KELLY MCMANUS, North Shore Outlook, Feb. 9, 2010

Four Host First Nations CEO Tewanee Joseph pictured outside the 2010 Aboriginal Pavilion in Vancouver. Rebecca Aldous photo

The 2010 Aboriginal Pavilion is ready to receive a projected 100,000 visitors and organizer Tewanee Joseph says the venue is about to make history.

Located at Georgia and Hamilton Streets, the pavilion opened to the public Monday Feb. 8, showcasing a 65-foot inflatable multi-media dome and the venue’s signature show, “We Are Here.”

Also known as the Chiefs’ House, the venue will showcase artwork by hundreds of indigenous artists across the country and live daily performances in a lineup that includes Buffy Sainte Marie, hip hop artist Inez, Kinnie Starr and blues musician Murray Porter.

“This will be one of the – if not the – biggest coming together of aboriginal people for the purpose of hosting the world,” said North Van’s Joseph, CEO of the Four Host First Nations Society, in an interview.

Two years ago Joseph began visiting Inuit, Metis and First Nations communities across the country, extending invitations to aboriginal people across Canada to participate in “the world’s biggest potlatch.”

“What we wanted to say is ‘Our culture is meant to be shared,’” said Joseph. “For so long, we’ve been in the shadows, but now we want the world to know that we are here . . . telling the story about aboriginal people.”

The Society’s Welcome video – launched online late last month and logging upwards of 10,000 views – tells a story not often seen in mainstream media.

While narratives of Canadian indigenous people often focus on housing crises, health care and social ills, the Welcome combines traditional song and drumming with footage that showcases thriving cultures and positive young people.

“We wanted all people to be proud of it, not just aboriginal people,” said Joseph of the video.

The three-minute clip will play at all Olympic venues and is available to broadcasters. Estimates are it will reach millions of viewers.

“In three minutes we hopefully can inspire a new generation of young people to say ‘Wow, those things are possible,” said Joseph. “It’s about seeing aboriginal people in the Games and seeing aboriginal people in other cultures.”

He hopes the host partnership between Squamish, Lil’wat, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh nations and the Olympic committee will inspire young aboriginal people and connect entrepreneurs with international businesses.

Joseph also hopes all Canadians will consider issues like indigenous poverty, land claims, and unsolved cases involving missing aboriginal women as “issues that affect all Canadians.”

The Welcome video shows indigenous cultures as rooted in tradition but thriving in the present and moving to a positive future, Joseph said. As witnesses to the world’s biggest potlatch, Joseph hopes visitors to the pavilion will share those stories with their communities.

The potlatch will be an “education process” for all Canadians, he added. “The games represent a new beginning that way.”

What’s on at the 2010 Aboriginal Pavilion

Buffy Sainte-Marie. Feb. 12

Young at Heart Feat. Sister Says and Inez, Feb. 13

Plain Talking Feat. Soul Paua and Kinnie Starr, Feb. 17

Digging Roots, Feb. 28

For a full list of performers, visit fourhostfirstnations.com

The Jack Poole Reception Hall also holds lounge events and aboriginal fusion cuisine at 9:30 p.m. each day. Tickets: $25.

Also at Vancouver Community College

The VCC’s downtown campus hosts the Aboriginal Artisan Village and Business Showcase from Feb. 12-28. The event will feature live demonstrations by aboriginal artists and artisans and merchandise by hundreds of vendors.

kmcmanus@northshoreoutlook.com

KELLY MCMANUS, North Shore Outlook, Feb. 5, 2010

Members of the Squamish Nation share the Olympic flame at Totem Hall in Squamish. Rebecca Aldous photo

The Squamish Nation welcomed the Olympic flame to Totem Hall in Squamish yesterday in a charged ceremony that saw the torch reach Four Host First Nations territory for the first time.

Chief Gibby Jacob told a crowd of more than 300 people the entrance of the flame to Squamish territory represented the fruition of nearly ten years of planning.

In an interview with The Outlook, Jacob said the Games will be an opportunity for aboriginal people to showcase their cultures.

“We’ve received tremendous feedback to see chiefs and protocol recognized on the same stage as national leadership,” said Jacob. “The (Olympic) flame has provided a flame of hope that people will see what their communities are all about.”

Chief Ian Campbell said he hopes the unprecedented participation of Canada’s aboriginal people in the Games will empower aboriginal youth and raise awareness of pressing issues for aboriginal communities and all Canadians.

“We’ve come through a dark chapter in Canadian history. We’ve made huge strides as a collective.”

Squamish elder and fire keeper Laverne Baker blessed the Olympic flame following traditional protocol.

“It’s a happy occasion for the community as well as the world that’s coming to visit our territory,” she said in an interview. “It’s an honour to be representing the Squamish First Nation.”

After the blessing at Totem Hall, the flame proceeded to the Brennan Park Recreation Centre for a community celebration. Today (Feb. 5) it arrives in Whistler. The torch will enter BC Place Feb. 12 for the official opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Games.

In the torch relay, 50 delegates in aboriginal communities across Canada will welcome the Olympic flame as fire keepers, Jacob said.

North Vancouver’s Audrey Rivers, of the Squamish Nation, will bless the flame when it stops at the Chief Joe Mathias Centre Feb. 10.

Composed of the Lil’wat, Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Wauthuth peoples, the Four Host First Nations is a partner hosting in the 2010 Winter Games.

kmcmanus@northshoreoutlook.com

KELLY MCMANUS, North Shore Outlook, Feb. 3, 2010

The Fraser Institute releases its annual report card on schools this week, ranking nearly 900 elementary schools across B.C. and while several North Shore schools have sat consistently at the top, local school administrators say the report card doesn’t provide an adequate portrait of schools.

Generated by the Fraser Institute, a right wing think tank, the report card uses data collected in the ministry-mandated Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA) for Grades 4 and 7. The institute assigns a mark out of 10 to each school and measures progress or regression in reading, writing and numeracy.

On the North Shore, school administrators say they refer to the ministry’s FSA results internally but don’t put much stock in the independent Fraser Institute rankings.

“I find what the Fraser Institute does doesn’t produce a full picture,” said Tony Macoun, Head of School at West Van’s Mulgrave, an independent school that has performed at the top of the rankings four years running.

Macoun said the rankings, based on a snap shot of three foundation skills in student achievement, don’t provide enough information to rank schools.

“Frankly, most things which make a school special, they’re not really very easily measured by an outside think tank.”

At the West Van school district – where several elementary schools have received top marks from the report card in years past – Superintendent Geoff Jopson said he supports the administration of the education ministry FSA but thinks the Fraser Institute rankings are “a misuse of the data” from those provincial tests.

Jopson referred to a letter board chair Mary-Ann Booth sent to the education minister last winter.

“We deplore the comparison of schools across the province, especially when that comparison is measured using such a limited yardstick,” Booth wrote.

West Van schools “compete with the best schools in this country, public or private,” added Jopson, “but ranking us seems really unfair to those schools that have all kinds of challenges.”

At North Van’s Holy Trinity, an independent school that has performed in the higher range according to past report cards, principal Kevin Smith said his staff “won’t pay too much attention” to the rankings but they will use the ministry’s data to assess how their students are doing individually and as a school.

Superintendent of North Van public schools John Lewis said in an email to The Outlook, “The use of FSA results in ranking schools has no validity.”

At the Fraser Institute, director of school performance studies Peter Cowley said the think tank will continue publishing the hotly contested report because its website saw last year’s rankings searched over 200,000 times.

With just over 315,000 students accounted for in last year’s report, Cowley says those search hits prove the report card is “serving a need.”

To educators and administrators who dismiss the report because it provides too narrow a snap shot, Cowley challenged schools to open themselves up to further evaluation for rankings.

“A better report card would have other measures in it,” he said, suggesting a more in-depth report study dozens of other indicators such as citizenship, health and fitness. “With more data, we might be able to come to a conclusion, how does the school come to educating the whole child?”

North Van Parents Advisory Council co-chair Leslie Uhlenbruck said parents have “mixed feelings” about the use of the FSA data to rank schools. “We understand it’s important the ministry has this information, but on the other hand, the rankings which doesn’t come from the ministry but comes from the Fraser Institute can get people very upset.”

West Van PAC’s Carolyn Broady wrote in an email to The Outlook, “if you are ranking student or school performance it is important to look beyond the academic results of the (FSA) testing.”

North and West Van teachers association reps did not respond by Outlook press time.

–Full province-wide results and all data from the Fraser Institute’s BC Elementary School Report Card will be available February 5 at www.fraserinstitute.org

kmcmanus@northshoreoutlook.com

Gino Giragosian. Photo by Daniel Pi

It was a quiet morning at the office for jewelry store owner Gino Giragosian – until he looked up from his computer and into the barrel of a 9 mm pistol.

“The guy says ‘Get down! Get down! Get down!’” recounts Giragosian, 46, owner of Dundarave’s Absolute Design.

The morning of Jan. 19 two men in hoodies and baseball caps went to work smashing and emptying out his display cases, he says, while one other man held the gun on the store owner and kept him on the floor.

Giragosian says he felt rage rising as the watched the men stuff his merchandise – diamonds, necklaces and pendants, he says valuing upwards of $100,000 – into their pockets.

Then they “walked out casually,” says Giragosian.

The livid store owner grabbed a can of bear spray and went after them, but when he tried to empty the canister, the wind blew the eye-burning pepper spray back in his face.

So he chased the men across Marine Drive, “screaming and yelling . . . the first guy had a gun, turned around and shot at me twice.”

Giragosian says adrenaline made him chase their car – an older import model – as it sped away. Plus, he initially thought the gun was a fake.

“I created a jewelry and cigar shop,” he says. “I put all my blood and sweat to create this and some idiot lowlife comes and tries to take it away . . . The only mistake I made – I didn’t grab my baseball bat.”

After a moment he adds, “Thank God I didn’t get shot.”

He says a nearby Mercedes took the bullets for him, and some people on the street called 911.

Police quickly responded to the scene and launched a pursuit that would become a multi-agency manhunt.

At a afternoon press conference, WVPD Const. Jeff Palmer said the suspects in the morning’s shooting ditched their car at the side of Highway 1 at the Capilano River.

North Van RCMP, Vancouver Police and Air One units scoured the Cedardale area and stopped cars on the highway and Marine Drive crossing the Cap River.

Police found one suspect on foot around the 300-block of Marine Drive soon after they found the car. Later that afternoon, they brought in three other Lower Mainland men, found near Macbeth Crescent.

Two schools in the area went into Level 2 Lockdown during the afternoon search, with students leaving their classrooms without incident by the close of the school day.

Police say cooperation from over 30 civilian witnesses helped the investigation.

The men, ranging between 19 and 26 years old and all from the Lower Mainland, were set to appear in court Jan. 20.

Displays were smashed during the robbery. kmcmanus@northshoreoutlook.com

West Van Police said they would recommend several charges but had not released more information at The Outlook press time other than to say investigators had recovered a 9 mm pistol, magazine and ammunition plus “substantial” amounts of jewelry.

Giragosian says he wants to stay focused on getting his store up and running again – as it stands the six display cases in his show room are totalled.

“Really, this is nothing,” he says. “It’s just a minor incident. No one got hurt. The cops got everybody.”

KELLY MCMANUS, North Shore Outlook, Dec. 2, 2009

A blogger and activist who has voiced anti-Olympic views received a visit from the Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit (ISU) at his home on the Capilano Reserve earlier this month.

Dustin Rivers, 21, says two officers questioned him about potential Olympic protests and asked if he would work as an informant for police.

The visit occurred Nov. 5 at Rivers’ family home. Two investigators offered business cards – which Rivers has posted on his blog – identifying themselves as Const. Kirk Rattray of the Joint Intelligence Group and Jordan McLellan of the Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit.

Rivers said the investigators told him they were following up with activists or protesters who have voiced opposition to the Olympics.

Cpl. Bert Paquet, a spokesperson for the ISU, confirmed the encounter, explaining, “…these two officers are from our unit and they did visit this individual (Rivers), basically like they do every day with other individuals and groups of potential interest to our security mission.”

Similar incidents involving other activists and Olympic critics have been widely publicized, including multiple visits from investigators to UBC professor Chris Shaw, author of Five Ring Circus (New Society Publishers, 2008), a critique of the 2010 Olympic bid and the potential impact of the Games.

Executive Director of the BC Civil Liberties Association David Eby says his organization has counted about 30 people who have been approached in the last six months by police about their anti-Olympic sentiments.

“That’s the trend that we’re seeing – that the ISU is linking dissent or disagreement (concerning the Olympics) with the idea that it could be a security threat,” said Eby.

Paquet said he couldn’t speak to the number of activists and protesters approached by the ISU but added, “We were justified in asking them questions in order to confirm whether or not these individuals would pose a threat for safety to the Games . . . we will continue to do so.”

Rivers said he expected the police visit because he attended some meetings last year with members of the Olympic Resistance Network.

Rivers also posts content that is critical of the Olympics on his blog, liberatedyet.com and has spoken out against Squamish chiefs and council in matters relating to the Four Host First Nations Olympic partnership in which the Squamish Nation is one of four members.

“They (Rattray and McLellan) asked me what are my thoughts and feelings about the Four Host First Nations and their involvement in the Olympics,” said Rivers.

Rivers says investigators Rattray and McLellan asked if he had any involvement with militant groups or societies – and finally they asked if he would “help” police if he heard of a protest activity where “somebody was going to get hurt or property was going to be damaged.”

Rivers says he found the visit unsettling, but he’s “not really intimidated by it. I’m disgusted by the whole thing, but I’m going to keep on doing what I’ve been doing and fight the good fight . . . as an activist.”

Paquet said criticism is part of the gig for the ISU. “One of our favourite sayings is we’re not in the business of making absolutely everybody happy, but we’re definitely trying to make everybody safe,” Paquet said. “This is why we do what we do.”

kmcmanus@northshoreoutlook.com

KELLY MCMANUS, North Shore Outlook, Aug. 26, 2009

North and West Vancouver school boards could be sued for roughly $2 million combined if a North Vancouver lawyer succeeds in launching a class action over summer school fees paid in B.C. since 2004.

James Poyner said the province deemed the fees illegal in 2007. At that time former education minister Shirley Bond cited the School Act, stipulating B.C. students must not be charged for courses essential to graduation.

Bond ordered the return of summer school fees paid in B.C. that year.

Poyner has said the 2007 refund is not enough and that school districts should refund families for any illegal fees paid since 2004 under a six-year limitation.

Currently Poyner represents one North Vancouver family in a civil action filed in B.C. Supreme Court against the Vancouver board of education.

According to court documents Sarah and Ali Agha Riazi were informed their son, identified only as “KR,” needed remedial science and English summer courses before advancing past Grade 9 at Lord Byng secondary.

The Riazis paid $274 for each course and Poyner is seeking the return of those fees. Poyner also hopes to see the case certified as a class action some time this fall.

That means he may also take on North Vancouver, West Vancouver, Coquitlam, Richmond, Surrey, Burnaby and Abbotsford school boards, he said.

“We say that it (any summer fees dating back to 2004) is contrary to the provisions of the School Act . . . which provides that courses and materials charged for graduation must be provided for free of charge by the school district,” Poyner said.

According to Poyner, the North Shore school boards could owe over $2 million combined if a class action succeeds.

Amended budgets for the period in question show that the summer school fees collected by North Vancouver school board totalled roughly $1.9 million.

In West Vancouver that number was about $388,000 according to budget information.

A representative from the North Vancouver school district was unavailable for comment by Outlook press time, but West Vancouver superintendent Geoff Jopson said his district will keep tabs on the Riazi suit.

“I think all school districts will be (watching the suit),” he added. “But it’s really hard to speculate on what (the implications for West Vancouver schools) might be.” He said it would be “premature” to comment further “other than to say that when the Supreme Court judgement came down with regard to school fees, districts began to comply immediately and continued to do so.”

On top of expanding the suit to encompass other districts, lawyer Poyner also told The Outlook that he may try to attack other fees charged by public schools.

“There’s a lot of them (fees) and a lot of them are unlawful. Eventually we may go after those as well.”

A website for Poyner’s firm, Poyner Baxter LLP, lists class actions against Sun Life Assurance Company, Bausch & Lomb, Canada Life and Manulife Financial “on behalf of tens of thousands of class member clients.”

In 2006, Poyner sought a class action suit against the provincial government over fees, but the court ruled it was the responsibility of school districts and not the province to charge school fees.

Poyner said of his plan to launch the class actions, “We’re taking a different approach now and we’re suing the various school districts where summer school fees have been charged.”

A representative for the Vancouver school board said the board couldn’t comment as the matter is currently before the courts.

kmcmanus@northshoreoutlook.com