Reprioritizing our Sidewalks: Remembering Jane Jacobs While Walking in Dunbar

On Saturday, May 4th, group walks were held in various North American cities commemorating the late Jane Jacobs and her ideas about cities.  I seriously considered joining one of the walks here in Vancouver, but dealing with a dire sooty mold situation prevailed.  (I spent much of that Saturday hand-washing thick, black, sooty, gunk from a tall camellia bush–leaf by leaf.  Ah, the joys of having a garden.)

One of the reasons I’d wanted to join one of the walks was that, back when I was studying in Toronto, I lived for five years in the same block of Albany Street in the Annex area as Jacobs.  I often saw her walking along the sidewalk in our block to do some shopping on nearby Bloor Street and, occasionally, even shared a few pleasantries.  I didn’t actually read any of her books when I was living in Toronto, although I read much about Jacobs, and her ideas, in the local press.  When I returned to Vancouver, and had more time, I actually read some of her work–and even wrote a short letter to her about a point with which I disagreed in The Nature of Economies.  (It wasn’t her best book.)  I was sad to hear that she died a few years ago.

Although I didn’t make it to one of the Jane Jacobs walks, through the past week, as I walked through the area in which I now live, following my regular routine, I thought about Jacobs and her ideas about cities.

The area of Vancouver in which I now live, called Dunbar, in the city’s south-west far reaches, became heavily populated only after cars took over from horses and buggies and other, more ‘primitive’, forms of transportation–and before Jacobs ideas started to influence city-planners world-wide, including in Vancouver.  Although we’ve had relatively good public transportation and sidewalks lining every street for many decades, most people living in this area who can afford to buy and operate cars, which is the majority in this relatively affluent area, rarely use public transportation or ever walk on those sidewalks–unless it’s to walk their dogs.  Full disclosure: I personally do not own a car (nor do I own the house where I live).

I concede that the layout in this part of Vancouver isn’t especially hospitable to walking.  If this area had developed in the pre-car era, surely there would be more shops and other city amenities interspersed among all the houses, such as one finds in older residential areas, like the Annex in Toronto–as well as in newer residential areas in Vancouver, like our False Creek area.  But for anyone who is healthy, the distances actually aren’t too bad.

Using an iPhone app that can track the distance one has walked using GPS, and the amount of time the trip takes, I recently found out that the distance from my house to the nearest Starbucks, in the midst of our nearest shopping area, is 1.08 km, and that, using my usual gait, it took me only 12:15 minutes to walk there.  The amount of climbing I had done in that uphill walk was a bit of surprise to me, 384.11 m, or more than a third of the horizontal distance I had walked; but for me, even at my relatively advanced age, that walk isn’t too bad–and coming back, all downhill, even laden with shopping bags, is easy-peasy.

The frequent rain in Vancouver also can be a deterrent to walking.  But we’re used to it here, and it beats the heavy snow and frigid temperatures that are common through much of the year in other cities, in Canada and elsewhere, where people generally do a lot more walking than is done by people living in this part of Vancouver.

So why is it that people living in this part of Vancouver use our sidewalks as little as they do, for just regular getting around?  Even the urgings to Vancouverites of our ecology- and health-minded Mayor, Gregor Robertson, to use cars less don’t seem to have gotten through to most of the people living in this part of Vancouver.

One of the reasons seems to be that walking along our sidewalks can sometimes be rather treacherous, or at least very unpleasant, apart from the distances and the rain.  Although very few people in this area use sidewalks for regular getting around, this is not to say that the sidewalks here are usually completely bereft of life.  What I commonly do see on our sidewalks is people using the sidewalks for purposes other than what I would consider their primary purpose.  These including jogging, biking, skateboarding and rollerblading, incorporating sidewalks into elaborate gardens that stretch out into the road with much of the sidewalk obscured by plants, and, to be sure, people walking their dogs–or allowing their dogs to walk themselves.

This is after a recent, much-needed, pruning

It’s understandable that, in an urban area with limited space, if sidewalks aren’t commonly used for the basic purpose of getting around, they will come to be used for other purposes. But if we do now increasingly need our sidewalks for basic getting around, we have to reassess if, and if so, how, these other purposes fit in.

If, for example, it is generally agreed that is important that area residents be able to walk up to the local stores, and down again (or down and up, as the case may be), to fetch a few groceries, perhaps including meat products, large dogs, especially those running free, drop to the bottom of the rankings in the overall system of priorities.  Furthermore, if is agreed that area residents should be walking in general, then walking on our sidewalks have to made as safe and as comfortable as possible for everyone, including young children and the elderly.  Skateboards and bicycles, over-extensive foliage, as well as misdirected, overused, lawn sprinklers, have to make way for safe, comfortable, dry (when it’s not raining) pedestrians.  When I observed Jacobs walking back and forth along Albany Street in Toronto’s Annex, she was already in her eighties, and slowing down physically, although still managing to get around by foot in that neighbourhood.  I doubt that she would have been able to manage as well, at that age, in Dunbar.

To make such changes stick, it seems that there needs to be better enforcement on such issues at the city level.  But I think local residents could help to a great extent to make the changes themselves, by taking a chance with our sidewalks, despite their colonization by forces that are inimical to just walking and, if and when they do meet opposition, politely but firmly stating their case for pedestrians as the number one priority.

Besides the environmental and health advantages to walking, if we can get more people in this area using our sidewalks for just getting around, I suspect that, before too long, we also might see some improvement in the amenities available in this part of Vancouver–that, in turn, would make using our sidewalks for daily tasks more attractive for many people in this area.

The other day, I was down at the northern section of Dunbar street, near 16th Avenue, and saw that yet another small grocery store, that had been in operation for only about six months, had gone out of business.  You would think that people in Dunbar, particularly those living in its northern section, would have flocked to that store, since there was nowhere else in that area to purchase even basic food items.  But the majority of people here seem to be so unaccustomed to just making a quick walking trip to a local store to pick up a quart of milk or a loaf of bread that the store apparently didn’t get enough customers to succeed.

The next time someone tries to operate a store like that in this area, or other businesses or amenities that we need, we have to support them, and make the best that we can of this area that probably at one time seemed so modern, but that, by now, has come to seem out of date.

Learning to appreciate the value of cats as pets might help, too.

Update: Vancouver Art Gallery “Flamingo” Advertising for “Grand Hotel” Show

A friend who read my previous post in this blog, about the Grand Hotel show at the Vancouver Art Gallery, offered the interesting suggestion that those making marketing decisions for the show may have been familiar with the infamous Flamingo Hotel in Whalley (a part of Surrey, just outside of Vancouver), and chose to feature in the show’s advertising the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas partly because they realized many local people were likely to confuse the two hotels, and thought the confusion might boost attendance at the Art Gallery show.

It’s an amusing idea–even if it’s unlikely to be true.

Bring on the Strippers: A Not So Grand “Grand Hotel” at the Vancouver Art Gallery

 

Surely someone associated with the show that opened at the Vancouver Art Gallery last week, Grand Hotel: Redesigning Modern Life, was sufficiently familiar with the Greater Vancouver area that they knew that we have our own famous Flamingo Hotel in these parts.  ”World-famous”, which is how the hotel is described in the banner from the hotel’s website (that I’ve copied and pasted above), may be stretching the truth; but it’s definitely well-known throughout Greater Vancouver.  Its striking pink neon sign on the busy King George Highway in Whalley has been an iconic Surrey landmark for many decades–since at least when I was a kid, and our family would drive by the Flamingo Hotel when we were making a trip into Vancouver from White Rock or Crescent Beach.  The hotel’s pub and lounge have long been popular Surrey drinking spots.  Following the introduction of strippers in the pub, the hotel on the whole has become strongly associated with adult entertainment–and I don’t mean art shows.

It’s very unfortunate that the Vancouver Art Gallery chose to feature another Flamingo Hotel (the one in Las Vegas), with not only the identical name but also similar signage, in its advertising for its current show, since this advertising is likely to give many people from our region an entirely erroneous idea about the show.  No, it’s not a stripper show, or even a show about the ‘art’ of stripping.  Too bad, because either would probably have been more interesting and entertaining than the show I saw at the VAG a few days ago.

Besides the various failings of this show that already have been enumerated in various newspaper reviews–including the well-written and insightful review by Robin Laurence in the Georgia Straight, with which I generally agree–I was very troubled by the apparent lack of awareness of, or even interest in, the local scene by the curators of this show.  Even in Los Angeles and New York, whose hotels and cultural products are apparently of greatest interest to the curators, a mediocre Master’s thesis plastered all over the walls, with scant illustration, is unlikely to go over well in an art gallery–or in any other setting.  But when such a show is run at the Vancouver Art Gallery, and Vancouver hotels, and their relationship to artistic production in this region, are virtually omitted from the show, and when the advertising for the show treats our own Flamingo Hotel as if it didn’t exist, I feel that people from this area who attend shows at the VAG, and who otherwise support the Gallery, are being exploited.

The show was not entirely without local content.  I saw the Waldorf Hotel, on Hastings Street, listed among various hotels from around the world in a text block concerning how some hotels accommodate performance art.  There was only the name of the hotel, with no particulars (not even that it was in Vancouver).  I also saw a video loop, shown on a very small screen, probably no more than a foot wide, and dwarfed by text, of the ballroom of the Vancouver Hotel going through many transformations over the course of what seemed to be a couple of days, speeded up to a couple of minutes.  (One of my earliest jobs was working as a banquet waitress at the Vancouver Hotel, a job that sometimes involved helping to set up and take down tables.  In days of yore, I was one of those little worker ants scurrying about on the screen.)   Also, in the ‘chapter’ of the show about the relationship of hotels and transportation (going through this show really was like reading a thesis), I saw a small illustrated map on the wall showing what were formerly the Canadian National Railway hotels, including the Vancouver Hotel.  Other other than these token local references, I didn’t see anything, or read anything, in the show itself about Vancouver hotels, or about the relationship of Vancouver hotels and artistic, or cultural, production.  (Granted, I may have missed some other token references in all that text.)

In the show itself, I didn’t see, or read, any reference whatsoever to English Bay’s Sylvia Hotel, which is famous in arts circles throughout Canada–and is also likely to be familiar to many artists and writers in other countries.  In one of the blog posts about the evolution of this show, this important Vancouver landmark is mentioned; but, not even in the blog post, is the significant function of this hotel’s lounge as a hangout and meeting place for Vancouver, and other Canadian, artists and writers mentioned.  In local terms, this establishment is almost, if not just as, significant as New York’s Algonquin Hotel is to New York culture and, in a show of this nature at the VAG, should have received at least as much attention as the Algonquin–even if this meant giving less attention to the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles.  (How many visitors to the VAG who reside in Greater Vancouver give a hoot that Lindsay Lohen frequents the Chateau Marmont when she is in Los Angeles?)

And what about the beautiful, recently renovated, Georgia Hotel, right across Georgia Street from the Vancouver Art Gallery, where, in the past, I’d gone for drinks several times with Vancouver theatre friends?  Coming upon the Georgia Hotel immediately after leaving the show at the art gallery, it seemed so unfair that this lovely old neighbour of the VAG had been entirely left out of the show–including the blog.

I’ve wondered since seeing Grand Hotel last week if the curators may have put so much emphasis on hotels outside of our area, and given such short shrift to local hotels, for some well-considered, well-intentioned, reasons that weren’t immediately apparent to me.  Last week, the VAG received approval from Vancouver’s Mayor for a new and expanded gallery on the old bus terminal site, at Georgia and Cambie–provided that the Gallery can raised $350 million in the next two years.  That’s a whole lot of money, especially during tight economic times.  (Readers of this post may wish to read an article by Marsha Lederman published last week in the Globe and Mail about the VAG’s current fundraising challenges.)

Perhaps the show was designed to possibly be exported to other galleries, to generate additional revenue for the VAG.  (I’m no expert in such matters, but I imagine some money changes hands when a show that is put together at one art gallery is shown at another.)  If this were the case, more of a focus on Vancouver hotels may have been seen as making the show less attractive to ‘buyers’ in other cities.  (Due to its strong emphasis on American hotels in general, and the Chateau Marmont in particular, the show would seem to be an especially good fit for Los Angeles–disregarding, for now, the other problems with the show.)  It also may have been thought that certain well-heeled, globe-trotting, potential donors to the VAG’s relocation and expansion fund, from Vancouver and elsewhere, would be more inclined to donate if they saw (and read about) their own globe-trotting lifestyles in this show.  (There was a story in last Sunday’s Province newspaper about a swanky fundraising dinner for the VAG held  in conjunction with the opening of Grand Hotel that raised $350,000.  At least a few people with money liked this show–or at least didn’t hate it so much that they were deterred from donating.)

It is possible that the curators, and the Gallery Director, were allowing the VAG to be exploited to some extent for what they saw as the greater good.  But if that is the case, I’m not sure it’s worth it: even though they might have been OK with allowing themselves to be exploited (I’ve heard that some strippers feel that way about what they do for a living), they also stand to alienate a lot of local people.

Or, maybe they are all from elsewhere, and just didn’t know any better, plain and simple.  If they’d known better, surely they would have avoided using the Flamingo Hotel in the advertising for this show.

Or, maybe it was some combination of the two.

Pigeon Rising from a Puddle: One of My Favourite Things on a Gloomy, Wet, Vancouver Day

 

To lift my spirits when things aren’t going well, I will sometimes try to pick out things in my physical environment that give me special pleasure.  It’s much like the exercise to beat the blues–or terror engendered by a severe thunderstorm storm–suggested in song by Maria in The Sound of Music of remembering one’s favourite things.  However, in my variation, one is dealing with the here and now.  Also, there’s no music–except, perhaps, screechy music being played by an obnoxious kid on an iPod in the seat behind me on the bus.

One day late last week, I was heading home from work, on the lookout.  I’d been interviewed for a good job, that would have made use of my background in education, the week before, and had been hopeful about getting it; but, if I hadn’t been called by now, they had proceeded to the next stage of interviews, that was scheduled for this week, without me.  It was too early for a definitive no; but it was almost certain I didn’t get the job.  Okay, I didn’t get it.  Also, on the home front, things had not been going well.  I wonder if Shaw Cable has yet been cited as a contributing party in a Canadian divorce or separation, or homicide, due to its installation of those infernal digital TV boxes across our land, without the provision of complete, intelligible, user manuals, for everyone–including those who, like my mother, don’t use computers, and who can’t download the digital, semi-intelligible, complete version.  Also, the weather was gloomy and wet, once again.  To make the weather situation, and my mood, even worse, we had a taste of balmy, dry, spring weather over the Easter weekend, a couple of weeks ago; but now we were back to typical Vancouver winter weather, that is also prevalent through much of our spring, and sometimes even summer: gray, wet, and cold.

So, as I was saying, I was on the lookout that day for things in my environment that give me special pleasure.  I saw a young woman standing at a bus stop carrying a particularly attractive leather shoulder bag, in a splendid scarlet red with some stitching on the front in contrasting colours, that didn’t look like an expensive designer bag but that was very attractive nonetheless.  It wasn’t so much the bag itself that gave me pleasure as the taste in accessories of this young woman: to see that there was someone in this city that appreciated the lovely colour and design of the bag, and its workmanship, gave me a bit of a lift.  Unfortunately, when she pulled out her phone and made a call to a friend, and started speaking to her friend in French, I realized she was a visitor to Vancouver from Quebec, and likely would be returning home, with her bag, and her good taste in accessories, very soon.  (Note to Vancouver Fashion Designers: Please, please, design some attractive, functional, reasonably-priced, raincoats and rain-proof accessories for Vancouverites. We should be a world centre for wet-weather fashion here in Vancouver; but we’re far from it.)

I got on a bus heading up Granville Street, and looked out the window for inspiration; but there was nothing to see but rain and gloom.  In the heavy rain, even the sight of the Stanley Theatre, home of the Arts Club Theatre Company, and where I’d enjoyed seeing several shows in the past, didn’t lift my spirits.  With the heavy rain coming down, from inside the bus, I couldn’t even see what show was currently playing at the Stanley. 

(Note to Stanley Theatre: Make the printing on the outside of the theatre of the names of the shows currently running larger and brighter, so that one can see this important information from vehicles passing the theatre in Vancouver’s rain.  And Note to TransLink, our local transit authority: Make the route names and numbers of your buses on the front of the busses larger and brighter, so that one can see this important information before boarding a bus in Vancouver’s rain and gloom.)

I got off the bus and headed back down Granville towards Broadway, where the bus I’d intended to take stopped, still not having observed anything in my environment that really picked me up.  I kept looking, even in the windows of the upscale shops along South Granville; but nothing did it for me.

Near Broadway, with my head hanging, I caught sight of a pigeon rising from a puddle on the road beside the curb.  It gracefully swooped up over me and other bedraggled, uninspiringly attired, pedestrians to a dry perch overhead, under a red awning.  Watching that pigeon as it rose from the puddle, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, I experienced that moment of special pleasure, and renewal, that I’d been seeking.  (Note to City of Vancouver:  How about a pigeon rising from a puddle as our new city mascot?)

Seeing that pigeon swoop up was a nice moment, but I still think I could use a good vacation about now.  I plan on getting to the new show at the Vancouver Art Gallery next week, about hotels around the world, which should give me at least a little of the experience of going on a vacation.  I plan on writing about the show in my next blog post.

     

Remembering Whapmagoostui (Whale-Pam-Goose-Too-ee)

I still knew the Cree and Inuit village in northern Quebec where I worked for six months as a co-ordinator for a Cree youth employment program right after finishing my BA at McGill as “Great Whale River” or, in French, “Poste de la Baleine”. So when I first heard about the six Cree youth from “Whapmagoostui” who had hiked 1,600 kilometers from their village in northern Quebec to Ottawa, beginning in January and arriving March 25th, it didn’t register with me they were from that same village. I did know, however, that some of the First Nations villages in northern Quebec that used to be identified at least by Whites by their European names were now generally known by their First Nations’ names, and 1,600 km seemed about the right distance, so I eventually checked on-line. (I probably would have clued in faster if the distance had been reported in miles.) “Great Whale River”, or “Poste de la Baleine”, and “Whapmagoostui”, or “Kuujjuarapik” (the Inuit name for the village), are all one and the same–at least in geographical terms.

Culturally, however, there are four distinct cultures–including two cultures widely regarded as Canada’s founding cultures, English and French, and two significant Canadian First Nations cultures, Cree and Inuit–represented in this small, isolated, village. This makes Whapmagoostui, as I’ll call it here, unique. (“Whapmagoostui-Kuujjuarapik”, which now seems to be the official name for the community as a whole, is too much of a tongue-twister for me, at least just yet. I have to first get used to just the Cree part.)

Whapmagoostui is the northernmost of the ten Cree settlements in Quebec, and also the southernmost of several Inuit settlements in northern Quebec. A Canadian Air Force base, built during the Cold War but already closed for many years by the time I visited, in the late ’70s, had drawn the two groups to the same place. All of the Cree lived in one part of village while all of the Inuit lived in another part, separated by an all-important runway (there is still no year-round road access to Whapmagoostui); but the two groups shared many community amenities.

The predominant second language among both groups, at least when I was there, was English. Yet most of the Whites who then lived in Whapmagoostui, or who visited the community, were Quebecois, who spoke French among themselves but who also could communicate in English–and sometimes also in Cree and/or Inuktitut. When they were speaking with me, because my French is limited and because I was, after all, from Vancouver, they spoke English–although I heard more French in the six months I was in Whapmagoostui than I had heard in the three years prior that I had been living in Montreal, and even tried speaking French on several occasions (especially after I’d had a few drinks). I also learned a few words in Cree and Inuktitut.

Arriving at this this very special Canadian crossroads, where four linguistic and cultural groups converge, almost immediately after completing an intense academic program at McGill, my thoughts turned to Canadian post-secondary education in relation to Canada’s supposed multicultural identity. Perhaps, in the months following university graduation, most recent graduates go through a process of reassessing what they’ve just been through; but, in my case, the process seems to have been especially intense because of where I was residing during this period. The Euro-centric educational program that I had just completed did not do justice to the multiculturalism that I experienced in Whapmagoostui.

Even now, while many Canadians currently critique our universities in terms of economics or the poor job prospects, and sometimes also high debt loads, of many Canadian university graduates, my critique begins with a consideration of cultural factors. That’s not to say that is where my critique ends; but that’s where it begins. And this seems to go back to my six months in Great Whale River–or Whapmagoostui–followed by a year of helping to set up a program on three First Nations reserves in my home province of British Columbia modelled after the program for which I’d been working in northern Quebec.

Congratulations to those six Cree youth from Whapmagoostui who made it all those 1,600 kilometers, in the middle of a frigid northern Canadian winter, to Ottawa. It was a great personal triumph for all of you, as well as, in my view, a very significant step forward for Canada as a whole in its long march towards a just, multicultural, society. You brought with you in your trek to our nation’s capital the Northern Lights of your unique community, that can help to show the rest of Canada the way.

U v. u (Part 2): Universities, in the Big ‘U’ Sense, versus universities, in the Small ‘u’ Sense

As I suggested in my previous post, Trinity Western University’s argument that religiously-minded students are likely to face discrimination in the law schools of secular Universities due to their religious beliefs seems to have been greatly overstated–while the probable main reason for TWU now wanting its own law school, the income-generating potential of a law school, hasn’t been publicly stated at all.  Although religiously-minded students may indeed encounter discrimination due to their religious beliefs in many programs in Canada’s secular Universities, especially in the humanities and social sciences, the chances of this occurring in law schools seem to be relatively small due to the close ties between law schools and the Canadian legal profession: Canadian law schools teach (primarily) Canadian law and, in Canadian law, there is a protection of religious freedom.

To accommodate all potential Canadian law school students, including religiously-minded students, our secular law schools don’t seem to need fixing to nearly the extent suggested by TWU; however, undergraduate programs in secular Universities that now serve as prerequisites for law schools do need fixing, and  not only for the sake of religiously-minded students who can’t afford the high fees charged by private Christian Universities.   Perhaps we should now consider modelling these programs more after professional programs like law . . . or maybe we should just allow students who want to do so to bypass University, in the big “U” sense, altogether, and enter these professional programs (with certain modifications) directly from high school, as is now being tried, on a limited basis, in Great Britain.  The institutions that such students attend might still be called ‘universities’–but we can drop the capital ‘U’.

I’m very curious to know how many current law school students and recent law school graduates–and maybe even not-so-recent law school graduates, who were undergraduates when, or after, I was an undergraduate in the mid- to late-70s–generally have been satisfied with their law school experiences yet have felt that the program of studies they had to complete at the undergraduate level in order to be accepted into law school was generally unsatisfying–and possibly even questionable in legal terms.  I’m most interested in Canadian cases, since I’m Canadian and since, due to our current national ethos, I suspect there is a relatively high prevalence of such cases in this country.  But I also suspect there are many such cases in other Western countries know well, especially the United States and Great Britain.  I’m also, of course, interested to know the nature of the discrimination, or perceived discrimination.  I doubt very much that it’s only Christian lawyers and law students who have felt there were some significant problems with their undergraduate educations.

Indeed, religiously-minded Christians seem to have it relatively easy in our secular Universities, compared with other groups.  As pointed out by the Vancouver Sun’s religion writer, Douglas Todd, in a piece about TWU’s quest for a law school that appeared in the Sun’s Saturday edition on February 16, “A spat over spirituality in higher education,” Western Universities in general have been strongly associated with Christianity since their inception.  Todd suggests in that piece that, in recent decades, our secular Universities have lost that longtime connection with Christianity–but I would argue that, in many respects, including some very profound respects, this is not actually the case.  (For consistency’s sake, I’m continuing to use the big ‘U’ when I see fit, even though Todd doesn’t capitalize in this manner.)

Among the policies and practices of our secular Universities that can be traced back to Western academia’s Christian roots include the notion that there is such a thing as pure, unadulterated, Universal, Truth (definitely deserving of a capital ‘U’ and ’T'), from which it follows that academics in pursuit of this highly valuable Commodity deserve to be free of any outside interference.  In this context, University professors also deserve to be accorded a very high status, much like that of respected clergy.  (Watching a procession of all of the Cardinals congregated in Rome to elect a new Pope on TV last week, I was strong reminded of the entrance of professors in their full academic regalia at a University Convocation.)  Today’s religiously-minded Christian students studying in secular Universities are likely to find the fundamental belief system of our Universities consistent with their own fundamental belief system–even if they have trouble with certain left-leaning professors or fellow students.  But, if they are careful in selecting their courses and professors, they can get through University relatively unscathed.  (Particularly when I was studying education, several of my professors were openly, devoutly, Christian.  One was even retiring early to become a priest.)  Those who believe in Absolutes, whether they are on the right or the left of the religious and political spectrums, get off relatively easy.

It’s the rest of us, including, I suspect, the majority of Canadians today, who don’t–and who shouldn’t be prevented from entering law school, or other professions that now require University education, due to our religious and political beliefs.

U v. u (Part 1): Trinity Western University’s Push for the First Canadian Christian Law School

I’ve been following with great interest the current controversy surrounding the desire of a local Christian university, Trinity Western University (or TWU), to establish Canada’s first private Christian law school. TWU wants to establish its own law school because, it claims, Christian students are treated unfairly in secular universities due to their religious beliefs, presumably such that these students may be prevented from pursuing careers in law. The head of the Council of Canadian Law Deans, Bill Flanagan, is strongly opposed, because, as he has stated, TWU’s “community covenant,” which forbids homosexual sex, and possibly also limits academic freedom, is “fundamentally at odds with the core values of all Canadian law schools.” Flanagan has insisted that he has nothing against Christian universities as such, but only with TWU’s “community covenant.” (The religious basis of TWU is Evangelical protestant. Other Christian denominations and, it follows, other private universities and colleges associated with these denominations, are more open-minded about the issue of homosexuality.) In January, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association became involved, supporting TWU and denouncing Flanagan. The BCCLA accused the deans of Canada’s secular law schools of wanting to monopolize legal education and keep religiously-minded people from becoming law students and lawyers.

Although I’ve generally been supportive of Trinity over the years (I went to elementary school with the children of the first President of Trinity, so Trinity has been on my radar almost since its inception), I don’t support Trinity on this issue. My sense is that Trinity isn’t being entirely honest about its reasons for wanting to start its own law school. I suspect the main reason that Trinity now wants its own law school is to generate more income. Trinity is now seriously in debt, and the tuition fees paid by law students could help to alleviate some of this debt. (I don’t know what the fees are that Trinity proposes charging its law students, but I suspect they are well in excess of the fees charged law students at public, secular, Canadian universities. Trinity currently charges its undergraduate general arts students over $20,000, four times as much as such students are charged at Canada’s public universities.)

It seems to me to be disingenuous to argue that religiously-minded people are likely to have greater difficulty in law school than other students due to their religious beliefs. I’ve never attended law school myself (although I did apply, and was accepted); however, when I was doing graduate work in education (for which I opted instead of law school), I did take a course called Law and Higher Education, taught by a practicing judge, who taught the course using the law school model. The course basically consisted of reviewing existing case law pertaining to various educational issues, and I found the course extremely satisfying–indeed more satisfying than the majority of university courses I took over the years, at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. What set this course apart was its close connection with the current standards of a profession existing outside of universities, namely the Canadian legal profession, and with the current mores of Canada as a whole. Canadian law enshrines religious tolerance, and not only the content of this one law course I took but also the manner in which it was taught reflected this. I’m not a practicing Christian myself (I was brought up in the United Church, but stopped attending when I was a teenager), but I find it hard to see how any religiously-minded person would have difficulty with courses like this.

It would be interesting to have a conversation now about this subject with ‘K’, the son of Trinity’s first President, who sat directly behind me through Grade 7 at White Rock Elementary, and who became a good buddy. (If you’re reading this, ‘K’, remember “Very funny little bunny . . . ?”) I lost touch with ‘K’ after my family moved to Vancouver when I was in Grade 8, but I Googled him recently, after I’d heard about the current controversy at Trinity, and learned that, ironically, he became a lawyer, and now has a successful practice in the United States. I also learned that he went to law school at the University of British Columbia. I don’t assume that ‘K’ still subscribed to the religion in which he was brought up by the time he reached law school; however, if he did, I doubt that he would have had problems in law school because of his religion. He didn’t seem to have such problems at our secular elementary school.

Of course, to say that the justification that TWU has publicly presented for wanting its own law school is invalid is not to say that this institution should not be entitled to have its own law school, on other grounds. I believe that, if it were at any other time in history, TWU would be entitled to have its own law school to the same extent that our secular universities have been entitled to have their own law schools: TWU would be entitled to subsidize its undergraduate programs with law-school tuitions, just as our secular universities have done, and do. The problem is that we are now at a point in history at which Canadian universities in general are being seriously reevaluated, and the question has become not whether TWU should have its own law school but, rather, whether professional education, including legal education, any longer really belongs within Universities (in the capital ‘U’ sense), of any kind. In my opinion, the answer is no. Under the current circumstances, I believe it would be folly to expand legal education in universities, whether secular or Christian.

I’ll have more to say about Universities (in the capital ‘U’ sense) versus universities (in the small ‘u’ sense), especially in relation to the study of law, in my next post.