, be a master of ceremonies, whatever, I want to excel at it,” he said.

The question that bothers him most is ‘when will he retire?’ He laughs at the thought. “What would I do with myself?” he said.

He said that he’s come to a point where he asks the person back,  “Well, when are YOU going to retire?”

Richards said he still enjoys what he does and his good health allows him stay focused on his work. His memory sometimes falters for the lyrics to his songs, he said, but he never forgets the music.

Richards’ adventures and overtures

Richards literally stumbled into his calling as a virtuoso. He was on his way home from school in Vancouver’s Marpole district when he tried to snipe a bird with his slingshot.

The nine-year-old Richards was so eager to examine his fallen prey that he tripped and fell as he ran towards it. The slingshot’s prongs injured his eyes and he was doomed to spend weeks recovering in a dark room.

His parents enrolled him in music lessons to cheer him up and keep him occupied. He took to the clarinet, and the rest is music.

Listen to Dal sing ‘Hour of Parting’:

Richards’ resilience is driven by his love for performance. Three years ago he underwent surgery on both his knees. “I thought to myself, that’s a lot of time away from the bandstand,” he said.

Richards amazed his physiotherapist by doing twice the number of prescribed exercises during in his surgery preparation and recovery period. He shocked his doctor by being fully mobile again just three weeks after the operation.

He showed the same durability while training to carry the Winter Olympics torch through Robson Street last year. He would jog half a mile to Muriel’s office and jog back with her, he said. He also swam 20 laps once a week.

More recently, for exercise he rides his stationary cycle for half an hour every night while watching the news and does his famous squats twice a day. (He sometimes does them on stage, just to tickle the crowd, he said.)

Dal prepares to do some squats for the camera.

Richards calls himself  “a ham at heart.”  He said that he thrives on his audience’s love and affection.

“All those people come to me and shake my hand and tell me that they followed my music over years and listened to my radio show. It is a great legacy that I carry around at this age,” he said.

His hour of parting

Part of Richards’ legacy is his arrangement for the song, “Hour of Parting,” his theme song for 72 years.

“I love that song, lovely song, beautiful,” said Richards. He said he heard it broadcast from the Los Angeles Hotel Biltmore and adopted it as his theme in 1939 when he started playing at the Palomar Ballroom of the first Hotel Vancouver.

Richards said that if he had to stop making music then he would write a second book. “So much has happened to me in the year since my last book was published, I’d devote my blood and guts to it,” he said.

At the eve of his latest CD release, Richards is still excited for adventures to come. He wrote in his last book, One More Time – The Dal Richards Story, that he’s nowhere near the hour of parting from music.

“Not when I’m still on top of my game with the gigs coming in and the young talent coming up,” he wrote.

Richards wrote in is book that one day his “true hour” would come, but till then, “keep your dancing shoes polished and your partner close by. The Dal Richards Orchestra could be coming to a hall near you.”

Charles, 27, speaks the Musqueam dialect of the Coast Salish First Nations language family.

She learned the language at the feet of her great-uncle and later, as a high school student, behind a desk at the University of British of Columbia’s First Nations Languages Program.

Now she’s taking it to the stage, rapping in her Musqueam language.

“It makes me feel a lot more connected to who I am and where I come from and it also makes me feel stronger inside too,” she said.

Sharing the language with younger family members, and youth in her community, is part of Charles’ motivation for fusing it with hip hop culture.

“It’s not just in my community too,” said Charles, who’s been rapping in her Aboriginal dialect for a few years now.

“There’s a hunger in youth …to learn a lot more of their culture.”

Endangered languages

First Nations communities across Canada are trying to revive their unique languages. Right now, many dialects teeter on the brink of extinction.

First Nations communities in B.C. speak 32 different languages, comprised of 59 unique dialects.

The downriver dialect of the Musqueam people.

More than half of Aboriginal languages in the country reside in B.C., according to a 2010 report from the First Peoples’ Heritage, Languages and Culture Council.

There are only 278 fluent speakers of all three Halkomelem dialects. Halkomelem, an English term, refers to upriver, island and downriver – or Musqueam – dialects.

Like most Aboriginal languages, the Musqueam dialect of Halkomelem is an oral language and was not traditionally written down. It boasts 22 consonant sounds not heard in English.

The Disappearing Languages Project, from The Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages and National Geographic, identified B.C. as one of five geographic regions in the world where languages are disappearing rapidly.

The loss of Aboriginal language began when Europeans came to Canada.

The decline continued past colonization through government policies, such as residential schools which further stamped out many dialects in place of the dominant language – English.

Many Aboriginal languages have already been lost forever. In B.C., eight languages are gone – no documentation remains.

These losses have sparked efforts across the country to record, preserve and teach First Nations languages.

Generations in the classroom

Patricia Shaw is the director of the UBC First Nations Languages Program. Charles, her father and her mother took classes through the program.

Christie Lee Charles raps in the Musqueam language at the Vancouver Art Gallery event FUSE: Dark City.

Multiple generations in First Nations language classrooms are common, she said.

Classes typically take place on the Musqueam Indian Reserve, which makes it easier for community members – young and old alike – to attend.

“It really helps build bridges across what might otherwise be a generation gap,” Shaw said.

“One of the painfully poignant things about loss of language is that the elders who are left don’t have anyone to talk to.”

She said she’s impressed with Charles’ blend of popular culture with the Musqueam language.

“The really big challenge is taking it out of the classroom and into your lives,” she said.

Charles laughs when she thinks about her dad’s language-learning tactics.

“My dad studied it – a lot,” she said. “I’d come here on the weekend and he’d be cleaning his house, but he’d be blasting his language tapes.

“Instead of music coming out of someone’s house it was language.”

Charles’ dad, Henry, now holds the position of First Nations Storyteller in Residence at the Vancouver Public Library.

For him, it’s about keeping his culture alive through language.

“Musqueam is a living breathing…being,” he said.

Language family

The desire to maintain language is nothing new to Charles’ family. Her great-grandparents were instrumental in recording the oral history of the Musqueam people.

Christie Lee Charles chose to tattoo her Musqueam name on her arm so it would stand out on stage.

Charles learned the language from her great-uncle. His death prompted her to return to her linguistic roots.

“It wasn’t until he passed away that I went back into the language and started studying it a lot more because I realized I had to after he was gone.”

Charles is doing more than learning – she’s sharing the language and living its teachings. She’s using an ancient language in an entirely new and provocative way on stage using hip hop.

She plans to finish her education in Aboriginal Studies at Langara College. She began there a few years ago, before taking time off to do an internship in government and have her baby.

Since the birth of her daughter, Kimora, Charles is toying with a new idea – creating and performing children’s music in Musqueam.

She’s already practicing; she talks to her baby girl in Musqueam every day and soothes her to sleep with modern Musqueam lullabies every night.

“My own home, my own country inside,” said Patrikeeff of his Abbotsford dwelling. “This is the house of the heart.”

This is the closest Patrikeeff can come to traveling back in time to visit his country. His real home is tsarist Russia, which ceased to exist at the turn of the twentieth century.

Patrikeeff, 78, is one of a few descendents of the old Russian officer class who live in Vancouver but identify first and foremost with tsarist Russia. They are desperately trying to keep its traditions alive.

But now even these traditions are slipping away as the formerly tight community loses its members and becomes increasingly fragmented.

A dying breed

Patrikeeff and his family stepped off the train in Vancouver on a Friday night in 1949, their few suitcases hurriedly packed with clothes and a hand-drawn portrait of tsar Aleksandr II. On Saturday morning, they went to a Russian Orthodox church.

Patrikeeff, the son of a tsarist officer, describes himself as a White Russian – the term used for those who remained loyal to the monarchy during the 1917 revolution. Like his ancestors, he sticks to the view that only people of Orthodox faith can be considered truly Russian.

The church Patrikeeff visited on his first morning in Vancouver no longer exists.

He now goes to an Orthodox church in Dewdney even though the services there are in English. Church remains the main place where he meets his fellow émigrés.

Photo gallery: Inside Patrikeeff’s home (click for larger image)

Every Sunday he slowly climbs the stairs to the second floor of the small wooden cabin and stands for the two-hour service. Church has become more difficult to attend, Patrikeeff said. He now rarely goes to the Saturday evening vespers.

George Vishniakoff, 66, also attends Orthodox services regularly. He has worshipped at the Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church on 43rd Avenue since he was six and sometimes still volunteers there.

He met other White Russian immigrants at church, but has lost track of them over the years, Vishniakoff said.

Even when he meets his old friends at church, they rarely speak in their native tongue. Meetings are so rare that there is little to talk about.

“It’s sad we are little by little losing our Russian character, not only the language but the culture as well,” Vishniakoff said.

The Russian Community Centre on 4th Avenue promotes itself as a gathering place for Russian émigrés, but Vishniakoff goes there only once a year for the Christmas bazaar.

Patrikeeff has not been at the centre for seven years even though he was one of its founding members. He sees his old friends so rarely that he doesn’t know whether they are still alive. When asked where they are, he pointed his finger at the ceiling and shrugged.

A vibrant community

It’s been nearly a half century since Patrikeeff worked weekends to transform an old Kitsilano movie house into the Russian Community Centre, but the memories of that time are still fresh in his mind.

Vishniakoff finds it hard to find a balance between the Russian and English cultures.

He and a small army of other immigrants ripped out movie seats, rewired the stage and re-floored the main hall to have the centre ready to open its doors by 1964, according to the centre’s current directors.

The centre had up to 300 members in the 1960s and 70s, Vishniakoff said. Hundreds of Russian immigrants still come out for the centre’s events, but it is rare to see the older White Russians among them.

Russian immigrants donated their personal savings to build orthodox churches in Vancouver.

“It was like a second home,” said Vishniakoff of the church on 43rd Avenue. “It was important to help the church when possible.”

White Russians came across the city to the community centre and two orthodox churches every week.

Large crowds partied at the centre every New Years, Patrikeeff said. Russians as well as Canadians would also rush there when Soviet musicians, actors or circus acrobats came to perform.

“It helped at that time to connect among ourselves,” Vishniakoff said. “It gave the opportunity not to just us Russians, but also Canadians to see what Russian talents there were.”

A new generation

Snow typically piled six feet deep outside Edna Cazakoff’s small Saskatchewan farm house in the winter. Cazakoff remembers how she and her three siblings would cozy up by the stove on cold evenings and listen to their father read them Russian stories.

But Cazakoff, 89, could not read these stories to her only daughter when she raised her in Vancouver.

Her daughter spoke Russian until she was five years old but switched to English after she got teased for her accent at school.

Cazakoff’s daughter has also not shown interest in learning the family history except for the few borsch and vareniki recipes that Cazakoff passed down to her from her own mother. Cazakoff’s parents fled Russia before the turn of the century to escape the tsar’s religious prosecutions.

“It doesn’t seem to be important…as if there’s no time for it,” Cazakoff said. “It’s hard to hang on to the things that were very important to us.”

Vishniakoff and his Canadian wife picked Russian names for their daughters “so that they know that they’re from a Russian family,” he said.

His mother fled Russia after the revolution and lost a brother in the Soviet Gulag camps after he returned to his fatherland.

Nadejda Vishniakoff passed on her language and traditions to her granddaughters Tamara and Larissa. But the girls spoke English at home since their Canadian mother did not know Russian.

They now go to church only once or twice a year because they no longer understand the Russian service.

Vishniakoff also started to go to church less because his family does not go.

“I argued, argued, but what can be done?” Vishniakoff said.

Patrikeeff remains hopeful that his country’s history will not be forgotten. He is widowed and doesn’t have any children, but hopes to start a new family with a mother of an older child who is interested in history and could carry on old Russian traditions, Patrikeeff said.

For now he jokingly calls his home the Ipatiev House after the last living place of the Russian royal family in Ekaterinburg. The site has since become a memorial for the family and the old Russian state.

On a typical Saturday, French, Italian, Arabic and Mandarin echo through the classrooms at the University of British Columbia.

These are not only the usual twenty-something students, but boisterous mature learners.

“When they see all the white-haired people in the class, they go, oh dear, do I have to study with them?” said Nan Hornaas, 74.

“But I think we’ve reached that period where we’re in our second childhood, and we act younger than they do.”

Every Saturday morning for most of the year, the Vancouver campus is packed with senior citizens learning new languages through Continuing Studies.

The demand for language courses among seniors has grown in recent years, said Nina Parr, Program Director of Languages, Culture and Travel at Continuing Studies.

“I think seniors are more active than they’ve been. People are traveling more in their post-retirement years, so there’s a lot more interest in other cultures and languages.”

The department will likely continue to expand its programming for its more elderly students in the coming years.

“As the baby boomers are retiring, we’re probably going to see that age group increase,” said Parr.

Active brains, active lives

The non-credit courses are open to all ages, but senior citizens make up most of the language students.

In an Advanced French class, students range from age 27 to 82.

A group of seniors in the class have been attending together for up to 20 years. They call themselves “le club samedi,” or the Saturday morning club.

“It’s a social thing for them,” said Parr, “just keeping themselves active and keeping their brains engaged.”

The students hosted a goodbye party in their classroom on the final day of class for the semester in March. Bottles of red wine and platters of sharp cheese crowded the tables as French conversation filled the room.

“There’s lots of fun. We joke, we laugh at each other,” said Joyce Craig, 82.

“We’re here because we really want to be here.”

Travel is a major reason for learning a new language, at any age.

“It’s really enjoyable to go to Montreal or Quebec City or Paris and be able to actually converse with people in their language,” said Craig.

Often people will hear her accent and begin speaking to her in English, Craig said. When that happens, she has a firm response.

“I’m here to speak French.”

Life experience

Continuing Studies first started offering French classes in 1970. Mandarin classes were added in 1972 and then Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Arabic, Greek and Japanese were added in 1974.

The extra courses were added due to demand, but the most popular classes for seniors continue to be French and Spanish.

“Mandarin is our number three language and there’s a lower percentage of seniors in Mandarin,” said Parr. “People tend to learn that language for more business or professional reasons.”

Senior citizens enrich the classes because of their life experience, Parr said.

“In a language class, because they are conversation-based, people are sharing their lives. You learn so much from their experiences and what they’ve done.”