by Andrea Warner and Tamara Letkeman
From the raucous realm of rock ‘n’ roll
to the daring and dangerous edges of
skateboarding, Maureen Jack-LaCroix
has emerged as Vancouver’s golden girl of
promotion. Her entrepreneurial moxie has
always embraced a bottom line emphasizing
social change—and now, the ingenious
impresario is summoning all her brilliance
to take on her most daunting challenge yet.
“It’s a profound shift in consciousness to truly value the ‘we’ over the ‘me.”
Within minutes of meeting Maureen Jack-LaCroix, it becomes clear that she is as wild as the free-flowing mane of silver curls that frames her delicate facial features. Energy and enthusiasm seem to pulse off her as we settle into an interview that underscores her talent as one of Vancouver’s best “connectors”: a networker and a weaver of ideas and people. She’s a rare find—a hybrid who’s equally comfortable working with concepts (the world of ideas) and practicality (the world of action).
Early in her career, Maureen established herself as a producer and impresario who could engineer projects at the highest of levels. But she’s perhaps best known for taking a teenage sport thought to be populated by juvenile delinquents—skateboarding—and making it a respectable and even celebrated part of urban life. Maureen, whose son is a boarder, did it through the creation of Slam City Jam, a three-day festival of skate culture and music—and the longest-running event of its kind in North America.
It was a tough undertaking. Maureen recounts bumping up against City Council, the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association, and the Chief of Police, following a cover story in Thrasher magazine that featured one of the world’s top boarders bombing down a metal railing in Vancouver.
“The business association guy held it up and was like, ‘Look at this! Look at this!’,” she recalls. “And I laughed, and said, ‘Yeah, can you imagine doing that?’”
Before skateboarding, it was music. A classically trained pianist, Maureen stepped into the rock ’n’ roll scene after a college boyfriend enlisted her help in making a documentary about a band. She went on to become the band’s manager, and found herself thrust into a near-exclusive—and notoriously ruthless—boys’ club: the music industry.
The more intimate she became with the scene, the more appalled she was at the way musicians were being shafted, from contracts that resembled “master-slave” relationships to banks that rejected loan requests to replace broken instruments. Not content to merely play “backup,” Maureen founded a series of seminars on the music industry, which ultimately grew into New Music West, the biggest new music event in Western North America.
“It grew organically because it was of value, until we had 200 bands together showcasing in 20 venues, 150 talent scouts out from 75 labels internationally,” Maureen says. “It was a wonderful appreciation of our music and what was coming up from the grassroots of our creativity.”
And the hit parade doesn’t stop there. Maureen’s other credits include working closely with Bruce Allen, Bryan Adams, and David Foster to produce “Tears are Not Enough,” the song recorded in ’85 by a supergroup of Canadian artists to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.
It’s a star-studded resumé, to be sure, and it’s about to get fortified even more. Because now, Maureen’s entire career and set of producing experiences have aligned for her most important work yet. Get ready, Vancouver, for “Be the Change.”
A grassroots movement, Be the Change is bringing people together to combat global warming. Through a series of symposiums, it takes the huge and daunting concept of “saving the environment” and breaks it down into manageable chunks to show how our small, everyday contributions—like riding our bikes instead of driving, or composting our kitchen scraps—can result in permanent change. As the name suggests, “Be the Change” is about what you can do.
“This is no longer the time to marginalize our environmentalists,” Maureen stresses. “It’s not ‘They have to fix the problem and deal with it.’ What are our values? Who are we as a community?
“The best part of how big this global mind shift is,” she continues, “is that it’s truly ego-shattering—it’s so humbling to face the enormity of the task at hand, to fully recognize that I am not in control. ‘I’ cannot solve this problem. But ‘we’ can. It’s a profound shift in consciousness to truly value the ‘we’ over the ‘me.’”
The monthly, one-day symposiums are slated throughout Vancouver for the rest of this year. Participants are encouraged to bring the message back to their communities—but not to preach it. The philosophy is that as an individual changes, he or she will inevitably lead by example.
The ultimate goal? To get 1,000 Vancouverites to reduce their energy consumption by 20 per cent and, among other initiatives, increase their use of local organic produce by the same amount. In October, members and the public will gather for the first Be the Change Festival, featuring inspirational speakers, interactive workshops on climate change, plus music, film, dance, and poetry.
This is a project of—if you will—global proportions. But it’s also an idea that’s been germinating for 20-some-odd years. Shortly after Maureen finished working on “Tears are Not Enough,” she wrote her first proposal for an environmental event. Unfortunately, it didn’t take hold.
“At that time I thought we needed to have stars to endorse something for it to go,” she explains. “It needed to be powerful people that were behind it, and I was a young woman and I didn’t feel all that powerful. It never left me though.”
In fact, for the last several years, Maureen has had a quote from R. Buckminster Fuller, the American inventor, architect, author, mathematician, and futurist, affixed to her mirror: If success or failure of this planet and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do… how would I be? What would I do?
“I didn’t know,” she says, in answer to the first question. “But I knew I had to be different from the way I was.”
In response to question no. 2, Maureen’s taken a hiatus from her very successful company, Jack of Hearts Productions—and thus her income—to form the Be the Change Earth Alliance. It wasn’t an easy move.
“That entailed letting go of my attachment to the illusion of independence,” she says. “Of my self-worth being attached to how much money I made, and of my attachment to being in control. Not easy, letting go without knowing what will come in its place.”
With a string of such wildly successful events backing her up, it’s a leap of faith the premier producer and impresario can probably afford. After all, this is the same woman who championed skateboarding and took on the music industry—and the passage of time has done little to curb her defiant spirit.
“Ideally, I’ve become a wiser rebel,” she says. “But I think it’s really healthy for all of us to have a little rebel inside, because otherwise we just spend so much energy compromising to fit in that we don’t explore all of who we can be.”
Freelance writer Andrea Warner and SharedVISION editor Tamara Letkeman also have a little rebel inside. They just need some help coaxing her out sometimes.
Hello, lazy consumer. Meet your match
John Wiebe knows our dirty little eco-secrets. He knows, for instance, that we declare we’d like to buy environmentally friendly products… but don’t want to have to put a lot of work into searching for them. That if it’s sustainable but ugly, we probably won’t buy it. And if it costs mucho more—forget it.
Wiebe’s too reserved to say it, but read between the lines: we’re a selfish society. We want what we want and when we want it. So in a stroke of genius, Wiebe, a globe-trotting business consultant who’s made a brilliant (and lucrative) career of showing industries how to make money through environmental management, turned his attention to us fickle consumers and created EPIC, to showcase eco-lifestyles.
SharedVISION asked a few questions of this entrepreneurial impresario.
You have a Ph.D. in biochemistry. Do we call you Dr. Wiebe?
No, that’s really only good for getting reservations at a restaurant.
OK, John, what’s your personal philosophy around sustainability?
My personal philosophy is that we can live in a healthy environment and have a healthy economy. My belief is that the solution to environmental problems is really the business community; governments can only do so much. And I also believe that when businesses can profit from looking after the environment, that’s when they will start to look after the environment.
You’re best known for your not-for-profit GLOBE Foundation, and huge business-to-business conference extravaganzas. Why have you moved into the consumer arena with a party like EPIC?
It’s something I’m passionate about because I really do believe that people need choices. They need to be aware of what’s available. If we can show people that these environmentally friendly products are worth buying, they’ll demand them and the supplier will supply them. What EPIC is all about is just trying to get this in front of people—both suppliers and consumers.
So you find that people will choose sustainability when it meets their other needs?
When we did some surveys we found that the average consumer, while they say they would like to buy environmentally friendly products, is not really prepared to go look for them and not prepared to give up some quality or style, or for that matter, price. So what we need to do is get manufacturers and retailers to supply and provide environmentally friendly goods that appeal to consumers. And that’s why EPIC has fashion shows and speakers and sort of a friendly shopping venue and tries to present these kinds of products.
Do you think there’s a lot of fear mongering around sustainability?
Yes, there is a lot of Chicken Little “the sky is falling, the sky is falling.” But I think we need that in the same way we need people to push the envelope on almost everything from science to technology to political systems. These people can push things and push them a lot faster. Without them, we as a society probably wouldn’t react, and it certainly would take a longer time.
What are your pastimes? Golf, golf, and golf.
Some would say golf is not particularly sustainable—not environmentally friendly. I think golf can be environmentally friendly. Increasingly there are golf courses that are being rated certified by the Audubon Society and others as being environmentally friendly. I also believe you take steps: it’s not like tomorrow you’ll never use another pesticide, never do this, never do that. As long as we understand and move along a path that becomes more intelligent in the way we treat the Earth, I’m happy.
You know, you’re a pioneer. Do you think of yourself as one?
I don’t consider myself a pioneer in any way. I see opportunities where perhaps others haven’t taken action. But I think when you get right down to it we all want to maintain this planet for future generations. We all want our kids to grow up in a nice place. But at the same time we also want a quality of life that we’re used to.
—interview conducted, condensed, and edited by SharedVISION publisher Rebecca Ephraim
With the planet running on empty, these sweethearts are running for the solution
by STEPHANIE MACDONALD
If just thinking about running a marathon makes you want to curl up with a doughnut, consider running those famous 42 kilometres nearly every day for a whole year. It may sound like the premise for a science fiction flick involving a futuristic form of torture, but not to Matt Hill and Stephanie Tait. These two Vancouverites are making their dream of running to save the planet a reality—and they plan to promote the concept of every individual’s environmental responsibility each kilometre along the way.
“It’s really the small actions that add up to a big result,” says Stephanie. “Whether it’s single steps in a marathon or small, everyday efforts like recycling, the cumulative effect is significant.” (Matt and Stephanie both admit to having a pet enviro-commitment; hers is replacing plastic bags with reusable cloth ones; he is crazy about composting.)
Run for One Planet is at once a daunting physical challenge to jog 11,000 kilometres around Canada and the U.S. and a moving metaphor for the steps we need to take to ensure our planet remains healthy for future generations. The idealistic endeavour kicks off May 4 right here in Vancouver with the BMO Bank of Montreal Vancouver Marathon, and will end back here next year.
After all is said and run, Run for One Planet will leave behind a legacy: all money raised—the goal is a million bucks—will be used to start a foundation to initiate yearly Run for One Planet green marathons in cities around the continent.
Matt and Stephanie possess both the energy and enthusiasm to make this gruelling adventure happen. During our interview in their cozy Kitsilano loft, they exude a degree of perkiness usually attained by the rest of us only after a few triple espressos. Extreme motivation also characterizes their personalities and professions: Stephanie is an internationally recognized speaker and business coach; Matt is an actor (he worked with Jackie Chan in Shanghai Nights and has played the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Rafael) as well as a seven-time Ironman triathlete.
“I had the sports training experience,” explains Matt, “and as an actor, you have to get used to putting yourself out there and taking risks. Steph has the organizational and business side of things down because of her work coaching small business owners to succeed.”
It was, in fact, Stephanie’s coaching that first brought the couple together two years ago. A friend of Matt’s suggested he make an appointment with her to talk about his career path. During his first consultation, his head was spinning.
“I was fascinated by her intelligence and ideas,” he recalls, “but there was this half of my brain that couldn’t concentrate, because it kept saying, ‘Wow, look how beautiful she is!’”
Not surprisingly, their professional relationship lasted only three sessions.
“When I found out she was an avid and dedicated runner,” says Matt, “I was hopelessly smitten.”
It’s fitting, then, that the biggest challenge either of these two marathoners has taken on in their respective lives germinated during one of their regular jogs.
Running along the trails of Burnaby Lake Park one day late in ’06, they realized their conversation kept coming back to their mutual concern about the state of the environment. The couple had adopted a progressively green lifestyle for themselves, but felt it still wasn’t enough. They wanted to spread the word about individual responsibility, and do it in a big way.
“Since we’re both pretty motivated people, we tried to think of ways we could bring attention to the issue,” says Matt, “that could evolve into something bigger than ourselves and provide the push that would bring green living right into everyday life.”
Inspired by trailblazers Terry Fox and Rick Hansen, Matt and Stephanie decided to commit themselves to their own epic journey to achieve recognition for their cause. And don’t think for a second they’re not walking the walk: the motor home that will follow them down the highways and byways will run on biofuel and utilize solar power, so the adventure will be as green as possible.
In cities and communities along the way, the couple plans to make stops to promote their vision, give interviews, and—it is hoped—inspire people to think about the small steps they can take to reduce their footprint on the planet. They’re also encouraging supporters to come out and join them on the road for a few kilometres and share in the journey and the message. Their enduring—and endearing—optimism is so infectious, it just might even be enough to get some of us to throw down that doughnut and join them on a leg (even if it’s a tiny midget leg) of their odyssey.
If it all sounds like a Herculean task way beyond the capabilities of two mere mortals, Matt and Stephanie are quick to acknowledge the large group of individuals behind the scenes, including trainers, chiropractors, promoters, web developers, communications specialists, as well as corporate sponsors who’ve donated everything from running gear to energy bars for the trip. “There’s no way we could do this without our awesome team behind us,” confirms Matt.
With the first steps of their mission to save the world just weeks away, the two are eager to hit the pavement, but there is a pensive side to their desire to get going, too.
“Past the excitement to get started, and all the hype surrounding the run, this is a very serious issue,” says Stephanie. “As a global family, we’re really on a timeline here. At the core of this run is the fact that we are concerned citizens, and we want to do what we can to convey the sobering truth about the future if we sit back and do nothing.”
And what about Matt and Stephanie’s future? How do you top running 11,000 klicks in a single year to inspire your fellow humans to change their lives for the sake of the Earth’s? Matt and Stephanie aren’t too concerned. “We hope that our efforts for the planet will take on a life of their own, but we’re not about to sit back and watch,” says Stephanie. “When we get back, we’re just moving into a whole new exciting phase of our lives.”
Stephanie MacDonald is a Vancouver writer who feels that running around the Stanley Park seawall is the best prequel to enjoying a few Bellinis in the spring sunshine.
Mixed race (black, white, Cherokee, Creek) and adopted, the Vancouver soul singer known as GreenTaRA snubs music industry standards while attracting worldwide
attention with her passionate pleas for social justice. Adrian Mack tears the wild child away from her guitar long enough to get the scoop
Tara Donald grimaces slightly as she eases into a booth at Dadeo, a New Orleans-style diner and bar on Cambie Street. The Vancouver-based musician is still recovering from a snowboarding mishap in Whistler, when she took a wrong turn onto a ramp and found herself flying through space, landing on her derrière with a solid thump.
“I have to tell everyone that they should wear a butt helmet,” she laughs, before her expression takes on a flicker of concern. “Hopefully this won’t be the lead to the story. My tailbone’s not the most interesting part of me.”
That’s true. Known to her fans as “GreenTaRA,” the award-winning musician is a self-determined, one-woman affront to the entire music business. After 15 years of being shafted by a mythically savage industry, these days she operates largely independent of it.
“Music is a dirty business, and I have no problem saying that,” she states.
“Look, I wanna make money. I’m not an idiot. But I don’t expect other people to come and do things for me. A lot of musicians think that once they get to a certain level, they can let somebody else take care of the business. But that’s the number one way to get screwed.”
The West Coast certainly has no shortage of well-meaning artists toiling just beyond the mainstream, producing consciousness-raising music that advocates change, spiritual growth, and positivity. Frankly, a lot of it isn’t very good, and some of it—especially at the earnest drum-banging end of the spectrum—is downright ridiculous. Donald’s second solo album, Global Baby, released last September on her own Easy Bake label, is a different beast entirely.
The governing musical vibe of Global Baby sits somewhere between acid jazz and the silky vernacular of ’70s soul. Buttery strings and a bright horn section help to float numbers like “Figure It Out” and “Doin’ It,” while guest-rappers Ndidi Cascade, Belladonna, and Kia Kadiri bring the more timely language of hip-hop on board. Meanwhile, Donald convincingly extends into full-blown reggae for “Controller,” which examines the legacy of Harriet Tubman, a runaway slave from Maryland who led hundreds of others to the Underground Railroad (something that has special significance for Donald, as it turns out—more on that to come).
Donald states that her “real work” is “music for social change.” An upcoming benefit in Texas for the families of the Jena Six, the group of black teenagers charged with the beating of a white schoolmate in Jena, Louisiana, in reaction to a string of allegedly racist incidents, is just one of the events on her calendar for ’08. But the songwriting on Global Baby is personal, too, reflecting Donald’s eye for the micro as well as the macro. Given the odd circumstances of her life, such depth should come as no surprise.
“Truth really is stranger than fiction,” she says, “and my life exemplifies that.”
Orphaned at birth, Donald was raised by her adoptive mother, an outpost worker for the Red Cross who would bundle Tara and her brother into the station wagon for road trips through the Yukon. Her adoptive father was a doctor, a Trinidadian immigrant who passed away when she was four. Of the things he left behind, a live recording of Nina Simone performing the haunting “Obeah Woman” in a Trinidadian church made an early impression. So did her brother’s collection of cassette tapes.
“I remember being 12 and singing Prince’s ‘Erotic City,’” she recalls. “I didn’t even know what it meant!” Donald also names the Wailers, Peter Tosh, and Led Zeppelin as influences, though it was punk that perhaps inadvertently determined her path.
“I was 14,” she recalls, “makeup, safety pins, pink hair. And I was getting into some, as my mom and step-dad perceived them, unsavoury habits.” With a chuckle, she adds, “It’s funny how when you’re little you think you don’t smell like cigarettes.”
Donald was consequently enrolled in the Prince of Wales Secondary School’s TREK outdoor education program, which sparked what would become her lifelong dedication to the environment. “And by the end of that program,” she declares, “I had a totally new perspective on how to treat the world around me. I started going out into nature. I remember the Exxon Valdez happened that year, and we were all like, ‘Come on, we’re gonna clean up those birds!’ Sixty kids, and we meant it. They wouldn’t let us go, and I was crushed.”
After graduating, Donald followed her musical muse to New Zealand, Australia, New Orleans, and Florida, where she remembers standing alone before 60,000 people when the rest of her band chose a day of surfing over a festival gig. “That taught me a big lesson,” she notes. “If I have my guitar, then I can play the show.”
When Donald finally returned to Vancouver in ’98, things really took a turn for the weird, starting with the unexpected arrival of a big brown envelope from Family Services of Greater Vancouver. It’s here that the disparate strings of Donald’s life finally converged.
“I do have an interesting life, from conception,” she stresses, as she runs down the events that would lead to a reunion with her biological parents. “My birth mother happened to bump into my biological father at a powwow at Trout Lake,” she says. “She was like, ‘Hey, I’m looking for my daughter.’ And he said, ‘Who are you?’”
Donald knew that her birth mother was white, and had always been aware of her bio-dad’s African-American heritage. She knew that his grandmother was a slave, and that her family operated an Underground Railroad depot in Ohio. But there was still a surprise in store for her.
“At 29 I found out that Cherokee was a large part of my history, on my father’s side,” says Donald. “And I recently found out Creek, as well.”
With a smirk, she adds, “Global baby, see?
“The circumstances of my birth were so bizarre,” she continues. “My biological mother was put in prison for having some illegal substances when she was two months pregnant. There was a nursing strike in the prison, and she couldn’t get an abortion. She was young, and partying, and back in the early ’70s, it was a big social faux pas to have a mixed-race baby with a black man.”
And so Donald’s birth and subsequent adoption were made inevitable by circumstance, not choice. It was with some trepidation that bio-mom would reveal Donald’s secret history to her some three decades later. Donald, however, was anything but angry or upset. She told her relieved mother, “I think that’s the greatest story I’ve ever heard.”
Invoking the same emotional wisdom that lifts her music out of the ordinary, Donald continues, “Life is so fragile, but the Universe ensured that I made it onto this Earth to do all this stuff that I’m doing. I think somewhere I must have always known that. My biological parents said, ‘I wish we raised you,’ and I said, ‘No, no, I ended up exactly where I needed to be, and every experience in life has led me to where I am, and I wouldn’t change a thing.’”
Concludes the global baby with a warm smile, “Because I love where I am.”
Adrian Mack is a Vancouver-based writer and musician who was nearly born out of wedlock, but not quite. Other than that, his back story doesn’t have much of a plot.
For more on GreenTaRA,
check out myspace.com/greentaramusic
Albums:
Global Baby (2007)
Music for a Mixed Nation (2003)
Now the truth can be told about Carol Newell's visionary generosity
by PAMELA POST
To wit, multi-millionaire and philanthropist Carol Newell has spent most of her life staying in motels, not hotels. Until recently, she’d never owned a matching purse and shoes. But it’s not because she’s a miserly millionaire—far from it—it’s just that she’s never had a sense of needing “more stuff.”
When Newell went away to university in her 20s to study geology, she rented a rundown student house with a group of friends. When her mother came to visit, she was horrified.
“She said, ‘Oh Carol—this is a slum!’” Newell recalls. “I was really angry and said ‘No, it isn’t! This is regular housing. This is how people live.’ And the thing is, I loved that place.”
Big Hearts, Deep Pockets
Joel Solomon, the soft-spoken, business-savvy native Tennessean with a lingering whiskey-drip of a drawl, is still convalescing from a recent and very successful kidney transplant. But he’s more than happy to talk about his business partnership with Carol Newell.
They met in 1990 at a gathering of the Threshold Foundation, a group of individuals who had either come into financial windfalls or had inherited wealth and wanted to use their funds for causes of social justice.
Solomon had inherited several million dollars from his father, who also passed on the genetic kidney disease that ended his life prematurely. Solomon has speculated on how his illness has bestowed on him the gift of knowledge that life is precious and sometimes short. And how the wealth he inherited has been a mixed blessing.
“There’s a false authority that comes with money. People treat you differently. Everybody has an idea how you should spend your money. You become the target for foundations, universities. Yes, you face guilt, shame, hubris, and uncertainty and doubts about your choices. Doubts about whether your friends are really your friends. It can cause jealousy and rifts in families.
“In Carol’s case,” he continues, “she inherited far more money than she felt she had any reason to have. She wanted to do something meaningful and was looking for answers and strategies.”
Solomon had both the business chops Newell needed, and the ethical and environmental passion she admired, to do something constructive with her wealth.
“We are both the visionaries,” says Newell, “but he is very much the implementer. I can tell you, there would be absolutely nothing done, or very little of this would have been done, if it was just me. He is key to this.”
It was the first of many times she would find herself clashing with her family, and the expectations of how she should use her money to support a certain kind of lifestyle.
If Newell had grown up in a big city, you probably wouldn’t be reading this article about her. Or at least not for the same reasons.
But as fate would have it, this heiress to the Newell Rubbermaid fortune and recent Order of Canada recipient grew up in two small towns: one in upstate New York, the other in Illinois. The young Carol attended regular public school, and outside of living in a “big” house, she grew up blissfully unaware that she might be “different.”
Growing up in small-town America in the ’60s meant no exposure to high society, designer stores, a culture of affluence, or ostentatious displays of wealth. But it did give her a lifelong connection to community.
“In a small town, there’s more ‘keeping together’ in community,” she maintains. “I think money actually does separate us from community. It can have a deeply isolating effect.”
Newell’s father died when she was just nine years old, an event that brought not only a traumatic loss, but another life-changing event: her first multi-million-dollar inheritance.
Yet her childhood unfolded without any sense of separation from small-town life until she was sent to an all-girls boarding school in upstate New York at the age of 15. It was a good experience, she says, one that imbued her with a sense of self-reliance. But when she came back to her small town, class differences began to make themselves apparent.
“My best friend from Grade 8 told me another one of our friends had approached her and said, ‘Why do you want to hang out with that Carol Newell? She’s so rich.’ I felt terrible.... And it was probably one of the reasons I eventually became anonymous, because I never wanted to be treated differently due to my wealth.”
Three decades later, she is just now stepping out from behind her mask of anonymity. But make no mistake: Carol Newell—the reluctant millionaire—may have been invisible, but she has been far from idle.
As the founder of the philanthropic entity The Endswell Foundation and the seed-capital company Renewal Partners, she has been using her money for the good of nature and community in a very big, but—up until recently—very hush-hush way.
Newell has poured tens of millions of dollars garnered from the sales of billions of curtain rods, cookware combos, and other household items, along with the aggressive acquisitions activities which provided her Newell Rubbermaid fortune, into funding non-profit and for-profit companies that can prove a commitment to social justice, sustainability, and protecting the environment.
Money has gone to fund groups that fought for the protection of B.C.’s Great Bear Rainforest, and to companies like Capers Community Market, Small Potatoes Urban Delivery (SPUD), Lunapads, Communicopia, Across Borders Media, Happy Planet, and, for the record, publications like SharedVISION.
Newell doesn’t like to be tied down on just how much she inherited, but it’s in the ballpark of US$50 million. She has committed to giving most of it away.
She came into the bulk of her fortune when her mother passed away, by which time she’d come to B.C. In her 30s, she moved to Cortes Island. That’s also when she connected with Joel Solomon, president of Renewal Partners, who shared her values and vision. He had the business drive and acumen to run Endswell and Renewal Partners out of Vancouver. He fronted them, while she lived a quiet and anonymous life on a remote B.C. island.
On Cortes, she pursued her passions for music and nature. She sang with an improvisational group and drummed with an African music ensemble. She remembers vividly one night when “all of the pieces of my life came together.”
A group of environmentalists whose cause Newell’s companies had funded were gathered at Hollyhock Centre on Cortes for a business retreat. Her African drumming ensemble had been hired to provide music at the end of each day’s sessions.
“Fifty different environmentalists dancing wildly away, and I’m drumming and singing. Joel is there and comes sashaying up to me, winking at me because he knows nobody else in the room knows and I was getting paid 50 bucks for the gig!” she recalls, laughing at the memory.
But there was a price to be paid for wearing a cloak of invisibility in terms of her deepest sense of integrity, both in her personal relationships and because of a burgeoning sense of a new mission.
“I walked with a secret; with a heavy burden of silence,” Newell says. After some deep soul-searching, she moved from Cortes to Vancouver in 2004. She came out from behind her mask and decided to go public, in hopes of convincing other people of vast wealth to “get up off their assets” and try to change the world.
Her latest venture is Play BIG. It’s a movement to encourage individuals with “exceptionally high net assets or ‘discretionary capital’ to use that immense capacity to leverage some change.” As the Play BIG website points out, “There are currently, worldwide, 85,000 people with $30 million or more.”
That could save a lot of rainforests.
Meanwhile, Newell is adjusting to life in the city, meeting with the rich and powerful, buying shoes to match her purses, and observing the allure of living in a big-city sea of consumer choice. She admits, guiltily, to having developed a fondness for staying at the occasional five-star hotel while on the road.
“I confess I like a Westin bed. And I’m a little horrified with myself. I feel like I’m letting myself down.”
There probably aren’t too many people who would condemn Newell for her weakness for the odd down comforter while she entices the wealthy to join her as she gallops toward a brighter future.
After all, this small-town Lone Ranger is still adjusting to life without her mask.
“Am I uncomfortable? Oftentimes, yeah. Do I love cocktail talk? No, not particularly. But I’m finding my way. It’s important.”
Pamela Post is a CBC News reporter, teacher, and mom who is rich in all the ways that matter.
Editor’s Note: Renewal Partners has been a longtime supporter and investor in SharedVISION.
Celebrated author Ruth Ozeki writes to satisfy her curiosity.
by NADINE PEDERSEN
Novelist Ruth Ozeki is midway through a public reading at Joy Kogawa House when my cellphone goes off, blaring the overture to La Traviata at full volume. Mortified, I frantically root through my bag as Ozeki continues, unruffled, to read from her latest work, a chapter in the collaboratively written novel Click. As members of the audience begin shifting in their seats, Ozeki stops and waits until—finally—I yank the offending device out of my bag just as the ring crescendos and the call falls into voice mail.
“I’m so sorry,” I offer sheepishly in the sudden silence.
Across the packed room, a woman crisply replies, “You should be.”
Ozeki adjusts her Buddy Holly-style glasses and resumes, while I slowly sink into my chair.
Later, I wait at the end of the autograph line to offer my apologies. Spotting me, Ozeki gives a sympathetic smile. “Don’t worry about the cellphone. You know, when you’re up there it’s really not as distracting as you’d think.”
Where most authors might be tempted to get in at least a little dig after such a rude interruption, Ozeki reflects the same warmth I had experienced a week earlier when we first met for an interview.
It strikes me that, as a practising Buddhist, Ozeki has not only mastered inner balance, but also how to keep her ego in place—a pleasant surprise when you consider the scope of her accomplishments.
An award-winning filmmaker, Ozeki roared onto the literary scene a decade ago with her first novel, My Year of Meats. Since then, Meats has been marinated in accolades, most recently as the 2007 pick of the Vancouver Public Library’s “One Book, One Vancouver” program.
Meats is an important work—one that has made Ozeki sort of a cross between a modern-day Upton Sinclair and Marshall McLuhan, as she exposes the sinister sides of both agribusiness and the media while simultaneously exploring issues of race, class, and gender. When Ozeki decided to write Meats, she was primarily interested in exploring how media is used to manipulate consumers, but as she carved into the meat industry—uncovering information about antibiotics, growth hormones, and questionable farming practices—meat took on a disturbing edge.
As Ozeki wrote these unsettling facts into the novel, she began scrutinizing what crossed her dinner plate. Before long, her regular forays to Chinatown butcher shops for dinner came to a halt. Inadvertently, she had become “contaminated by food politics,” a topic she revisited—probably for the last time—in her second award-winning novel, All Over Creation, a story in which she examines genetically engineered potatoes and whether they will save the world from hunger or destroy the environment.
“I get e-mails and people telling me all the time about how the books have changed their diets,” she says. “I mean, a lot of people have stopped eating meat as a result of reading My Year of Meats.”
She gives a guilty laugh. Ozeki’s still a meat-eater—albeit of locally raised, organic meat. As someone who views following the ethical precepts of Zen Buddhism as an integral part of her spiritual practice, her omnivorous diet is something she both struggles with and accepts. So when people tell her about their dietary conversions, she feels conflicted. “I always go around and apologize to people. A little knowledge is a bad thing… But you know… I’m very suspicious of absolute rules about things. I’m not an absolutist. I’m much more of a relativist.... And things change. I’m a Buddhist—things change.”
In the past 10 years, Ozeki’s life has certainly changed. When she wrote Meats, she was living with her husband, visual artist Oliver Kellhammer, in the Downtown Eastside. Just down the alley, a thrift store regularly threw out mattresses and couches, which were then put to use by drug addicts and prostitutes. Meanwhile, trucks full of chickens rumbled by to the local slaughterhouse; the stench regularly wafted through the neighbourhood.
The couple now lives on Cortes Island, in a house with a reinforced foundation to support their pet turtles’ tanks. Although Ozeki is clearly enamoured with her husband, she confesses, “My domestic life is really quite boring.” Well, maybe more “cerebral” than “boring”: Kellhammer describes in his blog the pleasure he experienced upon discovering a Japanese mountain yam in their miniature greenhouse, and how he and Ozeki entertained themselves one Christmas by making a bestiary of paper insects.
Their home life serves as the stable foundation to an existence that is otherwise in motion. Ozeki travels to New York at least three times a year, regularly goes on lecture tours, and is invited to participate in various events involving film, books, food, or the environment. She loves the opportunity to dialogue with people about issues close to her heart, but admits that travel is also becoming a personal challenge.
“Environmentally, it’s a problem. I try to be rigorous about buying my carbon credits and stuff like that, but that’s not really a solution,” she says. “I’m going to have to figure out how to consolidate my activities in a radical kind of way.”
Would she consider a solution like Margaret Atwood’s LongPen™ technology, which enables authors to sign books and interact with their readers without having to actually go on tour?
“I really believe in face-to-face meetings,” she says. “If it was just about selling books, I mean, who cares? I wouldn’t do it at all. It’s not about that. It’s about… having quality interactions with new generations of students, for example.”
Does this mean she’s on a mission?
“I don’t have a mission at all. I’m a novelist. If I write about things it’s because they interest me. My mission is to satisfy my curiosity. And if anybody else is interested, that’s great.”
Writer and book editor Nadine Pedersen also believes in change, particularly when applied to ringtones.
For more on Ruth Ozeki, visit ruthozeki.com.
To learn about the “One Book, One Vancouver”
reading program, see vpl.ca/MDC/onebookonevancouver.html.
Ruth Ozeki’s latest work is a chapter in the
collaborative young adult novel Click (published
by Scholastic). All royalties go to Amnesty
International.
Thinking of going organic? Many organic farmers
sell their meat and produce at local farmers’
markets. For info, visit eatlocal.org.
Little Woo's journey from corporate cubicle to a life of passion
by JENNIFER CROLL
“Life is pure magic,” says Vancouver’s legendary Little Woo. We are sitting together on a sun-dappled park bench in East Van. She’s dressed like a modern-day pirate with short pants, white shirt, vest, and red wraps entwined in her waist-length hair. Everything about her—her outfit, her demeanour—is playful. But her turquoise-eyeliner-rimmed brown eyes reveal that when it comes to magic, she’s not joking around.
Little Woo is a relatively new nom de guerre for the gifted performance artist. As a child growing up in New Brunswick, she had a challenging childhood that she describes as a prolonged “dark night of the soul.” But she says there are no regrets, because it helped create who she is now. To escape, she read voraciously, focusing on mythology, fairy tales, and paranormal phenomena, and spent days at home quietly writing stories and reinventing herself even then. “I wanted to be, let me see, an actor, musician, detective, writer, psychologist…pirate,” she laughs, gesturing at her outfit, “unicorn, mermaid….” (which was her alter ego the day of her photo shoot with SharedVISION).
Since no university education could lead to her dream job as a unicorn, Little Woo pursued a more earthly vocation: film studies at Concordia University. After graduation, she received a national screenwriting grant, and moved west to experience the Vancouver film scene. She spent two years in the industry, but grew jaded with the business side of filmmaking. “So I had to walk away from it to preserve my love of the art,” she confides. She decided to focus on music, developing her talents as a singer-songwriter. It was a romantic, bohemian immersion, but without a financial life jacket, Woo soon ran out of money.
That’s when she landed a plummy job with the Employment Insurance department of the federal government: full-time work, benefits, security. Day in and day out in client services, she talked to people about how they lost their jobs.
“I thought I’d do my filmmaking, music, and art at night,” she says. “But for me it didn’t work that way. When I spent eight hours a day forcing myself to do something that wasn’t aligned with my heart’s desire, it created a schism.”
She might have pushed her dreams of art aside, but for a disturbing development. “The thing is, I started to have bleeding cysts on my forehead.” Distressed by something so visibly strange in the middle of her face, Woo tried every possible remedy over the next two years, from medication to acupuncture to infrared therapy. Nothing worked—until she took a two-week break from her job.
“It healed entirely,” she says, still sounding a little awed. When she went back to the office, the skin condition returned, leading her to the realization that: “I wasn’t living in my real skin.”
Woo took the hint. To the surprise of co-workers, after three and a half years, she quit her job. Her skin immediately cleared up, and she decided it was time to invest in a deeper level of healing. She spent four years exploring her spiritual side. In her case, the investment was quite literal: she drew on a bank loan to support herself, as well as various odd jobs. “It was a tight time, because I wasn’t looking at income. I was doing inner work.”
In 2005, Woo was finally ready to cash in herpersonal investment and step out into public life once again. “I really thought, ‘OK, I’m healing. I’ve got a really strong grip.’ And that’s when I discovered my community.”
The arts, healing, and activist communities seduced her: “I fell in love with myself, and then I fell in love with the world.”
The enraptured woman changed her name to Little Woo. She is now creatively prolific, teaching dance and performing around the city at burlesque festivals, parties, and even a cross-cultural collaborative learning day with Senator Roméo Dallaire. She’s perhaps best known for her popular and sensually ingenious invention of burlesque yoga.
“I was doing yoga in my home…and I suddenly felt a desire to bring together the ideas of the sacred and the profane.” She’s adamant that no line separates the two. “Even burlesque can be a spiritual act.”
Her other venture—giving workshops and one-on-one counselling sessions in Epic Alchemy—is all about working with energy. It, too, pushes boundaries and challenges people to look at the world from a different angle. “It’s an active, conscious thing.” Woo pauses, and thinks. “It’s the transformation of the mundane into the sublime. So, nothing is mundane.”
Remember that the next grey morning when your alarm clock anxiously blares its call. Smiling blissfully in the sunlight, a landlocked pirate without a care, Little Woo is content. “What I want people to understand is that it’s all grand. It’s all magical. It’s all profound.”
Jennifer Croll is a Vancouver writer who is no stranger to the snooze button. When she grows up, she wouldn’t mind being a mermaid or a ninja.
 Discover Your Passion
Feel like you too could use a bit of change in your life? Artist Craig Conway has posted a Follow Your Bliss Compass on his blog, oneletterwords.com/bliss. Just click on the compass and—poof—the arrow will spin and land on some prescient advice.
ManifestYourPotential.com is a career guidance site with a mission: to help people around the world thrive by helping them
discover their uniqueness.
Vancouver career- and life-path expert Alanna Fero wants what most people wish for themselves: to do good in the world and do well for themselves at the same time. With this in mind, she has written Love Made Visible: Values-Driven Approaches to Work/Life. And classics of the personal-transformation genre include Life’s a Bitch and Then You Change Careers by Andrea Kay; What Color Is Your Parachute? 2007 by Richard Nelson Bolles; The Artist’s Way by Julie Cameron; and The Art of Happiness by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.C.
Little Woo recommends books by Abraham-Hicks, Goddard, Caroline Myss, Neville, and Vancouver’s own Eckhart Tolle.
And if you’re stuck in life, or just stuck in traffic, the CD The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Growth by Don Miguel Ruiz might offer some soothing advice. Ruiz was a surgeon until a near-death experience changed his life. Now a shamanic teacher and healer, he exposes self-limiting beliefs and presents a simple yet effective code of personal conduct learned from his Toltec ancestors.
Upcoming workshops with Little Woo
- Alchemy of Manifestation (Nov. 24 or Dec. 3, 10, 17)
- Alchemy of the Heart (Dec. 4, 11, 18)
- Alchemy of Community (Dec. 2 & 9)
To register and for more information about workshops or private sessions,
visit littlewoo.org.
Want to make a difference in the world? Be a voluntourist.
“Orangutan!”
A few metres off the side of the trail, our local guide, Wanda, pointed up into the jungle canopy. Without hesitation, our volunteer team went crashing off the beaten path to look, slipping and sliding through the undergrowth. We peered up.
He was hard to see at first; he blended so seamlessly with the leaves. But when he moved farther along a tree branch into full view, my heart beat with the thrill of it. For the first time we were seeing a wild orangutan, a male with big face pads and shaggy ginger hair, munching on figs. Then he became aware of us, and got shy and swung away into the trees.
We may have been a pesky annoyance interrupting his lunch, but we were also there to help. The United Nations has recently reported that orangutans will be extinct within 10 years if something isn’t done to protect their rainforest habitat. As volunteers for the Orangutan Health Project (orangutan-health.org) based in North Sumatra, Indonesia, we had come from around the world to contribute, in our small way, to the survival of these graceful and intelligent beings.
When enough people do their small part, it adds up to a world of difference. More people than ever are finding fulfillment in combining holiday time with volunteer work, whether building homes for the poor in Honduras, promoting HIV awareness in Tanzania, or helping conserve pandas in China. North American bookings for volunteer travel through tourism operator i-to-i (i-to-i.com) have risen more than 300 per cent since 2002, and the volunteer organization GlobalAware reports its membership has quadrupled in the past year. Industry professionals have coined the growing trend “voluntourism,” citing 9/11, the 2004 Asian tsunami and other world disasters as the reason more people are looking for meaningful travel experiences that enable them to help others.
Voluntourists benefit personally as well. Brettany Cook, a volunteer with the Orangutan Health Project who has also been to Costa Rica to help conserve sea turtles, says volunteer tourism is the only way to travel. “It’s a way to be completely immersed into the local culture and really experience a place. You get to meet and become friends with the locals, eat true cuisine from the area, and strip away all your preconceived ideas.”
Our volunteer team spent time at the home of a local guide, where we ate papaya fresh off the tree and listened to him play guitar and sing Indonesian songs with his friends. You just don’t get that kind of experience staying at the Best Western.
There’s also the sense of fulfillment that comes from sharing a common goal with people from a different culture. In our case, we all wanted to help protect the health and habitat of orang-utans—and had a great time getting to know each other in the process. As for the orangutans, Cook says, “They are so gentle and comical, and by looking at their eyes, wise. If anyone sees these amazing creatures and doesn’t want to help them survive, I would be greatly surprised.”
When Wendy Bone isn’t hanging around with orangutans, she is learning about the healing qualities of plants in the Sumatran jungle (a plant called inai works wonders for healing blisters on big toes). For more on her adventures in Indonesia, visit travelpod.com/members/wendyworld.
How to Do it
1. Choose your destination, whether it’s the remote Amazon rainforest or concrete jungle of Bangkok.
2. Pick your project. What environmental or social issues are you passionate about? Also, consider your
skills. Though volunteer tourism projects don’t require the same level of skill as traditional volunteer work,
your ability to teach English or background in biology could come in handy.
3. Conduct your research. The internet is the easiest way to get started.
4. Once you’ve found a voluntourism possibility, ensure the operator is qualified. At least some staff should
be able to speak the local language, and the project should help empower local people rather than encourage
dependency on handouts. Find out the organization’s long-term goals and objectives.
5. For reviews of numerous volunteer organizations, check out Lonely Planet’s new guide, Volunteer: A
Traveller’s Guide to Making a Difference Around the World.
6. Come with an open mind and attitude. You may encounter upsetting situations, but be prepared to leave
any preconceived Western ideas at home, and respect the local culture.
21 long days on Dr. Joshi's celebrity detox
by PAMELA POST
One lazy weekend last spring, I found myself at one of those giant Vancouver book emporiums. As I meandered dreamily down the boulevard-sized aisles, the cover of a little white book caught my attention.
Popping out of the white backdrop was a graphic of bright green asparagus tied up in a bundle with a little note card attached. The title: Dr. Joshi’s Holistic Detox: 21 Days to a Healthier, Slimmer You—For Life.
I wasn’t in the market for a dietary cleanse book, and I don’t believe in diets. But I picked up the book and peered at the print on the asparagus note card.
It read, “‘Joshi is truly special. I love him.’ –Gwyneth Paltrow.”
Gag, I thought, recoiling as I do at everything celebrity. And then I cracked it open.
Inside I read the preface by Dr. Nish Joshi, who, I was to learn, is London’s hottest holistic guru. The shameless name-dropping continued as Joshi talked about his long relationships with Diana, the Princess of Wales; Cate Blanchett; and Ralph Fiennes, all of whom love—or, in the case of Diana, loved—Joshi.
I read how this Indian healer, who has trained in traditional medicine and osteopathy, worked with legions of petulant, anorexic, injured, and toxic ballet dancers who lived on “diet soda, cigarettes, and tissue paper.” How Joshi brought them back to glowing good health and eternal gratitude for his ministrations, sharing with them all of the Ayurvedic dietary knowledge he gathered while raised on a strict Indian Brahmin diet. All of this is based on a very strict 21-day dietary regimen, which he was now graciously sharing with the rest of us in softcover for $19.95.
I was impressed by what looked like sound Ayurvedic principles in the book, and it was spring—a good time to cleanse. But the marketing hype, Joshi’s ego, and the celebrity endorsements were a turn-off.
I put the book back on the shelf, feeling a little embarrassed lest someone spot me holding a Gwyneth-gusher. I backed away slowly and headed over to the philosophy section on the other end of the store.
As I perused the latest translations of the Tao Te Ching, I was startled to see another copy of Joshi’s little white asparagus book staring back at me, now at least a kilometre away from its proper section. Had it just been dumped there by somebody who thought better of their decision?
Or was it fate?
What the hell, I thought. OK, Joshi, I’ll try your damn holistic detox thingy. After all—what’s 21 days?
A week and a half later, I realized that 21 days is an eternity when it involves no coffee, no caffeine, no wheat, no gluten, no dairy, no chocolate, no red meat, no fruit (except bananas), no sugar, no alcohol, no jams or spreads, and no processed or artificially produced foods.
An entry from my Joshi diary sums it up:
Day 9: As I write this, I’m in a funk from eating lentils and cabbage for lunch, which—while bland and unsatisfying—have nonetheless left me feeling bloated and approximately four months pregnant. I am also struggling to write a radio documentary, feeling a wave of sleepiness that I am unable to jolt myself out of with nice, rich, dark-roast, Bolivian coffee and a square of dark chocolate. My alternative: lukewarm green tea with lemon. I can also nibble on a rice cake. Rice cakes have no flavour and are the consistency of Styrofoam, but the way they break off explosively and scatter in a two-metre radius is somewhat entertaining for those around you...
Joshi’s cleanse did little for my happiness, and it created havoc on the home front. My 15-year-old daughter repeatedly stared into the refrigerator in horror: “Oh my god, Mom, there’s nothing but RICE! Rice milk, rice crackers, rice pasta, rice bread!”
“But, rice is…nice, sweetie,” I responded weakly, still shaky from caffeine-withdrawal. She started eating out with her friends.
I became obsessed with every morsel I put into my mouth, what it was made of, and where it came from. From dawn till dusk, Joshi’s voice buzzed in my head like a self-righteous holistic housefly. When I cheated or faltered, I felt crushing failure.
I’ll give Joshi this. At the end of 21 days, I stopped craving coffee, and undoubtedly alkalized my acidic system.
But do I love Joshi?
Not as much as a few squares of organic chocolate and a nice cup of free-trade Bolivian dark roast.
Pamela Post is a CBC News reporter. She loves her job, but remains open to offers from any major international dailies or networks to become their “spa bureau chief.”
Just how far are you willing to go for that youthful glow?
by Stephanie Macdonald
Beauty is only skin deep; it’s in the eye of the beholder; it is but a flower, which wrinkles will devour… Whichever cliché you subscribe to, it’s hard not to notice the abundance of people—mostly women—in every chic restaurant and posh shopping boulevard who sport disconcertingly frozen expressions of placidity, permanently surprised eyebrows, and duck lips.
Interestingly, though, while aesthetic medicine used to be the domain of pricey plastic surgeons with a tenuous grasp of the Hippocratic oath, these days a less-radical, less-invasive generation of anti-aging treatments is being practised by everyone from highly respected dermatologists to naturopaths.
Graceful acceptance of the aging process is the cheapest and probably most effective way to happiness. But in the interests of those of us who aren’t quite there yet, here’s the lowdown on those non-surgical “rejuvenating” procedures we’re always hearing about.
Botox
For those who have been residing in a cave for the last five years, Botox is a derivative of the botulism toxin that, when injected into areas on the face, temporarily freezes the muscles there for a more relaxed countenance and prevention of future wrinkles. It must be re-administered every six months or so.
Pros: It is effective, preventative, relatively affordable, and proven safe when (and this is very important) administered by an expert. No downtime.
Cons: Naturopaths still think it is bad to inject yourself with poison (or any non-natural substance) for any reason. Also, you could end up looking like a Stepford Wife or stroke victim if not injected correctly (but only for six months or so!).
Dermal fillers
Known as Perlane and Restylane, fillers work by adding volume with an inert material to plump up wrinkles and lips, or reshape imbalances in the face such as in the correction of a crooked or bumped nose. Fillers last a varying, but limited, time, usually from six months to two years.
Pros: They work immediately and can provide surgery-like results, especially used in conjunction with Botox.
Cons: See Botox. Also, without proper application, in the words of one doctor, “You can end up looking like you just got out of a pond somewhere.”
Laser treatments, focused ultra sound, intense pulsed light, and radiofrequency treatments
These complex treatments (IPL, Thermage, Fraxel, Palomar Starlux, to name a few) can penetrate beyond the epidermis to the layer of collagen that breaks down as we age and stimulate the production of more collagen, for tighter, younger-looking skin. Lasers can also target dark spots, destroying the cells and removing the pigment, and can resurface the top layers of the skin, removing small wrinkles, scars, and sun damage.
Pros: The most effective therapy, with often quite dramatic results, especially on people with acne scars, wrinkles, rosacea, and age spots. Even some naturopaths are offering laser (“light-based”) treatments to patients.
Cons: Expensive. Recovery time and results vary. Certain treatments can be quite uncomfortable.
Dermabrasion and facial peels
Involves using crystals or mild acids to deeply exfoliate the epidermis to remove dead skin and wear away scars and age spots. These treatments can be done with organic or non-organic materials.
Pros: Inexpensive, readily available, no side effects.
Cons: Not as effective as lasers; can be mildly uncomfortable.
Facial fitness or rejuvenation
Used mainly by natural practitioners, this technique involves stimulating the facial muscles with a TENS machine to become more toned, thereby holding the skin up better. Also used on stubborn cellulite.
Pros: Natural, with no side effects.
Cons: Many sessions are needed to see results.
Cosmetic acupuncture
Works by removing toxins and encouraging cell reproduction, increasing circulation, and stimulating collagen production.
Pros: Can also increase the body’s natural chi (life force), increasing overall health and a strong stress response.
Cons: Results vary; monthly maintenance treatments required.
Cosmetic dentistry
Over the years, teeth can wear down, significantly changing the shape of the jawline and exacerbating wrinkles and sagging of the facial skin. By rebuilding the teeth and jaw to a youthful state, the skin is stretched more naturally and the face looks younger. Also, laser whitening can dramatically and easily take years off a smile.
Pros: Can improve overall health by restoring
normal function to the jaw. Immediate results.
Cons: Can be expensive, and veneers have to be properly maintained or they break.
The “natural” vs. “unnatural” distinction is abstract, so it is up to an individual to determine her or his own threshold for technology and invasiveness. The most pronounced benefit of a naturopathic approach, such as that offered at Integrative Healing Arts or by Dr. Maria Fabbro, is that, by approaching the process of aging from a holistic and systemic point of view, it’s possible to simultaneously invigorate both the outside and inside of the body. You end up looking and feeling better, and avoiding duck lips altogether.
In the end, there’s a Spanish proverb we might all want to embrace: “Health and cheerfulness make beauty.”
Stephanie MacDonald is a Vancouver writer who worries that stressing about wrinkles will turn them into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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