TRAILBLAZERS
Vancouver filmmakers Danny Berish and Ryan Mah chronicled Canada’s oldest nudist club in the buff; plus, innovators in medicine and the arts
Welcome to the third annual Georgia Straight “trailblazers” issue, in which we highlight B.C. residents who are doing things that nobody has ever done before. When we began this project, we never imagined that it would result in two naked men appearing on the cover of the paper.
DANNY BERISH AND RYAN MAH
Documentary makers in the buff Filmmaker Danny Berish compares Canada’s oldest nudist club to a rustic Scandinavian spa. Situated at the base of Mount Fromme in North Vancouver, the Van Tan Club was created by free thinkers in the midst of an idyllic forest way back in 1939.
According to Berish, the naturist movement began in Germany more than a century ago, preceding the rise of the beatniks, hippies, and hipsters.
“They were the original radical people,” Berish told the Straight by phone. “That was their generation’s way of rebelling against their parents.”
How does he know this? His grandmother, Zella Berish, told him before she died that she had spent time as a young woman in a nudist camp in Quebec in the late 1940s. In fact, that’s where she met her husband and Berish’s grandfather, Issie, after ignoring her parents’ advice not to go there.
“She was originally engaged before she met my grandfather,” Berish said. “So she went up to the nudist camp and then she met my grandfather and dumped the other guy.”
He revealed this shortly after he and cinematographer and producer Ryan Mah posed nude for a Georgia Straight photo shoot. It was to promote their new short documentary, “Nude to Me”, which tells the story of the Van Tan Club through interviews with some of the members, none of whom are wearing any clothes. Genitals are discreetly blurred out, ensuring the film of this “secret garden” can be shown on CBC Gem in the future.
“Nude to Me” will have its world premiere at the Hot Docs festival in Toronto, which begins on Thursday (April 29). It’s also being screened at the DOXA Documentary Film Festival in Vancouver, which runs from May 6 to 16.
Berish, the director, and Mah both removed their clothes during the filming, no doubt marking a first in the history of B.C. documentary filmmaking. Berish said that by doing this, he truly learned that nudity is “normal”. Secondly, he discovered that everyone he talked to about the film has an opinion about nudity.
“I’m very comfortable with my producing partners now,” Berish said. “I just learned that every body shape is different and, you know, to really feel good about that.”
He also quipped that Mah had to do a multitude of tasks in addition to cinematography, including working as the sound guy. That’s because it was hard to find anyone else willing to work in the nude. The story line interweaves the history of the Van Tan Club with Berish’s family story and how he feels about naturism after having experienced it.
“I’ve travelled with Ryan for almost seven years now,” Berish said. “We’ve gone all over the world. I’ve never seen him naked. Not once… It was an ultimate team-bonding experience.”
It took time for Berish to develop the courage to peel off his clothes at the Van Tan Club. But within five minutes of doing this, he said, it felt “completely normalized”. And he’s now far more comfortable in his own skin.
The hardest part was talking about it on-camera.
“I have a newfound respect for everyone who has ever been interviewed,” Berish said. “This is like instant karma for any director.”
Their coproducer, Erin Mussolum, didn’t feel comfortable stripping down in front of the crew, which meant she was sometimes the only person wearing clothes during the filming.
Mussolum told the Straight by phone that she was deeply inspired by the members of the club, who are very in tune with their natural surroundings. And she wonders if one day, she’ll ever be able to muster up the courage to do this.
“It stays with you,” Mussolum said. “I saw a bunch of different naked people—all different shapes and sizes and bulges all over the place. Why can’t I do that? What is holding me back?”
RAE SPOON
Nonbinary author and musician
Just over a year ago, writer and singer-songwriter Rae Spoon felt liberated. The nonbinary, Calgary-born author (who prefers the pronoun they) and former long-time Vancouver resident felt that they had beaten cervical cancer after undergoing radiation and chemotherapy treatments in Victoria.
So Spoon drove from the B.C. capital to Toronto, planning on launching a fresh start back east, and even found an apartment. That’s when the musician and writer learned that the final medical scan in Victoria had revealed that more surgery was necessary.
“Because I had so much radiation, the operations that I’ve been having have had complication after complication,” Spoon disclosed in a phone interview with the Straight from Victoria General Hospital. “They’re just working on how to keep certain body systems working.”
On the upside, Spoon reported receiving “the best medical treatment you can
get in Canada”. Plus, the cancer is gone. The downside? Spoon may remain in hospital for weeks.
In the meantime, Spoon was healthy enough to discuss their fourth book, the young-adult novel Green Glass Ghosts, which includes illustrations by Gem Hall.
The narrator is a queer, guitar-wielding musician who arrives in Vancouver in 2000 at the age of 19. Written in Spoon’s usual highly accessible style, the story of youthful exuberance, excessive drinking, and emotional angst plays out across Vancouver—on the bus system, at the beaches, and in various neighbourhoods.
“I was unhoused for periods, and so was Gem, but the book is more about youth that are kind of ‘struggling working poor’,” Spoon said.
The author added that it’s a common misconception to think that being poor is someone’s own fault. “I think that’s a really ignorant way to look at youth.”
It raises an obvious question: how much of Green Glass Ghosts is made up and how much is borrowed from Spoon’s own life?
“It’s a bit like my first book [First Spring Grass Fire], which is very close to autobiographical,” Spoon conceded. “But I wanted to write it as fiction. I think remembering things, and the freedom to change things, is really important to me. I don’t like to write memoirs so much. I like to have that space. But it’s definitely very close to my own experiences.”
It’s astonishing to consider how far the trailblazing Spoon has come from being a poor couch-surfing, sometimes homeless trans youth living on the East Side. In addition to four books, including the Lambda Award finalist collection of short stories that kicked off their career, Spoon has created a dozen albums. In addition, they achieved their dream of touring extensively.
“I knew what I wanted, but I didn’t know how to be an adult,” Spoon quipped of their early years. “I didn’t know how to live and feel okay. It didn’t make sense to take care of my body. I had goals. I was very driven, artistically.”
One of Spoon’s writing mentors was 2020 Freedom to Read Award–winning novelist and filmmaker Ivan Coyote; an early musical mentor was East Van klezmer star Geoff Berner, who taught Spoon about comedic timing and the importance of meeting people where they’re at.
“I remember the two of us showing up at a really far-up northern Norwegian town,” Spoon recalled with a laugh. “People didn’t know what to make of us, the two of us together. It’s an interesting combination: this person’s transgender; this person’s Jewish. And the way we express it is so outward.”
PAOLA MURILLO
Latincouver founder and executive director When Paola Murillo graduated with a master’s of business administration from France, she thought that she would resume living in the United States for years to come. After all, Kentucky had been her home after she left her native Colombia to get away from the violence of the drug trade in the 1990s and a decades-long conflict between guerrillas and the government.
But trouble came to the U.S. homeland in the 9/11 attacks. It seemed to Murillo that America was angry with the world, so she looked to Canada for salvation. She moved to Montreal in 2005, planning to sell underwear in one of its markets. At that time, she had no idea destiny would lead her to Vancouver, where she would become a pivotal figure in the local Latin American community.
“It was way too cold for me in Montreal,” Murillo told the Straight by phone. “I didn’t have enough coats.”
Her brother invited her to visit for Christmas in Vancouver. She loved hearing all the different languages in the city streets, so she decided to make it her home.
While working at a recruitment agency, Murillo came face to face with the frustration of many immigrants from Latin America.
“I was realizing all these people were not reaching their potential,” she said. “It’s not bad to drive a taxi; it’s not bad to clean houses. But when you live with a dream— thinking you’re going to be that—you want to be that.”
She was deeply bothered when people would feel like giving up and going back to their country of origin because they felt something was wrong with them. When she was hired by the Ministry of Canadian Heritage in advance of the 2010 Olympics, she volunteered to find Latin Americans in Metro Vancouver who would be willing to sing the Canadian national anthem in Spanish and Portuguese.
It’s a bit like my first book, which is very close to autobiographical.
– Rae Spoon
“They said there are no Latinos here,” Murillo recalled.
That was the spark that led her to create a Latin American hub called Latincouver in 2008 to help people from the Rio Grande in Mexico to the southern tip of Tierra del Fuego in Chile to Argentine to come together to network, socialize, and build a cohesive community.
The organization’s signature event became the annual Carnaval del Sol festival, which began in Strathcona Park, moved to Granville Street, and later moved to Concord Pacific Place until the pandemic put it in a virtual space in 2020. It’s billed as the largest Latin festival in the Pacific Northwest, attracting many thousands of people in pre-pandemic days with music, food, arts, and culture, and even some fútbol. In regular
years, there are 200 to 300 volunteers.
“We’re not cancelling,” Murillo said. “We’re expanding.”
It’s one of a multitude of events that take place every year in Latin American Week, which includes an annual awards event for distinguished members of the community. For Murillo, it’s all about helping immigrants feel a sense of belonging.
“We still need to create a connection,” she said. “We need to let people know they’re not alone when they start in a new place. And they can understand more of Latin America. I think we have been able to do that.”
DR. ARUN GARG
Physician and founder of the Canada India Network Society
Dr. Arun Garg concedes that it was “totally crazy” for him to move to Canada in 1965 as a 19-year-old from Agra, India.
“Nobody was going to Canada in those days,” Garg told the Straight by phone. “Canada was some hinterland, some frozen land.”
He moved to this country to attend university in Regina, where he had to travel across the city just to get the yogurt that he loved so much with his Indian food. But Garg was also searching for something missing in his homeland, which is what led him there. After he met his future wife, Lori, it dawned upon him that she was also searching for something.
She is a non-Indian with a fascination for yoga and diet; he graduated with a PhD before going on to medical school, immersing himself in allopathic medicine.
“We have seen what the best of East and West can do when…the right minds come together,” he said.
Garg’s career took off. He became a pathologist and a key player at B.C. Biomedical Laboratories and served as president of the B.C. Medical Association (now Doctors of B.C.). But it wasn’t until he founded the Canada India Network Society in 2010 that he really started focusing on how to create more robust connections between medicine in Canada and his country of origin.
“I really got engaged with India and started to read these ancient books,” Garg said. “I had never read them before. Then it started to click.”
He realized that western medicine was largely focused on what he calls “external interventions”. Those are things that somebody, often a medical practitioner, does to you. It could involve administering a vaccination or prescribing pills. He believes that this is where western medicine has excelled.
“You’re a passive player in that,” Garg said. “It’s important. You know you need it.”
He contrasted that with “internal interventions”, in which the patient needs to develop a mindset that is in harmony with external interventions. In the case of Type 2 diabetes, for example, the patient’s ability to control diet and engage in exercise can have a huge impact on the health outcome. (This isn’t the case with Type 1 diabetes, which is an autoimmune condition.)
Garg believes there are other degenerative chronic diseases in which the same could be said, including heart disease.
Other conditions—such as depression, anxiety, arthritis, and hypertension—are often interrelated. Garg argued that negative ideas and positive ideas, along with diet, can play a critical role.
And that’s where Garg believes that scriptures can offer guidance.
“First, let me say when I talk about scriptures, I am not talking about one scripture over another,” the doctor emphasized. “My belief is all those words of wisdom based on ancient philosophies of any of those scriptures carry that weight.”
The “Bhagavad Gita”, which is part of the epic Mahabharata in Hinduism, includes conversations about health and the role of food. Then there are the “Yoga Sutras of Pantanjali”, a foundational text in yoga philosophy. Garg pointed out that it asks basic questions, such as what is health? And what is disease and why do people develop it?
The answers, he added, mostly consist of internal interventions.
As a result, Garg believes that medical schools should give more thought to how individuals can be empowered through the transfer of knowledge along the lines of what occurs in the ancient Indian scriptures. “That is what is required,” he insisted. “That’s one of the things that I think is very good to have: these kind of conversations during your medical training, to sensitize people to this.”
CHAN HON GOH
Dancer and educator
Even though Chan Hon Goh spent more than 20 years with the National Ballet of Canada, she realizes how ephemeral her art form can be. A pirouette or plié—or a careerending injury—can happen in a flash.
“I’m the first to admit that dance is fleeting as well,” Goh told the Straight by phone. “It’s there for the moment.”
That’s what makes her staying power all the more remarkable. She has followed up her stunning dance career—which involved performing around the world—as a successful businesswoman, operating the Goh Ballet Academy, staging dance events, and writing a book.
In advance of International Dance Day on Thursday (April 29), the director of the Goh Ballet Academy and Youth Company Canada has created a short film, “Together We Dance”, in partnership with the Vancouver International Dance Festival.
The video was supported by Reitmans, which offered a scholarship, and was filmed by videographer Chris Randle.
“The part that I created for Goh Ballet dancers is classical, and then I invited artists from different genres of dance, ranging from Broadway to tap to salsa to contemporary to Irish to flamenco,” Goh said. “So you’re going to see flashes of all these wonderful genres of dance that really ignite our passion, ignite our spirit. It really says it in
the title: ‘Together We Dance’.”
The Beijing-born Goh’s parents were each principal dancers of the National Ballet of China; they moved to Vancouver in the mid-1970s.
Goh established her bona fides as a trailblazer in 1994 when she became the first principal dancer of Chinese ancestry with the National Ballet of Canada. In that capacity, she thrilled audiences with her emotional depth and stunning talent until her retirement from the stage more than 15 years later.
To her, dance is an irreplaceable part of her life. “It’s something indescribable,” Goh said. “It’s the feeling—and that feeling evolves according to my life experiences, the music, my environment, and the people I’m associating with.”
She also thinks that dance is more essential than ever in the pandemic, when people are feeling isolated. Fortunately, technology has enabled dance artists to reach people in the comfort of their homes through video and online.
“I really took International Dance Day as a vehicle to put a piece together where we can bring some hope, put a smile on people’s faces, and just bring people together in a dance,” Goh said.
DEREK CHAN
Theatre artist
Like many Vancouverites who trace their roots back to Hong Kong, playwright and theatre artist Derek Chan is heartbroken and angry about what’s occurred in the former British colony.
Ever since freedom-loving students launched the prodemocracy Umbrella Movement protests in 2014, he has witnessed how the city of his birth has slid into a deep decline. Chan, like many millions of other current and former Hong Kong residents, has been appalled by the People’s Republic of China clampdown on freedom through its notorious National Security Law. It has resulted in highprofile Hong Kong democracy advocates—such as Martin Lee, Agnes Chow Ting, and Joshua Wong—and media tycoon Jimmy Lai being sent to prison.
“I think a lot of us are still grieving because Hong Kong now is not the Hong Kong that we know, that we remember, and that we love,” Chan told the Straight by phone. “It’s been completely decimated by a totalitarian regime.”
While others have held rallies and signed petitions, Chan chose a different route to express his opposition to what’s going on. Spurred on by a mentor whom he won’t identify, Chan decided to use his expertise and his training as a theatre artist to raise awareness abroad. That led him to create yellow objects, a multimedia exhibition featuring voice recordings and projections, which premieres at the Firehall Arts Centre on May 11 and continues until May 22.
“It came from love and almost guilt for not being back in Hong Kong,” Chan said.
He left Hong Kong at the age of 17 to complete high school in Norway, then arrived in Vancouver in 2005 to study theatre at Simon Fraser University.
Many in the Vancouver arts community are familiar with Chan as the writer and director of the whimsical Chicken Girl, which was nominated for a Jessie Richardson Award for outstanding original script. He is also cofounder of rice & beans theatre, which produced the Dora Award–nominated touring production Sik Zeon Tin Haa/A Taste of Empire.
His latest effort, yellow objects, is unlike anything he’s done before. It was created with the help of a composer who was among several participating artists who refused to disclose their identity for fear of repercussions against their families back in Hong Kong.
“When people enter the Firehall in their small groups— small, small, small distanced groups—they will see an array of mostly found objects that symbolize people who have been disappeared or worse,” Chan explained. “They’ll hear dialogues, memories, and thoughts from different characters coming from speakers that are placed in areas in the space and in the courtyard of the Firehall.”
The title originated from a notorious comment made in 2019 by Hong Kong police superintendent Vasco Gareth Llewellyn Williams. After videotaped images were shown of cops attacking a protester, Williams told reporters that what he saw “appears to be an officer kicking a yellow object on the ground”.
“Not only was he dehumanizing a Hong Kong citizen—a protester, an activist—while protecting his own fellow officers being accountable for violence they are using on protests,” Chan said, “[but] also as a Caucasian person in power in Hong Kong, it’s impossible for him to not be aware of the racist and colonial connotations by calling anybody—anybody who is of East Asian descent—’yellow’ anything.” g