KELLY MCMANUS, North Shore Outlook, July 2, 2009

North Vancouver RCMP say a local “ring of pimps and drug traffickers” has been seducing teen girls into prostitution and advertising on Craigslist. Cpl. Marlene Morton said men in their early 20s or late teens are preying on their former high school classmates in a North Van neighbourhood, some under 18 years old.

“They know each other,” said Morton of the girls and the alleged pimps. “They were maybe in the same school but not in the same grade.”

The RCMP received a tip from staff at a North Vancouver high school and have been investigating since last November, Morton said. School district representative Victoria Miles said the investigation is an RCMP file, so the district is not free to comment on specifics, but she did point out the alleged recruitment of teens into prostitution is “not happening on school grounds or during school time.”

Morton said the North Vancouver pimps often recruit the girls through gifts. “Often these girls think its a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. They’re given clothing, drugs, cellphones, etcetera and then they’re told ‘You’re actually not my girlfriend and you need to work off your debt.’” Morton said the relationships spiral into exploitation and abuse. “The pimps are using violence or the threat of violence to control the girls,” she wrote earlier in a notice. So far RCMP investigators allege 11 young female sex workers and four pimps.

Some underage sex workers may be circumventing the relationships with pimps and advertising their services on Craigslist, Morton also said. She cited one June 26 posting that listed “uncovered” sexual services, meaning sex acts without a condom, offered for $150. She said investigators knew the girl in the ad to be under 18.

One June 26 posting promises a “Quick-e Car date” in North Vancouver at the Parkgate Community Centre. A June 29 search of Craigslist revealed over a dozen postings offering the sexual services of young women in North and West Vancouver claiming to be between 19 and 24, many of whom promised they looked “barely legal” and offered “G.F.E.” (girlfriend experience).

Some listings posted services ranging from $45 per sex act or $250 per hour.

Social worker says disclosure rate may not reflect rise in teen prostitutes

Morton did not reveal the number of North Vancouver teens who have identified as sex workers and reached out for help, but in another media report RCMP has said support groups are logging more cases of teen sex workers on the North Shore.

Morton said the RCMP’s Youth Intervention and Sex Crime Investigations units are working with ONYX, a Vancouver support network for sexually exploited youth.

However a social worker partnered with ONYX warned that just because more teens are coming forward with “disclosures,” doesn’t mean that the rate of incidences is on the rise. Diane Sowden, director at Children of the Street Society, a partner organization with ONYX, said her group speaks to teens in Lower Mainland classrooms, sharing information about how pimps recruit young people and how young sex workers can quickly find themselves wrapped up in a snarl of crime and addictions.

Sowden said more disclosures by local teen prostitutes can “mean that more kids are asking for services and help which is a positive.” “Now, through more education, they are identifying . . . (saying) maybe I am in over my head . . . That doesn’t mean more kids are being exploited,” she said.

ONYX could not comment on the issue, said a social worker from that organization.

Sowden said that her group has visited high schools on the North Shore to make presentations about avoiding prostitution. Outreach workers visited North Van’s Argyle secondary “on a regular basis and have for years.”

West Van assistant superintendent Chris Kennedy says the troupe has visited the West Van school district, but, “It (teen prostitution) hasn’t been raised by counsellors or administrators in the schools. It hasn’t been a concern.”

In visits to Sentinel secondary in 2008 and 2009, a troupe of young outreach workers from Children of the Street dramatized the downward spiral of gift-giving and exploitation of teens by pimps. West Van school board chair Mary Ann Booth said the presentation received positive feedback from students and teachers because, “It relates to kids . . . Any time you can get the voice of youth speaking out to youth the message is so much more underscored and accepted.”

Responding to the RCMP claims that young local sex workers are using Craigslist, Sowden said her group now focuses more on education about internet recruiting. She said pimps often recruit young people through social networking sites. “We now know that young people are using technology so the predators and the pimps are also using technology,” she said. “Young people can also be selling themselves without a pimp involved when it comes to online (exchanges) … but the fact is the customers they are meeting with are still the same customers.”

Cpl. Marlene Morton said anyone with leads about allegedly burgeoning teen prostitution networks or any young people who need help can contact Const. Cam Stewart or Const. Michelle Steele at 604-985-1311.

kmcmanus@northshoreoutlook.com

Bryan Tickell was sentenced this week to six years in jail for ripping off elderly and mentally unfit clients in his former job at the Public Guardian and Trustee of B.C. His taunts to investigators ring eerily, “It was just so easy.”

KELLY MCMANUS, North Shore Outlook, June 4, 2009

Standing in the hall outside courtroom number two, he could be a young lawyer. He looks healthy, well-fed, and is just beginning to show that 30-something heaviness to the cheeks.

He checks his cell phone, punching on the keys as though he’s texting. He smoothes over his crisp dark suit and his red silk tie.

It’s not until Bryan Michael Tickell walks into the courtroom that the cracks in his upwardly mobile demeanor begin to show. The 30 year old is accused of 14 charges involving forgery, breach of trust, theft and fraud covering a 10-month period where he worked for the Public Guardian and Trustee of B.C. (PGT) as a case manager of more than 200 clients. The PGT alleged after a forensic investigation with Deloitte & Touche that he had defrauded or attempted to defraud 12 of those people. In September 2008, Tickell pleaded guilty to three of those charges.

As he enters the courtroom, he turns a pair of aviator sunglasses in his hand, pacing the isle with a slow swagger, a little too slow. It’s as though Tickell needs to keep moving. His thick shoulders are squared, his chin juts forward.

His lawyer, Scott Wright, indicates it’s too soon to sit down, and Tickell stands waiting for the judge who will deliver his sentence.

Not much is known about Tickell, and what is known is sometimes hard to believe, according to Justice Tony Dohm.

But the court does know that Tickell’s job was to help manage the estates and finances of PGT clients, because, after being deemed mentally unfit, they couldn’t take care of their own affairs.

He lied to get that job, referencing a fake degree he’d hoodwinked from the University of Carleton and a non-existent one from the University of Calgary. He provided a phony-reference, one John Murray, a false identity he created thanks to an Alberta forklift operator who lost his wallet.

Former West Vanner Phyllis Lowdell, in her 80s, was one of his victims, and last fall Tickell pleaded guilty to defrauding her of a Maple Ridge property. He had it transferred into his own name for “$1.00 plus love and affection,” and flipped the property for $1 million.

Friend and unofficial guardian Ross Henderson and his wife Elaine Henderson remember meeting Lowdell three years ago, shortly before she came under the supervision of the PGT’s new recruit, Tickell.

It was spring time. Ross Henderson found her wandering down the street in their British Properties neighbourhood, her pants held up around her 90-pound frame with a Barbie pin. She needed help with her taxes, and she needed groceries, she told the Hendersons. Over the next six months, Elaine Henderson would bring meals over to Lowdell’s house every few days, but she often didn’t answer the door, so Henderson left the food on the hood of Lowdell’s old car.

In September 2006, Elaine Henderson crawled through Lowdell’s window and found her face down on the floor. According to Henderson, they took her to Lions Gate Hospital with a serious infection and soon after she was deemed mentally unfit to run her own affairs, and was entrusted to the PGT.

Tickell managed her case and many others like hers in his time at the PGT – between fall 2006 and summer 2007. There was Barry Boris Derlago, a victim of Tickell’s forgery, to which Tickell pleaded guilty last fall. A PGT client, Derlago suffered an aorta rupture in February 2007 and at that point Tickell was told Derlago didn’t have long to live, according to the PGT. The next month, Tickell had drafted a new will for Derlago in which 20 per cent of his $1.3 million estate was designated to Tickell, listed as “My (Derlago’s) longtime friend’s grandson,” reported by The Outlook last year. The fraudster tricked two caretakers into witnessing the fraudulent will, telling them they were signing a transfer of petty cash.

According to Justice Tony Dohm, when Tickell left his job at the public guardian it coincided with Derlago’s death, and “that’s what brought Mr. Tickell’s house of cards down.”

Derlago’s brother, Ivan Derlago, claimed it was when he flew from Winnipeg to North Vancouver in August 2007 to bury his brother – and found that he was no longer listed as the executor of his brother’s estate – that the PGT became aware of Tickell’s fraud.

The PGT has said it was internally aware of the fraud and that even if Derlago hadn’t died, they would have caught Tickell’s flub within the month due to internal controls.

Tickell was arrested soon after, and, according to PGT spokesperson Indiana Matters, he asked to speak with PGT head Jay Chalke. When Chalke arrived at the North Vancouver cell, Tickell allegedly relished the opportunity to taunt his former higher-up.

In Justice Dohm’s reasons for sentencing, he explains of that incident, “Mr. Tickell told Mr. Chalke that he had done other things, but he would not assist the authorities in finding those.”

He repeatedly told investigators, “It was just so easy,” and, according to a psychologist’s assessment, Tickell enjoyed talking about his crimes and also the “psychological challenge” of stealing, forging and conning others.

While the psychologist’s report said that Tickell showed “a large number of features” of a psychopath – a grandiose vision of himself, a lack of empathy for his victims, a self-centred vision of the world – he didn’t qualify because he hadn’t shown the unstable, antisocial lifestyle that typifies psychopaths.

Justice Dohm rejects that line. He also dismisses the letters from Tickell’s family – his mother, his cousin, an uncle and a friend – as personal observations from people who “have obviously not known of the other side of him (Tickell).”

“It is hard to know much about Mr. Tickell’s background and antecedents,” Justice Dohm notes. “He is profoundly dishonest and manipulative.”

Leaning back in his chair through the hour-long summary from the judge, Tickell is just that, apparently impassive, unknowable. As to how he has chosen to present himself in the past, what is known are photos from social networking sites. Those images now removed from the internet could certainly qualify as “grandiose” – one where he flexes, shirtless, glaring up at the camera, or another where he poses in a white singlet, hand over his shoulder, his head cocked. In all photos he is serious, not smiling.

Perhaps the most fitting is one black and white snap where Tickell stands behind a screen, partially obscured, his face in shadow. In each he stares straight into the camera.

In the sentencing, Justice Dohm gives Tickell four years for defrauding the PGT and six years apiece for his crimes against Derlago and Lowdell, all to be served concurrently. The sentence is one year more than requested by Crown counsel.

Phyllis Lowdell is pleased. The elderly woman is now 50 pounds heavier than she was three years ago, and more alert since moving to a North Vancouver seniors living facility where she sometimes hosts the Hendersons for dinner.

Elaine Henderson helps her down the courthouse steps, where TV cameras await. Lowdell concentrates on shuffling forward with her walker as she notes, “He (Tickell) just thinks he’s damned smart, that’s all.” She was previously quoted as having resented his imposition as her grandson. “That’s why he did it in the first place.”

The money recovered from Tickell’s sale of her $1-million property will go to charity, she and the Hendersons say.

There are other alleged victims out there, and their names are on public record, but the PGT cautions about drawing undue attention to “vulnerable people,” according to PGT spokesperson Indiana Matters. “They’re not in a position to respond or take care of themselves . . . Normally we don’t discuss anything at all about our clients . . . The law has determined they need protection.”

Matters says all 12 of the people or their estates have been reimbursed “plus interest.”

In that list is one man whose PT Cruiser Tickell stole, and the woman who found her Standard Life Pension and American Express Travelers cheques fraudulently converted for Tickell’s personal use. Others whose credit cards or TransLink passes or cheques ended up in the hands of their case worker.

The PGT says after the nine-month investigation, no outstanding cases of frauds remain in Tickell’s caseload. According to court records, that investigation process topped out over $1 million in legal fees, consulting and staffing costs.

The organization also says it’s revamped its hiring and internal checks and balances, so that opportunists like Tickell won’t get through the door again to have a crack at the 32,000 clients under its care.

But Tickell’s boast to investigators echoes with a creepy hollowness, “It was just so easy.”

Fraud might not be so easy for Tickell in the future, however, as Justice Dohm has ordered him to provide a DNA sample within 30 days, to protect against any future identity theft.

The measure will make it tougher for Tickell to continue “heaping deceit upon deceit.”

Even at this moment where perhaps the most is known about Tickell – what he’s done, where he’s headed – he shows no emotion. Led from the courtroom in cuffs he only squares his shoulders, stares straight ahead as the sheriff ushers him into the next phase of his life behind bars.

KELLY MCMANUS, North Shore Outlook, May 7, 2009

In her lucite pumps, Conni Smudge is seven feet tall, a 220-pound pillar of W-O-M-A-N. She spells it out like that, too, with a flick of the hips, “Doubleyew-ohhh, Em, Ay, En. Woooooo-man.”

Her dress, a billowing blue chiffon number, catches the afternoon breeze through the window.

“Daytime drag is always a bit scary,” the drag queen says, considering herself in the mirror.

She is wig-less, and arches one carefully-drawn eyebrow for effect. “The nighttime hides a multitude of sins.”

Daylight is one challenge, social frost is another. Whether hosting a ladies’ soiree for symphony supporters or MCing a biker’s night in Nanaimo, Conni Smudge sometimes has to blast through the deep freeze to help kickstart a party. As an MC, she sings or tells jokes, compliments people’s shoes — whatever works.

“They (clients) hire us (queens) out to walk around and be glamorous and fabulous … some people might be a bit nervous about it at first,” she pats more glitter over her brows. “It’s like, I know I’m a man in a dress. Let’s get over it. Tell me how fabulous I look.”

Chris Bolton grew up in North Vancouver, whereas Conni, his stage persona, had her start in little dives in and around Nanaimo, Comox and Port Alberni. Her first show, back in the early 1990s, was choreographed to perhaps one of the most ubiquitous of drag anthems, Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”

In one of Smudge’s first weekly gigs at a biker-frequented establishment on the island, management put up chainlink fencing around the dance floor – where she and a few of her fellow queens did their lip sync shows, baring chest hair through their faux fur get-ups – just in case unenlightened patrons threw beer bottles.

A few years later, some connected guys from Nanaimo’s bar scene arranged for Smudge to MC a biker party at an undisclosed location on the island.

With two exotic dancers, one known as Celica, Smudge boarded a float plane in Coal Harbour one windy afternoon, her sequined dress whipping at her legs. She agreed to be blindfolded. A couple hours later she removed that blindfold to peer from backstage into a room packed with about 150 bikers.

“I was really scared… they were hooting and hollering,” she remembers.

“Well, gentleman, the ladies have arrived,” shouted the organizer, and Smudge steamrolled onstage, guns blazing.

“I walked in first and said, how the f*** are ya? And they were like, what the hell?”

It was a tough crowd: huge guys, some with huge bellies drooping past their seats towards the floor. Guys with scars and scraggly beards and tattoos. Some muttered, “fag.”

In the front row, one of them leered at her, arms crossed.

“I walked up and said, listen pal, I’m more of a man than you’ll ever be and I’m more of a woman than you’ll ever get.” Soon after the men were lining up for polaroids with Smudge. When she MCed for that crowd again, she made a thousand bucks in one night just charging for snapshots.

“I started out doing drag because I wanted to change people’s opinions,” she explains: “The name is ‘Smudge’ because I wanted to smudge the lines between heterosexual and homosexual. We’re all just people.”

It’s the same reason Smudge tears off her wig after every Sunday afternoon show at The Oasis on Davie Street. “I think it shows the transformation. It ruins the illusion,” Bolton explains.

Instead of morphing completely from one to the other, he sees a continuum, “the whole journey” of Chris and Conni.

Chris Bolton was teased sometimes mercilessly by kids at Ridgeway elementary, an experience he shared with a sociology class at Malaspina University as an adult. “It was cathartic.”

He was a shy kid who went on an exchange to Germany in his teens and came back full of confidence and exuberance. He gravitates to service or sales jobs because they allow him to work with people and he loves to tell a good joke. His North Van home holds witticisms like a pillow that reads “It’s not easy being queen.”

“Connie is just me but ten times more,” Bolton explains in the blue chiffon and lucite pumps get-up, his voice beginning to fill the kitchen like some smokey clandestine watering hole, or a “Love Boat” party bus heading off into the night for a Vancouver Island pub crawl, one of his all time favorite gigs.

His gestures tumble forth with increasing gusto as he grabs a wig. Choices range between a purple afro, a Liza Minelli-like mop, and the blond Streisand bob that makes the cut.

“Oh! Just gorgeous!” Smudge booms. “Now just let me powder my chest.”

A few years back, Conni Smudge committed to multiple evening engagements in Vancouver’s West End. Her route between gigs took her, heels and all, past some downtown alleyways, a bit dark, away from the rainbow flags of Davie. Bolton’s mother worried a drag queen might run into trouble crossing one of those alleys.

Smudge shudders for a second when she mentions the more recent West End “fag bashings.”

Then Smudge lets her voice drop to Bolton’s range. “But are you going to f*** with this? I don’t think so.” She draws a long, theatrical hand down the many, many feet of her blue getup, saying sweetly: “Especially if I’ve painted one eye brow higher than the other.”

For all the snapshots out there of Conni Smudge – evading “handsy” bikers, twirling on party boats and party buses or holding court with other queens – this moment deserves a polaroid, of Chris and Conni congratulating one another with a resounding high-five.

Conni Smudge appears in Fit for a Queen, the Vegas-style drag show to benefit the Shooting Stars Foundation, running May 14 at the River Rock Casino, 8 p.m. Tickets: $30 through Ticketmaster, 604-280-4444. Last month the foundation donated $100,00 to local HIV/AIDS organizations including A Loving Spoonful, AIDS Vancouver and Positive Women’s Network. More info at shootingstarsfoundation.org.

Conni Smudge also hosts Hott Smudge Sundays at the Oasis Ultra Lounge. Info: 604-685-1724 or connismudge@yahoo.com. May 11 catch Conni Smudge on Studio 4 with Fanny Kiefer.

KELLY MCMANUS, The Globe and Mail, April, 2009

“God, it’s exhausting being me.”

So notes 17-year old Zoey Redbird in Hunted. Between boys, school work and the shifting allegiances in her social circle, life can be complicated.

Add to that an immortal sex god with a serious vendetta and a bloody civil war at her finishing school for vampires — “Hell High,” as it’s known to outsiders, or the “House of Night” as it’s known to vamp kids — and Zoey’s life becomes even more exhausting.

Twilight haters, don’t pull away yet. The fifth book in mother-daughter team P.C. and Kristin Cast’s popular House of Night series handles some interesting material.

Admittedly, vampirism is an all-too-pervasive trope in teen narratives of late, the problem being that many authors don’t go beyond the surface flash and glamour of young, hot, undead teens. However, the Cast team rises above bottom-of-the-heap vampire clichés by exploring teen sexuality with creative gusto.

Remember your first kiss, or the first time you fell in love? Chances are you were a teenager. Chances are you felt invincible, otherworldly even, as the surge of your new sexual power flooded your horizons and your body morphed overnight from kid to adult — not unlike, say, how the goddess Nyx marks Zoey with “gorgeous” tattoos that frame her face and unfurl down the new curves of her body.

I remember hitting 16 and discovering the strange world of sexual attraction. Those new feelings were magical, mythic even. They rose above the mundane indignities of math class or soccer practice, convincing myself and my friends, as Zoey notes of her circle of sex-charged, multicultural vampire pals, “all of our lives were in the process of never being the same.”

Sex drives and metamorphosis lead the charge in that department, and in these novels, there’s a scientific explanation for what happens when vamps bite humans or other vamps. Sexy pleasure receptors in the brain of biter and bitee stimulate an unparalleled erotic romp, creating psychic bonds in some cases or inspiring (for teen participants) make-out-only three-way sessions in others.

“Hot,” Zoey or one of her friends might note in the many times they witness sexy vampire outbursts of desire and longing mixed with lunchtime. But that hormone-charged power comes at a price and can turn dark, greedy or possessive, as Zoey finds — in this novel and in others — with the cast of dreamy men and boys who vie for her attention.

Frisky teenaged vampires might not represent “new material,” but the Casts use those fertile themes to create strong, complex female characters negotiating the darkness and the light of sexual attraction, the biggest strength in this series.

Zoey has recently lost her virginity, although she regrets it and thinks she’ll wait before she tries sex again. That doesn’t mean she isn’t strongly attracted “to more than one guy” — sexy undead archers, vampire guards or even her ex-boyfriend, the (merely human) quarterback.

The worst of her would-be suitors is Kalona, a fallen angel turned sex-addled predator who, in ancient times, was imprisoned in the earth by Cherokee women who grew tired of serving as his sex slaves. Now he’s taken over the House of Night with his twisted “Raven Mockers,” a band of mutated raven-human hybrids.

When Zoe and her girlfriends lay eyes on the shining Kalona, who is perpetually shirtless, his night-black raven’s wing’s unfurling to frame his washboard stomach and rippling pecs, they fall instantly under his spell. He is, in Zoey’s words, “mortal enough to touch but too beautiful to be anything but a god.”

Ring a bell, Twilight fans or haters? Think paranormal BF numero uno, Edward Cullen, resplendent in the sunlight with a diamond gleam that brings Bella Swan to her knees.

Hunted boasts Harlequin moments as intense as, if not more intense than, those in the Twilight books. Hello, Zoey might say, it sounds lame but it’s true: Kalona is “an ancient immortal with eyes like the night sky and a voice like a forbidden secret.”

Shudder — by all means, shudder. But chances are, at one time in a person’s life, this stuff could have resonated sweetly, and it still might, as even thousands of full-grown women have admitted to falling at the feet of the fictional Edward Cullen.

So what of bird-god Kalona and Zoey’s battle to save vampire finishing school (and possibly the world)? Look for an action-packed climax where ancient Cherokee blessings meld with the prayers of Benedictine nuns and a vampire power-circle of the five elements.

Kalona relents, for now, but not before taking to the sky in rage-soaked sexual betrayal — book six reportedly publishes this fall.

There’s definitely something deliciously resonant if not occasionally melodramatic here: the cosmic ka-boom of young desire.

Kelly McManus is a Vancouver journalist with a special interest in science fiction and fantasy literature, and, in particular, identity issues in young adult narratives.

Violet Antone tells the story of Kalkalihl, a cannibal ogress who roamed the North Shore mountains. Part of an ongoing series: Squamish words. Daniel Pi photo

KELLY MCMANUS, North Shore Outlook, March 2009

Violet Antone heard the story of Kalkalilh, the cannibal woman, when she was 6 years old. She listened carefully as her aunty told her the Coast Salish legend.

Kalkalilh (sounds like Kaw-ka-leye) is “this big lady that comes out in the mountains every single night. She comes out to get children who are late and then she puts pitch in their eyes and she eats them.”

The Norgate student says that until she was 7 years old, she made sure to be in bed before 7 p.m. every night, just in case Kalkalilh was on the prowl.

Several Salish cultures tell stories about a giant ogress who snatches kids in the night. The Squamish tale features the ogress who lived in the Coast Mountains. She hunted stubborn children, tossed them into the basket on her back and roasted them on her fire. One night T’it’ki?ctn (sounds like Ti-kin-tin) the young carver was home with some hungry kids – their parents had gone to a potlach, but there was no food for the young ones to eat.

Kalkalilh tricked the kids into leaving the house, offering pieces of cedar bark that looked like smoked salmon. Then she scooped up T’it’ki?ctn and some of the smaller kids and made for the mountains. T’it’ki?ctn, being an excellent carver, cut a hole in the back of Kalkalilh’s basket so that the tiniest kids could escape. Then, once back at the ogress’ hut, T’it’ki?ctn helped the remaining kids outsmart their captor. First they shut their eyes tight so she couldn’t blind them with pitch, and then they pushed her into the fire.

In some versions, Kalkalilh offers salmon berry shoots – Tsa7tskay (sounds like Sas-skies).

Latash, a Squamish educator in the district, reads the story of Kalkalilh and other Squamish tales with aboriginal students in the North Vancouver public schools.

“Do you remember what I was sharing with you guys about Kalkalilh and our people?” he asks a guided reading class at Queen Mary elementary, around the same week that Violet’s class discusses the legend at Norgate elementary.

“They don’t mention it in here, but when Kalkalilh was burning up, the sparks came off her body … that’s what became mosquitoes.”

The mosquitoes channel Kalkalilh’s ravenous nature: “That’s why they eat you… and come out at night, when the sun goes down, the mosquitoes come out.”

Latash has a joke to go with the story. He shares it with a mischievous grin: “Kalkalilh always says ‘don’t be afraid to try someone new.’”

In the next installment of Squamish words, students at Westview elementary talk about Tsa7tskay, a local spring delicacy.

Read more in the SQUAMISH WORDS series, an ongoing series about the cultural renaissance and the educational programs in North and West Vancouver’s Squamish Nation.

Schayilhn: little salmon people. Queen Mary elementary hosts thousands of salmon eggs this spring and Squamish Nation students shared a blessing to help protect the little fish.

Tribal Journeys. There may be only 12 fluent speakers left of the Squamish tongue, but the Squamish Nation is in the upswell of a powerful revival of language, culture and identity.

In other stories, Squamish Nation students and educators share words and stories from a language in revival: Sasskies for lunch; The story of Eagle.

Spinning yarns

Students at Cleveland elementary ramp up for an oral storytelling event April 30.

KELLY MCMANUS, North Shore Outlook, April 23 2008

Cleveland elementary students talk about the influences of popular novels in their own creative writing.

Daniel Pi photo

What’s the deal with teen vampires in young people’s fiction? Not just teen vampires, either. What about teen werewolves, teen ghosts, teens with super powers…

Invoke the word “Twilight” in a seventh grade class anywhere in North America – and other places too, the Harlequin-type books about a teen-vampire romance, published in several languages have recently been translated into Arabic – and chances are a host of girls, and maybe even a few boys, will respond with the same enthusiasm.

“I got kind of obsessed,” confesses one student at Cleveland elementary, sitting with a group of avid readers and writers, grades 6 and 7, to consider the trend.

They start by rhyming off their favourite titles at the moment: Elsewhere, Breaking Dawn (the fourth sequel to Meyer’s Twilight), The Vampire Diaries.

What’s the big attraction of fantastic stories, or “paranormal romances” as they have been called? Across the board, the young readers say they dig the thrill factor of mixing the everyday (school, homework or small town life) with juicy surprises (boyfriends who can fly or the secret of the afterlife).

Take Elsewhere, explains Charlie Muir.

“In Elsewhere after you die you go somewhere else and you age backwards and then you go back to earth,” she says. “It’s really a series you can read and get into.”

The “hot guys,” in the story don’t hurt either, adds Samantha McCabe.

The girls explain they feel the same pull to exploring fantasy in their own creative writing.

“When I work on creative writing I find… you can just go to another place and it’s more interesting,” explains Olivia Startup. “In a more realistic story I find it hard to imagine myself in.”

Startup, Muir and other young writers at Cleveland have been writing stories for a school anthology. Some students have chosen to write non-fiction, as in Allie Donaldson’s interview with her gymnastics coach.

Saboura Ahmadzadeh, recently emigrated from Iran, chose to talk about her transition to Canadian schooling.

“In Iran we don’t have the same school for boys and girls,” she writes, “but in Canada, the boys and girls study in the same school. That was interesting and scary for me.”

Some have chosen to write fictional mysteries or paranormal romances a la Twilight’s Bella and Edward.

Some have even straddled the two disciplines, conducting interviews with fictional characters (one student interviewed the main character from her favourite book, The Rainbow Fish) or imagining fierce alien invasions and relaying that information in a newspaper-style brief.

Grade 4 student Gavin Lopez-Smith crafted a hard news take on an alien abduction as witnessed by a photographer, an Orangutang named Dinosaur.

The anthology launches in tandem with the school’s Standup Storytelling night, a celebration in oral storytelling.

The April 30 community event that will see kids, parents and special guests including author Brendan McLeod and RCMP Const. Chelsie Isobe spinning yarns and sharing tales. The Dancers of the Damelahamid, a performing group with the Gitksan Nation, will kick off the evening.

Students are invited to stand up and share stories, too, a prospect which might seem more intimidating than submitting a written copy. But don’t sweat it, explains teacher-librarian and event organizer Sandra Santarossa.

Plenty of Cleveland kids have been practicing their oral storytelling techniques, whether they are aware of it or no. A teacher team at the school has been developing a storytelling curriculum for the district, and that unit, implemented in Cleveland classrooms this month, is designed to give kids the tools to stand up and tell a story for an audience.

“For us, the big idea is all stories have a purpose that help us learn about ourselves, others and the world,” explains Santarossa. “They (stories) bind us together, ground us in meaning, and most importantly evoke empathy.”

For kids and parents puzzling over good story ideas for the event, Santarossa explains, the stories can be about anything, although preferably about things that have happened.

“Some kids have been using family stories that make them laugh or make them cry, stories that grandpa or great grandpa told about the war or maybe an immigration story, how families came to Canada,” Santarossa explains. “One parent was telling me about being sprayed by a skunk. Another child, her dad wanted to take the kids for quality time and they were attacked by a storm of bees.”

The April 30 Standup Storytelling event at Cleveland elementary begins at 6:30 p.m. in the school gymnasium. For more information, phone Cleveland at 604-903-3390.

Read student writing from Cleveland elementary here.

kmcmanus@northshoreoutlook.com

North Shore Rescue trains up its new wave of young leaders.

KELLY MCMANUS, North Shore Outlook, April 16, 2009

North Shore Rescue search manager Tim Jones oversees a helicopter flight rescue systems training day at Bone Creek. Seven young members have been groomed for leadership roles in NSR's 10-year succession plan. Daniel Pi photo

Tim Jones humours the TV cameras. Barely. The North Shore Rescue manager is legendary for keeping at least one eye and one ear to the rescue crew at any given time.

“This is a multiple helicopter operation,” he explains, his eyes shifting back between the reporter and the stream of rescue technicians filing into the bunker at Bone Creek. “Multiple people. Multiple subjects … rescuers will be suspended from a cable simultaneously.”

The walkie talkie at his side punctuates the interview and quickly Jones is back to work.

“Okay, Bridget,” he rumbles into the speaker, “set the radios for Seymour repeater… we’re going to conduct our briefing in one minute.”

He turns to call after the crowd of rescue techs, mostly men in top-of-the-line gear – high-end Goretex shells and hard plastic boots for serious mountaineering.

These guys look like they really use their gear, too, as they smile and nod to Jones, filing into the building on burly mountain legs.

Moments earlier the helicopters arrived, the sun just up over the ridge across the Seymour Valley. In succession, the aircraft came arcing down from the skyline, like prom dates drifting down the stairs. The two yellow Talon choppers – private contractors – came first, followed by the RCMP craft, setting down on either end of the staging area by the North Shore Rescue trailer.

Today the teams at NSR, joined by Coquitlam and Lions Bay Search and Rescue teams, will run a number of staging drills to keep their helicopter rescue skills sharp. But this day is also an important one in what Jones and other veterans call the North Shore Rescue “succession plan.”

“We’re over 50,” Jones explains later of the NSR management team. “We have to take a step back.”

Just two years ago, North Shore Rescue admitted to a dire need for qualified young personnel. A committed group of now-aging guys, led by Jones and George Zilahi, built the helicopter unit from the ground up, spent between 20 and almost 40 years honing the world-class volunteer rescue agency. But due to rising real estate prices and busy family lives or lack of interest, the young people weren’t stepping up to inherit responsibilities.

Today, Mike Danks, 32 years old and 10-year member of NSR, will try his hand at third in command.

“This is a big day for Mike Danks,” Jones explains.

With Danks, five other men ages 23 to 38 have been groomed to take on increasing field responsibility, allowing Jones and Zilahi to take themselves out of critical field positions while keeping their expertise available as managers. But that plan will take at least five or six years – all told probably 10 years before the men retire.

“We’re in our 50s,” exclaims Jones, “we’re still relatively young men.” First the young crew will have to pass through the fire of Jones’ meticulous scrutiny.

“We’re proud,” Jones says, but not without firing: “They (the young rescuers) also know we’re going to be hard asses on them.”

Longline

Forty or so people are sardined in the briefing room at Bone Creek, Jones delivering a power point in his green NSR vest, two radios strapped to his chest.

“Right now, today, I’ll tall ya, it’s a Gong Show out there,” he points through the window in the direction of Seymour’s second peak. “We could easily have to rescue multiple people from Goat Mountain … you name it.”

In mid-March, with longer, warmer days, outdoor enthusiasts are starting to feel the pull of the mountains. But things go wrong in the backcountry – mudslides or avalanches, broken legs, nasty weather systems. Sometimes people get lost.

This year, NSR will have greater rescue capability with the skills to execute “multiple extractions,” rescues involving volunteers suspended from helicopters by longline with not just one, but two or eventually three choppers working at once.

But this is no cowboy drill, Jones warns the crew.

The gear bags must be packed meticulously, every time. The rescuers need to nail the timing and obey pristine communication protocol. Precision, as exemplified by NSR’s Tuesday night gear checks, is what enables the team to accomplish safe, efficient rescues.

“This (day) is a huge part of our succession plan on the team,” Jones pivots to make heavy eye contact around the board room. “I operate on a 100 per cent intensity level. I get really serious. No jacking around. If I ask you to do something, you do it. We’re not going to say please.”

Heir apparent Mike Danks says he appreciates Jones’ tough-love, often militaristic, approach to leadership grooming.

“He’s the most passionate guy I know for search and rescue,” says Danks, whose father, Allan Danks, was among NSR’s founding members. “You name it, (Jones) takes the time. He’s patient.”

Jones says the team “didn’t ask for any applications,” but watched the new recruits carefully over the last 10 years. Those deemed worthy and committed have been given the chance to take on the mantle of leadership.

“It’s draconian,” explains Jones. “The members who have trained (for the succession plan), they’re on one-year probation.”

Danks may be in the hot seat today, but the tall, lanky CNV firefighter looks calm while he dons the headset and gives orders to his team.

The choppers power up, kicking sand from the parking lot at the crowd of observers – supporters from RCMP, the Provincial Emergency Program, Integrated Public Safety, Metro Vancouver and B.C. Parks teams.

Jones looks tense, watching the pairs of heli-techs, their faces tight under the wind off the chopper blades. Danks helps coordinate as the rescuers take turns clipping in to a 45-metre rope, doing two-kilometre circuits suspended from the helicopters 900 metres above the canyon.

The pressure is on, as Danks has to know who’s on the line, who’s on deck, and where each helicopter is at in the circuit. On the ground, he communicates with the techs through hand signals.

Eventually they stage a rescue across the canyon with additional gear and a neck board, and Jones is hoarse from barking input between the drills.

“Everyone (is) really fresh with their skills,” Danks explains, pleased with the test run. “The six guys just ran through every step, every procedure.”

Groundpounders

Danks has spent a lifetime exploring the North Shore mountains, and has come through the fire with Jones before. In one rescue about four years ago, he says, “It really sunk in for me that there’s a lot of risk in this (rescue).”

Climbing a steep scree slope four years ago during a rescue in Golden Ears Provincial Park, softball-sized rocks barreled down at Jones and Danks, who luckily went unscathed.

“It was like being in a firing range,” Jones remembers. “We were lucky we didn’t get killed.”

This is something Jones hammers home to the team: NSR volunteer lives are on the line with every call.

There’s imminent danger whether it’s a night rescue – like last October’s 4 a.m. call to the Lions, where a hiker had broken her leg and waited stranded with her son, or this winter’s twilight call to help RCMP and firefighters retrieve the body of a fallen hiker from the BCMC trail on Grouse Mountain – or a dangerous weather pattern like the 2007 rescue of a snowshoer on Mount Seymour in severe avalanche danger. That op saw Jones and other NSR members stranded for three days in a storm.

The helicopter extraction is a safer, more efficient alternative to foot rescues, explains Mike LaVigne, one of six young heli rescue-techs in training. “You’re not exposing 30 guys (NSR rescuers) to ugly terrain, instead you’ve got two technicians who can go in and get this (rescue) done quickly.”

But that experience on the ground is essential too. Danks remembers one other key moment in his initiation as a “groundpounder.” In one rescue nearly eight years ago on the Grouse Grind, Jones and Danks located a man who had been carried 300 feet by an avalanche that fractured the man’s leg. They tethered him to a stretcher and then dragged him up the last third of the trail. “The snow was so deep it was incredible,” says Danks, who remembers that slog as one of the toughest in his life. “But we had done a lot of training. We were well prepared … my job was just to keep talking to the guy. Keep him awake.”

Helicopter rescues don’t preclude the need for avalanche safety training, rescue skills, stamina, stability and comfort in the mountains – those tree trunk-sized mountain legs under the Gortex outer layers.

“Plan for a one way trip (on the chopper),” Jones says. “When you know the gig is up and you have to convert from air op to ground op, you have to be just as comfortable.”

The dynasty

LaVigne, Danks, and five others – Jeff Yarnold, John Blown, Barry Mason, Jim Loree and Jones’ son Curtis Jones — will spend the next five years absorbing the legacy of Jones, Zilahi and their contemporaries.

“There’s a lot of knowledge in these guys’ heads,” explains LaVigne. “We’re being pushed forward to basically close that gap.”

The HFRS expansion is just the beginning, explains Jones. The group has an eye to building their capability for big wall rescues, for example, on the Stawamus Chief or kayak insertions for river rescues. “What we’re trying to do is specialize into a niche team,” explains Jones, who hopes the next winter drill at the team’s cabin on Dog Mountain will see steep snow insertion helicopter rescues, with one long-liner dropping in early to build a snow bench for the team.

Still, with half the crew over 45 years old, Danks says the younger generation is “going to have to step up to the plate … we’re going to lose our experienced members.”

He says he hopes more young people will step in to fill the gap: “We’re always looking for good, committed members – people that can actually commit, because of the amount of time (NSR) takes up. It’s phenomenal – a huge commitment.”

Will the young generation be able to fill Jones and Zilahi’s mountain boots?

“Tim – it’s phenomenal the time he puts in. It’s beyond belief,” wonders Danks.

Still, these seven guys will be putting in an awful lot of air time over the next few years. LaVigne explains what it’s like, clipped to the long line, exposed to 360 degrees of high-mountain views.

The chopper blades are so far above, you don’t even hear them, he says. All you hear is the wind in your ears and the drill of your training:

Jones recites the mantra, “The clock is ticking. The minute they release from that line … we’re talking areas where, if you don’t get out, this is an exercise in survival.”

Hey mum, especially,

The Collectors series took gold at the BCYs. Exciting! Shown here on the right is BCYCNA President Scott Nelson.

thought you’d get a kick out of this photo. This was taken at the River Rock last week at the BC and Yukon Community Newspaper Association shin dig. Fun. Cheers K

Queen Mary elementary hosts thousands of salmon eggs this spring and Squamish Nation students shared a blessing to help protect the little fish. The first in an ongoing series, Squamish Words.

KELLY MCMANUS, North Shore Outlook, March 19, 2009

Squamish Nation placement worker Jeanette Baker addresses the students at Queen Mary elementary about environmental stewardship during the afternoon of the school's salmon blessing. Daniel Pi photo

Jeanette Baker doesn’t have time to stop. The guests for the salmon blessing will arrive shortly, and the last bits of artwork need to be hung, the gifts laid out, the blankets folded neatly on the table. She needs the kids to focus, a tough assignment when they’re this excited.

In 10 minutes the gym will be packed with kids, all 400 at the school and every teacher. Distinguished guests will include the principal Mr. Reid, two hereditary chiefs from the community – Ian Campbell and Floyd Joseph – plus Squamish Nation council members, representatives from the school board, and parents too.

Quentin Nahanee and his brother Marcus burn off some energy as they dart around the empty gym, reliving their favourite body slams from the amateur wrestling match Friday night at the Chief Joe Mathias Centre. Their cousin Tristahn Nahanee circles the pair, lobbing affectionate jibes, teasing the boys about girls they like.

“Did you know that all of us are cousins?” exclaims Latisha Jefferson, pointing to the 10 or so kids scattered around the gym at Queen Mary elementary.

These kids, most around 10 or 11 years old, take guided reading class together with Jeanette, studying the Squamish Legends reader (the story of Qalqalil, the cannibal woman who roams the North Shore mountains, and the story of how Raven stole the light from Seagull are big favourites). With Jeanette, the kids perform plays in the community and study other indigenous cultures from around the world. They just finished a unit about the Maori people.

When they call themselves cousins, it could mean close friendships, direct family ties or ones that go back generations. Most importantly, it denotes community.

“A lot of families on the reserve have grown up together. There’s a tight sense of community,” explains Brad Baker, Carson Graham teacher and Aboriginal education liaison for the district. “My best friend’s grandparents are like my grandparents; it’s about taking care of each other.”

“We’re all family. We’re all related,” explains Jeanette.

Today these closely-knit kids will share a Squamish ceremony with their school. Events like this happen a few times every year at Queen Mary and some other schools in the district, as encouraged by Squamish educators and district staff in the Aboriginal Education Enhancement Agreement laid out three years ago.

That agreement, one of 43 in the province, outlines collaborative plans for schools and classrooms where all Aboriginal students in the district feel safe and respected and where the children have the opportunity to share their culture with the other students.

Whenever an opportunity like this salmon blessing comes up, says Baker, her students line up to participate.

“They want to understand it (the ceremonies),” she explains. “It’s important to stand up. It’s being able to share with people who they are and where they came from – the families they come from, the clan they came from. It gives them strength.”

Learning to say Skwxwu7mesh

Nearly hopping from foot to foot with excitement, Latisha and Francisco Wagemann show a handful of other kids how to pin the laminated cedar hat drawings to the walls around the gym. The Nahanee boys throw one another a few quick elbows, grabbing a stack each and getting down to work, too. Jeanette helped them make these drawings last year, and several classes in the school contributed as well, decorating the halls for National Aboriginal Day in June.

This year the kids have coloured little salmon fry drawings to populate the walls, in honour of the two tanks of coho that will call Queen Mary home until the spring, one tank out in front of the main office, the other in Mrs. Stearn’s Grade 1 and 2 classroom. Then they’ll be released in Mosquito Creek come spring – hopefully.

The last time Queen Mary fostered salmon, the kids were devastated as one after another of the hundreds of tiny fish dropped to the bottom of the tank.

Only seven survived the mysterious blight.

So this year Baker and her classes decided to do something to help the salmon: a blessing and a ceremony where all the students will promise to look after the little fry.

One week before the big day, Jeanette’s class practices a salmon song with district support worker Latash (Maurice Nahanee). He wrote the song and gifted it to the school.

Francisco counts them in by slapping on the table, one, two, one, two.

It means “Welcome home salmon people. Take care little ones. Take care salmon people.”

“Here’s a word for you guys,” says Latash. “Schayilhn” (pronounced Shy-al-thin).

Salmon.

“It means to give of oneself for food.”

“Does that mean all fish or just salmon?” Francisco leans in closer.

“It’s to honor the salmon people,” says Latash.

As they set up for the assembly, Francisco and Latisha wonder with some other kids when they’ll get to sing Latash’s salmon song today.

Jeanette hurries over to the group.

Boys, she says, summoning the Nahanee trio and a couple other kids from their work with the cedar hats, come here.

“This is for the guests,” she pulls thick pill plaid blankets from her bag. “One blanket and one headband go to one person.”

As he aligns the blankets, the older Quentin mutters for the younger Marcus to pay closer attention. Marcus looks sharp.

“Each witness gets two quarters.” Baker plunks a margarine tub of coins on the table.

Latisha and Francisco watch carefully. They remember that at Squamish gatherings, some people act as witnesses, “like the newspaper,” says Latisha.

Witnesses tell the other Nation members what happened. It’s an honour and a responsibility that forms a pillar in the traditional Skwxwu7mesh (sounds like Skwa-hoat-mesh) oral culture – the Nation worked with a linguist in the ‘60s and ‘70s to create an alphabet for the fully oral language.

In language classes at schools around the district, elder and language teacher Alroy Baker, also known as Bucky, has the students repeat the word after him.

“Skwxwu7mesh,” he’ll say slowly.

“Skwxwu7mesh,” they’ll test in staggered unison.

“It means ‘the people of the river.’ How did we travel before, does anyone know? Did we walk, did we drive, did we use horses, did we use big balloons?”

The kids giggle.

“What did we do?”

“Walk?”

“What else?”

“Canoes?”

“Canoes,” he nods his head. “We had some small canoes and some really big canoes… The one we paddle in (are) about 40 feet long, a thousand pounds. Some even bigger than that and that’s how our people traveled.”

“So Skwxwu7mesh, can you guys repeat that again?

They do, this time with more success.

“And it means Squamish, people of the river.”

Where do salmon keep their money?

In the halls builds a crescendo of little voices, long lines of kids streaming out of classrooms at Queen Mary.

The Nahanees discuss the handing of quarters while Jeanette outfits Malcolm Paull and Brian Skellenger with blanket wraps and headbands. The two boys will stand at the doors to greet the guests today and they scurry to get set up before the first visitors trickle in.

Speaking softly, their hands folded and their eyes wide, Francisco, Quentin and Latisha sit at the front of the gym with the blankets.

Jeanette, in her cedar paddle jacket, introduces hereditary chief Ian Campbell.

“My name is Xalek, and Xalek was the third son of Kitsilano … I come from the Squamish and Musqueam peoples.

Huy chexw a.”

He tells a joke.

“Before we start, does anyone know where salmon keep their money?”

The younger kids shake their heads.

“In the river banks!”

Giggles.

Queen Mary principal Bill Reid chuckles appreciatively, noting, “You have to be a chief to pull off a joke like that!”

Campbell, lead negotiator for the Squamish Nation, works more with government and business partners these days, but has a long history as an educator and ambassador in local schools.

“It’s crucial for Squamish kids to learn how to apply traditional knowledge – language, stories, traditions – in modern contexts,” he says.

Campbell sees the future of the Nation as “an ancient culture of professionals and entrepreneurs,” an evolving organism rooted in the stories and legends of its ancestors.

“We will assert our own self-determination and along with that comes a resurgence in culture … we have to move away from blame and shame and judgement. The way we do that is a recognition of our territories and our community, supporting one another, inclusiveness.”

With 60 per cent of the nation under the age of 25, inclusive education and what some support workers, like Latash, call “culture transmission,” is paramount to the future of the Squamish Nation.

“I see us as relay runners,” Campbell explains later. “Ultimately we have to pass on the baton or the eagle feather to our future descendants.”

The history of the Squamish people and the stories and traditions of the lands here should be front and centre in local schools, he says. “There’s an ancient culture in this land and we should all take ownership.”

For the kids today, that means welcoming the return of new life.

Campbell sings a canoe song while Quentin, Latisha, Francisco, Malcolm and Brian brush the salmon mural with cedar boughs. The 400 students pledge to look out for the creatures.

Then Campbell asks the kids which animals like to eat salmon.

Bears!

“What else likes to eat salmon?”

The kids shake their heads.

“I know one: eagles love to eat salmon, right? … We see two or three thousand eagles in our rivers along Squamish coming down to catch the salmon.”

What about in the water, what else eats salmon in the water? You in the back, shout it out.”

A Grade 5 boy yells “Orca!”

“Orca! Absolutely,” encourages Campbell. “They (salmon) have a hard life. So many things are always trying to eat them.”

A moment later the gym is teeming with dancing kids. Campbell sings one of the nation’s chief songs, originally by Jimmy Jimmy. Today he modifies the song to get the kids moving. The middle-ages mimic the Grizzly Bear, led by Jeanette and her students. Other students dance as Yew yews (Killer Whale), and Spakwus (Eagle). The youngest ones dance as the salmon people, slapping their hands at their sides and jumping on their tip toes.

Malcolm Paull is right into it, leading the kids from the front of the gym, bopping around Campbell in huge leaps, his headband slipping down his forehead.

“Schyalihn – the salmon people!” calls Campbell.

When the gym empties, Latisha and Francisco discuss the fish.

Francisco’s little brother is in Mrs. Stearn’s class, so he’ll be able to keep a close eye on the one batch.

“And yah, we’re going to watch them in the tank too,” says Latisha of the fish outside the office. “I’m happy the salmon are going to live.”

Imagine each of their Squamish words as an endangered, little salmon fry. Chief Campbell, Jeanette Baker and a whole community of elders, leaders and education workers are doing everything they can to give them a fighting chance. With 3,500 Nation members and only 12 fluent speakers, the language in the Coast Salish linguistic grouping is classified as critically endangered. In less than a decade many of the words could be gone forever as the fluent elders pass.

But the Squamish say they won’t settle for that.

Alroy Baker explains, “The language and the culture go together – that’s what our old people, our elders say. Without the language there’s no culture and without the culture there’s no language.”

To Campbell, there’s “absolutely” an imminent crisis. “The language is in peril for sure. But it’s not a new story. If I look at my own mythology one of the universal stories is the great flood … each time, it’s cyclical.”

Next week, Squamish leaders, educators and students tell the story of language and culture revival and what they’re doing to protect the Squamish legacy. It begins with a 30-day canoe voyage to Bella Bella, over 15 years ago…

FICTION FOR CHILDREN

Changeling so fast Three Canadian authors explore teen metamorphosis in fantasy for young adults

KELLY MCMANUS March 21, 2009, The Globe and Mail

WONDROUS STRANGE By Lesley Livingston HarperCollins, 327 pages, $17.99

LITTLE (GRRL) LOST By Charles De Lint Penguin, 271 pages, $10

TIMOTHY AND THE DRAGON’S GATE By Adrienne Kress Scholastic, 414 pages, $19.99

As she proves in her first novel, Wondrous Strange, Toronto actor Lesley Livingston knows teenaged girls. While the story of a long-lost, teen fairy princess in New York City might pique a 13-year-old’s interest, teenaged cynicism requires strong characters grounded in the here and now, and at the very least a token hesitancy to take kid’s stories and fairytales at face value.

No problem, Livingston demonstrates with her protagonist, Kelley Winslow. At 17, pale and lovely Kelley gets her big break: She will play the fairy Titania, the Summer Queen who quarrels with the Winter King Oberon, in the Avalon Theatre production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Next, Kelley meets Sonny Flannery, a long-haired dreamboat who is, in fact, centuries old. Sonny is a real Changeling, stolen from mortal life by none other than the real Auberon, Lord of the Unseelie. Yup, faeries do exist, as do Titania and Queen Mabh, the vengeful mistress of air and darkness.

Hunky Sonny belongs to the Janus guard, Auberon’s henchmen, who hew pixies and befouled ravens and any other “fae” creatures, especially Mabh’s minions, who cross into the mortal realm. Her demon hunters would see the streets of New York City run red with mortal blood.

Oh, bestselling Twilight, thou hast a strong contender.

Livingston’s Sonny is a dreamy bad boy of the first rate. He starts off frosty but melts Kelley’s heart with escalating acts of chivalry and selflessness. Kelley and Sonny’s stormy negotiations culminate in a faerie-lit date to Central Park’s Tavern on the Green, and a re-enactment of the Bard’s Midsummer Night’s love scenes: “I love thee. … His storm grey eyes flashed, and the dark silk of his hair drifted across his cheek as he leaned in his head. Perfect.”

Groan-worthy mushy stuff? Nah, it works for a young adult audience. Livingston delivers with skillful momentum, in the same way she unveils the complicated faerie plots lurking behind the fabric of the everyday: Kelley is a long-lost faerie princess, the secret fruit of Auberon’s “dalliances.”

With mastery, Livingston handles the dramatic agony of growing up as Kelley wrestles through her transformation and the mystery of her birth – is she or isn’t she “an incandescent creature”? Alas, cruel Auberon and another fae, revealed later as the bloodthirsty Mabh, have saddled her with a legacy of dark power and terrible gifts.

As a young adult fantasy, this book has it all. Livingston conjures a chaste but heady teen romance, a coming-of-age story about the tyranny of hormones, the burden of parentage and the glory of young love, all wrapped in a gossamer bow.

Fantasy powerhouse Charles De Lint also creates a secret fairy world for girls in Little (Grrl) Lost. Instead of olden fairy courts and Elizabethan gowns, however, this book is more Goth and punk, an almost retro-homage to the feisty girl power of the Riot Grrrl movement.

Elizabeth is six inches tall, but never diminutive. She has neon blue hair, “chunky shoes” and glut of attitude. She sews her own clothes from scraps she finds lying around the house where she lives with her family, creatures called “Littles.” De Lint’s literary references, which he acknowledges more than once, are John Peterson’s The Littles and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.

Like mice, Elizabeth’s family lives in the walls, scrounging for food and escaping the house cat belonging to the Moore family. The Moores are “Bigs,” or regular sized people, living in a suburb near a place called Newford. T. J. Moore, our other protagonist, is nearly 15. She hates city life in Newford, having recently moved from the country. She learns about the Littles in her midst when Elizabeth runs away from home, screaming through the wee door in the baseboard the same thing T. J. feels about her new life: “I’m not that person. I don’t want to be that person. I’m never going to be that person and you can’t make me!”

It’s a fantastic premise for young adult fantasy as the girls, big and little, mirror the push and pull of the teen years, a rearview yearning for childhood and the hunger for adult experience. In that tension, the girls provide a continuum for identity questions, undoubtedly the most important aspect of this book.

What kind of a girl does T. J. want to be? Will she moon over boys and tell secrets about other girls to gain the favour of the popular kids? Or will she wear sneakers because they’re most comfortable, ride her bike because she enjoys the freedom and find friends who like her just the way she is?

De Lint’s storytelling doesn’t equal the sophistication of Livingston’s work in Wondrous Strange, but it does escalate to an easy-reading, plot-driven finish. De Lint alternates the perspectives of Elizabeth and T. J. as they venture to a local bookstore. There they hope to meet an author who writes about Littles and their lost ability to transfigure into birds. Along the way, the girls meet boys, both big and little, dangerous and kind. They learn about the perils of city life, both in dark alleyways and the secret Goblin Market.

This is a book about easing transformation with the company of good friends and supportive family.

Timothy and the Dragon’s Gate is more action-packed than the two offerings above. It features pirates and ninjas, toxic goldfish the size of sharks, a fleet of mysterious black taxi cabs, helicopter chases and, most important, a very old dragon named Mr. Shen.

Toronto actress and drama teacher Adrienne Kress follows up her excellent Alex and the Ironic Gentleman with a complementary story about Timothy Freshwater. At 11, the mouthy, clever Timothy has been expelled from every school in town, so he finds himself in an unusual internship at the Tall and Imposing Tower of Doom. There the dullest man in the world – CEO Evans Bore – pines for invitations to “fancy parties,” but to his disappointment receives only memos and invoices.

Kress has done a marvellous job parodying the towering egos of the adult world. Unbeknownst to the various big people, their pursuit of glory, love or money reduces them to caricature, which perceptive Timothy then exploits. This is how he steals a golden key from Evans Bore and becomes the master of an ancient Chinese dragon: by promising a fancy party in return.

As an old fellow with a long white beard, Mr. Shen looks human enough, but only because he has been sentenced by the king of all dragons to pay for his past crimes. As a giant blue dragon, Mr. Shen used his power with capricious greed, plundering jewels or gambling away fortunes. He wasn’t evil so much as young, he explains, fallen prey to “all the usual trappings: arrogance, pride and incomparable energy.”

Sounds a bit like Timothy – Timothy at his worst, that is. At his best, Timothy is discerning and helpful, as he must get Mr. Shen to the Dragon’s Gate in China, where the king dragon’s spell will lift. Otherwise, kindly Mr. Shen will transfigure into a powerful dragon subservient to only to the golden key’s keeper.

The tug of war between the grumpy, selfish Timothy and the empathic, patient elder never dulls the action. Kress avoids the major pitfall of writing for young audiences: heavy-handedness. Timothy’s character revelations feel like short, meaningful epiphanies and not moral sermons. The 48 chapters are short and punchy, with colourful narration of a pirate ambush, a rooftop chase with Shaolin monks, poison darts, a ghost and a girl (Alex, from Kress’s first book) who can fence like Zorro.

At the conclusion of the tale, Timothy learns that some adults aren’t so bad after all, and maybe, just maybe, attending school might be tolerable – especially if that school is located on a pirate ship.

Kelly McManus is a Vancouver journalist. She has a special interest in science fiction and fantasy literature and in particular identity issues in young adult narratives.