History Lesson About Pacific Spirit Park

Walking in Pacific Spirit Park

Several times a week I walk in Pacific Spirit Park, which covers 860 hectares, with 55km of trails, but didn't know much about the history of it until last week. 

Ryan Regier of the Pacific Spirit Park Society gave a talk recently to some neighbourhood residents and I sat in on most of the presentation.

Douglas Fir trees are second growth

He first showed a news video of the park's official opening on April 23, 1989, with then Premier Bill Vander Zalm and his wife Lillian booed by the Musqueam people, who inhabited this land long before Europeans settled in British Columbia, but had no say about the park, let alone its name.

It didn't seem like Vander Zalm thought to consult the Musqueam, or assumed they would use the land to build casinos, and thought he would pre-empt them by declaring the area a provincial park.

As Regier tells it, trees there used to be some of the tallest in the world before settlers came; it's because the Musqueam would only harvest the bark, and then the trees would grow back the bark and become bigger.

However, after the Europeans arrived in the 1850s, they saw the forest and by the 1890s chopped down all the Douglas Fir trees in what is now the park and used the wood to build most of the houses in Vancouver. Those trees were known as the old growth forest, and the ones standing today are called second growth, which are quite tall, but very skinny.

The park covers 860 hectares

An interesting fact is the Musqueam were living in the area for at least 5,000 years, if not up to 8,000 years ago. Camosun Bog gives us a good idea of what happened to the forest because the trees develop pollen, which falls into the bog and kind of like glacier ice, you can analyse what trees existed in the forest over time. How cool is that?

There are still some old growth trees left, but they are standing on the cliff above Wreck Beach, not the best place for them to flourish.

Regier says when the loggers chopped down trees, they would pour kerosene over the blade as a lubricant... not surprisingly it caused many fires in the forest! There was a large forest fire in 1919 that burned one-quarter of the park, and thankfully because of Camosun Bog, it stopped the fire from spreading to the residential area nearby.

The bog used to be quite large, but then when the University of British Columbia was building Sedgewick Library (now Koerner Library), the dirt that was dug up for the below ground library was dumped in Camosun Bog!

There is a group of volunteers called "crazy boggers" who are trying to restore the bog every Saturday  morning for two hours. 

Mostly Douglas Fir in the forest

It's great to see so many people love the park like me (perhaps much more!) and that we have a common goal of preserving it as naturally as possible.

Review: Atomic Habits Can Lead to Real Change

This book has clear, incremental ways to change your habits

If you've got some goals and wondering how to achieve them, James Clear has the answer for you -- Atomic Habits, incremental changes to your daily habits that must might help you succeed.

Clear grabs your attention right away by describing a horrific freak accident in high school that almost left him for dead. He had had dreams of becoming a baseball player, but this accident was a massive setback not only physically but academically too.

However, with good habits, from cleaning his room everyday to studying not only got him back on track to be named a top athlete in college, but also win academic honours too.

Clear gives examples of changing his life

He's living proof that small habits can lead to big changes, hence he calls them "atomic habits".

Clear tells another great story about the British cycling team and how they were not very good. But a new coach tried to make incremental improvements of 1 percent here and there, from the bikes to the uniforms to how they were training and strategy that led to British cyclists winning the Tour de France.

Basically Clear explains we have good habits and bad habits, so try to change your bad habits into good ones.

That means trying to make good habits easier to do, and bad ones harder. He gives the example of watching television. If you want to watch less, you can only turn it on if you can name the show you want to watch. Or unplug it so you have to plug it in. Or lock it in a cabinet, or place out of sight so you have to move it to be able to watch it. 

Another interesting point he makes is we make goals such as wanting to lose weight. How do you do that? Clear says we should try to be the person we want to be. If we want to lose weight we should start to think about how a healthy person thinks. Does a healthy person eat chocolate? Maybe you should put in extra steps instead, or eat an apple.

To build more good habits, stack them with ones you already have. For example, once you wake up in the morning, make your bed and then take a shower. Other possible good habits to add on are, if you see a set of stairs, climb them instead of taking the elevator, or if you want to buy something over $100, wait 24 hours before buying it.

In order to increase the chances of changing or improving your habits is to change your environment so that you will have a higher chance of doing them. He says if you want to draw more, put pencils, pens and paper on your desk, or to exercise more, have your workout clothes set out to change into, and to eat healthier, chop up vegetables and fruits and put them in containers so you won't turn to junk food.

Starting something may seem daunting to people, and Clear suggests the two-minute rule or at least opening a book and reading a page or working out for five minutes; in this way you have shown up which is a big part of starting good habits.

He also writes about a young man who became very successful in sales very quickly. How did he do that? He had two jars on his desk, one filled with 120 paper clips. Each time he finished a sales call, he would put one paper clip in the empty jar and so on until all 120 paper clips were in the second jar. It was a physical reminder of how much he had accomplished in one day. That's why things like journals can help people keep track of what they have eaten or done.

Atomic Habits is very easy to read with clear relatable examples that make you think there are some small ways you can improve yourself in all aspects of your life.

I borrowed the book from the library, but had to wait a while as there were over 90 people ahead of me wanting to read Atomic Habits too!

Hong Kong Book Fair's Red Lines

Customers eager to snap up books at the Book Fair

It was announced that the annual Hong Kong Book Fair will be held for a week starting on July 19 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai, and that exhibitors could show books as long as they weren't banned.

The Hong Kong Trade and Development Council would not pre-screen books, "as long as the titles didn't breach the law, including the national security law.

Pick your books carefully, no breaking the law

Sophia Chong, deputy executive director at HKTDC said there was no list of "banned titles", and that all exhibitors were familiar with the "house rules".

So she is basically saying there are no banned books, but if you sell anything the government deems illegal then you'll be arrested. The authorities don't have a list of the books, but surely you know what they are...

It's like the chicken and the egg -- which came first?

But clues can be found of what may probably not be displayed. In May some 200 books were taken off the shelves of Hong Kong libraries, many of them written by pro-democracy activists.

Most people would rather err on the side of caution than walk a fine line.

This is what Hong Kong has become, a place full of invisible red lines that are a minefield to navigate. 

How would the government react to these titles?

Books are knowledge, and knowledge is truth, something the government is terrified of Hongkongers of having.

HK Libraries Censor June 4 Books

Libraries have removed books related to Tiananmen Square

This year marks the 34th anniversary of the June 4th massacre, and should we be surprised that in Hong Kong, people cannot hold a candlelight vigil for the fourth consecutive year, and now they can't read about it in libraries anymore.

Practically any book or documentary related to the Tiananmen Square crackdown have been pulled from the shelves due to national security concerns.

But critics worry this is yet another sign of the city becoming closer aligned with the mainland, and that the free-flow of information for which Hong Kong was known for is fast disappearing.

Chu says the move impacts government credibility

Simon Chu Fook-keung was the former acting director of the city government's archives from 1999 to 2003. He said the censorship of books was not uncommon in many places, but to remove them from the shelves without explanation could have consequences for government credibility.

"If a government cannot even convince its people why certain books -- including those apparently non-political -- are banned, it might have difficulties in winning trust on other issues," he warned.

However, Secretary for Security Chris Tang Ping-keung said public libraries had well-established policies when it came to book selection. 

"I'm also sure that safeguarding national security is high on the agenda of each and every individual department and bureau," he said.

Government auditors have asked public libraries to step up efforts to root out works "manifestly contrary" to national security.

Previously Chinese media reported 149 works that dealt with the events of June 4, 1989 were available in libraries, now almost all of them are gone. 

Ma's novel is still available in the library

One of the few relevant books still on the shelves include Beijing Coma by Chinese-born, British writer Ma Jian. The English-language novel published in 2008 is censored in the mainland, but still available in five city libraries. Perhaps because it's fiction?

A 30-year-old who was interviewed by a reporter at the library and asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said they feared children in the future would question if the crackdown had actually happened if they could not find out about it in libraries.

Ma Ngok, a political scientist at Chinese University who specialises in local elections, said the continued removal of books would affect the city's reputation.

"Hong Kong has been known for its free access to information in the past decades. Are the ongoing moves by authorities contradicting their own goal of 'telling good Hong Kong stories'?" he said.

Sadly the crackdown on what can and can't be read in the city continues -- no one know when or if it will end. Eventually the libraries are going to be empty...