Category Archives: Culture

it’s a small, nasty world, after all

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Forgive me; this is going to be a post with the bare minimum of reflection in it, at least until the comments section, because quite frankly I really don’t want to know what I think or how I feel about this. Right now I have to say I’d prefer neither to think about this, nor to have feelings about it, or even at all. 

It’s been five years since I felt sorry for Trevor Greene.

Trevor Greene CivilianTrevor Greene is a dynamic, innovative and well-traveled individual with over 15 years of experience in writing and reporting. He is a speaker of three languages, a published author, an entrepreneur, a trained and experienced liaison officer, and has eight years of highly regarded service in the Canadian Armed Forces.

Greene joined the Vancouver bureau of Bloomberg News as a general assignment reporter on business and finance in Canada and Asia. He also began researching and writing about the so-called poorest postal code in Canada; Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

He wrote his first nonfiction book in Canada, Bad Date: The Lost Girls of Vancouver’s Low Track, about the women who have gone missing from the Downtown Eastside over the past 15 years. Bad Date was published in November 2001. Some of his present entrepreneurial projects include an eco-tourism venture and a community volunteer consulting company.

Greene is an officer in the Seaforth Highlanders, a Vancouver-based primary reserve infantry unit, where his main duties are domestic emergency and disaster response, and community and civilian agency liaison. At time of writing he was also preparing for a six-month army deployment to Afghanistan in 2006 as part of Operation Archer.

Greene lives on a boat docked at Fisherman’s Wharf on Vancouver’s Granville Island. He speaks English, Japanese and French.

In 1993, while living in Japan, he’d written a critically-lauded book Bridge of Tears on the taboo subject of Japanese homelessness. Socially-conscious from the beginning, his latest project was a venture philanthropy initiative, encouraging fat cats to invest in Afghanistan’s rebuilding.

Bad DateIn 2001 his new book Bad Date:The Lost Girls of Vancouver’s Low Track, the first on the Missing Women case, had just come out to cautiously positive reviews. 

Over two years, Greene spent just about every day in the impoverished neighbourhood, eventually earning the trust of prostitutes, police and the families left behind. He paints a graphic picture of life in the ‘s most drug-addicted neighbourhood.

“What I was shocked at is the violence that is perpetrated on these women by normal, everyday johns every single day,” Greene said in an interview.

Nobody really wanted to be seen crowing about a book that laid out the fact that there was a serial killer on the loose in Vancouver. Unfortunately for Trevor Greene’s book (which I immediately bought because I was working on what I figured would be the SECOND book about the case), a few weeks after it came out Willy Pickton was arrested for those murders, essentially rendering Greene’s book, with its many theories and free-floating, faceless menace, obsolete.

I felt sorry for the lad.

A few months later, my friend Miss V asked me if I knew him; he’d applied for membership in her Social Empire. I said we’d never met, but that I knew his writing from the book as well as his social journalism pieces in the Georgia Straight, and he seemed like an earnest, educated, and interesting guy, not the fashionista A-List type (this was in the days before “metrosexual” was a term, but after it had become a lifestyle). No idea if she let him in or not, but smart money says yes.

Then, not one word from that time to this. Vancouver’s a small town. Six degrees of separation do not apply; six degrees do not exist. In this city, it’s two, at most three. Jounalists grow wary of chatting about stories, not for fear of being overheard and scooped, but because it’s quite likely that the barista, or the blonde at the next table, or someone else within earshot, is sleeping with/related to/BFF with the subject of the article.

Today, at the Shebeen Club, I found out the latest about Trevor Greene.

It happened in Shinkay. The man just can’t pick a good neighborhood.

Canadian Soldier Wounded in Afghan Ambush

The axe assault that badly injured a Canadian soldier was part of a deliberate ambush as troops met with village elders in southern Afghanistan, the military says.

Lieut. Trevor Greene, a journalist and former navy officer from Vancouver, suffered a serious head wound during the meeting near the small Canadian outpost at Gumbad, about 70 kilometres north of Kandahar.

Capt. Kevin Schamuhn, the commander who was leading the expedition, told CBC News that the Canadian troops had already visited several villages during the day to attend shuras, or meetings with village elders.

He said all of them had been peaceful events where they shared lunch or tea and introduced themselves.

The Canadians took off their helmets and put down their guns as they usually do to reassure villagers that they were friendly.

“There was no weird feelings. There was no gut feeling that something was about to go down. Everything was very calm and similar to the previous meetings.”

A minute later, a man who appeared to be less than 20 walked up behind Greene and pulled a half-metre-long axe out from underneath his clothes.

“He pulled an axe out from underneath his clothing and lifted right above his head, standing right behind Trevor,” said Schamuhn, who was sitting only about a metre away.

As he lifted up the axe, the man shouted “Allahu Akbar,” which means “God is great” in Arabic.

Then, said Schamuhn, “he swung the axe into Trevor’s head.”

“He was just really set on helping these people and doing it right. He’s just really well-spoken and mature. …He was just really looking forward to helping these people.”

He was shipped out to a military hospital in Germany immediately, via Black Hawk helicopter. After two months in critical care there, one week ago he was transferred to Vancouver General Hospital.

The emotional father of a Canadian soldier seriously wounded in an axe attack in Afghanistan welcomed his son home Tuesday, saying he’s improving every day.

Richard Greene said his son, Trevor, has been breathing on his own for the past four days and even managed to move his legs while in hospital in Germany.

“That apparently has some significance and we believe it (does.) We’re confident he’ll recover completely,” said Greene. “He’s just received great care.”

Greene had to pause to compose himself.

He said his son has received e-mails of support from around the world. Greene read them to his comatose son in Germany.

Greene described Trevor as “quite a lad.”

Richard Greene said Trevor volunteered to go to Afghanistan and hoped he could later get some experience at the United Nations.

“We’re very proud of him,” said Greene. 

His writing partner has put up a page on their website for the media. I’ll paste it here, with a couple of spam-reducing edits.

A Message to the Media and Concerned Canadians
 

From Shane Gibson co-author and friend of Trevor Greene

Thank-you for all of your prayers and concern for Trevor at this time.  I have passed on your well wishes to his family and those closest to him.  At this time I will not be commenting on interviews in regards to Trevor’s situation until he and his family give me the okay.His family is busy praying and hoping for the best and I will forward any requests to make statements or comments directly to them.  Just drop an e-mail to shane at closingbigger dot com. At this time I have been asked not to disclose their contact details.Trevor is very professional in everything he does.  This includes keeping in the strictest confidence the nature of his military responsibilities and past experiences while serving our country.  Your best source of information is from the Department of National Defense.Here’s what I can be quoted on:
 “Trevor is a talented author, an amazing Dad and partner, the kind of person you can count on always. He is deeply committed to protecting and preserving the freedoms we enjoy as Canadians.”

Kindest Regards,

Shane Gibson

Trevor Greene

Welcome to the Blogroll: Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog

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Very much in the spirit of yesterday’s advice column, we present Geoffrey Chaucer’s Friendster Blog, including the fabulous Aske Chaucere section.

Q: My betrothed, a most wicked man, betrayed me near as bad as Tereus Chaucer Gifdid Procne. His woman of choice commited, though, that villainy which women do best, and tempted him away. Presently it is not legal, where I live, to have either of them killed for this treachery — what shall I do to avenge the wrong they both have done to me, and to my virtue? Their joy at my grief does pain me so.

Cor Fracta Est

 

A: Ma Cher Coeur Brisee

Thoughe y love a goode revenge tragedie as much as the nexte guye, y muste counsel yow to a bettre path. Yow sholde maken pece and kepe faithe, not wyth thyne betrothede nor wyth this womanlie Diomede, but rathir with yowrselfe. For vengence aperteneth and longeth al oonly to juges. Remembre yow that pacience is a greet vertu of perfeccioun, and remembre that ther are tymes ordained unto al thynges by the first moevere — of the ookes, and of the hard stones, and of man and womman seen we also, in youthe as well as age, alle shal be dumped , a kyng as shall a page – som dumped on dates, som dumped by telephone, some dumped in compaignie, som dumped allone – ther helpeth noght, al goth that ilke weye.

And thus, take two pintes of hagen dasz dulce de leche, a ful seson of buffie the vampyre slayre, and calle me in the morninge.

Le Vostre G

 

The Nameless, Named!

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effigia okeefeCower in fear, for the end of the world is nigh: the unnameable has been named!

Behold, mortals, the nameless dweller in the accurst city named “The Nameless City.”

Well, actually he’s from New Mexico.

And from Columbia University:

Two Columbia scientists have discovered the fossil of a toothless crocodile relative that looks like a six-foot-long, two-legged dinosaur, but is actually a distant cousin of today’s alligators and crocodiles. Adjunct professor of earth and environmental sciences Mark Norell and his graduate student Sterling Nesbitt, both of whom also work as paleontologists at the American Museum of Natural History, have named the fossil Effigia okeeffeae.

Effigia means “ghost,” referring to the decades that the fossil remained hidden from science [and also the fact that it was found on the Ghost Ranch Dig; like, synchronicity, dude]. The species name, okeeffeae, honors the artist Georgia O’Keeffe, who lived near the site in northern New Mexico where the fossil was found.

According to Wikipedia, the fossil was discovered back in 1947-1948 by Edwin H. Colbert, but was lying unclassified in the basement of the American Museum of Natural History when Norell and Nesbitt were looking for something else and the one of them went, “I say, that’s odd. Never seen anything like it. What do you say, old chap?” or something like that, and the other fellow said,

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons death may die.

I should have known that the Arabs other department heads had good reason for shunning the nameless city fossil, the city fossil told of in strange tales but seen by no living man, yet I defied them and went into the untrodden desert basement with my camel grad student. I alone have seen it, and that is why no other face bears such hideous lines of fear as mine; why no other man shivers so horribly when the night wind air conditioning rattles the windows specimen cases. When I came upon it in the ghastly stillness of unending sleep it looked at me, chilly from the rays of a cold moon the fluorescents amidst the desert’s New York’s heat. And as I returned its look I forgot my triumph at finding it, and stopped still with my camel grad student to wait for the dawn.

Or words to that effect.

(nb Cthulhu references get the squid tag. Makes total sense, right? Aw, shut up)

Boring, Pointless, yet really, really useful

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Yasu RecipeWhen you’re cooking rice, get a pot with a lid, stick your finger in the pot, right down to the bottom. Put in rice up to the first joint. Add water up to the second joint. Take finger out, bring rice and water to a boil, then turn it down to low till the water’s absorbed. That’s it: your rice will be perfect.

 

Hemingway’s Nobel Acceptance Speech

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This is something I read at the Shebeen Club’s long-ago Hemingway’s Birthday Party. James Sherrett was kind enough to be one of our readers that night, with an excerpt from his very Hemingwayesque novel Up in Ontario.

Up in Ontario 

Our other reader was Lucan Charchuk, who has now read twice, as well as presenting some of his artwork.

Luke the Olive Vase 

When Lori Dunn and I began the Shebeen Club, we hoped that within a year we’d be using it to present living Canadian authors, instead of dead foreign celebrities. This was the first event at which we managed to do both, and almost a year ahead of schedule! There were challenges to be overcome, of course. Our event occurred during a bicycle race whose track completely encircled and cut off the pub, but our public was not to be thwarted, and we had a relatively full house. The readings went very well. Despite the dangerous concentration of so much masculinity in one room, violence was averted and a sense of calm, if really testosterone-fuelled calm, reigned.

This is the speech that a very ill Hemingway had the US Ambassador read as he accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature on Hemingway’s behalf. It tells you something about the courage of the two men above that they had the fortitude to read their own work after hearing this. Hemingway is, as always, honest to the point of acute pain. He sets the bar very high; may we all attain that height, if only for a moment.

Hemingway’s Nobel Acceptance Speech

Having no facility for speech-making and no command of oratory nor any domination of rhetoric, I wish to thank the administrators of the generosity of Alfred Nobel for this Prize.

No writer who knows the great writers who did not receive the Prize can accept it other than with humility. There is no need to list these writers. Everyone here may make his own list according to his knowledge and his conscience.

It would be impossible for me to ask the Ambassador of my country to read a speech in which a writer said all of the things which are in his heart. Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses he will endure or be forgotten.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.

I have spoken too long for a writer. A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it. Again I thank you.