Started off the week with a rather dispiriting set of facts from speakers at BCSEA’s monthly meeting, where the subject was peak oil. The first speaker was Ron Smyth (provincial government’s Chief Science Officer, Offshore Oil and Gas Branch and member of ASPO-USA) who ticked through the list of oil-producing countries, showing graphs that tracked the declining production of oil world-wide, and enumerated the percentage of GDP that oil represents for those countries, leaving us to imagine for ourselves the repercussions to national fiscal policies of the increasing loss of significant revenue over the next few years.

The impact, he predicted, would come in the next 5-10 years. It seems likely that instead of pouring money and research into developing sustainable energy sources, today’s short-sighted humans will keep looking for oil and turn back to carbon-unfriendly coal for the near term.

OPEC was at the heart of his presentation (with reference to Twilight in the Desert); he explained that these countries are madly developing infrastructure to secure their non-oil-rich futures: which – aluminum smelters, copper refineries and the like – require a lot of oil to build and run, and so will divert a lot of what would otherwise have been oil exports into increasing internal use. Leaving the non-OPEC world suddenly and dramatically short of oil. Again. With huge question marks dangling about self-sufficiency and living standards world-wide, given the seeming general lack of preparedness in this oil-happy era.

Consoled myself with some dim sum on Thursday, which I hadn’t eaten for quite a while. I was, in my tedious way, struck again by the perils of restaurant menus to the pure of palate. Where had these shrimp, this pork, that rice come from? Unlikely, at those prices, to have been organic or sustainably raised. Free associating now into visual feasts, note to self: must watch Eat Drink Man Woman again one of these days.

Thursday night I managed to get to the art gallery to catch the Rice is Life show, which closes today, and a talk by the curator, Paula Swart (Curator of Asian Studies at the Vancouver Museum) who showed some slides of pieces in the exhibit and photos of her travels around rice-producing nations, and recommended the book Seductions of Rice for the beauty of its photos and the range of its information and recipes. She talked about some of the religious and cultural aspects of rice: Inari shrines in Japan, Dewi Sri in Bali, Mae Phosop in Thailand. As always where food is concerned, ancient methods – sustainable and back-breaking human labour – are eclipsed by the production possibilities of mechanisation and chemical and biotech research. California’s rice growers sow their seed by plane, which is faster but costs more – unless you have a plane and an endless supply of oil, I guess. If all you have is hungry people and lots of land, traditional methods work too. And as always you get what you pay for: cheap rice carries that inevitable deferred price tag of chemical contamination of the product, the soil and the water supply; poorly-paid labour; and declining nutritional value.

Friday was Fred Stenson‘s

reading in Sidney; his co-star was not Rachel Wyatt as originally billed, but Jo-Ann Dionne who read from Little Emperors, her memoir about teaching English in China. Fred was reading from his latest, The Great Karoo, about Canadian soldiers in the Boer War.

And last night I had friends to dinner, for which I made a welcome journey out the Saanich Peninsula visiting my favourite farm shops — and saw this handsome display at Farmer Dan’s:

and served a seasonal and mostly local meal, finishing with this dessert which I’d been wanting to try for some time: pumpkin kheer, for which I used a combination of butternut and sweet mama squashes, seasoned with cardamom and topped with toasted cashews.

It was good; basically a cold, sweet soup to finish on, surprisingly filling.

Here’s a photo of an afternoon view across the parking lot of my favourite Victoria store: Capital Iron, long may it continue.

There’s a new bakery/pizzeria in my neighbourhood, which pleases me greatly as this part of Victoria has been a bit of a quality food desert. B-red Organic Bakery Patisserie & Pizzeria is a tiny place on a busy road, with two slightly dangerous parking spots (you must back out into aforementioned busy road when you leave) and a tiny counter for watching the world go by. Making efficient use of space and time, they bake by day (open for sales 10-3) and pizza by night (5-11 most nights, till 1am Fri & Sat), taking their weekends on Mondays and Tuesdays. Here’s a view of their whole wheat sourdough, called Miche, which was extremely good, with lots of flavour and crunch:

Lots going on right now. I must hurry if I want to catch the Rice is Life show at the art gallery.

GG nominee (announcement tomorrow) and excellent literary chap Fred Stenson is reading in Sidney on November 21st at the Red Brick Cafe, together with local treasure Rachel Wyatt, beloved of many alumni of the Banff Writing Studio.

Next Thursday November 27th there’s a one-day conference in Sidney that aims “to put the farm back in farmland”. The Farmland Conference: Our Foodlands, Our Future runs from 9.00 am till 6.30 pm and features plenary speakers farmer/agrologist Niels Holbek and MLA and agriculture critic Corky Evans.

Saturday 29th I’m tempted by the CRD Parks Magnificent Mushrooms outing. Or I could stay home and study all the ones that are growing in my lawn..?

Weirdness on the water: surprised to see this sight on Sunday morning. A passing dog-walker told me it was only foam from the reversing falls under Tillicum Bridge, but I’ve never seen this on the Gorge in the six years I’ve been looking at it. Something funny going on…

The Vancouver Island Slow Food Film Fest was small but tasty. Last night’s premiere was packed out, with excellent nosh

and such a keen audience of eaters that the Oyster Man

was able to go home oysterless. The screening of Island on the Edge went well and the panel discussion afterwards was lively and showed the keen awareness of the audience about local food issues. As a finale, we got to meet the chef, Michael Minshull, who took a bow with the film’s director Nick Versteeg, writer Don Genova and associate producer Jason Found.

Today’s lineup included Hijacked Future, which covered the issues around seed production and featured a great many Canadian farmers and researchers who spoke well and compellingly about the issues. There was a panel discussion afterwards, hosted by Don Genova, and featuring Sinclair Philip and the film’s producer/director David Springbett.

Gardens of Destiny, featured seed saver, forager and campaigner Dan Jason,

whose Salt Spring Seed Company has been doing a roaring trade in recent years, and who also heads the Seed and Plant Sanctuary for Canada, a network of Canadian gardeners devoted to nurturing plant diversity. The viewing ended with a bitter twist as Jason revealed, after the screening, that he had recently been given the boot from the showcase garden featured in the film by his landlords, and was currently considering his options.

The final feature, The World According to Monsanto, had some technical glitches – scratches on the dvd perhaps, or a tired dvd player (or, as one wag suggested, a Monsanto-engineered dvd player?!) – which cut things a little short. The film can be purchased fairly widely, or for the cheap and patient, it’s available for free viewing on Youtube (in 10 parts), or in 4 parts on LiveVideo.

We saw some previews as well. Here’s Eric Schlosser speaking to CBC, as part of a promo interview about the new documentary Food, Inc.

And Deborah Koons Garcia, director of The Future of Food, spilling the beans about her new film whose subject is, well, dirt:

Here’s a cheerful one for a film – not quite finished yet, I understand (though you can help to make it happen: see their website for more info) – about young farmers, called Greenhorns:

And I end this entry with the useful and appetising suggestion with which Nick Versteeg closed our meeting: invite some people to dinner, serve them some good, local food, and talk about it!

Last week I attended the opening ceremonies of the First Nations Collection at the Cowichan Valley Museum in Duncan, which includes paintings, carvings, masks and artifacts from local artists. The ceremonies consisted mainly of some drumming with dancing by local boys

and a couple of mercifully short speeches by the museum curator and the First Nations cultural coordinator, after which the overcrowded room emptied into the rest of the museum – not a huge place – to enjoy a little buffet which featured smoked salmon candy and smoked salmon & cream cheese wraps with capers and dill, and lots of sweets.

It’s local election time here, so I went to an all-candidates meeting last night, curious to hear the talk and see the one candidate (for mayor) who thought food was worth mentioning. His platform is built on the ideas of self-sufficiency and local autonomy that heated up a room in the downtown library last summer, at a town hall meeting on food security. Aside from Harald Wolf’s comments, there was no discussion of food, and no questions from the floor or the organisers. The closest they came was to talk about the berming of Panama Flats (sounds like a Woody Guthrie song title?) which all candidates who answered the question agreed was suspect activity, said they doubted the agricultural purpose of the berm, expressed concern about environmental consequences of messing with the drainage of these fields, and affirmed they planned to fight to keep the land in the much-abused Agricultural Land Reserve. In terms of what could be inferred about the 13 candidates from their appearance, one point I noticed was that only two candidates (Wolf and Brownoff) brought their own water in re-usable water bottles; 12 of the 13 had bottled water sitting in front of them – it appears only Wolf had had declined it.

Most of the talk was about better public transport, more affordable housing and methods of coping with climate change (answers to the latter were all, except Wolf, pretty much limited to better public transport!). Not a whisper about cultural issues…

One thing I enjoyed about the meeting was the timekeeping. Organisers used a yellow/red card system: a yellow card was a warning the time was nearly up; a red card meant stop talking and sit down. How I wish this had been in use in some of the poetry readings I’ve been to in my day.

This weekend there’s a Slow Food mini-film fest in Victoria, taking place at the Hotel Grand Pacific. For a trifling $25 you can attend the premiere night on Friday, to watch locally-made documentary Island on the Edge and enjoy a splendid reception featuring local treats including but not limited to: Sea Cider, freshly shucked Cortes Island oysters from the Oyster Man, and duck confit made from Cowichan Bay Farm duck legs.

Anyone wanting to stay on top of food issues in Canada can subscribe to mailings from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, or just check the Food Recalls & Allergy Alerts page for the latest. There’s been another BSE case, Canada’s 13th, whose investigation makes interesting reading.

I spent some time catching up on the Food Programme‘s recent reports, which included a thoughtful piece on organics in Britain. There’s been a decline in organic producers there, it seems, because the logistics of producing organic meat and dairy products involve a great deal of imported grain – which became quite a problem with the recent fuel price spike and the world-wide shortage of wheat. In addition, the higher price tag on food in general, but particularly organics – due to fuel and grain prices as well as the overall higher price of producing organic foods -have led to something called the “Lidl Effect” (named after a discount supermarket chain) where consumers are turning away from organics in favour of price-centred shopping. In the program, it’s argued that true organics (which fall within the upcoming EU legislation governing the area) require that producers use a virtuous circle production method, where each farm is more or less self-sufficient, producing its own grain to feed its livestock. They question the inclusion of large, industrial-scale organic producers who are watering down the guiding principles of organic food production.

Last weekend I participated in one of the many launches planned for Rocksalt, a new anthology of BC poets. The event I went to was in Nanaimo at the new public library which is large and beautiful but didn’t have quite enough seats for all the people who crammed in the foyer to see the 17 poets reading. The 108 poets featured in the anthology include, sadly for me, a Rhona (yay!), a Rhoda and a Rhonda. I think the sheer number or poets reflects the retirement and pre-retirement patterns for poets in Canada…

Harold Rhenisch, one of the editors,

Mona Fertig, the other editor and publisher

Nanaimo poet Tim Landon,

Joe Rosenblatt,

and my publisher, Ron Smith:

Meanwhile, working through my list of things to do, I had sent a post-six month query to a Canadian literary magazine I’d sent poems to back in the spring. Because the journal publishes an email address, I thought for purposes of a follow-up I’d email rather than send a letter, but my message bounced in seconds. I was feeling persistent, and rather fed up with technology that works against communication rather than for it, so I printed off the email and the bounce message and stuck it into an envelope with a suggestion the magazine check with its IT department, as things had reached a sorry state when a legitimate enquiry was being dumped as spam. Here’s the reply I got from someone (not an IT guy) at the magazine:

We haven’t received any other complaints about blocked emails (and we receive hundreds of emails a week). I suggest that the problem is on your end. You should run a full system scan on your computer. We have a Spam filter on our computer, but it does not block Spam, it only identifies it as such and lets it through. In other words, your email is being identified as malicious, not simply as Spam.

I guess unhelpfulness is not the exclusive domain of profit-oriented company employees. How could you know for sure you “haven’t received any other complaints about blocked emails” when those complaints can’t actually get through?

For that matter, how many of us even have the energy and persistence to lodge complaints about all the things that don’t work right in this indifferent and alienating world? It’s tiring! Even here in supposedly customer-friendly Canada it’s taken me all week – 3 failed phone calls and 4 email messages – to get my phone bill sent to me.

But out of control spam blocking has been on my mind a lot lately. It happened that in my attempts to arrange a poetry reading with another Canadian college this summer, my messages were sent to the Spam folders of two different organisers. When I hear about these things, I always suggest to the recipients that they contact their IT department, but I don’t know if they do. I think I might have to go back to using paper and stamps.