Illustration by Dave Donald

Why we should never feel bad about what we read

“I keep telling myself that this winter I’m going to re-read In Search of Lost Time. I can’t believe how long it’s been.”

“Oh. Yeah. Um. Me too, it’s been … way too long since … that.”

“But you have read Proust, right?”

“Proust? Have I read him? What a silly … I mean, obviously—hey, I’m going to grab a drink, do you want one?”

You can insert anything into the place of Proust in this hypothetical conversation, be it another classic, the latest CanLit triumph, the steamiest or most thrilling commercial hit or perhaps the newest smartypants trade non-fiction in the vein of Malcolm Gladwell et al. The point is, even— or maybe especially—those who most love reading and books seem to be plagued by the sneaking suspicion that we should be reading something other than what we are; that whatever we’re reading is wrong.

The wrong choice, the wrong genre, the wrong level (high-brown vs. low-brow, commercial vs. literary) or the wrong period (we’re behind on what’s new, we haven’t read enough of the classics—the list goes on), the wrong demographic. Do I read enough books by women? By queer writers? By aboriginal writers? Is my bookcase politically, socially or intellectually compromising? Am I geographically lopsided? Does it matter if I missed the Russian novelists all together? In a completely non-scientific sampling, I surveyed a few bibliophiles on their guiltiest “missed book”. Responses ranged from In the Skin of a Lion to “anything by Gabriel Garcia Marquez” and from Trainspotting to Ulysses. Expressions of genuine pain clouded my friends’ faces as they ‘fessed up. People who love to read and to talk about reading were wincing over the fact that they hadn’t read, well, everything.

And then there is the temptation to define ourselves not by what we read, but by what we refuse to read, a sort of negative and combative impulse that makes us focus not on what we love about books but what takes away from our enjoyment.

Reading is, at its core, a leisure activity. We gain knowledge, joy, catharsis and empathy from reading. And yet when reading, a solitary pursuit, becomes interactive—when we talk about it with one another—it is suddenly fraught with anxiety and guilt. Everyone is in the same boat, minus the perhaps imaginary spectre of a few maddeningly well-read people. But if we’re all together in our anxiety, why do we torment ourselves and one another? Guilt is rarely a productive emotion; it is more immobilizing than motivating.

That being said, positive peer pressure can sometimes have happy consequences when it comes to reading. Book clubs democratically give each member a chance to select a title, meaning readers who might never have picked up Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town or The Sisters Brothers may find themselves pleasantly surprised. I remember reading 1984 overnight in high school—I literally stayed up all night on a school night—after fibbing to a (totally dreamy) boy that I had already read it. By dawn the boy was forgotten and all I could think of was Winston and, of course, the cage of rats.

Perhaps the important thing isn’t why or when you read a book, but how. As long as you are willing to engage with a book on its own merits and read generously, it doesn’t matter whether you’re reading it because it won the Giller Prize and you don’t want to be left out at the water cooler or because the picture of Fabio on the jacket made you feel tingly.

Besides, no one can read it all—not even if you choose a narrow focus by country, period or demographic. Choice should be delightful, not debilitating. The secret of it is that there is no wrong book to read. Even if you’re re-reading Harry Potter on the subway. So maybe we should take the opportunity to cast aside the textbooks inside of which we’re hiding our comics books, and embrace the fact that we can strive to expand our reading habits without beating ourselves up—and that most importantly, guilt adds nothing to the reading experience.

Grace O’Connell is the author of the novel Magnified World. She lives in Toronto, where she works as a writer and editor.

Former sex worker Cee Jai Julian escaped from Pickton's farm. Photo by David P Ball

What would justice look like for B.C.’s Missing Women Inquiry?

Note: An earlier version of this story made reference to a photo of one man hogtying and holding knife to a woman’s throat.  Information has since revealed the identity of that man was not, in fact, Cpl. Jim Brown. This Magazine apologizes for any embarassment or confusion caused by the error.

Now overgrown and derelict, even a decade ago Robert “Willy” Pickton’s property felt like ghosts were reaching out of the ground. Crying for attention.

That’s the recollection of Bill Hiscox, one of the serial killer’s employees, from Pickton’s Port Coquitlam, B.C. pig farm back in 1998—where DNA of 33 women, mostly indigenous, was found. Pickton confessed to killing 49.

“There was something not right there,” Hiscox says, describing piles of women’s clothing he saw outside Pickton’s trailer, and Indian status cards his sister-in-law found inside. But his attempts to tip police were rebuffed.“It’s almost like people were trying to reach out, ‘Oh, we’re here.’ Kind of a turning, wrenching feeling where you know something’s wrong.”

Ten years after Pickton’s arrest, disgust at his crimes has crystallized into rage. Rage at the police, for ignoring tips and missing person reports. Rage at the justice system, for failing to catch him sooner, then dropping 20 of his murder charges. And now, rage at the very public inquiry his victims’ families sought for years.

“We need to get the answers,” says Lillian Beaudoin, showing a picture of her sister, Diane Rock, who was killed on the farm. “We will get to the bottom of this, to find out why they did what they did. We fought hard and we’re still fighting hard. There’s so much hidden in the closets with this Pickton case, it would go on for a century.”

Cover-ups and closets? Hiscox—who was barred from testifying despite lawyer requests—concurs, with unflinching certainty.

“They’re covering up a lot of stuff, and I just can’t fathom some of the things being says here in this inquiry,” he says. “The truth will set you free. We’ll see what happens.”

In June, the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry (MWCI) concluded 92 days of public hearings. The province’s appointed Commissioner, Wally Oppal—who as ex-Attorney General had overseen the controversial dropping of charges—will submit his final report on Oct. 31.

But the inquiry was marred by a mounting barrage of scandals, from baffling to sinister.

Starting with the province’s refusal to fund organizations’ legal counsel—leading to a mass boycott by Amnesty International, the Assembly of First Nations and others—the MWCI’s executive director was suspended after a string of anonymous sexual harassment allegations within its own ranks. Another officer testified that police were having sex with the very women Pickton targeted.

Oppal himself was lambasted for moonlighting as a serial killer victim in a slasher film. He was later seen publicly embracing a Hells Angel (HA) member, despite banning discussion of Pickton-HA links: a club property across the road and, on the farm, Piggy’s Palace nightclub, the rumour of a buried HA member and the discovery of male DNA. “There are some that have been trying to bring the Hells Angels into this tragedy from the beginning,” says HA spokesperson Rick Ciarniello, dismissing “conspiracy theories” about his group. “[We] had nothing to do with the missing women.”

But amidst mounting controversy, Oppal would tolerate no rumblings of a conspiracy.

“That any such suggestion may have been made is disturbing,” he retorted in February. “I take a dim view of any such suggestion having been made. There is absolutely no evidence that the commission may be, quote, enabling a cover-up, unquote.”

“If MWCI does not re-open the hearings, it will be perpetuating a police cover-up of the circumstances surrounding Canada’s worst serial killing case,” wrote Cameron Ward, lawyer for 25 victims’ families, on his website.

“Willy Pickton didn’t kill up to 49 women by himself,” Ward’s statement continues. “The women whose remains were found at the pig farm were likely the victims of a group of sexual sadists and torturers, who likely included convicted murderer Willy Pickton himself.” How many murderers, Ward asks, remain at large?

For Ward and others, such questions are essential to finding any semblance of truth or justice.

“This is a dirty shame,” says Bridget Perrier, whose step-daughter Angel Wolfe lost her mother to Pickton. “This was a sham, a waste of our time. In Canada, you’re allowed to murder by race and class. These women—these families—need justice.”

Suspicions of a cover-up grew even more pronounced when the Crown Prosecutor who dropped Pickton’s 1997 attempted murder charge—after a sex worker barely escaped, bleeding, from his farm—admitted her documents had been inexplicably destroyed.

“There’s so many unanswered questions,” says Michele Pineault, whose daughter Stephanie Lane was among those killed. “Look at all the documents they lost … It seems too convenient.”

As Oppal crafts his report, will his recommendations prevent future cases where missing women reports are rudely dismissed, police agencies fail to cooperate, and killers continue killing?

“The report, in the end, is not going to be of any relevance or importance in the long run to us,” says Jeannette Corbiere Lavell, president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada. “How can we look on this as something positive—that might do some good—when there was too much of a cover-up?

“If I were to think of an actual outcome—a good, positive outcome—it would be for them to recommend a national inquiry.”

For Corbiere Lavell, justice would include ratcheting up accountability for Canadian police, who she says operate with virtual impunity. Such failures have brought Canada under the investigative microscope of both the United Nations and the Organization of American States.

“This inquiry is not going to really touch on key areas of racism, discrimination, delivery of services, access to justice,” she adds. “We talk about systemic racism right from First Contact. Aboriginal people haven’t been conquered … and yet, we’ve been treated as if we were a conquered people, conquered nations, and told, ‘This is what you get.’”

And so the question of what justice looks like for Pickton’s victims—or the 600 missing and murdered Aboriginal women across Canada—hinges on causes far more profound than any single officer or detachment. They, too, raise questions about prostitution’s criminalization, and poverty in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. And they strike at the root of Canada’s history of colonialism, racism and discrimination against Indigenous women.

One night, long before Pickton’s arrest, that dark past collided with another Native woman’s life.

“I had to flee for my life from the farm,” Cee Jai Julian, a former sex worker, recalls. “When I approached the RCMP, I wasn’t listened to. When I found out my friends were missing, I tried to tell the Vancouver Police Department, but they wouldn’t listen to me either.

“During the investigation no one believed me. They didn’t believe me because I was Native, drug-addicted, transient and a prostitute … All I can say is shame on them. They’ve got to start pulling up their socks and start doing their job more … We’re sex trade workers, we have the right to get the help that we need down here too. We’re human just like everyone else.”

David P. Ball is a freelance reporter and photojournalist in Vancouver, B.C. His website is davidpball.net

Illustration by Matt Daley

The tipping point for musicians—from crisis mode to full-blown emergency—came when the commercial radio format died its sudden, though not entirely unexpected, death in 2015. Even Top 40 artists lost their most reliable tool of exposure, practically overnight. Faced with a new music order void of hit singles, a diverse group of independent artists and mega stars—including will.i.am, Arcade Fire, M.I.A., Kanye West, and the UK’s influential Featured Artists’ Coalition—formed the now-ubiquitous TipJar. The artist-run online music-buying hub  allows consumers to bypass the business’ middlemen and directly pay artists.

Today, three years after internet finally killed the radio star, few are shedding tears. Artists now have fair, direct and effective ways to reach the fans who will gladly buy their music. Let’s journey into this radical, new industry landscape via a typical Canadian week in music consumption:

Monday, October 22, 2018
Armed with a mental to-do list following a week at the Halifax Pop Explosion festival, Arjun Petit steals a few minutes before his classes begin at McGill to add a handful of new artists to his “watching” list on TipJar: a psych-folk band from Lexington, Kentucky, a Toronto mashup artist who re-writes melodies for older songs, and a live triple-dub-step trio he enjoyed in person but wasn’t sure would translate in the recordings. He’ll follow up when he has a bit more time.

Tuesday
Arjun scans the new releases on Rdio, bookmarking three highly-anticipated albums. With the latest from Chad vanGaalen still resonating in his ears, he leaves the artist two dollars on TipJar before closing his laptop. He’s down to his last seven TipJar dollar-credits on his $20-a-month plan for October, and he wants to use them judiciously. Arjun then leaves the house playing a “old favourites” playlist on his Android phone’s music app (an open-source app that pulls songs from Rdio, Bandcamp, Soundcloud and
his legacy iTunes Cloud library).

Wednesday
Arjun receives an inbox alert from drip.fm about a Vice Records re-issue of the Stills’ “Logic Will Break Your Heart,” released 15 years ago this week. As a $10-a-month subscriber to the Vice “drip”, he has been shipped a 180-gram vinyl pressing of the album plus expanded liner notes, and the message includes links to bonus audio and video content from the album’s original sessions.

Thursday
During a routine check of Facebook, Arjun notices his friend Leo has been using Spotify to listen to Dan Mangan, which reminds him that the Vancouver artist is coming through town next month and Leo has asked him to pick up tickets. He buys a pair and downloads them to his phone.

Later, Arjun meets his girlfriend and her friends at a local bar where the DJ is playing music they like, but not so loudly that they have to shout to be heard. Unlike the old days, the music performance-rights association SOCAN uses Shazam to track exactly what is played at most every restaurant, cafe and bar in the country, and distributes the writer performance royalties based on actual plays. Additional royalties are collected via the same musicians’ association that dreamed up TipJar. No longer does the industry rely on radio charts to measure what is played in public.

Friday
Lacking the energy after a long week to pay much attention to his musical choices while making dinner, Arjun puts on a playlist of new and old selections by one of his go-to music sources, Aux. Years ago this would have been a job for commercial radio, but Arjun likes that he can trust the music channel’s taste. His Rdio subscription allows him to avoid ads. When a particular song he doesn’t know catches his ear (“The Shape I’m In” by The Band), he adds it to his collection.

Saturday
“I’m battling a cold,” Arjun tells a friend who asks him to go to a house party. It’s partly true, but Arjun also has a date with his Roku—Arts & Crafts records is using the website Liveset to stream a showcase of the label’s biggest artists performing separately and together in a 90-minute program. For five bucks—a price set by the artist—he can watch the whole performance on his big-screen TV, and interact with other fans through a chat window on his tablet.

These days, Arjun is hardly alone in his music spending habits. Better bandwidth allows for high-quality music files to be streamed over different services, and the ease of use has created many converts. Fans even turned their backs on iTunes when artists made it possible for them to redirect Apple’s margins directly to creators. The middlemen of the former business model have lost out, but the rest of us can thank the interested parties on all sides who helped build a fair, artist-driven new media landscape for the early 21st century.

Mason Wright is a Toronto-based writer, editor, and web producer who loves everything about music.