Winter is setting in, there’s a nip in the air, and the hope that reading week offered is now gone. Did you really get as much as you were hoping for done? If you’re going to be continuing the late-night streak, you’re going to need a hearty meal to keep you trudging along. And stew is where it’s at. Even if you bypass the meat and just make a veggie stew, there’s still enough in it to keep you running through a few more weeks of this semester.
And, yet again, I’m telling you that the Instant Pot is a student’s new best friend. Maybe use this recipe to convince your parents it’s a ...
How did the recent tragic incident on campus impact the community, and how can we take care of ourselves in this challenging time?
Answer:
The loss of a life impacts us all in some way, and for many of us the impact is significant. What happened is a tragic loss and our hearts go out to all those affected.
A range of possible responses arises in the wake of a tragic event, as we have seen in our own community. We want to remind you that you are not alone and supports are available on and off campus.
After a stressful event we may experience various reactions in the short-term ...
Rewind to eight years ago. I’ve just returned from my first time travelling overseas. I’m buying new pants and my eyes are bloodshot from the continual hangover. Needless to say, I’m not doing so hot.
I had known from a young age that I would travel extensively. Number one on the list was India. This was decided many years before I knew anything about Indian culture, or even where to find it on a map. As it turns out, India would ignite the spark in me which yearned for self-discovery. India challenged me, encouraged me, and is where I trained to become a yoga teacher specializing in ...
You may have heard of Ryan Zuvich. He runs the show at La Stella Trattoria, an Italian restaurant located in the heart of the Old City Quarter, since 2014. The cozy eatery serves a variety of Italian cuisine, with an emphasis on ingredient-driven, technique focused, classic cuisine with a modern approach.
Zuvich chatted with The Nav about some of his peeves with the restaurant industry, things to avoid when eating out, and his method for cooking the perfect steak.
What’s the one ingredient you can’t live without?
For me, it’s about what’s fresh, so it changes all the time. That ...
*Spoiler Alert*
For those who grew up in the 90’s, Mid90s is Jonah Hill’s gift to you, tied tightly with a sepia bow of nostalgia. Cruising streets of Los Angeles, the film begs you to fall among a brotherhood of young skateboarders, living with four wheels under their feet and not a care in the world.
In the film, Stevie (Sunny Suljic) seeks to escape his home life, troubled by abusive older brother, Ian (Lucas Hedges) and their single mother Dabney (Katherine Waterston). Setting out on his bike, he rides without a destination, when he discovers a group of skaters hanging around ...
I write both fiction and nonfiction. One of my current projects is a memoir about my tour in Afghanistan and return to Canada with cancer. I made it home okay, but the side effects of chemo while dealing with trauma almost killed me. The inspiration isn’t there with this project like it is with my other writing, and the material is difficult, but it’s something I feel I have to write.
I’ve learned a lot about this memoir by submitting my most vulnerable material to classes for workshopping. I’ve shared what motivated me to serve overseas, women accused of adultery being stoned to ...
The sun rises late in the morning and sets early in the evening,
a sign that autumn is departing, with its bright colours and crisp leaves,
as winter arrives with cold mornings and dark nights.
I shiver as I walk to the library, longing for comfort.
Warm air encompasses me as I step inside,
my glasses fog and my cheeks redden.
The glow of the lights casts an aura,
highlighting the shelter, the peace.
The smell of freshly brewed coffee fills my nostrils,
as Starbucks baristas prepare cup after cup of warmth and joy.
I sit in the café, observing the outside world,
the ...
Have you seen the dark
at Wounded Knee?
Have you seen queens and kings who
sing and act in glorious beauty?
I have.
I have seen queens and they are
beautiful.
They transcend with raven hair and
coffee toes.
They rise from caramel and milk chocolate skin and
toffee and cedar and ooligan grease.
Yes, I have seen queens.
Back in September, I joined a VIU dialogue group to discuss Indigenous perspectives in post-secondary education. The group is composed of 10 Indigenous students, five domestic non-Indigenous students, five international students, and various VIU faculty members and elders. The focus of the group is exploring what issues exist for Indigenous learners and what we as a community can do to deal with those issues.
As a non-Indigenous Canadian from Regina, Saskatchewan, I grew up with a knowledge of Indigenous people that was permeated by the false superiority of eurocentric ideas and ...
Do you suppose you could love a rodent? I assure you, no you could not. We’re speaking here of mice, rats, gophers, beavers. You know, rodents. Rodentia are not well regarded. Never have been, except for profit. Prairie boys once learned hunting skills by collecting ground squirrel tails for money. Don’t forget, either, this whole damned country was built on fur. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been made off the backs of beaver and muskrat.
So, could you love a lagomorph? Yitch—who could, right? Sounds awful. Only, somebody started calling the damned things bunnies. There isn’t ...
In 2012, I became an intravenous substance user.
Previously, I swallowed and snorted substances to maintain my dependence. Using needles, in my mind, was a level beyond the other methods of administration—not only because of the increased chance of overdose and disease, but because of the stigmas. For many who consider the use of substances a moral failure, injecting is the ultimate shortcoming. Only a culmination of crime, laziness, and self-indulgence could lead someone to abuse themselves in that way, the stigma goes.
Even among substance users, the stigma exists. Before I used ...
More than five million people around the world live with Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis, two forms of the debilitating Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Canada has among the highest percentage of population affected by these diseases. In Canada, November is Crohn’s and Colitis Awareness Month. A month dedicated to raising awareness and understanding of these diseases, and what it’s like for the people who live with them. The following is my account of life with ulcerative colitis.
Many people are faced with the daily challenges of having to live with a chronic, lifelong illness. I ...
Here’s something you probably didn’t know: November 3 was International Sandwich Day.
Dr. Imogene Lim is an anthropology professor at VIU and an expert on sandwiches. One sandwich in particular, but we’ll get to that in a minute.
When non-anthropologists think about anthropology, I think they think about bones and bowls, maybe a copper bracelet or two; they definitely don’t think about food. Or at least, I don’t. But that’s what Dr. Lim thinks about, in addition to “foraging societies, rock art, ethnicity, [and] the Chinese diaspora in North America (archaeology & ...
For many of our Indigenous students, Canada’s education system has been a traumatic experience. Over the decades, we have experienced lower levels of education compared to the general population. It is well known that Indigenous peoples of Canada, including First Nations, Métis, and Inuit, have faced many mental health challenges. For the Indigenous population, suicide rates are shockingly high compared to the average Canadian. The root of these mental health problems is widely believed to be from the impacts of colonization, and historical determinants, such as the history of Indian ...
With $34k of funding received from the Community Radio Fund of Canada (CRFC) via its Radiometres program, CHLY 101.7FM aims to improve local programming and volunteer participation through a series of media skills-training workshops. These workshops, for both novice and experienced volunteers, will run during the spring semester of 2019 and will be aimed at VIU students interested in media, broadcasting, and podcasting, as well as existing volunteers from the community. This is the third time the station has received money from the CRFC Radiometres program, bringing the total awarded to ...
Math and science or arts and humanities? Right wing or left wing? These distinctions often miss an essential element of what it means to be human: the middle ground.
Identities are intersectional. I am a caucasian male. I am also a millennial. That differentiates me from a caucasian male from the baby boomer generation. What does a millennial caucasian male act like? What are their beliefs? Do you have an idea? What forms that perception in your mind? Do your ideas of what a millennial caucasian male is match with who I am as an individual? Probably not, because there is far more to ...
We live in a world of political polarization: our social media is algorithmically-tuned to feed us opinions we agree with, news organizations have growing partisan slants, and the available middle ground between political parties is shrinking.
Our identities are often clear indicators of what side of the political spectrum we fall on. I am a university student who lives in urban British Columbia. My parents are small business owners who live in rural Saskatchewan. Guess who’s on the left and who’s on the right?
In some ways, our opposing views are reflective of modern political ...
In 2017, VIU Theatre professor Eliza Gardiner spent a lot of time in prison. For nine months she directed a cast of inmates in a play at William Head Institution, a minimum-security federal facility located in Metchosin, just outside Victoria. Professor Gardiner will share her experiences working with inmates in a presentation on November 23 from 10 to 11:30 a.m. in the Malaspina Theatre. The talk, which is part of the Arts & Humanities Colloquium lecture series, is entitled "Prison Theatre: Rebelling Against the Man, Playing Women, and Restoring Justice in Antigone".
Written by ...
Internationally acclaimed Canadian poet Lorna Crozier will participate in two free events this month as Vancouver Island University’s Gustafson Distinguished Poet for 2018. The Victoria-based poet has published 18 collections of poems, earned five honorary doctorates, and is the recipient of a Governor-General’s Award for Poetry, making her a major literary voice in Canada.
The first of these two events will be a poetry reading at White Sails Brewing on Wednesday, November 7 from 7:30 to 8:30 pm. Creative writing student Aislinn Cottell will also be sharing the stage with Crozier, ...
“You can’t get addicted to cannabis.”
It’s a common belief that, at least anecdotally, I’ve long known isn’t true. I’ve watched a friend, fresh out of weed and desperate to get high, comb his carpet with a flashlight in hopes of finding tiny bits of bud. I’ve watched another friend, penniless from his daily toking habit, pawn his belongings so he could buy a few grams in order to sleep.
As someone in recovery from addiction to bath salts, hydromorphone, and other “hard drugs,” I see similarities between my behavior while addicted and the behavior of my aforementioned friends. I ...
I jingled the keys to my Grandmother’s house as we walked up the driveway. The heritage house in Esquimalt sat neglected. There were more weeds than gravel. Some kids had impaled a pumpkin lantern on the wrought iron fence; rusted spikes pierced through the orange flesh. Once yellow and white, it was in bad need of repainting. In the moonlight, it looked blue and green, like mould.
“These, ladies and gentlemen, are the keys to party central,” I said.
“Are you sure it’s okay that we hang out here. Won’t your parents freak?” Jane said. She looked amazing in a red crushed-velvet ...
On July 4, 2018, a 27-year-old man was stabbed at Nanaimo’s Discontent City, leaving him with life-threatening injuries. The attacker, an 18-year-old man wielding a knife, was taken into custody shortly after police were contacted at around 7:30 pm that evening. He was charged with one account of aggravated assault. The incident was the first of two stabbing occurrences over the summer, with multiple additional incidents of general violence having been reported since the makeshift habitation was organized. The severity of other crimes related to the tent city varies from panhandling and ...
On July 24 2018 the killer whale J-35—nicknamed Tahlequah—began a 17-day “tour of grief” for her daughter that worried researchers. The 20-year-old mother of the J pod pushed her calf, who lived for only 30 minutes, for over 1,000 miles off the Pacific Northwest Coast.
J pod is the community of Southern Resident Whales who live in the water off of Victoria. Tahlequah wasn’t the only member of the pod to suffer. Only a few weeks later, Scarlet (J-50) was presumed dead. Scarlet’s birth had once brought reason for researchers of The Pacific Whale Watch Association (PWWA) to celebrate: ...
October 17, 2018 will mark the end of cannabis prohibition in Canada. We gathered folks from the Medical Cannabis Research Institute (MCRI), a nurse practitioner (NP), and a youth councillor (YC) and asked them some questions about cannabis.
Medical cannabis will continued to be regulated by Health Canada and prescribed by medical professionals while recreational cannabis will be available to people over 19, at licensed dispensaries and BC Liquor and Cannabis Distribution Branch dispensaries. Edibles are being removed from dispensaries until they find a child-proof way to regulate ...
