Second Spring

A break in the grey canopy of heaven
Slanting light the colour and texture of honey
Dripping and pooling in the folds of waterlogged earth
Trails littered with leaves blown wildly
By autumns first big storms

After two weeks of wind, rain, worry
The faint autumn sun seems like an inferno
And I am running in shorts in defiance
Of the chill that lingers in the afternoon air.

Up and over and around Mount Doug, again
Pounding down trails so familiar they seem like family
Old friends that time does not trouble
Feet, this is your domain
Guide me through falls paradox

And then, where the slopes are open, rocky
And below, a farmers field makes for pastoral charm,
The Garry oaks cling to stone as children to a parents sleeve
Now adorned with acid green leaves
But this is November, friends, not May

It seems like magic, these vestiges of a forgotten season
Appearing now when it seems as if all the future held
Was darkening skies, earthbound torrents, bluster
Fits that bend bows, whipped waves into a fury

The cause, experts say, is the Oak leak Pyhlloxeran, a pest
That stripped these trees of leaves during summer past
Now a second spring for these twisted sentinels comes
A fleeting chance that will pass in a few weeks, a month
Reminds me that from any darkness a light can emerge.

Running Rain

Now it’s the dark season again.

I fear the fall.

Last September I stumbled into a ditch and couldn’t get myself out for 9 months. Long after the sun had reappeared and the oaks leafed-out and the Ocean Spray festooned my favourite trails with pearl white drapery, I lay in the muck.

Of course, there was more at work than mere weather.

The depression I felt was part of a cycle I’ve experienced most of my life. Runs in the family. But last autumn was different. Last autumn made me pay attention at last.

So I made changes. Big changes.

But now it is fall once again.

I am running in the rain, once again. My favourite place to run is Victoria’s Mount Doug park. It’s a rainforest oasis nestled along the shore of the Straight of Jaun de Fuca in the north end of the city (Saanich, really). The hill rises some 800 feet above the adjacent sea, and is cloaked in dense red cedar, Douglas fir and big leaf maple forests, Gary oak meadows and bald, rocky summits. Since moving to Victoria I’ve run up and over these domes hundreds of times.

In the winter the rocky slopes become slick, so on the wettest of days I have to be content to circle the mountain’s base. In places the trails become creeks, so I splash my way up and down these waterways, jumping up tiny water falls, careening over rock and root pathways. In the darkness of autumn the dense woods can be chocked with mist. The air entering my lungs is thick. The forest appears in layers out of the fog, trees and under story being revealed as curtains of mist are pulled back like screens where players wait until their entrance is called for.

I find it hard to run in this weather.

The rain is invigorating, and I don’t mind getting wet. You can’t mind getting wet if you want to run in the rainforest. But the autumn sky, slate grey when it can be seen at all, presses down on me. I feel like each step is leaden. It’s a mental effort to keep going somedays.

I splash across Douglas Creek, calf deep, looking for spawning Salmon. Up the slick hillside, roots as handholds. This is what cross country running is all about. And I remember that in the summer, when I felt as though I could fly, I would soften my decent along the treacherous, rocky slopes by inviting my body to flow as if it were water sluicing down a spill way.

So I must remember this now.

I am water. I am this rain that pounds on my capped head from the gunmetal sky. I am not a man, running for my life, through darkening woods. I am the rain itself, in the form of a man, moving heavily, but still moving, among rains myriad other incarnations – red cedar, sword fern, Oregon grape. Salmon. I am rain, running. And I can keep on running remembering this certainty.

Computer Karma

On the morning of September 12th, 2006 I was downtown Victoria, meeting with a small team of people from the City of Victoria to prepare for a strategy session, to be held the next day, on the issue of homelessness in Victoria. As I was to be downtown most of the day, I had my computer with me so I could check email and do some work between meetings.

After my get-together with city officials, I walked through Fan Tan Ally to Victoria’s tiny, but historic Chinatown to meet a photographer from Focus Magazine. Earlier in the summer I had given an interview to Focus writer Sara Cassidy on Carry Tiger to Mountain: the Tao of Activism and Leadership, and as it was to be published in the October issue, they wanted a photo of my happy smiling face.

Now, I’m torn on this matter: I’ll admit that my ego enjoys the massage it gets when someone wants to take my picture and plaster it in a magazine. But part of me would really rather have a photo of nature – waves on a beach, or the curl of a rapid on a river – accompany stories about Carry Tiger to Mountain. Well, ego won out and I agreed to the photo-shoot.

The photographer sat me on a bench at the mouth of Fan Tan Ally and I put my computer bag down at my feet. For some reason I thought it important that it not be in the frame, and he assured me it wouldn’t. I had actually placed it some distance away at first, and decided that it had better be close at hand for safety’s sake. He clicked away, I managed a grin, and all seemed to be going well until I checked on my bag a few minutes later. Gone.

I lept to my feet and scanned the busy sidewalk along Fisgaurd Street. People coming and going, but none of them toting my black shoulder bag. The photographer and I split up – I strode towards Government Street, and he hurried off – cradling all his gear – towards Store Street. As I walked, I called the police to make my unfortunate report – that not only had my computer been swiped, but so had my palm pilot and wallet. In addition, all my files on Victoria’s homelessness challenges were in my bag. Good grief.

After talking with the constabulatory, I made a more thorough search of the alleys and doorways in Chinatown – picking through a few trash containers and recycling bins - and that’s when I found my bag. It was just sitting in a doorway a few hundred meters from where it had been stolen. I braced a couple of dudes eating pizza outside a shop, questioning them if they had seen who had dropped it. They described a generically scruffy 20-something man. Not much help. The computer and palm pilot were gone, but my wallet was there, complete with over burdened credit card.

Now it was time for reflection. My first thought was awe. That some light-fingered thief had managed to stroll past and lift my bag – which was sitting less than a foot from my foot – without being noticed by myself, or the photographer, was amazing. My next impulse was to curse my ego for desiring to have my dour mug in the magazine, which lead me to the situation in the first place. And finally, and blessedly quickly, I turned towards solutions. All the data on my computer and palm pilot is backed up both on an external hard drive, and through a nifty online service called Data Deposit Box. But of course, we all know that to configure a computer to your liking takes weeks and months, and the joy of setting up Window’s again was now looming on the horizon. And while I learned that my household insurance would cover the replacement of the machine, there was a $500 deductible to be considered.

I went shopping, and decided on a new HP lap top to replace my bulky Acer, but resolved to sleep on the decision.

The next morning I bussed it back downtown to work with my colleague James Pratt to facilitate a strategy session on communications and Community Based Social Marketing for the Victoria Steering Committee on Homelessness. As I usually am before such a session, I was focused on the day’s agenda, so when a couple of gents I’d never seen before joined me in the elevator on the way up to the meeting room that morning, I didn’t pay them much attention. Even when they followed me into the meeting room itself I didn’t really notice them much.

But when one of them took my computer out of a shopping bag, I snapped to attention.

“That’s my computer,” I managed.

“We found this in some bushes,” he explained. “We took it to Reverend Al and he knew how to find out who owned it.”

The two men, who introduced themselves as being homeless, explained that the night before they saw someone throw my palm pilot – an aging Kyocera that looks like its been through a combat mission in Afghanistan - into the shrubs. When they investigated, they found it along side of my computer there. They took it to Reverend Al, who runs Our Place, a local service centre for the homeless in Victoria – and he flipped open the palm pilot. The reminder that flashed was for the Steering Committee meeting on homelessness that I was about to participate in, complete with address and room number. He sent his two friends down to deliver my goods back to me.

I asked for and received the two men’s names and offered handshakes of thanks. I dug some money out of my pocket and gave it to them. And they departed, accepting my heart felt appreciation.

The computer was entirely intact. Not a scratch. Nor was the battered palm pilot any worse for ware. Even the power converter was accounted for. As someone recently commented, “you got to learn all the lessons, and got your stuff back anyway.”

Good karma? I like to think so. For most of my life I’ve been working hard to make the world a better place. I’m not always successful. I’ve made a lot of mistakes. Of late, I’ve been going through some profound, and very difficult, personal transformation that hasn’t been easy, on me, my family, friends and loved-ones. There too I’ve made some mistakes in my pursuit of truth and peace. I’ve hurt people. But I’ve been trying. And the harmony of the universe seems to return for that effort some semblance of justice.

I had been prepared to find the goodness in the situation even if my computer had never been recovered. That I didn’t have to didn’t stop me from learning the lessons of ego and attachment yet again.

Step Back to Ward Off Monkey

I spoke with someone on the phone the other day who had been at the Vancouver reading from Carry Tiger to Mountain. The call was professional in nature, our businesses searching for an intersection so we might help one another serve others. But the conversation came around to the book, and her praise for it.

She said a lot of things that made me smile. When you write a book, I image that often it slips into the world and as the writer all you get is silence as feedback. A few reviews, a note from a friend or two, and that’s it. Getting feedback from this stranger was a lovely gift.

She told me how she suggests to her clients, who are coming to her for career counselling, that they read it. Isn’t that amazing? To imagine that people who are charting a renewed course in life might look to Carry Tiger for inspiration is wonderful.

What she said that made me feel most wonderful was this: one day she was sitting on the sand at Jericho Beach in Vancouver, reading, when a friend came and sat down with her. She told her about the book, and read to her from the final chapter, Step Back to Ward off Monkey. This chapter deals with the delicate balance between activism and leading a healthy, balanced life. It’s something that I struggle with daily. My new acquaintance tells me that the writing really resonated with her friend on the beach.

Imagine that. Someone reading aloud from Carry Tiger to Mountain on a beach, hoping to inspire and revitalize a friend in need.

My greatest hope in writing Carry Tiger to Mountain was that it would be used in this manner. That people might turn to it for solace and guidance from a humble servant who himself has so much more to learn. I am in awe that someone out there has found this book of service. I am deeply grateful.

Mock Orange

My writing shed is under the spreading branches of a Mock Orange tree. It stands a solid dozen feet tall, and its branches spread as wide. When our home was purchased in March of last year, we had no idea what this dense, just then leafing shrub was. In early June the first flowers began to appear, in ones and twos, and by mid month, the tree was festooned with flowers beyond counting. They perfumed the air, not ostentatiously, but with grace. Subtly. Delicately.

On late spring evenings that aroma wafts into our bedroom window, dousing my sleeping family with its fine scent. It is mildly intoxicating. It sends me reeling. I am very sensitive to fragrance.

The place where I write and work is an eight by twelve foot shed. The previous owners of our home used it for storage. It was rough. A plywood floor, battered drywall and gaudy florescent overhead lights. There were business cards for ammo and gun shops thumb tacked to the walls. But at least it was wired, and it was structurally sound. In February I gutted it. It took the better part of a week to find space for all of the stuff that was stored in it. Then I pulled down the ceiling, tore out all but two of the ceiling spanners, and patched or replaced the drywall. My friend Martin put in a new window. The old one was three feet long and a foot or so high. Really just a portal. The new one is five feet across and four feet high and offers a picture perfect view at the Gary Oaks and poorly kept lawn in the front yard.

A new pine ceiling, new wiring, heat, new lighting, telephone and internet lines (which involved Martin spending more time than he would have liked under my house), paint (Tibet blue and a light/blue grey contrast wall and trim) and carpet. By April I was able to move in.

The Mock Orange reaches out over the roof. The walkway from the house to Tumblehome – my name for my little space, taken from canoeing lore – is littered with mock orange petals. With the approach of July, the blossoms are fading. Another year slips from my grasp. It’s like trying to catch the falling petals. By August the petals will have vanished, and the Mock Orange will have no fragrance at all.

But tonight, as I work my way through another round of edits on Blackwater, a delicious, cool breeze assuring a fine sleep later, my writing space is scented with the Mock Orange blossom. It’s very fine to be alive in this trees embrace.

On Aging

My father said something the other day that took me by surprise. He and my stepmother Mabel were in Victoria for a visit, coinciding with the launch of Carry Tiger to Mountain, but extensibly to see the grandchildren. It was our last day together. We’d spent the day at Island View beach under cloudy skies, but enjoying a crackling driftwood fire and the company of good friends and family. We were scanning through the pictures from our day, and from the last ten that they had been visiting, when my father said, “Do I ever look old.”

My father is sixty five. He’ll be sixty six in August. I don’t really know what sixty six is supposed to look like, but I’m guessing that he looks pretty good for it. Maybe he’s carrying a few extra pounds around the middle, but I think he looks pretty damn fine. He’s strong and has a nice tan and his short, wavy hair is mostly silver now, but still lovely.

But looking at himself in the pictures must have set him back. Because he sees himself now as being in his sixties. I think we all have a static image of ourself in our minds eye. My father's almost certainly is the image of the slender young man leaning against a vintage 1950's automobile with a gang of his friends.

I may be wrong about this, as I’m yet in my mid-thirties, but I’m guessing that as we age, we continue to see ourselves as we were in our youth, in the prime of our lives. Indomitable. Unstoppable. To suddenly have that image challenged must be very unsettling.

It’s not like we’re unaware of our aging. I was commenting to my close friend Josh, who I have been running and hiking with since 1993, that my body doesn’t seem to be bouncing back from injuries as quickly as it once did. A sprain I suffered in September still gives me the occasional jab, and my knee, which I cracked when I fell full body weight on it crossing a creek in Montana two and a half years ago, will likely never be the same. I’ll likely have to wear a brace on it when I run for the rest of my life. If I live that long. Josh kids that when you turn thirty the warranty expires. Sad but true.

But looking at the sequence of photos – of my two boys, Rio (4) and Silas (not yet one) – and Kat and I, who are still in the prime of our lives – and then at his own stately self, must have driven the point home that, well, we’re not getting any younger.

The Tao te Ching doesn’t address death and dieing in many verses, but one in particular does deal with it almost exclusively. Here is verse fifty of the Tao as Gia-Fu Fent and Jane English translate it in their lovely 1989 edition, published by Vintage.

Between birth and death,
Three in ten are followers of life,
Three in ten are followers of death,
And men just passing from birth to death
Also number three in ten.
Why is this so?
Because they live their lives on the gross level.

He who knows how to live can walk aboard
Without fear of rhinoceros or tiger.
He will not be wounded in battle.
For in him rhinoceroses can find no place to
Thrust their horn,
Tigers no place to use their claws,
And weapons not place to pierce.
Why is this so?
Because he has no place for death to enter.


He who knows how to live, not merely as one passing through, but to really live, must not fear aging and dieing. Death has no power of us if we live life fully.

So don’t worry papa. You may no longer see that Buddy Holly look-alike, leaning on the car with all your friends when you look at yourself in digital photos displayed on a lap top computer. But he is there. He has had a good life, and will have much more yet to come. And he lives in me, and in your two grandsons. May they too not fear the piercing horns or wounding claw, as they live their lives deeply, with compassion and love as their guide.

Book, Launched

I not sure exactly what I was expecting to happen after Carry Tiger to Mountain was officially launched. I suppose I wasn’t really expecting much of anything to happen. The Tao te Ching, and the Dhammapada (the book of wisdom from the Buddha) both caution against expectation, warning that it often leads to disappointment. So I went into things pretty much neutral.

So not expecting much to happen, I wasn’t disappointed. Very little has changed, at least that I can see. I am still behind on my bills. I can’t seem to make it through the day without drinking a Pepsi. I’m not very good with unstructured time. I loose my temper too easily. I have a lot of fun with my kids. Same as before.

I guess I felt some relief. It’s OK to admit that. I was kinda’ nervous going into the launch. For two reasons: 1) when I throw a party, I like it to come off without a hitch, and this was an important party, and 2) though I’ve done plenty of public speaking, this was much more personal than anything I’ve ever done. It was hard to take yourself too seriously when dressed up like Harley and Harliquin Duck as I did when working for the Park Service in the early 1990's.

But, by all accounts the party was a success, and the reading went over well.

I’m pretty exhausted from the effort: Though the idea for the book has developed over the last decade or more, writing in Ernest really just began in the middle of May of 2005. The first draft was done on August 17th – 70,000 words or so in three months – at which time I took it to the Cadboro Bay beach for a week or so to edit, and then produced a second draft by the middle of September. Kat then went to work doing a major edit (ie, scribbling with a red pen over so much of the text that i couldn't read some pages) and I went to Hollyhock to read the manuscript from start to finish yet again. The next phase was the hardest, really. Here I had to incorporate Kat’s ruthless edit, and my own notes into the computer version. That took several weeks. Some pages had so many revisions that they took an hour to input. The manuscript was sent to Arsenal at the end of October. There was a significant revision done at Christmas, where I added a lot of the material that pertains to ethically driven businesses. And then a final look at the version as it was laid out in February.

And so now it’s out in the world. Nearly fourteen years after conception, three years after I began to craft the interpretation of the Tao, and a year after Arsenal Pulp Press, in a moment of weakness said yes to the idea of the book, its on the lose. For better or for worse.

It’s not going to be all peaches and cream. Some will disagree with what I have to say. Others won’t like the way I’ve presented the Tao te Ching. And others still will sigh at the thought of so much west-coast west-coast, crystal gazing mumbo-jumbo assembled in one place. That’s fine. To each his own.

I’m proud of my accomplishment, and humbled by other’s excitement by it. I hope it serves those who are making the world a better place well.

Here are a few pic's for the launch...

Stephen (left) with cousins Andrea and David.

Kat and Silas.

Rio, enjoying the grub

The author, signing his first book, and wondering, "Jesus, I hope this shirt doesn't make anybody sick...."

What are they thinking?

In what was obviously a trail balloon floated this week, a memo was leaked from federal Environment Minister Rona Ambrose’s office stated that the new Conservative government was planning on cutting funding to programs to fight climate change by 80%. I say obviously a trail balloon because this is the government, you will remember, that doesn’t have leaks. It controls the spin.

This comes on the heels of news a few weeks ago that the program made famous (or infamous) by Rick Mercer, the One Tonne Solution, was being discontinued. And while many will agree that the program had its share of pitfalls, cutting the only federal program that made any sense to Canadians seems a back-asswards way of tackling what many now believe to be the most pressing challenge humanity has ever faced. Also, Minster Ambrose has stated that Canada can’t reach the Kyoto targets. That they are “impossible.” No “little engine that could” effort from this fledgling Minister. Just acceptance of defeat. Very sad.

Kyoto, for all the fuss its created around trading carbon credits, is still the only program the international community has been able to agree on to curb global warming. And remember, its just, well, a warm-up to what must be a massive undertaking to reverse climate change, not merely control it.

The Stephen Harper conservatives were elected on a 5-priority platform, of which fighting climate change wasn’t in the top tier. They stated that they weren’t interested in the Kyoto Protocol, but that they were going to move slowly on the climate change issue. Now, just a couple months in office, they are threatening to gut the federal government’s response to this slow-motion catastrophe. A day after the trail balloon drifted into the national papers, Stephen Harper was back-peddling, saying that his government doesn’t have plans to cut program funding, only to relocate money spent on poorly performing programs to those that are fairing better.

To be fair, the Harper government inherited a suit of programs that has allowed Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions to raise by 24% rather than fall, as they should be if we’re to have any hope of reversing the perilous trend we’re currently authoring.

Environmentalists have feared since the advent of the Reform/Alliance/Conservative Party that should they ever come to power, among their first undertakings would be to slash funding for programs that protect Canada’s environment, cow-towing to Calgary’s oil and gas elite. Those fears seem well founded.

Now what? Give up on the government? If only we could. But there is some wisdom in following the lead of organizations like the Pembina Institute and the BC Sustainable Energy Association who forge ahead, building relationships with businesses big and small, and with industry, in the hopes that they will demonstrate the leadership that governments, federal and provincial, do not.

What seems obvious to me is that if we are going to tackle climate change, we need far greater organizational resources across Canada, and around the world, which is why I am so critical of the World Wildlife Fund’s “give me your money and we’ll solve the program for you” campaign (see previous Blog posting).

What are those resources? Sigh. Big question. I’m working towards some answers. My thinking on a sea change in Canada’s environmental community (it’s not a movement by a long shot) is developing. What do you think is needed to thwart the new threat posed by the Conservative government. How can Canada’s environmental groups work towards a conserver society?

What I know for certain is this: my children are going to grow old in a world very different than the one we know today. I feel a terrible fear, and an anger that as a country we are playing politics with my children’s future. And I know that I must clear my head of that fear, and that anger, if I’m going to come up with solutions.

Know when to leave

Like many, I was shocked when Premier Ralph Klein received a paltry 55% in the review of his leadership on Friday night. Klein, Premier of Alberta for the 13 years and three months, has had a strangle-hold on power in the province throughout his rein, and is credited with eliminating the province’s deficit, paying down its debt and creating massive, multi-billion dollar surpluses in successive provincial budgets.

I lived in Alberta through much of Premier Klein’s time at the head of the Conservative government, and while I respect him personally, his record in office looks very different from my side of the political spectrum. In the nearly fourteen years that Mr. Klein has held office (and several more when he was Minister of the Environment) the province has spiralled further into an abyss of ecological ruin. Alberta leads Canada in the production of greenhouse gas emissions. As shown in a recently released report from Global Forest Watch Canada, its borders can be seen in satellite photos: the green boreal carpet becomes a tattered remnant at the provinces demarcation with Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories.

While many will remember Ralph Klein as the slayer of deficits and the champion of debt pay-down, I will remember him as the Premier who squandered the opportunity to use the provinces unprecedented wealth to set Alberta on the path towards sustainability. What progress is being made in Alberta comes as a result of the entrepreneurial spirit found in the provinces entrepreneurs, with very little thanks to Ralph Klein and his conservative government.

And so, while I was surprised by the 55%, I wasn’t saddened. I don’t think many people in Alberta, or across Canada are. Why would they be? Fourteen years (which it will be before the leadership race – now finally a real footrace – is decided) is a hell of a long time in politics. Ask Jean Chrétien. Or Margaret Thatcher.

What do these politicians have in common? A reluctance to quit while they are ahead. A hesitancy to release the grip on power.

Do your work well, and then step aside
This is the way of the Tao

Tao, 9

I can’t imagine how hard a decision it would be, when leading a province or a country, to decide when your time has come. When you are flying high, you believe it might always be thus. When you are struggling, the tendency is to want to dig yourself out of that hole and redeem yourself. Thoughts at that time might turn to resignation, but only after you’ve redeemed your honour. But one of the most important lesson’s from the Tao te Ching is to know when to step aside. As a leader, this is one of the most important things to know. Good leaders begin to prepare for the transfer of leadership power as early as they can upon accepting a formal position of leadership, grooming others to take on responsibility, earn trust and accept challenges.

I know the pitfalls of leadership succession first hand. When, in 1999, I co-founded Wildcanada.net, a small, national conservation group that used online technology to organize activists to champion wildlands and wildlife, I said at the very fist meeting of my board of directors that I would be executive director for five to seven years. In 2004 I gave that board 18 months notice of my departure. I gave formal notice 8 months in advance of my end-date.

During all of that time, I worked with my colleagues and board to put in place the conditions of a successful leadership transition: A strong, independent staff, a solid, engaged board and financial resources sufficient to see the organization through the transition period were needed to ensure the hand-off in formal leadership was successful.

On the staff front we succeeded. On the board front, though caring and thoughtful, they become engaged too late in the organization’s life-cycle to weather the storm that lay ahead. They worked long and hard through the transition itself, giving every ounce of strength they had to ensure the organizaiton thrived, but events took on a life of their own. It was not enough. On the financial front, I failed. I was never able to have in place more than a few months of operating capital, nowhere near what was needed to ensure a successful transition.

So the leadership transition failed. And the rest is history. (More will be said of the lessons learned from this in Carry Tiger to Mountain, to be released by Arsenal Pulp Press in late April.)
I write this now because watching much, much higher profile transitions unfold, like the one in Ottawa between Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin two years ago, and in Alberta where Ralph Klein will almost certainly step down this week as Premier, I can see similar patterns. (Though in both of those cases, Alberta and Ottawa don’t suffer from lack of operating capital.) Insecure leaders fear strengthening those around them in the preparation of leadership succession because they have no clear plan to hand over leadership. The true purpose of leadership is the create other leaders.

And even with a plan in place, sometimes the transition is unsuccessful. So we learn from our mistakes. And with luck, we can suffer these missteps with grace.

When you have come to the end, leave with grace
and your efforts will be remembered forever

Tao, 33

Its time for Ralph Klein to leave with grace. Leave the bitter, vitriolic debate over whose fault this fall from power is to others. Thank the people of Alberta for 25 years of support as Calgary’s Mayor, MLA, Cabinet Minister and Premier, and exit smiling.

Watching Where Water Goes: The Tao of Strategy

Water is as soft as anything on earth
yet mountains and canyons have been sculpted by its force

Thus the soft overcomes the hard,
the yielding overpowers the rigid
Though a fact of nature,
this truth is difficult to put into day-to-day practice

Tao, 70


Through a tangled rainforest we emerge, past a driftwood gate onto a sweeping pebble beach. It feels like being born, out of the darkness of winter and into the full light of spring. The ocean is radiant, and I think of Bruce Cockburn’s song: all the diamonds in this world, that mean anything to me, are conjured up by wind and sunlight, sparkling on the sea.

This place isn’t marked on the winding road that snakes its way up the west coast from Victoria as far as Bamfield, so there are only a few other people combing the dazzling shore. The ecstasy of arriving here is nearly overwhelming. The sun is so bright, after two and a half months of dreary cloud and rain, that I feel stunned by it. The children run down dunes of pebbles washed into great mounds by recent storms. The adults find a place to lay out a picnic. Driftwood is collected and we build a small fire, not so much for warmth, though it is still chilly, but for ceremony. Cans of beer are opened. Food is shared. It is the middle of February and the back of a west coast winter is being broken. We can feel it.

Down the beach, to the south, we can make out a waterfall. In small groups we meander that way, walking along the waterline where there is sand, finding the shells of Dungeness crabs washed up from a watery grave. In places the pebble mounds are taller than we are, and have been carved into terraces. Two weeks ago there was a tremendous storm that shut down ferry traffic, stranding commuters in their cars at the ferry terminals. That storm and others like it over the winter sculpted this pebble beach as an artisan would mould clay. Rio finds a rocky terrace and runs to its lip and leaps off, laughing and falling and rolling down the rocky anticline.

We reach the end of the beach where twin falls tumble over a ledge of sandstone. The falls are fifteen feet high – much larger than we had guessed from a distance – and have carved this pliable stone with their near constant pounding.

Above the falls is forest, and beyond that, the highway. Perched next to the creek, with a charming view of the falls is a small, neatly kept cabin. I fantasise about retreating to this place, with a view of the Straight of Juan de Fuca, and the Olympic Peninsula beyond, and the falls at my feet, to write for weeks at a time.

Where the water plunges onto the beach it doesn’t rush to the ocean. It simply disappears. The mounds of storm pushed stones suck up the stream completely. As this is the first time I’ve visited this stretch of coast I don’t know how winter’s storms have changed it, but I imagine that maybe by the summer the water will have carved a path along the surface to the ocean, but for the time being, the water goes underground and makes its way to the sea unseen. A few feet above the tide line the water re-emerges and heeds gravities final, undeniable calling.

Since that day on the beach a month ago, I’ve thought a lot about those falls, and water’s path across the face of the earth.

I was thinking about it when I was talking with Hinton, Alberta based activist Connie Bresnahan about a story I’m penning for Alberta Views Magazine about a sea change in that province’s environmental community. Connie was telling me about how the Athabasca Bioregional Society quietly backed off from open environmental advocacy work for a couple of years after the contentious Cheviot Mine Hearing. After a decade of acrimonious debate and legal challenges over the Cheviot Coal mine – to be dug within view of the Cardinal Divide just east of Jasper National Park – she and others in the group realized that despite having lived in the region for decades, they were considered outsiders.

They determined to change their relationship with their community. They dropped everything else and focused instead on a small, community based creek restoration project. They forged relationships, based on common goals, with community and government organizations, local businesses, Town Council, industry, and interested public volunteers. For three years they worked to establish trust, respect, and open communication between themselves, members of the creek restoration project partnership, and fellow community members. The project they initiated – restoring Hardisty Creek – helped bridge the gap between local conservationists and a public distrustful of the environmental community.

They worked on fish passage issues, education about watershed health and building bridges with those who in the past had been their adversaries. West Fraser Mills Inc., (formerly Weldwood of Canada), one of the largest forest products producers in the region recently invested $200,000 in the restoration project, and CN Rail $115,000 to improve the railway crossing of Hardisty Creek.

What Bresnahan and fellow activists are saying with their work is “We’re here for the long term. We’re here forever.”


Softness overcomes hard
like a canyon wall slowly yielding to water

Tao, 43


Faced with anger, rage, and hatred because of their opposition to the Cheviot Coal Mine, The Athabasca Bioregional Society took a lesson from water’s ways. Now, says Bresnahan, the Society is ready to test that trust as it tackles more complicated, divisive issues once again.

This is what Allan Watts called the Watercourse Way of water in his book about the Tao. There is an obstacle in your path. Go around. Go over. Go under. Flow. Pool and back up, and seek out the way that offers the least resistance. Persevere. Have patience. Trust. Gravities call is loud, and strong, and enduring. You will find a way.


When turmoil swirls around you
be as the stone in the river’s flow
Allow the waters to come and go,
come and go

Be still
Wait for the right moment to act

Tao, 16


(As a post script this, my family and I returned to this beach on March 19 to spend the day with friends. We visited the falls again, and found that one of the channels had been nearly completely cut through to the sea. The smaller rocks washed away, and the larger rocks fell into the currents flow, and are slowly being pushed aside and out to the ocean. I learn so much every moment I spend by water’s edge.)

(Photo: Ed Wiebe)

First Reading of Carry Tiger to Mountain: Leadership and Social Venture

Last night I did my first reading from Carry Tiger to Mountain. Because the book won’t be out for a few months yet, it wasn’t really from the book, but from pages compiled from the various drafts of the manuscript. I was invited to talk with a small, interested group of senior business people in Victoria – many of whom are making mid-career course corrections – who meet on a regular basis to explore the topic of leadership, and support each other as they work to find meaningful ways to match their passion and skills with business ventures.

We started the gathering with a question: “What is your greatest challenge and your greatest opportunity as a leader?”

Some of the answers were:

* Finding a place to apply my skills

* Choosing to say no

* Finding a way to give as much into the community as I can

* Find a way to be most myself

* Discover a way to not be a mile wide and an inch deep

After this introduction, I read a conglomerate of stories, primarily focused on the Tao te Ching’s principle tenets of leadership: stepping aside, trusting and acting with conviction. Ultimately these three come together to form a common theme: that leadership is about service, to our cause, to our communities, and to those we lead.

Verse 17 of the Tao says:

The mark of a good leader
is that his colleagues do not require his attention
Next best is a leader who is loved
After that, one who is feared
And worst of all, one who is hated

Trust that the people you work with
are able and worthy of your confidence
and they will exceed your expectations

Lead by example
Do your work and be humble about your accomplishments
When you have finished, and your colleagues say
“Look at what we accomplished all by ourselves”
Then you will be a leader

One of the parts of the readings that seemed to resonate with these leaders was the story of Mark Deutschmann, the founder of Village Real Estate, of Nashville Tennessee. I met Mark at the Social Venture Institute at Hollyhock, and we spoke over the phone in December when I was putting the finishing touches on Carry Tiger to Mountain. Deutshmann’s company -- part of his own mid-course correction that steered his career more closely into alignment with his values -- is part of a community based approach to reviving Nashville’s once hollow city centre.

Long interested in how business could contribute to bettering society, Deutschmann has been associated with the Social Venture Network (SVN) for many years, and found himself asking “What am I going to do with my life to make a difference in the world?”

He decided that existing businesses needed to shift the way that they operated if they were going to create positive change, so in October of 1996 Village Real Estate was born, founded on the idea that the real estate transition – the act of buying a selling homes – could be used to create community.

The first thing Deutschmann did was place a portion of the company into the Village Fund, to be managed by the Tides Foundation – a San Francisco based philanthropic organization that helps individuals and companies manage charitable giving. The Village Fund would be used to support what Deutschmann calls “social profit” organizations – charities and what we often refer to as non-profit organizations – that were doing good work to build community in Nashville. As Village Real Estate’s profitability grew, the Village Fund started to support organizations working to clean up toxic waste in Nashville, and preserve greenways along the Cumberland River.

Nashville’s urban communities were in transition at that time, and they needed support, says Deutschmann. “Essentially, there was no residential living downtown,” he says. In fact, Nashville prohibited residential development there. “We had a city that was sprawling endlessly, but we weren’t taking care of our core. This is where my strategy as a real estate broker started to change.”

First, Nashville City Council was convinced to lift the ban on developing residential in the down-town core, and started planning for mixed-use of the city’s centre. The Civic Design Centre, which Deutschmann serves as a board member, was founded to develop the Plan of Nashville, the first effort to consider the central city in its entirety, develop a community-based vision, and identify design principles. Village Real Estate positioned itself to sell mixed-use multi-purpose redevelopments, and to manage new developments in downtown Nashville.

Today, Village Real Estate involves itself in project development and marketing in dozens of downtown infill projects, and adaptive re-use of existing structures. And he says that now the company is of a size that it can put more money into the Village Fund, giving away more than $100,000 to community organizations in 2004.

Next, he says, Village Real Estate will work to get everybody in urban Nashville to make the switch to green power through the Tennessee Valley Authority, which consumers can do through Village Real Estate’s web site. He says that many, though not all, of his more than 100 real estate agents are attracted to Village because of the company’s values.

What does the story of Village Real Estate have to do with the Tao te Ching? Deutschmann’s story comes from the chapter of Carry Tiger to Mountain that focuses on moving through challenge and change. Lao Tzu councils:


All living things are soft and flexible
all things in death are hard and brittle

The hard and the brittle will be broken
the soft and flexible will endure

(Tao, 76)

Village Real Estate was the result of flexible thinking. It recognized an opportunity to align a leader’s vision for his community with a business opportunity. The result has been a powerful success. In time, rocks, and even mountains succumb to the enduring power of the softest substance on earth: water. We can emulate that soft power in our work as leaders in nearly everything we do.

An Ad Campaign that Absolves via Visa

I was sitting on the subway in Toronto when I first saw it. The words global warming caught my eye. The ad featured a coffee table with a book whose title read How to Keep Your Cool While Chairing a Summit to End Global Warming.

My first thought was, “Wow, that was a fast turn around,” believing that somehow the Hon. Stéphane Dion, Canada’s former federal Minister of the Environment, and a pretty cool dude, had penned a treatise on his very recent experience chairing the climate conference – COP 11 - in Montreal last December.

Then I read the subtitle: Insights into meeting with captains of industry, government big-wigs, and environmental gurus to find long-term solutions to end climate change. Hmmm … didn’t seem like the Hon. Minister to me.

And then the kicker: If you want an easier way to fight global warming, donate to us. With your funding WWF-Canada can do things that you wish you could. The ad directed people to visit saveourclimate.ca to donate.

So when I got home that night I went to saveourclimate.ca, and contacted WWF to request PDF’s of their ad. (They are on the web page…) I had learned from a colleague that this particular ad was part of a series of radio, TV, and print ads that were airing in Toronto. (The second book was bathroom reading: 2352 Easy Ways to Make Fossil Fuels Extinct.)

The goal of the campaign is to raise $200,000 for WWF to use to combat global warming, with a particular focus on Canada’s north.

To say that the ad miffed me would be an understatement. The message that oozes from the ad is that the average citizen 1) isn’t clever enough to understand the complexities of global warming and its solutions, 2) isn’t motivated or interested enough to take action, and 3) they don’t need to anyway, because WWF can do it all for them. So hand over your money, and go about your lives, citizens. The Panda is on the job.

Now before I go any further, I want to say three things: First, when you visit www.saveourclimate.ca, the message found on the billboards isn’t reiterated. In fact, it’s a reasonably good, interactive website. There are things for people to do there other than donate. There are some tips for conserving energy. You can sign on online petition. There is a letter that can be printed and mailed to your Member of Parliament. In my book, the site gets 7 out of 10 for creativity, and 5 out of 10 for engagement. Not Bad.

Secondly, I don’t dispute WWF, or any other organization’s need or right to raise money to do its good work. When I was an executive director, I had to raise about $1,500 a day, every day, to pay for the operations of a very small national conservation group.

Thirdly, I’m not anti World Wildlife Fund. Not specifically. They do good work. In the late 1990’s I worked to protect areas in Alberta with WWF’s provincial rep, Peter Lee, one of the most effective advocates for nature in that province. Today they are focused on a couple of key issues – the Mackenzie Valley pipeline and global warming, to name two. Very important issues to which they contribute significantly.

But these ads are not a significant contribution. They are a set back. They roll the clock back a good, long way in how Canadian and North American conservation organization’s work with and engage the public.

These ads say, “We don’t need you. We’re so big and smart and connected and influential and effective that all we need is your money and we’ll solve these problems all by ourselves.”

I hope this is not what the good people at WWF really think. I hope that this is a case where the fundraising staff, and the advertising firm, got way out in front of the thinking at the organization, and that they now need to be reined in. Fast.

For the last twenty years the environmental movement has accelerated its professionalization. We’ve hired staff, created a brand for our organizations, started sophisticated marketing and fundraising campaigns, and in doing so put miles between ourselves and the mom and pop operations – the kitchen table activities – that gave us the first Earth Day in 1970, the Clean Air and Water Acts, and the Endangered Species Act in the US, and Canada’s marvellous National Parks system in Canada.

But to keep pace with the threats that we face – loss of biodiversity, the extinction of species, the impact of global warming – we’ve had to professionalize. The scale of the problem demands that we have people able to wake up every morning thinking about solutions. In 1996 I took my first paying job as an activist and I’ve never looked back.

But somewhere along the path to professionalization, we’ve forgotten that our real power as a movement is with people. People in communities. People who see the impact of climate change as shorelines erode, or as animal migration changes and habitat disappears. People who can taste the air. People who feel the assault on their bodies from toxic waste and who fear for their children’s future as smog pollutes their lungs.

We’ve forgotten that power is only useful when it is disseminated, when it is dispersed. When it is given away.

When an organization grows and gains power
it should become like the ocean
so that all streams will run downhill to it
The larger the organization grows
the lower it should stoop in humility

Lao Tzu, Tao te Ching, 61
In Carry Tiger to Mountain

If we’re going to effectively combat the impact of global warming, then we’re going to need people to feel empowered, not powerless. We’re going to need to turn to communities – to tens of thousands of communities – and learn from them what needs to be done to dramatically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, and then help them implement their ideas. And we’re going to have to learn to trust them.

We’ve got to understand by now that ameliorating the impact of climate change isn’t going to be accomplished by screwing in what my colleague Marc Stoiber calls “squirrelly light bulbs.” It’s going to take a sea change in our thinking, in our action, and in how we make decisions as a society. To do that, we’re going to need everybody working as advocates, not just WWF.

Organizations like WWF, and other large, national brands, have an important role to play in that effort. We need to empower our grassroots community activists. There ad says that people can go about their lives, drive their SUVs, buy their plasma TVs, so long as they donate twenty bucks to WWF. Visa card absolution.

This is not the way to build a movement in Canada, and across North America, that can tackle global warming. But what is?

What do you think the environmental movement needs? I’d like to hear from you. I’ve also given WWF an opportunity to post their response to my thoughts here, which I very much hope they will do. And I’ll be posting further thoughts in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.

The Year of Letting Go, Part 1

I was standing by the door, getting ready for a long day of meetings in Toronto, when my host, Tanya, replied “I can hardly remember my second son’s birth.” That stopped me cold. I had asked her if she was troubled at how our memory fades as our children grow older, and the lightening fast pace that often overtakes us as parents.

“I remember my first child,” she said, cradling Ethan – her second, the one whose birth she is forgetting – close to her as she too prepared for a busy day. “I remember the stitches.” Apparently there were many.

“Does it trouble you,” I asked, “to have that memory fade?”

“No,” she said, smiling widely, burying her face into her son’s neck as he squirmed, “because I am living every one of these moments to its fullest.”

Even still, it troubles me. Maybe it’s because I’m not living every moment to its fullest, so caught up I become in the struggle, to be a good parent, to be productive, to provide, to, as Leo Rosten once said, “have it make some difference that I lived at all.”

I think what troubles me the most is how quickly memory fades. In time the ripples that extend from the centre of the pond where the stone was thrown disappear entirely, and all recollection of the stone itself is gone.

Creating and guiding
Having without owning
Letting go of expectations
Leading without controlling
This is the way of the Tao

Tao te Ching, Lao Tzu, verse 10

When Rio was born this is the quote we inscribed on his birth notice. He has from the start been our little Taoist master. (No more so than now, after he found my hair clippers and proceeded to shave his head…all he needs are some robes.)

Sometimes at night I’ll turn on the light in the hall outside the room where my family sleeps all side-by-side on a ten foot wide bed. The light slants in and the faces of my two boys – pale in the darkness – can be seen sleeping peacefully. I love that image, those boys limp in slumber, their arms splayed, Silas sucking in his dreams, Rio deep in sleep. I’ll stand in the door, or sit at the foot of the bed, and watch as they almost perceivably grow older, and out of our lives a day at a time.

And I tell myself that I have to let go.

Let go of everything.

In September I stood on the beach at Hollyhock, on Cortez Island, BC, and said to anything that cared to listen – the gulls wheeling overhead, the mud sharks in Desolation Sound – that I would now have to learn to let go of things. Of everything.

Attachment is part of why we suffer so badly in this world. We cling to ideas, people, places, plans, to the image that we have of ourselves, to a story that we tell others and ourselves about our lives. Most often these things have nothing to do with our reality what-so-ever.

My children are teaching me to let go. Sometimes – as when I watch them through the darkness and see them change just a tiny bit each day – the letting go is gentle. Other times – as when Rio, 4, pushes me away when I try to give him a kiss – the letting go is so much more abrupt.

We can let go, or we can have wrestled from our grasp. It’s our choice. But one way or another all of our illusions – that our children were ever really ours; that our lives could be anything but meaningful – will be shattered. Better to let go first, and save our fingers to brush delicately against all that we hold dear.

The Tao of Toronto

One of the most difficult things about being a consultant is the never ending search for the next job. Even now, when I’m up to my eye-balls in work, I’m always on the look out for the next interesting contract.

So now I’m here in Toronto, serving one client, and searching for the next.

The work that brings me to the city is fascinating. I’m serving a small child and youth advocacy organization called Voices for Children. We’re working together to develop a comprehensive communication’s strategy that will accurately translate their mission – to turn knowledge into action for the well being of Ontario’s young citizens – into a set of tangible, measurable, and most importantly, effective communications goals, objectives, key messages and delivery strategies. I like the organization a lot, and I like the fact that my work is helping to make the lives of children – of which I have two – better.

And while I’m in the city I’m schlepping my wares, not unlike a dude in a baggy coat that, as you pass his haunt at the mouth of a shadowy ally holds it open and asks “wanna buy a strategic plan?”

Maybe it’s the weather – grey (when is it not in Toronto?) and a little brisk (I’ve become such a cream-puff since moving to Victoria) - but I’m not quite as aggressive about my hustling as I have been in the past. I’m down to just three or four meetings a day, instead of six or seven. I’ve accepted that I just won’t be able to see everybody that I want. I can even accept that in some cases, I really don’t have to foist myself and ideas on others – it’s ok to just relax a little. Lao Tzu says:


Know when you have enough to accomplish your goals
and you will succeed
Know when to stop
and you will always move forward
Seek nothing
and you will find everything you need

(Tao, 44)

So maybe it’s ok to hang out in Tinto, on Roncesvalles, and write a blog and do some work on another client’s Strategic Plan.

While writing Carry Tiger to Mountain, this was one of the most difficult things for me to accept. I wrote a whole chapter on this idea, focusing on fundraising, organizational development, scarcity and abundance. I’ve not yet come to grips with an abundance mentality, but I’m trying. I’ve got a lot to let go of before I can say I’m seeking nothing, and finding everything.

Welcome friends.

In a few months Carry Tiger to Mountain – The Tao of Activism and Leadership will be released on the unsuspecting public. I’m getting a little nervous about it. The book has been just a concept for so long that now that it’s nearly complete, I’m having a few doubts. There are a lot of deeply personal experiences laid bare in Carry Tiger to Mountain. There are also a lot of ideas in this book that may, or may not, go over like a tonne of bricks. In thinking about the books launch, I’m trying to let go of any expectations – for better or for worse – and just accept that much of my work is now done. The book is one or two edits away from being printed, and my substantial writing is now complete.

It’s been an intense journey. In January of 2005 I sent out proposals for three separate book ideas to about fifteen publishers. Carry Tiger to Mountain was one of them, and was sent to five different publishing houses.

I’m no stranger to book proposals. My first book proposal was made in 1995 after I wrote my first, and likely last, article for the Globe and Mail (I screwed up pretty badly on the research for the story). It was a story about wolves in southern Alberta, and I thought a book on the subject would be a good idea. Nobody else did.

Since that time I’ve been sending out flurries of book proposals on no less than fifteen different book ideas. I’ve come close (I think) twice to getting a yes – once from Stoddart publishing for a collection of short stories. That proposal died when the editor I was dealing with moved to a different publishing house. No forwarding address was given. The second time was with Fulcrum when I thought I was getting close to them accepting a proposal to photograph and pen a book on the Green River in Canyon lands National Park, Utah. Likewise, that one never came to fruition. Aside from that, ten years have passed and I’ve gotten pretty good at accepting rejection with grace. As William Faulkner once said, I could paper my walls with rejection letters.

And then came the spring of 2005. That’s when Arsenal Pulp Press responded to my query on Carry Tiger to Mountain and said that they would like to chat about the book. Fate would have it that I was to be in Vancouver two weeks hence as my family and I made our long anticipated move from Alberta’s Rocky Mountains to Victoria, BC. A meeting was set, and when it was done, I had a contract in my grubby little hands.

The production end of writing a book takes some time, so the first draft of the book had to be complete by the end of October, 2005. I was wrapping up my work with Wildcanada.net when I signed the contract in May, settling into Victoria, and volunteering for NDP candidates David Cubberley and Gregor Robertson during the run up to the May 17 election, so I really didn’t start writing until June. In July I started my new business, and had two big contracts to work on immediately. I penned 75,000 words in three months, rising between 5 and 6am to get a jump on our early-bird son Rio, and the ever-jangling phone. When Silas (see photo of us collaborating on some sleep) was born in July I was half way through the book.

In late August I was able to print a first draft, and for nearly two weeks I went to Cadboro Bay every afternoon and sat on the beach for a few hours to edit (life is hard). Then I worked to incorporate the edits and printed again, this time handing a copy of the manuscript to my partner (herself an amazing writer) Kathleen, while I kept a copy to edit again. By early October I was able to take both of those drafts and work through the thousands upon thousands of changes. This was the hardest part of writing the book. Kat is very, very thorough. On some pages I could hardly see the words for all the red....

But in the last week of October I was able to plunk a copy of the manuscript down on Brian Lam’s desk at Arsenal. It was an extraordinary feeling. After more than eleven years of effort, and much longer of dreaming, I had finished by first book.

There have been more edits since. Over Christmas I expanded on some of the stories in the book, and did some additional copy editing. But now it is largely done. The design is being completed. A final once over for copy editing will be done. And then printed. And then…. Who knows what happens next?

There has never been a moment throughout this process where I have been confident that this material would be well received. I’ve sought to be humble in my approach to writing this book, as Loa Tzu would insist. I’m frankly just a little concerned that the book will raise more ire than hope; will result in a deafening silence not a roar of approval. But I think that I’ve managed to let go of my expectations. If nothing else, Carry Tiger to Mountain will be a 300 page post-it note to myself about how to live life well, and to remember what I need to do in my own world to be an effective activist and leader. And if like Henry David Thoreau I end up with a library of 2,500 volumes, all but one hundred of them mine, I’ll know I am in good company.