Okay, so as you may know, by day I’m a humble public servant. Right now my union, the BCGEU, is on strike. My building has been on strike for two weeks now.
I’ve been in unions before, and I’ve even voted to strike, but this is the first time that I’ve been on the picket line.
When I was working as a teaching assistant at SFU, I was a member of the Teaching Support Staff Union (TSSU). I think we were bargaining for a new contract the entire time I was doing my master’s degree. In my last term, we held a strike vote, and I volunteered to do some polling shifts. It was actually pretty fun, sitting at the table and helping people vote. We ended up with a pretty strong strike mandate (I can’t remember what the percentage was). In fact, one of my colleagues in the School of Communication actually served strike notice at convocation, as he was receiving his PhD. It was pretty great to see the look on the president of the university’s face as he handed it to her.
Unfortunately for me, I was graduating too, and was no longer a TA or a member of the union when the pickets were set up soon after.
But anyway, now I’m actually on strike.
I’m not sure what the cats have to do with this, but they are perfect.
So, we’re on strike. It’s a nice change of pace honestly. The strike pay, though less than I would get if I were at my desk, is fairly reasonable for a union of 34,000 just finishing its fifth week of progressively escalating job action.
As government employees are scattered in offices across the province, my building has attracted BCGEU members working in all sorts of different ministries. I’ve made new friends from across government, and one of the things I’ve noticed we all have in common is that none of us have ever been on strike. And it shows. There have been a lot of challenges, but we have such a great group of volunteer picket captains that take everything with good humour that I know there’s no problem they couldn’t solve.
In the past, our union has relied on the BC Liquor Distribution Branch (LDB) and the BC Liquor store’s employees to strike for us, so I’m glad that union leadership isn’t taking that route this time. It doesn’t seem fair for LDB staff to always shoulder the brunt of job action for the whole union.
What this means is that a bunch of office workers, most of whom have never struck their worksites, and most of whom don’t really have much contact with the union at all, are experiencing what solidarity looks like for the first time. Some people hate it. They just want to get back to work and seem embarrassed to have to be out with us.
Others, however, are really into it! Or at least, are being good sports. We’d all rather be working, but it makes such a difference when people come to the picket line with patience and an open mind. We spend a lot of time standing or walking around. We cheer when drivers honk for us and when cyclists ring their bells for us. We get really excited when members of other unions refuse to cross our picket line.
It’s an interesting time. I’ll leave it there for now.
I was hoping to start today off with a run, but it is pouring rain outside so here we are!
One of my favourite albums of all time came out in 2018. Arctic Monkey’s sixth studio album, Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino. It’s a science fiction concept album, a bit of a departure from their fifth studio album, AM, and maybe a musical foreshadowing of their seventh, The Car. It is also fantastic.
I had a friend when I was in Montreal who I used to argue with about everything, but the one thing he was definitely right about is that music is best appreciated by the album, not by the song. And Tranquility Base is one of my favourites end-to-end. To start, the first lyric on Star Treatment, the album opener, is
I just wanted to be one of the Strokes
Which obviously resonated with me big time. The album is centered around this resort on the moon, but it has a lot of really interesting technological critique. There’s a house band called the Martini Police (also in Star Treatment), and a taqueria on the roof called the Information-Action Ratio (Four Out of Five) which is a very cool shout to a Neil Postman concept. Read Amusing Ourselves to Death, it’s a good read!
Anyway, the album is all hits, the lyrics are phenomenal, the music is incredible, but the reason I’m thinking about it this morning is because of a lyric that’s been in my head a lot lately
Everybody’s on a barge Floating down the endless stream of great tv
And I guess the reason this resonates with me is that
a. there is so much great tv available right now b. it does feel like I’m floating down an endless stream of it
I’m trying to think of a smart way to talk about this, but simply put, doesn’t it feel like we’re floating down an endless stream of great tv?
But what does that actually mean? I think if we compare how we used to “consume” television content (on cable, with episodes generally released once a week) with how we predominantly consume it now (multiple episodes at a time, sometimes an entire season or more) the metaphor is pretty clear. It’s also more than just bingeing, because that was also possible when they started putting tv shows into dvd boxsets. But it wasn’t endless! You’d watch a bunch of episodes of Friends in a row, but without the access to countless other shows in an endless stream.
Okay, and stick with me for a second. Remember Marshall McLuhan, famous Canadian media scholar? Well he argued that the form of media shapes society more than the content of media. You’re probably familiar with his saying, the medium is the message. It’s almost like the form a medium takes is more important, at the macro level, than the content it disseminates.
Now, McLuhan lived in the era of broadcast television (he passed away in 1980) and had grand visions for what tv would accomplish. I don’t know that his predictions necessarily came true, but I really like his analysis of the media of his time.
Neil Postman, who also lived in the era of broadcast television (he passed away in 2003), wrote about the “Typographic Mind” or basically what people were like when the dominant medium of the day was the printed word. As he put it, the written word is logical and linear, so people thought in more logical and linear ways. The Typographic Mind was more rational.
Of course, the way we could jump around network television changed that. And streaming has certainly changed that further, right?
Take all this with a grain of salt though. I once had a professor tell me that I had “severely misunderstood McLuhan” in a paper I submitted, but I was never really clear on what I got wrong. Oh well.
This last one is from American Sports
I lost the money, lost the keys but I’m still handcuffed to the briefcase
Pitchfork gave it an 8.1 (I read their review after writing this!).
It’s the first of October and I decided last week that I was going to write up a post every day for the entire month. The big problem with this, as you’ll soon see, is that I don’t know what to write about. I’ve done this kind of thing in the past, and when I did it always ended up devolving into a sort of sanitized version of a daily journal.
ucluelet, may twenty twenty five, shot on thirty-five millimetre film
I love writing out numbers. There aren’t that many opportunities to write out numbers though, except for cheques! Remember those? I almost completely missed the boat on cheque-writing, except for a brief 10-month stint in an apartment where the company only took cheques. Weird right? I had to go to the bank and pay for a whole cheque book then wait for it to arrive in the mail. This happened across twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen. Anyway, I guess I didn’t really enjoy writing out the whole amount on those, but that was due to the size of it. The rest of the process wasn’t bad.
I’ll have to prepare a list of topics for the rest of the month because I am sitting here staring at the blank screen and spinning out. I wanted to avoid this turning into a sort of stream-of-consciousness/morning pages type endeavour but I think today I’m just going to have to tell you about my day.
We have Gilmore Girls (in the markdunn.ca style guide the names of tv shows are italicized, is that normal? I can’t remember) on in the background, and a pile of dishes in the sink. The older I get the more it feels like all my time outside of work gets eaten up by the administrative duties of running my own life. Cooking meals, doing the dishes, doing the laundry, cleaning the kitchen, cleaning the bathroom, fixing things, picking up the groceries, taking the car to the shop…it’s much easier living with a partner, but still! Anyway, I think you get the point and this isn’t interesting.
I met two city councillors today! My union is on strike, and I was helping answer questions and sign members in for a rally today. We were set up at the end point of the march (near the convention centre) and Sean Orr came by while we were waiting for the thousands of marchers to arrive. He came up to me and one of my colleagues (who thought he was a BCGEU member and tried to sign him in). Should’ve taken a selfie.
Later on, Lucy Maloney was locking her bike near where we were checking in the stragglers. So, I went over and mentioned that I waited three and a half hours in line to vote for her, and I’d do it again if I had to! I’ve been pretty happy with Lucy and Sean, and I’m hoping that we get a strong progressive council when we have our municipal election next year.
I brought my film camera out today and I’m hoping the photos I took of the rally turn out. The roll’s been through an airport scanner, so I’m not sure how it’s going to turn out, cross your fingers for me.
That’s probably good for day one right? I think tomorrow we’ll talk about coffee or something. I just bought an aeropress last month and I’m obsessed with it.
I used to tell people that black and white film photography was easy because everything looks cool in black and white. That’s probably a silly take, but over the years I’ve taken a lot more photos in colour than black and white. That’s not because it’s harder though, I think I just like it better.
That being said, instead of folding the laundry, today I’ve decided to put on some Italian music and flip through some of the black and white photos I’ve taken over the years.
And for the record, my favourite song from the playlist so far is Mina’s Città Vuota off her 1965 album Studio Uno. It’s a banger.
I don’t know a lot about the actual mechanics of taking nice photos. I’ve tried a couple times to learn, I’ve bought books on the subject, and I’ve even practiced! The only thing that stuck around in my head is the rule of thirds, which I think I actually did apply in this photo, though it might not seem like it. It’s just that I also caught a bit of finger, so I had to crop it. That’s the only editing that any of these photos have gone through, by the way.
This one was taken up in Whistler in January 2024. Black and white is very effective in snowy conditions, ’cause it’s all about the contrast. The photo below was taken on the same trip.
I got a copy of Susan Sontag’s On Photography for Christmas the year before last. I was really excited about it, but to date I’ve only read through about a third of the book. It’s very good, but not gripping in the same was as a good sci-fi novel or a biography. I’ll pick it back up one of these days, but for a book literally on photography, there are no pictures.
Does it mean I’m getting old if most of what I read these days is non-fiction? I just finished The Art of the Impossible: Dave Barrett and the NDP in Power, 1972-1975 by Geoff Meggs and Rod Mickleburgh. Dave Barrett was the first NDP premier in BC’s history.
Barrett’s short stint in Victoria was, from what I understand, BC’s first time electing any left-wing government. It’s a good read if you’re interested in that part of the province’s history. One of the things I admire about their approach was their commitment to making positive change over seeking re-election. Apparently, after winning the election, Barrett’s first question to his caucus was, “are we here for a good time or for a long time?”
Anyway, I’m not here to shill for an NDP government from fifty years ago…but if you’re curious, they are the reason we have things like the seabus, ICBC, the agricultural land reserve, Consumer Protection BC, and they’re the reason why resource extraction companies pay the province royalties as they rip things out of the ground to ship out of the country.
Last week’s episode was supposed to be all about the west end, which you can see features prominently in the background of this photo.
There’s a spot near the Maritime Museum just above the dog beach where you have this beautiful view across the water. If you pull back a little more, it’s nicely framed by trees on both sides. Here’s another photography tip: framing. It’s important!
I couldn’t find a good example of framing with my black and whites, but here’s a photo I took from the Cambie Street Bridge looking towards False Creek’s dead end at Science World.
As I’m writing this, the playlist has unfortunately moved away from Italian music and towards David Matthews and Coldplay, but not before playing another of my favourites, L’Appuntamento by Ornela Vanoni. Have you seen Oceans Twelve? You’ll recognize the song if you have.
Quick side note: when you’re writing about music, do you italicize the song? Markdunn.ca doesn’t have a style guide yet, but I think album in italics and song straight up and down makes sense.
Also, I know that when people talk about the best trilogy, Ocean’s usually isn’t part of the conversation. I think that’s a tragedy.
I think my partner actually took this one. Remember the Naam? I think they’re still around, but I haven’t been in a while. They used to be open 24/7 and having a vegetarian restaurant that does almost everything vegan open all the time was such a privilege. I miss that.
Anyway, this little fella was sitting in the planter box outside watching us as we had brunch.
If you didn’t make it to my 2024 gallery show, BEACHES: a retrospective, I made the mistake of using a photo my partner took of a French press with my camera as like, one of the main publicity shots. It was on Instagram, and that was about it, but I didn’t really post a lot so using a photo someone else took on my camera meant that something like 50% of the marketing for the event wasn’t even my work.
To be clear though, when I say things like “my gallery show” and “the retrospective” I’m talking about the time where I was moving out of my apartment, and since it was all clean and nothing was in it, I decided to get a bunch of photos printed and hang them up around the apartment. I made little description cards and everything.
One of the photos included was the shot above. The funny thing about this one is that the sky was so beautiful that day. It had all these different shades of pink and blue and when I was setting up to take the photo, my partner was like, “aren’t you using a black and white roll? You’re not going to get any of this.”
And I was like, “but the texture is so interesting.”
I’m really happy with how it turned out.
But photos of people are so much more interesting than photos of things aren’t they?
This one was taken on a hike near Porteau Cove. You go up to a lake. I’m not sure what it’s called.
I’ve got a few more photos from this hike, and even though it was a beautiful day and we all had a really nice time (I think! I did at least), I find that they all feel quite tense. I think it’s something to do with the lack of colour, but to me when I look at them all I get a real feeling of tension from the photographs. Here’s another one:
Okay, less tension in this one maybe. It does demonstrate one of my favourite elements of photography though: flipping off the camera.
Flipping off the photographer would be more accurate actually. Either way, a classic pose, and an excellent option for when you don’t know what to do with your hands. Another good one is flexing the biceps.
And of course, the peace sign. Something we need now more than ever.
This seems as good a place as any to wrap up. The train’s running out of steam, the playlist isn’t hitting the same anymore, and it’s almost time to make dinner.
Remember when I had long hair though?
Questions, comments, concerns, complaints, and compliments can be directed to Mark at mark@markdunn.ca.
All photos were taken on 35mm film by yours truly. Ilford rolls in this case. 200 and 400.
Remember the barge? A few years ago after a particularly nasty storm this barge washed up on the shore near Sunset Beach in English Bay. It turned out to be too stuck to push off the rocks, even during a “king tide,” and had to be dismantled piece by piece. And so, after an iconic year as everyone’s favourite Vancouver landmark, sometime in late 2022, it was no more.
According to the Squamish Atlas, the area where the barge landed is called Í7iy̓el̓shn (pronounced ey-ee-el-shin, according to the atlas). The 7 is an interesting character in the written Sḵwx̱wú7mesh language that we don’t have in English. Similar to the hamza (“ء”) in Arabic, it signifies a glottal stop, kind of like the stop in the middle of “uh-oh.”
This kind of stuff is top of mind for me right now as I’m reading Tiná7 Cht Ti Temíxw: We Come From This Land, the history of the Squamish People. I highly recommend it if you live in Sḵwx̱wú7mesh territory, or if you’re simply interested in the history of the area.
The photo above was taken at Sunset Beach, by the concession stand. You can see Vanier Park across the water. Vanier Park, which is also home to the Planetarium, Vancouver Museum, City of Vancouver Archives, and Bard on the Beach, was once a village called Sen̓áḵw.
This photo is starting to push the “west end” theme a little. I took this one from a False Creek Ferry going between Granville Island and the Aquatic Centre. Looking ahead, you can see the Granville Street Bridge, but if you use your imagination, put yourself on that little ferry, and turn your head to the right, you would see the massive new towers that are the first phase of the development at Sen̓áḵw.
The development promises 6,000+ new rental homes spread out over 11 towers. The three towers north of Burrard that are currently under construction, and eight more of varying heights on the southern side. It was a little controversial, considering the massive scale of the development, but because the lands belong to the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, they don’t have to follow the typical City of Vancouver development process.
I won’t be the first person to point out the massive irony in members of a mostly-white neighbourhood complaining that an Indigenous development is going to dramatically change their community. But it still feels like it needs to be said.
To be honest, I started writing this blog post to show off some of the photos I’ve taken over the years, and also to just put something here. The website has just been parked for years now, and I felt like it was time to slap on a new coat of paint and re-launch the blog, for what feels like the hundredth time.
But I live in Kitsilano now, a neighbourhood named after Chief August Jack Khatsalano (X̱ats’alanexw Siy̓ám̓), and I’m reading about the history of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation/Squamish community/Squamish people). So, when I started putting this together, the first thing I thought about when I chose to start with the barge photo was: hey, I actually think there’s another name for this place.
This was the view from my old apartment. Living here, I was very close to Stanley Park, which was home to another significant village. As I understand it, X̱wáýx̱way was home to Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, səlilwətaɬ, and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm peoples and was one of the largest Indigenous settlements in the region.
X̱wáýx̱way (meaning “mask” according to Tiná7 Cht Ti Temíxw) was on the north shores of Stanley Park around where Lumbermen’s Arch sits today. There was apparently even a longhouse that was over 60 metres long.
I guess there haven’t been a ton of actual photos of the West End here yet. Above you’ll see the Denman Market, at Denman and Barclay. They used to have all sorts of good flavours of Coke Zero, like Cherry, Vanilla, and sometimes even Cherry-Vanilla.
X̱wáýx̱way, like Sen̓áḵw, was in the way of the brutal forces of colonization, and the people who lived there were forced out. Initially, it was to build a road around today’s Stanley Park.
The people living in Sen̓áḵw, however, were displaced because their community was too close to the Vancouver neighbourhoods popping up around it. White people didn’t want to live so close to an Indigenous village.
The trouble with non-fiction is that you often know how the story ends before you start reading the book. I’m only halfway through but I know that while, after an enormous struggle, some things have gotten better, it’s not necessarily a story with a happy ending. At least not yet.
Anyway, it’s something to think about.
Questions, comments, concerns, complaints, and compliments can be directed to Mark at mark@markdunn.ca.
All photos were taken on 35mm film by yours truly.
Since I live in the West End and lost my job in mid-March, I’ve come to appreciate the sounds of the apartment in a way that I always used to be too preoccupied to notice.
There’s the construction along Haro, that used to be a faint chorus of banging, buzzing, clanging, and other construction sounds that generally form an important part of the ambience of the city’s weekdays. A few months ago it was quiet enough that I would barely notice it, but as the work moved along the street, and closer to me, it’s quite efficiently replaced my alarm clock, and allowed me the opportunity to do things like run the seawall before it gets busy with my neighbours doing the same thing. Now the work is moving further on, and only time will tell if the merits of waking up pre-7AM will go with it.
I live right next to some big trees. I’m not sure what kind, but they lose their leaves in the winter and they take quite a bit of my privacy along with them. But they’re home to lots of different birds. Little ones, whose names I don’t know, crows, and pigeons. It’s also home to old clothing that has been discarded by either the folks higher up in my building or the one next door. I hear a mix of cooing and chirping throughout the day, but it’s most peaceful in the morning. You can pair it with coffee and avocado toast.
Two of the pigeons that spend a lot of time hanging out in the trees also made a nest on my patio. The eggs hatched a little over three weeks ago, and the nestlings have gone from tiny little yellow stress balls (in appearance only) to quite respectable juvenile pigeons. City pigeons are descendants of rock pigeons, and you can see this in the light grey birds with the two black stripes across their wings. Overtime, they’ve interacted with “escaped” domesticated pigeons, and this is why pigeons can have such different plumages today.
These birds, part-wild, part-escaped pets (bred for different reasons but no longer in captivity), have carved out their own space in cities all over the world, adjacent to, but separate from our own.
The nestlings make a little squeaking noise, one that’s very un-pigeon-like, when they know they’re about to be fed. It’s very sweet, but I can see why some would find it irritating.
In terms of gender-parity in child rearing, pigeons appear to be somewhat ahead of us people. When incubating, though the mother generally spends more time on the eggs, the father shares the responsibility. Watching them switch out is a very cool experience. I believe, and this is based on what I’ve read about wood pigeons (columba palumbus) which are a different subspecies, that the hen pigeon will warm the clutch for roughly twice as long as the cock. There are periods when neither is incubating though. When feeding, both produce “milk” which is made up of regurgitated plant and insect and held in a spot in the neck called the crop. Both parents seem to share the feeding equally.
Anyway, as you now know, I’m a bit of a pigeon-landlord these days, and have taken the responsibility seriously. They are not very happy with me though, and when I put out water for them they shat all over the bowl.
It’s kind of a weird time. I was a server before all this started, so I lost my job fairly early on in the global pandemic. I drove down to Seattle on March 9th for the Strokes concert, driving back that night, and got a bit of a cold a few days later. Apparently Seattle got hit bad, but I didn’t really know that at the time. None of us really knew what was coming, I guess. I’m psyched I got to see the Strokes twice in one week though. PLUS they played One Way Trigger and Evening Sun in Seattle, but not in Vancouver and those are BANGERS.
A few days later, a Thursday, my boss and I decided that it wasn’t worth the risk and I should take a few days off. I phoned the health line the next day and they told me to self-quarantine for the next two weeks. When that was done, the world was quite a bit different, and instead of waiting tables, my colleagues that had stayed on were mostly answering phones and boxing takeout. And trying very hard to stay apart in a very small restaurant with a very very small kitchen.
Today, a lot of people in my position have found ourselves with the incredible good fortune of being able to stay at home collecting $2,000 a month in order to keep the more vulnerable parts of society safe. I have to remind myself every day that this is a gigantic privilege, and though I’m fairly introverted and thrive when all I have to do is read books and write nonsense, a lot of people aren’t anywhere near as fortunate. Beyond the effects of the actual virus, people are killing themselves, people in abusive relationships are finding that they now have no escape and are confined 24/7 with their abusers, people who don’t qualify for CERB or EI and have lost their jobs have really limited options, and people who were already in precarious situations, like living in the street, can’t really shelter-in-place and are having a really hard time navigating this.
All the while, front-line health workers are dealing with the brunt of this every day. They don’t get to sit at home earning $2,000 a month. Neither do grocery store workers, restaurant cooks, and tons of other people that work in jobs that are incredibly essential but are not well-paid. This virus has effected us all differently, along lines of race, class, and gender, and once the world gets a handle on it, we desperately need to revisit the ways we’ve structured our institutions, and the ways we treat each other. The old way wasn’t working, so it’s on us to do what we gotta do to survive…I think that’s a Tupac lyric.
With the privilege acknowledged and out of the way, overall these last couple months have had a fairly positive effect on me. I’ve had the chance to really think about what I want to do, what’s important to me, and who’s important to me. I’m exercising a lot and feeling really fit, despite the ever-present bulging gut, and I’m writing again. I really like writing. I missed it.
When I lived in Australia a few years back I’d kind of sequestered myself at my grandma’s house (RIP Jean), a roughly 10 minute drive from Yarrawonga, a town of about 6,000 year-round residents that sits about three hours north of Melbourne. I’d read Stephen King’s On Writing and decided to follow his advice and write 2,000 words a day. I churned out two decently-thick science fiction manuscripts that I have not looked at since.
To be fair, a couple years ago I tried to edit one down into something reasonable, but realized that I used the cliche, “the more things chance the more they stay the same,” three times in the first 10 pages or so. I was so discouraged I shredded it. Haven’t looked at either since.
Maybe I’ll revisit them again one day. I still have the .docs somewhere. But lately I’ve had the chance to dive back into this love that I’ve always had for stories. I’m reading so much, and writing little short stories that I’m really hoping other people might actually like.
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Anyway, I just wanted to stretch my blogging muscles a little bit. I’ve clearly got the time. Take care of yourselves, take care of your families, think about what’s really important, don’t stress about ordering sushi 3 or 4 times a week if you can afford it, it’s a crazy time so do what you need to do.
Today I got the opportunity to root through a dead guy’s condo. It’s a surreal experience. A somewhat estranged relative of my father’s passed away a couple weeks ago. Today, with his brother and sister-in-law, my cousin and my dad, I went through his Surrey townhouse.
The last time I saw Cousin John was probably ten years ago. Even then, years before his heart attack in a cinema parking lot, conversations about him took on a past tense tone. He was labelled as an odd man to my siblings and I, and we never did a good enough job of staying in touch.
After seeing his place, I regret not taking more time to talk to the man. He had bookshelves filled with science fiction books that I’d love to read. John’s interests were varied–he had military books, shelves dedicated to books on aircraft, and it seems like he had a growing interest in submarines right before the end. The shelves also held textbooks on chemistry and biology, as well as books on alien encounters and TWO copies of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time.
EDIT (30-10-19): I took one of the copies and have not opened it yet.
EDIT (30-06-25): I still haven’t opened it, but I do still have it!
Though he was a fairly messy person (according to dad he always was, they had lived together for a couple years way back), I’ve been told that he was always very clever, maybe spending too much time on the more important questions of the day to have a chance to tidy up. I’m sure it’s partly because he was family, but I started to notice similarities between us as I walked through the rooms. He had two typewriters. I don’t know if he used them or just had them around.
I could’ve done a better job connecting with him, because after all I don’t know why he was so estranged from the rest of us. I mean, we’re a weird family anyway and he was just across a couple bridges in Surrey.
Anyway, maybe the point I’m driving at is that family is too easy to take for granted.
