Off the Ropes

Off the ropes
(originally appeared in the Vancouver Courier)

by Robert Mangelsdorf-contributing writer

It's a chilly Friday night in Cloverdale, but inside the Alice McKay Pavillion the air is warm with the musty, pungent tang of sweat, beer and 40-year-old timber.

In the centre of the hall, two young boxers bob and weave in the ring to a soundtrack of throbbing hip-hop music, their bodies instinctively reacting to each other's movements. They float, their eyes focused on one another, each trying to stake out a dominant position in the centre of the ring. It is a delicate dance, punctuated by short spurts of violence.

The boxer in blue throws a punch. The boxer in red blocks with his right and counters with a jab. But the boy in blue keeps coming, landing blow after blow to the boy in red's sides, causing him to drop his guard. He hits him with an uppercut to the head and the crowd gasps at the sight of the red facemask popping back. The boy in red shifts his weight to his left foot and attempts a jab, but is caught with a right hook sending him stumbling backwards, off balance. All of this occurs in seconds.

It's chess at the speed of sound, what many refer to as "the sweet science."

The bell rings ending the final round and both boxers walk, not to their respective corners, but to the centre of the ring to hug each other, pouring sweat and utterly exhausted from the hard-fought match. The locals cheer as the boy in blue from Alberta is declared the winner, 30 points to 27. Promoter and boxing coach Rob Stone surveys the crowd.

"It's a great turnout tonight," he says nodding to himself.

The half-empty bleachers hold barely 100 people, who have gathered to watch a team from B.C. and another from Alberta in an informal preview of their bouts at the Canadian Winter Games in Whitehorse. While the number of people gathered seems small, it represents a huge turnaround in amateur boxing in B.C. After a long and storied history dating back to the first B.C. Golden Gloves tournament in 1939, amateur boxing in this province died out in the 1990s, as professional boxing became a three-ring circus and society's tastes moved away from violent sports. But since 2002, the number of amateur boxers in the province has doubled from 600 to 1,200 and gyms are popping up all over Greater Vancouver. More boxers than ever are eager to make a name for themselves at events like the B.C. Golden Gloves amateur boxing tournament being held at Richmond's River Rock Casino this weekend. Last May, the B.C. Golden Gloves ventured out of the high school gyms it had been relegated to for nearly two decades, and sold out the 1,000-seat River Rock Show Theatre in Richmond. This year's tournament, again at River Rock, has been expanded over two nights, March 23 and 24.

Inspired by a greater awareness about the health benefits the sport provides, recent uplifting movies about boxing and the spillover from the rise in popularity of mixed-martial arts competitions, a new crop of young fighters is springing up all over the city, vying to be the next generation of champions tasting Golden Gloves greatness.

Twenty-two-year-old Brennan Lowrie is one of them.

At six-feet, 10-inches, you'd expect to find Lowrie on the basketball court shooting hoops, but this super heavyweight fighter has one love, and it's boxing.

"It's addictive and so competitive," Lowrie says. "All the sports I've tried before were team sports, but boxing is completely different. You're in there by yourself so it's a mental challenge as much as a physical challenge."

A fifth year engineering student at UBC, Lowrie knows all about mental challenges, and paramount among them in the ring is keeping focused on the right things with thousands of rabid fans cheering.

"I try to tune it all out, so it's just me and my opponent. I might as well just be boxing in a barn," he says.

The Kitsilano kid has competed in front of big crowds before, but never in B.C., where he has difficulty finding opponents. While the number of boxers in the province is increasing, there is still a shortage of competitive boxers in many weight classes. Both boxers Lowrie will be going up against in this year's Golden Gloves had to be flown in from the U.S.

Despite being mere months from graduation, Lowrie has not ruled out a professional career and isn't planning on taking a break from his demanding training regimen.

"It definitely affects your social life," he says. "You can't just go out drinking with your buddies if you've got a fight coming up because you got to stay in shape, but I love it too much to have second thoughts."

Lowrie has his eyes on the senior National Championships later this year and hopes to box in the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing, just as his coach Manny Sobral did 20 years ago in Seoul. The Golden Gloves is an excellent chance to gain exposure and recognition for the many hours of training.

"I'm looking forward to it. It's a big tournament and it's on a bigger scale now," he says.

However, the tournament, and amateur boxing in general, has a hard fight ahead if it hopes to regain its former glory. North Burnaby Boxing Club coach Rob Bortolazzo believes too many people confuse amateur boxing with its professional counterpart and believe they are the same. It's a false notion he's all too familiar with.

"It's like fencing and pirate sword-fighting," he says, rolling his eyes. He leans on the edge of the ring at his club near Confederation Park and eyes two of his young pupils as they spar. "The object of amateur boxing is to score points by making clean hits, not knocking the other guy out," he says. "I mean, it's an Olympic sport!"

The differences don't end there. Amateur boxing bouts last a maximum of four rounds compared to the 10 to 15 round matches in professional boxing. Protective headgear is required.

Stone, who is also the president of Boxing B.C. and a former Golden Gloves competitor, considers amateur boxing to be safer than most sports.

"In amateur boxing, if you get a concussion, you're not allowed in the ring for 30 days," says Stone. "In any other sport, football, hockey, rugby, whatever, they splash some water on your face and you're right back out there on the next shift."

The British Journal of Sports Medicine agrees with him. A 2002 study suggested amateur boxing is among the safest contact sports, thanks to what the study says is careful medical control, which includes annual medical evaluations, ophthalmic examinations, and electrocardiogram and laboratory tests.

A 2007 study in the Journal of Combative Sport pegged the death rate for amateur boxing at 13.9 per million participants. According to a 1994 study by the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission, this is roughly equal to the risk associated with riding a bicycle.

The research doesn't surprise Stone.

"Amateur boxing is the only sport where doctors are required to be present," he says. At any time the referee can end the match if he thinks one of the boxers is hurt, dazed, or even if the scoring is lopsided.

But the belief that brain damage is an inevitability in the sport persists, and many parents are reluctant to enrol their children in boxing for fear it will encourage violent tendencies.

"The biggest problem we have is the parents," says Stone. "In the beginning they have no idea what amateur boxing is all about."

By letting teenagers take out their aggression in a constructive, safe and tightly controlled environment, Stone believes boxing curbs violent behavior while promoting discipline and a strong work ethic. It's an opinion mirrored by many in the amateur boxing community.

"You learn how to work hard, you learn respect and that you are no tougher than anybody else who wants to get in the ring," says Bortolazzo. "People become humble here."

None more so than 37-year-old Musqueam native and light heavyweight Mike Sparrow.

Sparrow has boxed competitively for little more than a year, but got into martial arts 13 years ago after the birth of his daughter.

"I was just trying to do positive things with myself at the time," he explains. "It helped me outright from the beginning, it helped me develop a lot more discipline and cope with the everyday ups and downs. If I'm nervous or depressed, if I go and do a good workout I feel relieved afterwards."

One hundred and eighty pounds of raw power, the self-described "banger" thanks the intense training schedule for helping him to quit drinking and get out of the party scene on the reserve. He now runs a salmon fishing operation in northern B.C. during the summer and expects his second child in August.

Sparrow will compete in his second Golden Gloves, having made it to the finals last year and hopes to bring the coveted "Golden Boy" award for outstanding male boxer home to the Musqueam Reserve where he lives.

"I want to inspire some of the young people in this community who don't have a lot of opportunities," Sparrow says, watching two kids running soccer drills in the reserve's gymnasium. His tough physical appearance hides a thoughtful sensitivity. "That's the reason I'm going to the Golden Gloves. If I win it I might be able to start something around here."

That "something" is a boxing club he hopes to open on the reserve with the help of the Fraser Arms Boxing Club where he trains. Through boxing, Sparrow believes he can teach the young generation on the reserve self-reliance and a sense of pride their community often doesn't provide.

"It's very segregated, we have our own community, we have our own problems with drugs and alcohol," he says of his home. "It's a depressing place to live to tell you the truth... I just want to win this for my people, for my nation, and inspire my young bucks out there and all the young warriors."

The seven day-a-week commitment that boxing's strict training regimen requires keeps kids off the streets and leaves little time for horseplay, Stone says. If a boxer is found to be using drugs or alcohol, which inhibit a boxer's abilities, they will often face disciplinary action, or even be kicked out of their club.

"If you don't do your homework here, you're going to feel it in the ring," he says.

Despite all this, many people have trouble reconciling the violence associated with the sport as something constructive, and some boxing clubs have struggled to gain the public acceptance needed to survive.

But Bortolazzo, who has been boxing for more than 33 years, is convinced of the positive impact boxing has had, not only on the kids he coaches, but on himself.

"You look at life differently and you learn a work ethic that stays with you," he says.

One of the most tangible positive impacts boxing provides is increased health and fitness, advantages which have attracted a whole new demographic of boxers.

"Some days we get 10, 20 girls coming in," Bortolazzo says. "We got medical students who train for one or two fights and quit, just so they could say they did it."

A typical day at the gym starts with 15 to 20 minutes of skipping rope to warm up, then 15 to 20 minutes of calisthenics. Then it's on to the bag, throwing punches for up to an hour before sparring in the ring for up to 45 minutes. Then it's a half-hour of circuit training and heavy lifting after that. To finish things off there's more rope skipping to cool down.

A boxer training at a competitive level will spend up to five days per week in the gym, jogging and sprinting on the off days.

Barely 120 pounds soaking wet, Lydia Walczak is the antithesis of what one would expect in a boxer. Looking more like a librarian than a fighter, the bespectacled Walczak is affable and exceedingly polite.

But the second she drops her shoulders and squints her eyes it all becomes clear.

Firing round after round of explosive punches at a helpless, flailing punching bag, she sidesteps and rolls her shoulders from one position to the next with speed and precision. She operates on pure muscle memory, her body acting and reacting with the unthinking skill that comes with hours of training. It's no accident she's a national champion and a Pan-American silver-medalist.

"The first time I saw a boxing match, the movement just completely blew me away," she says. "It wasn't the throwing of the punches, it was the movement and the strategy the fighter has to employ that drew me in."

The 21-year-old was soon hooked, and found boxing to be far more complex and cerebral than she originally thought.

"It's very simple to learn the basics but it's much harder to progress and learn the nuances. Every little thing makes a difference, the angles you step, your approach, your timing," she says. "You might think a jab is just a jab, but there are 50 ways to throw that jab."

Her mother, however, still can't bear to watch her compete.

"She'll watch the video afterwards but she won't come to the fights. It's hard sometimes for parents to see their children in the ring no matter how old they are."

Her calm demeanor serves her well inside the ring and out.

"Anger really slows you down because you're thinking, 'I really want to hit her hard,'" she explains. "You end up getting hit more than you should because you'll miss seeing something that could have been easily blocked."

Walczak, who studies international business and human kinetics at Langara College, says a win at the Golden Gloves will be an affirmation of her dedication to her physical regime, which sees her training seven days a week before fights. The sport, she says, has given her not only physical strength but also inner strength.

"It's a confidence builder because you have to face fear no matter what, whether it is fear of going in front of an audience or the instinctual fear of being hit.

"You have to be witty and sharp to be able to see things coming and react to them quickly," she says. "A lot of the boxers are well-educated, successful people, so there must be something about boxing to keep people like that interested."

Media Monopoly in BC

By Robert Mangelsdorf

Moves by one of Canada’s media giants to swallow another major media corporation have once again raised the obvious questions about media monopolies in Canada and in B.C. in particular.

By gobbling up Alliance Atlantis, Can West Global plans to add 13 specialty television channels to its already vast media empire, which nationwide includes 7 specialty channels, 16 local television stations, 13 daily newspapers, more than 25 community papers, and Canada’s largest internet portal, giving them unparalleled media control.

While CanWest contends this consolidation is just good business and ensures the survival of small market news outlets, many feel it is detrimental to Canadian journalism, and as a result, Canadian democracy.

Paul Schneidereit, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, is among them.

“If you have people in a local market and all of their media choices are controlled by one corporate interest then that really limits the diversity of voices available to them,” he said. The result is that Canadians aren’t getting the whole story.

David Beers, editor of the independent Vancouver-based news and comment site the Tyee, agrees.

“If you don’t have different forms of media ownership then you’re not going to have different questions being pursued in the media. You’ll get a monochromatic view of the world from a publisher that is only interested in chasing big advertising bucks,” he said. “When you have only one skewed view upon which you’re making your decisions, then you’re not likely to make the best decision.”

Nowhere is media concentration more evident than in the newspaper industry.

According to the Canadian Newspaper Association, in 2005 close to 75 per cent of Canadian newspapers were owned by four corporations.

However, this limited diffusion of market share gets worse on a local basis.

In New Brunswick, the powerful Irving family has a virtual monopoly over the English language print media, while here in B.C., Black Press and CanWest control more than 70 per cent of the province’s print media.

In the Lower Mainland alone, CanWest owns both dailies, 12 community weekly and bi-weekly papers, and the most popular local television station. And the Black Press news chain owns the remaining 20 community papers, leaving only one major independent news publication, the Georgia Straight.

“Vertical” or cross-media concentration, where one company owns many different types of media in a single market, as CanWest does in the Lower Mainland, only compounds an already bad problem, Schneidereit believes. Often, a reporter will file stories for more than one outlet, further decreasing news diversity.

“You can have the world’s greatest reporter filing those stories but you are still limited to that one person’s ability to gather news and they can’t be everywhere at once,” Schneidereit said.

Beers believes the concentration of media ownership fools people into thinking they are getting varied news coverage when they are not.

“On the surface there is diversity, but if you look below that it is a mirage,” he said.

“You are going to get people turned off to the media as they realize they’re newspaper and television station is nothing but a thin gruel,” said Beers. “And in a 21st century democracy, this distortion of information is unacceptable.”

Kalle Lasn, editor of the Vancouver-based media literacy and social advocacy magazine Adbusters, is frightened by what he sees.

“Vancouver is arguably the number one media concentrated city in the whole of North America,” he said.

When CanWest refused to sell the magazine commercial airtime, Adbusters launched a legal action against them. Because of B.C.’s monopolistic media environment alternative voices and viewpoints are being stifled, Lasn contends.

“The advertising industry can buy as much time as they want for any kind of message they have, but when a citizen or group tries, all of a sudden we are censored,” Lasn said. “I think is really very sad, for a small number of people to have the power to decide how British Columbians or Canadians think.”

Adbusters aren’t the only ones who have found themselves silenced. Greenpeace has also had difficulty getting its ads aired on CanWest, and the lack of diversity in media ownership means they are left with few options.

Part of motivation for the lawsuit, Lasn said, is to put the issue of media ownership under the microscope so Canadians can see for themselves the reality of media monopolization. With the exception of the Toronto Star’s Antonia Zerbisias, the mainstream media gives almost zero coverage to the issue of severe media monopoly.

“Once the Canadian people understand how we have been misinformed and how media concentration is the antithesis of a vibrant democracy then something can be done [to fix the situation],” Lasn said. “On really big important issues like climate change, or the battle between Israel and Palestine, the issues get distorted in a major way.”

One example of this came in 2004, when CanWest changed the wording of Reuters wire copy to convey a decidedly anti-Palestinian slant.

The CBC reported one case in which the original text, “the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which has been involved in a four-year-old revolt against Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank,” became, “the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a terrorist group that has been involved in a four-year-old campaign of violence against Israel.”

Reuters denounced the changes, but in an editorial in the National Post, CanWest described the original language in the story as the “misleading gloss of political correctness” and declared that CanWest “owe it to [their] readers to remove it before they see it in their papers each morning.”

“These issues are all being spun and distorted in various ways,” Lasn said. “On a larger level I think if it continues to go on then our democracy becomes distorted. After all, information is the oxygen of democracy.”

Schneidereit agrees that, while media corporations are in business to make money, the effect they have on society cannot be underestimated.

“Meat packing plants aren’t mentioned in the constitution, but freedom of the press is, because it has a fundamental role,” he said.

In 2003, the Canadian government, responding to public concern about cross-media concentration, dwindling news diversity and newsroom layoffs, launched a senate committee into yet another probe of the Canadian news media.

It was pointed out to the committee that since acquiring the Southam newspaper chain in 2000, CanWest cut its foreign bureaus from 11 to 2. Additionally, Quebecor-owned Sun Media Corp., the owner of the Calgary Sun and SUN TV in Toronto, announced it was cutting 120 positions coast to coast last year.

In its presentation to the senate committee, CanWest maintained that, “there is no place for government in…the determination of staffing levels at private sector media companies,” claiming that all business decisions should be determined “by the need to produce the product consumers and clients demand, the need for efficiency and cost effectiveness,” and not by what is in the public’s best interest.

However, while this practice of reducing labour costs may increase the profitability, and in turn viability, of a paper, it has a profoundly negative effect on the quality of journalism, and on Canadian society, the senate committee found.

In its report released in June 2006, the committee recognized that while media organizations are in business to turn a profit, they are only too quick to claim to be motivated by the public’s best interest when seeking greater access to information or protecting their sources.

Furthermore, the report states that, “the media’s right to be free from interference does not extend to…a conclusion that proprietors should be allowed to own an excessive proportion of media holdings in a particular market, let alone the national market.”

The report clearly recognizes cross-media ownership and consolidation as a significant threat to Canadian news media, as newsrooms are whittled down, reporters are shouldered with increased workloads, investigative journalism declines, re-written press releases become news, and the diversity of voices is choked.

The Senate committee concluded there should be a limit on media ownership and monopolies, broadcast regulations should specifically encourage a diversity of news and news outlets, and start-up media should receive government funding assistance to increase diversity of media.

The call for renewed government regulation to increase media diversity was virtually ignored, by most of the Canadian news media. Instead, reports on the Senate committee report focused on recommendations that the CBC abandon its $300 million take in advertising and avoid competing directly with private sector broadcasting.

“If you rely only on the Vancouver Sun for your information, you wouldn't know that media concentration in Vancouver is a big issue,” said Donald Gutstein, a senior lecturer at the School of Communications at SFU, in an article for the Tyee.

Scheidereit supports the report’s findings, and would like to see laws similar to those in the United States and Europe, which limit the concentration of media ownership in a single market, established here in Canada.

“You can’t look at the CanWest’s or the Irving’s or anyone else specifically, you have to look at the environment in which all these companies operate,” he said.

“What’s needed is specific recognition that media companies have to be looked at a little differently than other companies because they play a fundamental role in our democracy.”

However, David Gollob, vice president of public affairs for the Canadian Newspaper Association, an advocacy group for Canadian daily newspaper publishers, balks at the idea that the government should have any say in how newspapers are run.

“We are of the view that Canada is a free society and we are not of the view that governments should regulate the press,” Gollob said. “Pierre Trudeau said the government has no business in the bedrooms of the nation. We say the government has no business in the newsrooms of the nation.”

In the CNA’s presentation to the senate committee they affirm that, “the right of any owner or publisher to influence content should be celebrated as a strength of Canadian law…not a weakness.”

Presently in B.C., that right is largely in the hands of just two people, Leonard Asper and David Black.

Founded by patriarch Izzy Asper and now led by son Leonard as president, the Asper family’s CanWest media empire as often been been criticized for pushing a own personal political agenda in their papers.

In 2001, CanWest began a policy of forcing its papers to publish uniform corporate editorials drafted at CanWest headquarters in Winnipeg. Reporters, editors and columnists at CanWest papers across the country who offered differing views quickly found themselves out of work.

CanWest backed off on the policy in late 2002, however, after other reporters, particulary in Montreal, began to pull bylines and walk off the job.

David Black (no relation to former Hollinger head Conrad Black), owner and founder of Black Press, followed a similar career arc to Asper, building his chain from the ground up. Throughout the 80s and 90s, Black bought up small, struggling community papers and now owns more than 70 publications in B.C. with substantial holdings in the U.S. and Alberta as well.

Black has generally taken a hands-off approach to editorial content, letting the papers more or less run themselves.

However, in 1998, Black had his papers run a series of editorials critical of the Nisga’a Treaty, then being negotiated by the NDP government, and not allowing his editors to run editorials in support of the treaty. Black claimed the editorials were in response to what he believed was widespread NDP propaganda promoting the deal. The NDP government complained to the B.C. Press Council that Black’s actions constituted “a breach of the duty to act in the public interest,” but the council ultimately decided in Black’s favour.

While the monopolistic nature of media ownership in B.C. may preclude independent voices from establishing themselves in traditional media, grassroots change is coming.

“The main issue is not creating more opportunities for corporate owners to compete with each other,” Beers said. “The main goal is to create opportunities for other forms of ownership in our media sphere.” The Internet is paramount among these for its inexpensiveness, and its accessibility.

In 2003, Beers founded the Tyee as an online independent source of regional investigative journalism in B.C. With more than 115,000 viewers per month, it has given voice to issues that would have otherwise gone unreported.

Schneidereit believes the Internet will enrich the diversity of voices as it becomes a more mainstream source for news.

“Even though it has been around for more than a decade we are only just beginning to see the impact the Internet will have,” he said. “It’s fundamentally altering information flow in our society.”

For Beers, it all comes down to media acting in the public interest, “a lively, problem solving media that accurately reflects the concerns of the whole.”

“Otherwise our democratic decision-making is flawed.”