Below the Radar

In 1983, the province of British Columbia saw the rise of a social movement like no other since — uniting activists, community organizations and trade unionists in protest. This time on Below the Radar, host Am Johal speaks to David Spaner, an author, cultural critic, and organizer who has written a compelling history of the Solidarity resistance movement.

Released in December of 2021 by Ronsdale Press, Solidarity: Canada's Unknown Revolution of 1983 is David’s chronicling of the organizing efforts by the Solidarity movement and its ongoing implications for worker justice in BC. He and Am go behind the scenes of the book, as David recalls experiences from being on the ground as a reporter and activist during that time.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/171-david-spaner.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/171-david-spaner.html

Resources:

— Solidarity: Canada's Unknown Revolution of 1983 (Ronsdale 2021): https://ronsdalepress.com/all-books/solidarity/

— SHOOT IT! Hollywood Inc. and the Rising of Independent Film (Arsenal Pulp Press 2012): https://arsenalpulp.com/Books/S/Shoot-It

— Dreaming in the Rain: How Vancouver Became Hollywood North by Northwest (Arsenal Pulp Press 2002): https://arsenalpulp.com/Books/D/Dreaming-in-the-Rain

Bio:

David Spaner has worked as a feature writer, movie critic, reporter, and editor for numerous newspapers and magazines. David’s also been a cultural/political organizer (Yippie, manager of the punk band The Subhumans). He is the author of Dreaming in the Rain and Shoot It! Hollywood, Inc. and the Rising of Independent Film.

In 2021, Spaner published a behind-the-scenes book about the Solidarity resistance movement, Solidarity: Canada's Unknown Revolution of 1983 (Ronsdale 2021) documenting the event using intimate storytelling and melding cultural and rebel politics to provide insight into the conflicts that are still with us. It was the largest political protest in the province's history and threatened to end in an all-out general strike.

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “Remembering BC’s 1983 Solidarity Uprising — with David Spaner” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, May 3, 2022. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/171-david-spaner.html.

SFU's School for the Contemporary Arts Assistant Professor Eldritch Priest joins this episode Below the Radarl to discuss the potential in nonsense and failure, the phenomenon of the earworm, and his journey from musicianship to employing theory.

In this episode, Eldritch explores his beginnings as a jazz guitarist, the practices that guide his work and his teachings, and the path that led him to composition and beyond. He dives into the legitimacy and aesthetic possibilities of failure and nonsense, and the potentials of daydreaming and a resting mind — in defiance of prevailing positivist neoliberal discourse.

Eldritch also talks about the phenomenon of the earworm, which is a focus in his new book, Earworm and Event. The earworm, to him, is a prime example of studying music less as an artform, but more as a technology, using the imagination to shape not just one's feelings, but one’s thoughts as well.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/170-eldritch-priest.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/170-eldritch-priest.html

Resources:

Eldritch’s new book, Earworm and Event: https://www.dukeupress.edu/earworm-and-event

Eldritch’s Website: https://www.strangemonk.com/

Eldritch’s previous book, Ludic Dreaming: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/ludic-dreaming-9781501320804/

Eldritch’s other previous book, Boring Formless Nonsense: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/boring-formless-nonsense-9781441122131/

The Logic of Sense, by Gilles Deleuze: http://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-logic-of-sense/9780231059831

Bio:

Eldritch Priest writes on sonic culture, experimental aesthetics, and the philosophy of experience from a ’pataphysical perspective. He is Associate Professor in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University. Eldritch is also a composer and improviser as well as a member of the experimental theory group “The Occulture.” He is the author of several essays and books including Boring Formless Nonsense: Experimental Music and the Aesthetics of Failure (Bloomsbury 2013) and most recently, Earworm and Event: Music, Daydreams, and other Imaginary Refrains (Duke University Press 2022).

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Priest, Eldritch. “Earworm and Event — with Eldritch Priest” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, April 26, 2022. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/170-eldritch-priest.html

This episode of Below the Radar is a special live event recording from “A Conversation About Urban Choreography,” presented in-person at SFU’s Vancouver campus on November 9, 2021.

Taking gesture as a point of entry, Justine A. Chambers and Alana Gerecke extend their collaborative exploration of the everyday choreographies that are built into an urban experience. Combining artistic and academic research, they index the various bodily orientations cultivated by the built and social structures that shape everyday spaces. By tracking an archive of everyday gestures that are prompted by various components of built and social space, they insist on the lasting and vital information contained within those specific organizations of moving bodies.

In this discussion, Chambers and Gerecke are joined by architect Annabel Vaughan. Together, the panelists explore the accumulation of living archival gestures generated by the interactions between moving bodies and built space, an evolving assembly of lost gestures.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/169-urban-choreography.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/169-urban-choreography.html

Resources:

Alana Gerecke: https://agerecke.wixsite.com/alanagerecke

Justine A. Chambers: https://justineachambers.com/

Annabel Vaughan: https://www.eraarch.ca/person/annabel-vaughan/

Everyday Choreographies (2016) event recording: https://soundcloud.com/sfu_voce/everyday-choreographies-alana-gerecke-and-justine-chambers?in=sfu_voce/sets/public-event-recordings

Bios:

Alana Gerecke

Based in Vancouver, on the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəjˀəm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil Waututh) First Nations, Alana Gerecke is a settler scholar, mother, and dance artist of mixed European descent. She researches choreography in public space, asking questions about how bodies are cast into relation with natural and built environments, and with other bodies. Her current book project, Moving Publics, examines the social and spatial politics of site-based dance in Vancouver. A former Trudeau Scholar and Banting Postdoctoral Fellow, Alana is currently a Jack and Doris Shadbolt Fellow in the Humanities (Urban Studies, SFU) and Artist-in-Residence at Vancouver’s Dance Centre (2021-22).

Justine A. Chambers

Justine A. Chambers is a dance artist living and working on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Her movement based practice considers how choreography can be an empathic practice rooted in collaborative creation, close observation, and the body as a site of a cumulative embodied archive. Privileging what is felt over what is seen, she works with dances that are already there – the social choreographies present in the everyday. She is Max Tyler-Hite’s mother.

Annabel Vaughan, OAA MRAIC

Annabel Vaughan is an architect and project manager at ERA Architects, she recently returned to Vancouver to manage projects in BC. She received her Master of Architecture from The School of Architecture at the University of British Columbia, where her master’s thesis examined the use of heritage buildings as mnemonic devices for the collective memory of cities and their public lives. She writes, teaches and participates regularly in discussions concerning the role that architecture and public art can play as agents of political change in the city.

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Chambers, Justine A. and Gerecke, Alana. “A Conversation About Urban Choreography — with Alana Gerecke, Justine A. Chambers & Annabel Vaughan” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, April 19, 2022. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/169-urban-choreography.html.

Micheal Vonn, from the PHS Community Services Society, joins Am Johal to discuss the relation between overdose prevention initiatives with different health policies at different stages of the pandemic. This is a conversation about how policies may not take into account marginalized, at risk groups, especially in the context of crises, whether for a pandemic, or for climate change resiliency.

As someone with extensive experience in law and public health, Micheal ends the discussion by talking about how the narrative framing of crises as concerns of security leads to different policy outcomes.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/168-micheal-vonn.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/168-micheal-vonn.html

Resources:

PHS Community Services Society: https://www.phs.ca/about/

Pigeon Park Savings: https://www.phs.ca/our-services/pigeon-park-savings/

BC Civil Liberties: https://bccla.org/

AIDS Vancouver: https://www.aidsvancouver.org/

Bio:

Micheal Vonn is CEO of PHS Community Services Society, previously known as the Portland Hotel Society. For fifteen years, Micheal was the Policy Director of the BC Civil Liberties Association. As an Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in the Faculty of Law and in the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, she taught civil liberties and information ethics.

Through her work in HIV/AIDS, Micheal has been granted both an AccolAIDS Award and a Red Ribbon Award. She was also the recipient of the 2015 Keith Sacré Library Champion Award for support, guidance and assistance given to the BC library community.

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “Overlapping Crises and Community Responses — with Micheal Vonn” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, April 12, 2022. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/168-micheal-vonn.html.

City of Vancouver Councillor Jean Swanson joins Am Johal to discuss her time in politics, both as an anti-poverty activist, and as a city councillor. In this episode, they discuss the housing affordability crisis in Vancouver, the need for safe supply, and the high cost of living.

Jean also describes how she was introduced to political activism through Bruce Eriksen and Libby Davies, the experience of developing a community newsletter, and her memories of being a political candidate over the decades.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/167-jean-swanson.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/167-jean-swanson.html

Resources:

Housing For All Of Us: https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-making-home-kennedy-stewart-revised

Carnegie Action Projects: http://www.carnegieaction.org/reports/

Residential Tenancy Act: https://www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca/civix/document/id/lc/statreg/02078_01

Vacancy Control: https://bc.ctvnews.ca/b-c-needs-vacancy-control-tenants-group-says-following-alarming-evictions-study-1.5588483

CMHC: Rental Market Report: https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/en/professionals/housing-markets-data-and-research/market-reports/rental-market-reports-major-centres

Renter Services Centre: https://vancouver.ca/people-programs/renter-office.aspx

Ian Mulgrew: B.C.'s chief coroner laments lack of action as opioid crisis hits worst death toll yet: https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/change-bonnie-henry-to-b-c-s-chief-coroner

Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU): https://vandureplace.wordpress.com/

Drug Users Liberation Front (DULF): https://www.dulf.ca/

Fair Price Pharma: http://fairpricepharma.ca/

Insite: https://www.phs.ca/program/insite/

In this episode of Below the Radar, host Am Johal is joined by adrienne maree brown, organizer and author of nonfiction activism explorations Pleasure Activism, Emergent Strategy, and more. Together, they discuss brown's history as a community organizer and facilitator, the powers of solidarity and pleasure in activism, and some of her inspirations—from Audre Lorde and Octavia Butler to the beauty of nature itself.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/166-adrienne-maree-brown/

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/166-adrienne-maree-brown.html

Photo credit: Anjali Pinto

Resources:

- adrienne’s website – https://adriennemareebrown.net/

- adrienne’s Twitter – https://twitter.com/Adriennemaree

- Octavia’s Brood – https://www.akpress.org/octavia-s-brood.html

- Pleasure Activism – https://www.akpress.org/pleasure-activism.html

- Emergent Strategy – https://www.akpress.org/emergentstrategy.html

- Audre Lorde’s “The Uses of the Erotic” essay — https://uk.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/11881_Chapter_5.pdf

- Public Reading and Dialogue on Octavia Butler and the Future https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSMZbgo0XZA

Bio:

adrienne maree brown is the writer-in-residence at the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, and author of Grievers (the first novella in a trilogy on the Black Dawn imprint), Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation, We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds and the co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements and How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office. She is the cohost of the How to Survive the End of the World, Octavia’s Parables and Emergent Strategy podcasts. adrienne is rooted in Detroit.

Cite this Episode:

Johal, Am. “The Pleasure in Liberation – with adrienne maree brown” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, March 29, 2022. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/166-adrienne-maree-brown

Content Warning: The stories in this series deal with difficult and sometimes traumatic topics. This episode in particular discusses substance use, family separation and residential schools. Please practice self care, stop listening, and seek help if you need to. Scroll down to find links to available supports.

For the final installment of the Voices of the Street podcast series, host Angel Gates invites Megaphone author Eva Takakanew into conversation about her powerful writings.

As longtime friends, Angel and Eva share and discuss pieces of writing that shine a light on the traumatic histories and ongoing impacts of the Indian Residential School system and the Sixties Scoop.

Eva reads her poem, “My Mother’s Comfort,” published in the 2021 Voices of the Street anthology, as well as her article, “The truth must be told,” calling for truth and accountability from colonial institutions.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/series/voices-of-the-street/165-angel-gates-eva-takakanew.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/165-angel-gates-eva-takakanew.html

Mental Health Support:

Crisis Centre BC: https://crisiscentre.bc.ca/

Indian Residential School Survivors Society: https://www.irsss.ca/services

KUU-US Crisis Line: https://www.kuu-uscrisisline.com/

WAVAW Rape Crisis Centre: https://www.wavaw.ca/

BC Mental Health and Substance Use Services: http://www.bcmhsus.ca/

More Resources:

— “The truth must be told” by Eva Takakanew: https://www.megaphonemagazine.com/vendor_voices_july_2021

— ‘Neglected in Life, Dishonoured in Death’ - The Tyee: https://thetyee.ca/News/2021/06/01/Neglected-Life-Dishonoured-Death-TRC-Excerpt/

— Megaphone Speakers Bureau: https://speakersbureau.megaphonemagazine.com/

About the series:

The 2021 Voices of the Street anthology, “INSIDE we are all the same,” jumps from the page in this special podcast series.

Featuring interviews with writers and personal reflections on how their lived experiences merge with the themes of the text, this podcast series illuminates Voices of the Street in a new way.

The Voices of the Street podcast is a six-part series for Below the Radar, curated and hosted by participants of Megaphone’s Speakers Bureau.

Read more: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/series/voices-of-the-street.html

Bios:

Angel Gates is aboriginal from the Haida Nation. She is the proud mother of three amazing kids and has been a dog owner for five years. She is a passionate human being and activist always fighting for human rights or the environment. When she is not doing work with the Megaphone Speakers Bureau, she is an actress. She has been nominated for Best Actress twice. At night she likes to relax with a glass or two of vodka and smoke crystal methamphetamine.

Eva Takakanew was born in Edmonton, Alberta and is from Thunderchild First Nation near Turtleford, Saskatchewan. She is a descendant of Chief Poundmaker. Eva moved to Vancouver and lived with her biological mom until just after her first birthday and then was adopted at the age of two. Last July, Eva graduated with a diploma in family community counselling from Native Education College and hopes to one day work with youth. She also has aspirations to become a Native court worker. Eva loves to write and says it helps her calm her busy brain, which never seems to shut off.

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Gates, Angel. “Voices of the Street: Honouring Indigenous Children & Motherhood — with Angel Gates and Eva Takakanew” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, March 22, 2022. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/series/voices-of-the-street/165-angel-gates-eva-takakanew.html

Content Warning: The stories in this series deal with difficult and sometimes traumatic topics. Please practice self care, stop listening, and seek help if you need to. Scroll down to find links to available supports.

Storyteller, actor and activist Angel Gates invites Megaphone author Peter Thompson into conversation about his poem, “Empty Inside.” Peter’s piece, published in the 2021 Voices of the Street anthology, is a poetic contemplation of loneliness and isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

They discuss feelings of anxiety and longing for simple connection and interaction during lockdown. Peter also speaks to the devastating wildfire, fueled by climate change, that burned his hometown of Lytton, BC in the summer of 2021.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/series/voices-of-the-street/164-angel-gates-peter-thompson.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/164-angel-gates-peter-thompson.html

Mental Health Support:

Crisis Centre BC: https://crisiscentre.bc.ca/

Indian Residential School Survivors Society: https://www.irsss.ca/services

KUU-US Crisis Line: https://www.kuu-uscrisisline.com/

WAVAW Rape Crisis Centre: https://www.wavaw.ca/

BC Mental Health and Substance Use Services: http://www.bcmhsus.ca/

More Resources:

“Lytton Memories” by Peter Thompson: https://www.megaphonemagazine.com/vendor_voices_august_2021

Megaphone Speakers Bureau: https://speakersbureau.megaphonemagazine.com/

About the series:

The 2021 Voices of the Street anthology, “INSIDE we are all the same,” jumps from the page in this special podcast series.

Featuring interviews with writers and personal reflections on how their lived experiences merge with the themes of the text, this podcast series illuminates Voices of the Street in a new way.

The Voices of the Street podcast is a six-part series for Below the Radar, curated and hosted by participants of Megaphone’s Speakers Bureau.

Read more: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/series/voices-of-the-street.html

Bios:

Angel Gatesl is aboriginal from the Haida Nation. She is the proud mother of three amazing kids and has been a dog owner for five years. She is a passionate human being and activist always fighting for human rights or the environment. When she is not doing work with the Megaphone Speakers Bureau, she is an actress. She has been nominated for Best Actress twice. At night she likes to relax with a glass or two of vodka and smoke crystal methamphetamine.

Peter Thompson (Nlaka'pamux) was born in Lytton, B.C. in the Fraser Canyon and has lived in East Vancouver for more than 46 years. He enjoys trout and salmon fishing in the summer and loves getting out of the city to spend time in nature and with his grandchildren.

Peter has been involved with Megaphone for more than a decade and can be found selling publications outside Whole Foods at West 4th Avenue and Vine Street in Vancouver. He has been published many times in Voices of the Street, has had several winning photographs appear in the Hope in Shadows calendar, and is a frequent contributor to Megaphone magazine. He has built a strong community of supporters, friends, and customers over the years.

Credits:

With additional music:

Flute piece provided by Paul Paul Che oke' ten Wagner: www.sacredbreath.ca

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Gates, Angel. “Voices of the Street: Empty Inside — with Angel Gates and Peter Thompson” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, March 15, 2022. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/series/voices-of-the-street/164-angel-gates-peter-thompson.html

Content Warning: The stories in this series deal with difficult and sometimes traumatic topics. This episode in particular discusses substance use, family separation and residential schools. Please practice self care, stop listening, and seek help if you need to. Scroll down to find links to available supports.

The fourth episode of the Voices of the Street podcast series features a conversation on Indigenous honour, healing and empowerment, with your host, Nicolas Leech-Crier.

Nicolas interviews Voices of the Street contributor Eva Takakanew about her written piece, “My Mother’s Comfort,” a deeply personal poem and reflection on drug use and the intergenerational mother-child relationships in her life as an adoptee from the Sixties Scoop.

Together they speak about their experiences as adoptees and reconnecting with their culture as adults.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/series/voices-of-the-street/163-nicolas-leech-crier-eva-takakanew.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/163-nicolas-leech-crier-eva-takakanew.html

Mental Health Support:

Crisis Centre BC: https://crisiscentre.bc.ca/

Indian Residential School Survivors Society: https://www.irsss.ca/services

KUU-US Crisis Line: https://www.kuu-uscrisisline.com/

WAVAW Rape Crisis Centre: https://www.wavaw.ca/

BC Mental Health and Substance Use Services: http://www.bcmhsus.ca/

More Resources:

UBC Transformative Health and Justice Research Cluster: https://transformhealthjustice.ubc.ca/

Music by Paul Che oke' ten Wagner: https://www.sacredbreath.ca/

Megaphone Speakers Bureau: https://speakersbureau.megaphonemagazine.com/

About the series:

The 2021 Voices of the Street anthology, “INSIDE we are all the same,” jumps from the page in this special podcast series.

The Voices of the Street podcast is a six-part series for Below the Radar, curated and hosted by participants of Megaphone’s Speakers Bureau.

Read more: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/series/voices-of-the-street.html

Bio:

Nicolas Leech-Crier (and his secret identity, “Mr. Essential”) is an adoptee of Cree heritage and a freelance writer. At 43 years old he has spent approximately half his life surviving in the streets and more than a decade in the DTES. It never occurred to him that being a “drug user” would ever be useful, but thanks to the incredible support and loving friendship shown to him by his many neighbours and friends in the DTES, he’s parlayed his street smarts and community connections into a successful career as an overdose responder and outreach worker.

Eva Takakanew was born in Edmonton, Alberta and is from Thunderchild First Nation near Turtleford, Saskatchewan. She is a descendant of Chief Poundmaker. Eva moved to Vancouver and lived with her biological mom until just after her first birthday and then was adopted at the age of two. Last July, Eva graduated with a diploma in family community counselling from Native Education College and hopes to one day work with youth. She also has aspirations to become a Native court worker. Eva loves to write and says it helps her calm her busy brain, which never seems to shut off.

Credits:

With additional music:

Flute piece provided by Paul Cheoketen Wagner: www.sacredbreath.ca

‘O Canada’ by Henry Burr, CC BY-NC 3.0 US, UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Leech-Crier, Nicolas. “Voices of the Street: My Mother’s Comfort — with Nicolas Leech-Crier and Eva Takakanew” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, March 8, 2022. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/series/voices-of-the-street/163-nicolas-leech-crier-eva-takakanew.html.

Content Warning: The stories in this series deal with difficult and sometimes traumatic topics. Please practice self care, stop listening, and seek help if you need to. Scroll down to find links to available supports.

For the third installment of the Voices of the Street podcast, we have a candid and heartful conversation between host Yvonne Mark and Megaphone writer Dennis Gates in response to his piece “Without Prejudice,” published in the 2021 Voices of the Street anthology.

In his piece, Dennis writes about his experiences of anti-Indigenous discrimination and injustice within the court system and the deep-felt impact of incarceration on his life. Yvonne and Dennis reflect on both their experiences with the criminal justice system, finding strength through writing, and the importance of sharing stories like theirs.

This episode was curated and hosted by poet, storyteller and Megaphone vendor, Yvonne Mark, an avid writer and advocate for ending stigma around substance use.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/series/voices-of-the-street/162-yvonne-mark-dennis-gates.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/162-yvonne-mark-dennis-gates.html

Mental Health Support:

Crisis Centre BC: https://crisiscentre.bc.ca/

Indian Residential School Survivors Society: https://www.irsss.ca/services

KUU-US Crisis Line: https://www.kuu-uscrisisline.com/

WAVAW Rape Crisis Centre: https://www.wavaw.ca/

BC Mental Health and Substance Use Services: http://www.bcmhsus.ca/

More Resources:

Yvonne’s website - I Live to Tell: https://www.ilivetotell.ca/

Pivot Legal Society: https://www.pivotlegal.org/

BC Civil Liberties Association: https://bccla.org/

About the series:

The 2021 Voices of the Street anthology, “INSIDE we are all the same,” jumps from the page in this special podcast series.

Featuring interviews with writers and personal reflections on how their lived experiences merge with the themes of the text, this podcast series illuminates Voices of the Street in a new way.

The Voices of the Street podcast is a six-part series for Below the Radar, curated and hosted by participants of Megaphone’s Speakers Bureau.

Read more: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/series/voices-of-the-street.html

Bios:

Yvonne Mark (Nisga’a-Gitxsan) was born in Haida Gwaii. Her parents had moved the family there so Yvonne wouldn’t have to go to residential school. She came to Vancouver when she was 16. In addition to her volunteer work at Carnegie Community Centre, Yvonne is a Megaphone vendor and member of Megaphone’s Speakers Bureau, working to end stigma around substance use. She has taken part in Megaphone’s Community Journalism 101 writing workshop, held in partnership with SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement, and is an outspoken advocate for the Downtown Eastside.

Dennis Gates (Haida), at 60 years old, has lived in the Downtown Eastside for 25 years. He says he is proud to still be learning new things about himself. As a participant in Megaphone’s recent writing workshops for people with lived experience of incarceration — offered through a partnership with the UBC Transformative Health and Justice Research Cluster — Dennis was able to explore and express himself for the first time since being released from a federal institution in 1996, about what it was like to go to prison.

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Mark, Yvonne. “Voices of the Street: Without Prejudice” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, March 1, 2022. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/series/voices-of-the-street/162-yvonne-mark-dennis-gates.html.