User:Hanspetermeyer

Biography

Hans Peter Meyer is a writer, photographer, and cocktail shaker. He was born into the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island in 1959 and grew up in the rural hamlet of Black Creek. He now lives in Courtenay where is a father of four (two adult daughters of his own, two sons by marriage – one adult, one school-age), a dancer, and someone who appreciates and loves to share the fine and beautiful things in life. Hans Peter Meyer is currently working on a number of projects related to sustainability (land use, food, finance), coastal logging, sex/sexuality, and lifestyle/family/community experiences. After a recent Media that Matters conference (#mtm09 #hollyhocklive), he is seeing a pattern: the richest aspects of his life flow from the "broken places." He thanks conference speaker and co-passenger on the journey to and from Cortes Island, Mike Littrell, for helping to create that insight.

Contributions

Community and Sustainability

In 1992, with the help of Dr. Jerry Zaslove at SFU's Institute for the Humanities and the cooperation of North Island College, hans peter meyer began to assemble the pieces of what would become the short-lived but prescient Small Town and Rural Community Insitute of BC. Drawing together a loose partnership of advisors, funders, and participants the "Communities Institute" generated just-in-time community educational and professional development workshops, courses, conferences focussed on supporting local knowledge to address emerging community and regional issues. As "sustainability" became a focal point for discussions about how to best grow the future of communities, the Communities Institute became one of the leading edge expressions of "sustainability" education at a local and regional level on north Vancouver Island. Significant support for this initaitive was provided over several years by the Real Estate Foundation of BC. When North Island College withdrew its active support for the initiative in 1995 the advisors formed the Small Town and Rural Communities Institute of BC Society. Board members were comprised of a number of local and regional Island luminaries, including highly regarded former mayors Joy Leach (Nanaimo) and Mary Ashley (Campbell River).

In 1998 Hans Peter Meyer suffered a Mild Traumatic Brain Injury as the result of a minor bicycle accident. Unable to continue as Executive Director, the leadership of the organization passed to already-busy Board Members. Although the Communities Institute had ceased to function by 2000, the kind of work it was pioneering in community/region-based sustainability programing has become increasingly important. Representatives at the Real Estate Foundation have acknowledged that the work being done through the Communities in Transition program builds directly on the Foundation's experience with the Communities Institute. Like CI, CIT works in a collaborative fashion with community and regional partners to support research and community development projects related to land-use transitions in BC's non-metro regions. As Hans Peter Meyer recovered from the immediate impact of the MTBI he was approached by REF to take on small writing, research, and photography projects. He has been working on CIT program-related research and writing projects since 2005. As of November 2008 he has been editor of the Communities in Transition Information Resource.

Coastal Forest Industry

Hans Peter Meyer grew up in the second growth forests of the Comox Valley, the remnants of the historic and extensive Block 29 that had been carved out of Vancouver Island's richest Douglas Fir timberlands. His father, uncles, and friends all worked in the coastal forest industry, at a time when it was the undisputed source of wealth of British Columbia. After graduating from high school in 1977, he joined the thousands of others who were making a good living clear-cutting the Island's ancient forests.

Hans's views about trees and logging have always been conflicted – at one and the same time an avid tree-feller and a hugger of trees, not an unusual contradiction amongst those who have grown up in logging families – and this has helped him generate a body of photographic work that both celebrates the individuals and machines who work in the woods, as well as documents the despoilation of landscapes that is the reality of industrial forestry as it is practiced on BC's coast. He has shot covers for a number of issues of Truck Logger Magazine, as well as writing numerous articles, including profiles of all three TLA presidents since 1994. In 1995 he was commissioned by the owner of Mike Hamilton Logging Ltd. to produce a photographic "crew book" to mark the company's 35th anniversary. In 2008, the president of BenWest Logging Ltd. commissioned Hans to produce a more substantial company book. Hans is currently working on a project to photographically document the coastal forest industry as it looks today, a decade into the 21st century, at a time of great uncertainty and change within the industry and the coastal communities that have been built on the wealth of the coastal forest resource.

Food, Dining, Lifestyle

Food and entertaining have always been a great interest to Hans. In 2004, at the suggestion of two respected Comox Valley restaurateurs, Sandra Viney (Atlas Café and Bar, Avenue) and Matt MacDonald (Orbitz Pizza), Hans began to write about the dynamic food and dining culture of the Comox Valley. Since then he has been published regularly in EAT Magazine, The Island Word, as well on-line publications like tastingvancouver.com.

Other Relevant Websites

www.hanspetermeyer.ca

www.hanspetermeyer.blogspot.com

www.communitytransition.blogspot.com

www.bonvivantvancouverisland.blogspot.com

www.development-issues.blogspot.com

follow hanspetermeyer at ... / @hanspetermeyer or on facebook (Peter Meyer)