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WRITERS FEST: Doctor and novelist Kevin Patterson says we need $200-a-barrel oil, or maybe a good narwhal hunt.
Kevin Patterson: doctor of fiction.
Kevin Patterson's writing is vivid, emotionally acute and bracingly smart. His first work, the sailing memoir The Water in Between, was a New York Times "notable book," and his short-story collection, Country of Cold, won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. But it's not just his literary craftsmanship that stokes the envy of his fellow writers. More maddening is that he is this good and he has a day job.
Patterson, who lives on Saltspring Island, is a doctor of internal medicine at Nanaimo General Hospital. He put himself through medical school by joining the Canadian Army, and next February he will go to Afghanistan to treat civilians at a hospital in Kandahar.
His latest book, Consumption, was inspired by his experiences as a doctor in the Arctic, where he has spent part of every year since 1994. Consumption began as a non-fiction account of the abrupt transformation of Inuit communities. In a short period of time, the Inuit have changed from suffering the diseases of deprivation -- particularly starvation -- to the diseases of affluence, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. But as Patterson wrote about the medical and psychological impact of acculturation, he kept returning to the underlying issues of loneliness, fear and social dislocation. These, he realized, would be better probed using fictional characters, and so Consumption became his first novel.
The book brought him to Vancouver last week for a Vancouver International Writers Festival preview event at the Norman Rothstein Theatre, where he appeared with Mary Lawson, whose The Other Side of the Bridge won a long-list nomination for the Man Booker Prize. The festival's core events run from October 17 to 22 on Granville Island.
Consumption begins in 1962, when Victoria, an Inuit girl, is diagnosed with tuberculosis and evacuated to the south. When she rejoins her family six years later, she is healthy but culturally estranged. In her new home of Rankin Inlet no one really fits in, however. The community is in the midst of wrenching change as the latest technologies, diamond fever and new patterns of consumption all arrive from the south.
"This novel is not about the problems of the Inuit, it is about our problems examined partly through the lens of the Inuit," Patterson told me when we met for breakfast last week at the Sylvia Hotel. He is a trim man who is in his 40s but looks younger -- except for the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, a consequence of weeks spent squinting into the distance at the helm of his ketch.
Here is what else Patterson had to say...
On the North:
The closest thing I've ever encountered to the tundra is the open ocean 1,000 miles offshore, on a particularly bad day. Part of what stirs me about the Inuit and the north is the sense of wonder I feel that people survived there, in that climate and with no wood.
Think about the bowhead whale hunt, for example. It's just amazing. I mean, you are in a kayak made from sealskin, and you have a piece of driftwood with a sharpened rock tied to it, and you are hunting these 50-ton animals!
But when you pulled the whale ashore your whole band ate well for weeks. You just set up a camp beside the carcass. Each morning you got up and chopped off another square foot of frozen blubber and skin and took it into the igloo. Your biggest job then was to fend off the dogs and polar bears.
On why narwhale blubber is better than Cheese Doodles:
When I first went up north in 1994 there was no diabetes. As late as the 1960s, people were travelling to Cree villages in the northern boreal forests to find out why they are immune to diabetes. Now, in a place like Norway House (a Cree community in northern Manitoba), the prevalence of diabetes in adults is 40 per cent. That's just amazing! Diabetes is at eight to 10 per cent in southern Canada, and it's a disaster down here.
While I'm working up north, most of what I do is see diabetics. I give them their pills, and talk about how much better it is to eat char and seal and narwhale blubber than to eat Cheese Doodles.
In the south when we talk to people about diet we say, "Avoid animal fat." But in 1994, when I went up to the Arctic, there was no coronary artery disease, no diabetes. Because in order to get narwhale blubber, you had to spend days in your boat on the ocean, then shoot one and put a harpoon in it and pull it ashore. Or to get caribou you walked the land for hours and shot one and gutted it, and then walked back with the meat. The whole lifestyle kept people thin and stopped them from having vascular disease.
On why Cheese Doodles would be far less destructive if they weighed 50 tonnes and swam in the Arctic Ocean and we chased them with harpoons:
People can eat almost whatever they want, and their bodies will deal with it. The key is that we keep moving. We were meant to move. When we withdraw into our little caves to watch a glowing screen, we become sick and dying mammals. Because only sick and dying mammals withdraw into their caves.
On the big dieting lie:
The emphasis in the south is on what we eat, and that's goofy. People have no capacity to deny themselves things they want. We're just not wired for it. All diets fail. If you measure them at five years, people who try a diet are at pre-dieting weight or higher.
One thing that works is exercise, because people can become fond of exercise. People cannot become fond of dieting. If you want a food, you will seek it out. Statistically insignificant numbers of people can achieve long-term weight loss through diet change alone.
On the seductive life of the mind:
Obesity and diabetes in the north are partly a result of the life of the mind. That leads to a difficult problem, because much of what we value in our culture is this life of the mind. People who write books or make films or reflect upon the way we live, these are people who embrace the life of the mind, and I'm all about that.
And that's what we've exported to the north. The traditional life in the Arctic is really pretty brutal. Men were valued for distance vision and being a good shot. Nothing else mattered. If you were a tender husband or good storyteller or effective father, it hardly mattered.
Making the life of mind available to people through the export of western culture, obviously it has tremendous appeal for them. But it has also led to acculturation at an incredible pace, which has been a disaster.
On globesity and the murderous influence of Van Halen:
The prevalence of obesity was stable between World War Two and 1980, despite the car culture and the McDonald's golden arches everywhere. At about 1980 there was an abrupt uptick in obesity. My theory is that it was caused by hair/metal bands replacing disco. Since then it has been increasing at 50 per cent per decade. If we were still wearing sequins and shaking our booty on the disco floor, we'd be thin.
But seriously, all over the world this is happening. In Malaysia, childhood obesity is up 1000 per cent in 20 years. Some people call this the globesity epidemic.
The New England Journal of Medicine published a piece last year that proposed that for the first time in history, politically stable and prosperous nations are looking at a sustained drop in life expectancy. And this is a consequence of the explosion of diabetes and obesity.
On why so-called "fat taxes" are doomed to fail:
For starters, paradoxically, the obese are the poor. Because the poor are the sickest in every society.
And do you think that taxes are going work, when the most profound motivation -- to be sexy -- isn't enough!? Seventeen-year-olds only want one thing in this world, which is to be sexy. And obesity is up 400 per cent in teenagers.
I think what we need to do is re-engineer our cities. It's not about more gyms, because there are lots of gyms. We have to walk to work. We have to live in cities that require us to move to get through our days. There should be as many square feet of bicycle lanes in Vancouver as car lanes. It should just be such a pain in the ass to drive a car that most people don't. We need oil to cost $200 a barrel, for health reasons.
Chris Tenove's last books story for The Tyee was "Hunting Down a Killer in Paradise," about J.B. MacKinnon, who appears at the Vancouver International Writers Festival on Sat., Oct. 21 on the Politics and the Pen panel.
Other festival guests recently discussed or profiled in The Tyee are Eden Robinson in "Big Cities Need Bad Actors," Billie Livingston in "Feminist Fatales," Ryan Knighton in "Blind Man's Bluff," and Noah Richler in "What Books Define Us?" For complete festival program information, visit the Vancouver International Writers Festival website. Watch for more coverage of festival events and authors on The Tyee in the coming week. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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Bytesmiths
6 years ago
Comments on "The Cure for Affluence"
Great stuff! I did have a bit of trouble sorting out Chris's words from Kevin's. This article was a bit schizophrenic -- was it a feature article, or a book review?
But the main points, be they Chris's or Kevin's, were right on, albeit missing a potentially huge motivator: Peak Oil.
We should move past the "shoulds" and into the "musts." The ideas about Vancouver's car-bike asphalt ratio are not "wouldn't it be nice if" material -- they are imperatives!
freebear
6 years ago
I like the approach using the Inuit as a lense on how we behave and what influences our behaviour.
It does not come as a surprise that we have designed our surroundings without thinking about the impact on ourselves and the environment.
I have been advocating for a number of years that we have to redesign our communities so that we burn calories rather than fossil fuels!
Unfortunately it appears more and more so that a crisis will only change our designs and behaviour. Perhaps true costs accounting would help, unfortunately I think Peak Oil and $200/barrel oil will be the harbinger of change. It can't happen soon enough, though I doublt we will be ready for the social and economic upheaval that will accompany Peak Oil!
freebear
6 years ago
Perhaps the cure is poverty!
I know when I was on welfare I could not afford a bus pass so I had to walk; or stay home an conserve my energy!
clubofrome
6 years ago
Right on the money. While we don't consider sailing a high calorie burner it's sure good for the soul. We can always walk when we get to shore. In the mean time pass me those delicious little cheese dooddles!
Truman Green
6 years ago
freebear, only poblem with your theory that poverty's good for obesity because it makes us walk, etc, is that the poor have the greatest obsesity and health problems. And I think Patterson's made up his mind too quickly that obesity's mostly caused by inactivity.
I think the problem is so far undiscovered, and that it's most likely related to things in the environment that are altering the metabolism of most people.
I mean... who says humans are designed to be active? I don't believe it.
Intuitively, I'd surmise that we should be able to adjust to inactivity, as long as we go slow on the cheesies. Now take me, for instance.....
Umslopogaas
6 years ago
If you exercise regularly, don't smoke. don't drink alcohol to excess, eat properly, and don't have extramarital sex, you don't live longer... it just seems longer.
Step easy
6 years ago
Exercise is THE most important factor in stress reduction, metabolic stabilization, sexual appetite/ability, bone/joint fluidity, overall happiness, and of course weight loss!! We are mammals after all and spending so much time 'living in the mind' as we do these days has created an enormous imbalance in our lives. Yes, pollution Truman, and other environmental factors have some effect, but as stated in the article, by a doctor of internal medicine, the human body has amazing adaption capabilities.
We're all way too damn fat and it's so obvious to someone like me who walks everywhere and watches the tubbo's spill out of their mini-vans like so much coagulated cholesterol.
I hope the price of oil doubles, triples, quadruples!!! Bring on the sweating that will result!!
peefer
6 years ago
Of course we're meant to move. Humans evolved with the pursuit of food as THE main activity, as it is for most animals. So now our food comes to us and we get sick. It aint rocket science.
timbley
6 years ago
I think we can control our diets and make permanent changes. It all comes down to our perceptions. I used to eat all sorts of candy, cake, cookies, ice cream, soda pop, etc. I was in to sugar in a big way, as well as other processed carbohydrates like white bread, noodles, white rice, etc. I thought these things were pretty much healthy to eat as long as other good foods were included in my diet.
My perception changed about a year ago when I was truly convinced of how damaging these processed products really are. I have zero interest in them now. This is not will power. It's changed perception. These things are not food. You wouldn't eat them either if you shared my perception. Would you eat a delicious looking and smelling slice of pie if I told you I had seen an angry cook add human excrement while it was being cooked? The pie may be perfectly safe, but with changed perception it's far less apetizing. But what if I told you the cook added some arsenic? Being informed of the arsenic changes your perception in a bigger way. It still looks and smells good. Can you resist? I think you can, unless you don't believe my report. It's all about being convinced.
Processed foods are at the heart of the problem, not just lack of exercise. Natural animal fats, especially from wild caught animals, are excellent. Fake, weird chemically produced fats in cheese doodles aren't. Even if we had to chase down and harpoon 50 ton cheese doodles we'd suffer from eating them.
Kids want to be sexy and thin but they don't have good information. They're trying to exercise their way to thin with the perception that anything offered to them as food is satisfactory. Wrong! You can't excercise without real food. You'll try but you'll retreat to your cave sooner than later, a sick and dying animal - a poisoned animal! Good nutrition comes first. Exercise follows naturally from feeling energetic and enthused about moving your body.
Fii
6 years ago
What absolutely boggles my mind is the amount of people who will work extra hours (usually at a job that involves sitting), to make $4-600 a month payments on a vehicle that is depreciating by the day, just for - what? the image of driving a new car? Bizarre! I own a 1986 Tercel but mostly ride my bike in the ciy... my more "affluent" friends crack jokes about my "car that is like the one you drove in university, Fi!" -yet guess who is fitter? I'd much rather people admire the vehicle that carries my soul through this life than some stupid car that I was brainwashed into buying and isn't worth the money that is poured into it.
G West
6 years ago
where can I find those 50 ton cheese doodles?
LOL
Clear Cut
6 years ago
Having the good fortune to grow up in the enlightened cultural mecca of Selkirk, Manitoba - and thus protected from the dark side of the human psyche - is most likely the reason Patterson is unconvincing when he writes about loneliness, fear and social dislocation.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Very interesting you guys, and like most of you, I'm using myself as the test tube on whether we need a lot of exercise to remain fit and healthy.
I think exercise, beyond a marginally active lifestyle is highly overrated.
I'm bizarrly healthy and fit for my age which is 61.75. Beyond maybe a half hour a day of aerobic activity, I sit around in my back yard doing nothing but thinking for many hours at a time or inside sitting at the computer doing research in virology and immunology. Actually, it's an extremely sedentary lifestyle with the exception of charging around the neighbourhood on my bicycle or shooting some hoops, a few times a week.
To stay healthy: Don't eat anything that comes in a package, a can or a bottle.
Avoid the stuff masquerading as food in the supermarkets. It's not.
Don't eat dead animals, even if they're cooked.
Stay away from doctors and hospitals.
Get toxic people out of your life.
Eat tiny bits of only highly nourishing food, if you can find it.
It's the pus in the stores that looks like food which we shouldn't be eating, and the crappy atmosphere and chemicals everywhere, including inside our houses that's ruining our health.
As for diebetes in the aboriginal community. It's the garbage in their stomachs not the lounging around that'll do them in.
We need movement, but not much. Don't drink pop.
And Fii, my car's a l985 Honda. To replace it will cost me two weeks of finishing carpentry.
G West
6 years ago
But Truman, how do you resist those delicious cheese doodles?
Nice work on the Glavin thread today, dude!
Charles Campbell
6 years ago
Don't read Terry Glavin, Truman, if you don't want to have a heart attack.
Step easy
6 years ago
Excellent points Truman, I agree completely with your dietary recommendations (although i don't know if i'll ever be able to give up meat-a craving stronger than coffee or alcohol for me which are strong enough on their own.) But i do notice that when i am eating more vegetables and specifically salad, i feel better. As well, i notice that if if eat too much processed food (which i generally try to avoid) i really feel the sickening effects of particularly the excess amount of salt they seem to contain.
A friend of mine who's about your age has similar eating habits (he eats far less than what might be considered a good sized or even average-sized portion. Also he is quite sedentary as well, yet he is incredibly healthy, more so in fact than most people his age. Here's to your health!
In fact, the above commentary contains many valid points from all and i agree absolutely about the driving of an old beater, and putting more financial focus on what really matters.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Hi, Charles Campbell. Great job with the books section!
I'll be ignoring the Glavin column. There's still going to be tons of good stuff on the Tyee, I'm sure.
freebear
6 years ago
Of course driving the old beater (with less or no emissions control) may affect general health in terms of pollution!
Fii
6 years ago
Nope, Freebear- it's called AirCare; old beaters are not exempt. The emissions control requirements for new cars made in North America are not all that high, I don't think.
Truman- a half hour a day of aerobic ativity? Riding a bike? You're way ahead of most people, especially considering your age. Vancouver is not the norm. Sixty year olds in other parts of Canada do not OWN a bike and they certainly do not zip around town in one, nor do they "shoot hoops". Good for you!
freebear
6 years ago
"Nope, Freebear- it's called AirCare; old beaters are not exempt. The emissions control requirements for new cars made in North America are not all that high, I don't think"
Is Aircare throughout BC? Old Beater in terms of cars to me means early 1980s, 70s and so on.
Of course with the 'New' Government's 'Green Plan' confirming that 'we' continue to delude ourselves into thinking we can avoid doing anything in the meantime about climate change, and lets continue the fossil fool insanity!
So depressing I am going to gorge on cheese doodles all weekend!
Alcibiades
6 years ago
Hey Truman,
Haven't seen you about lately. I thought you'd like to see this piece by David Rieff (Susan Sontag's son by the way) that he posted on a blog I watch from time to time.
It's about one of our favourite hobby horses - American Exceptionalism - thought you might be amused.
http://www.belgraviadispatch.com/2006/10/the_mailbag_4.html
Fii
6 years ago
Hi Freebear,
I live in Vancouver so I don't know about all of BC. I've had my '86 Tercel for 2.5 yrs and every year I have to get it checked or I can't renew my insurance- it failed both times because the nitrogen levels were too high. I got some "adjustments" done, took it back, aircared it again, and it passed. What I meant about new cars was that I don't think the North Amer manufacturers are faced with very strict rules... I think it was revealed in Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" that China won't buy American cars now because the emissions control standards in the US are not as strict as in China! Go figure.
Truman Green
6 years ago
Hey Charles Campbell, you still there? Do you recall my proposal regarding using 'probiotics' to protect women against hpv which, it is claimed by Pharmacorpia, causes cervical cancer. (It doesn't really)
You weren't too impressed.
Here's a bit of my proposal from the Stan Persky, Bad Science thread:
"In other words the actual first line cause of cervical cancer might be lactobacillus depletion that allows hpv to cause neoplasia. IF THIS WERE THE CASE, SIMPLE CHEAP PROBIOTICS MIGHT DO WITH TRICK--and much better than vaccines because they could be prescribed (only) after diagnosis with lactobacillus depletion, and target only women with this condition --not millions of women who are already infected with hpv, which is what will be happening under the current vaccination program." (See Gardasil)
GOOGLE THIS: "YOGURT COULD HELP FEND OFF HIV, NEW SCIENTIST, OCT 07, 2006.
These reseachers are hypothesizing that yogurt (with lactobacillus) might be efficacious against hiv.
So, if lactobaccillus can fend off Hiv, why not HPV?
Not that fending off hiv has any special importance, of course, because hiv is just a harmless passenger virus, unlike many strains of hpv (human papilloma virus) which can actually cause genital warts.
Incidentally, the definition of 'probiotics' is : "live microorganisms, including lactobacillus species and yeast, that may beneficially affect the host upon ingestion by improving the balance of the intestinal flora."
Also, notice that the New Scientist researchers do not mention (of course)hydrogen peroxide as one of the compounds produced by lactobacillus, and probably the REAL efficacious agent responsible for the "fending off" of hiv, but rather claim that the protection is due to their new genetically-engineered strains of lactobacillus.
They also recommend using lactobacillus only if nothing else is available. (AZT, anyone)
Very suspicious, eh! You'd think this would be a huge breakthrough. Oh, I forgot, no money in lactobacillus.
This is good, too, Charles: http://www.newaidsreview.org/posts/1161371476.shtml
Okanagan Orchardist
6 years ago
A quote from up top:
''We're all way too damn fat and it's so obvious to someone like me who walks everywhere and watches the tubbo's spill out of their mini-vans like so much coagulated cholesterol.
I hope the price of oil doubles, triples, quadruples!!! Bring on the sweating that will result!!''
Love that part about "coagulated cholesterol" Back in the '50's on the ocassional trip to Washington State, I would marvel at the size of the young people down there as compared to Canadians. It took us a few years but now we look just like some of the people waddling around Chicago and New York. More is the pity. Exercise is only part of the answer.
I do believe, however, that the rest of the answer will soon be here. I believe climate change and peak oil will have us back to our svelt selves. Not that Harper and Bush are any help. But do Google George Monbiot, and get some information on the Carlyle Group. Monbiot, despite a spate of pessimism tells it like it is and will be. The Carlyle Group will make you so angry that you will just have to go jog a few miles to get rid of the steam. There you have it. An apple a day, a nice long jog, friendly companions (and don't rid yourself of the pessimists--they just add fuel to your endeavours), a decent diet and life will be good for the oldsters. But $200 oil is not quite the answer. WWII gas rationing is. You city folk will start walking or taking rapid transit, you won't have to spend billions on new roads and bridges, and we farmers (orchardists in my case) will have all the fuel we need to produce the food you will want but haven't got the space to grow. The best of all worlds! :))
Have a good day.