Deborah Samuel’s Elegy: Buying bones and meditating on mortality

Erin Byrnes

Fine art photographer Deborah Samuel thought she was losing her mind. She had been working on a project for nearly two years and she couldn’t tell whether or not she had gotten off track. Her subjects were hard to find. Thinking back, she recounts moments of doubt, when she wondered, “What am I doing? I’m ordering skeletons off the Internet.”

The result of Samuel’s work is a collection of intriguing and well-executed images of animal skeletons: at once enduring and tragically fragile. The global premiere of her exhibit, Elegy, at the Royal Ontario Museum, marks the first collaboration of the ROM’s Life in Crisis: Schad Gallery of Biodiversity and their Institute for Contemporary Culture. The exhibit, which showcases 33 of the 50 prints in the collection, is featured in the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival and brings together science and art in a meditation on life and death.

The project had its genesis almost 10 kilometres underwater. As the British Petroleum oil rig, Deepwater Horizon, bled out into the Gulf of Mexico, emerging as the worst environmental disaster in the history of the United States, Samuel was suffering equally devastating personal losses. She began to focus on what she calls the “life/death divide,” and decided to channel these ideas by photographing birds suffering and dying as a result of the oil spill.

Due to restrictions imposed by the Coast Guard, Samuel could not access the shore, so she began to photograph the bones of birds and fish. Later, she widened her scope to include other vertebrates, including a frog, an anteater and a cobra. But skeletons were hard to come by. When the ROM contacted her to offer her access to its vast collection, Samuel accepted – happy to have access to skeletons that were intact, and not mounted in display cases: “Free-form, where you can actually do something with them,” she says.

Although inspired by disaster and housed in a museum, the birds defy conventional representation. They aren’t the iconic oil-covered ducks that stripped the Syncrude tailings ponds of their slightly bucolic resonance. Nor are they formalist, scientific representations of animal anatomy – archived frames that demonstrate functionality and form.

Her skeletons document interaction, oppositions, perhaps even attraction. Gesturing at an image of two birds, a solitaire nestled into a cardinal, she notes that many species of birds killed in the BP disaster mate for life. “What happens to them?” she asks, looking sadly at the unlikely couple. Another series of prints shows the skeletons at play, her ode to Mexico’s Day of the Dead. She says that she tried to imagine what their lives were like before the spill.

Exquisitely detailed, the dry spongy appearance of bone near an owl’s beak illustrates the lightness of the skeleton; the emerging pinfeathers on the print of an avian embryo are evocative little notes of texture on a tiny body with a too-big head. The colours of an almost abstract outline of an armadillo shell are luminescent, evocative of an oil painting. Meanwhile, a cobra winds powerfully across three frames to form a triptych tribute to the designs of nature.

Samuel captured the images by carefully positioning the skeletons on a flatbed scanner; placing the section she wanted to be in sharpest focus against the glass. Working with limited depth of field, the white bones emerge, breaking the surface of the deep black background. The bones stand in relief to what is behind them: they defy it.

The process of working with the skeletons helped her sort out her own thoughts on death and memory. “When you have skeletons that hold their life in them, hold the animation of their life lived, when they still exude that and you can still capture that, then death is not finite,” she says.

Elegy runs at the ROM until July 2, 2012.

Girls just wants to have fun

Bob Lackie

Girls is a half-hour comedy, airing on HBO Canada/The Movie Network at 10:30 p.m. on Sunday nights.  The show is executive produced by Lena Dunham, Judd Apatow and Jenni Konner, and the first season will run 10 episodes. The show is about a quartet of smart, young women who find themselves making very bad decisions. At the centre of the show is Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham), a would-be author who has spent the past two years since graduation having all of her bills paid by her parents until she can get a job in her field.

Hannah may not be the world’s most sympathetic protagonist. Within minutes of meeting her, we are witness to an artless attempt on her part to scare her parents into continuing to support her financially. By the end of the hour, she’s fumbled an attempt to get hired for pay at her internship, ignored her boyfriend’s clear disdain for her as she clings to him emotionally, flaked out on friends, and taken opium tea. And don’t look to Girls to present any of these things sympathetically: Hannah is clearly not doing life right, whatever that means.

The thing is, she’s so used to things being easy that she doesn’t know how to make things happen on her own. As such, her flaws are compelling. Despite her entitled nature, Hannah’s self-esteem issues come into play again and again. It’s why she always finds herself on the losing end of the conversation: with her parents, her boss, her boyfriend. The only person she manages to win an argument with – in that she can completely ignore their point of view without consequences – is her best friend Marnie (Allison Williams), who seems to be the only voice of reason in her life at all.

Hannah’s surrounded by a group of other beautiful 20-something white girls, all of whom have their own issues: smart and capable Marnie is trapped in a relationship with a young man who adores her, but she doesn’t have the strength to dump him or even discuss the issue; manic Jessa (Jemima Kirke), who is prone to having all sorts of crazy adventures and doing what she wants, finds herself pregnant; and Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet), who we don’t see much of, beyond one scene where she tries far too hard to get Jessa to like her. Jessa and Marnie seem to be the devil and angel on Hannah’s shoulders, with Jessa promoting the over-adventurous path, and Marnie offering the sensible one. The cast is strong, embodying their particular characters with nuances beyond the basic archetypes we’re given in the pilot. It’s easy, for example, to understand why Hannah gets caught up in Jessa’s adventures, even though the audience cringes at the disasters that could happen if she does.

Girls is funny, smart and seems to know exactly what it wants to be and how to go about being that. That’s a mightily impressive place to start for a show, considering most get halfway into first seasons before figuring that out, or are cancelled long before they do.

Jack White – Blunderbuss

Max Mertens

When you’ve been the frontman of one of the most successful garage rock bands of the 2000s, started two other critically respected and well-loved bands, and founded your own label, what else is there to do? If you’re The White Stripes’ Jack White, the answer is put out a solo album. While it isn’t surprising that the guitarist and singer-songwriter has done just that. White has always done things his way and marched to the beat of a different drummer (Meg White joke not intended) what is surprising is that it took him this long to get around to it. Blunderbuss, which is named after the muzzle-loading gun of choice for Portuguese mariners and the British cavalry during the 17th and 18th century, is White’s first independent release on his label Third Man Records. While it isn’t hard to hear the lyrical and musical influence of his past bands on this record (the aforementioned Stripes, The Raconteurs, and The Dead Weather), Blunderbuss contains some of the singer-songwriter’s most personal songs yet. This is perhaps most evident on first single “Love Interruption,” an acoustic and electric guitar slow burner with gospel-influenced vocals, where White promises, “I won’t let love disrupt, corrupt or interrupt me.” This sentiment could be about any number of past relationships, but more likely than not, it’s about the singer-songwriter’s divorce from British model Karen Elson last year. On the rest of the album’s thirteen tracks, White allows himself to follow his own muses, and has a lot of fun in the process. While the piano in “Take Me When You Go” and cheeky lyrics “Hip (Eponymous) Poor Boy” are more reminiscent of The Raconteurs’ interpretation of Americana, “Sixteen Saltines” sounds like a lost White Stripes B-side, with White proving why he deserved that spot on Rolling Stone’s list of the all-time 100 greatest guitarists.

Ty Segall & White Fence – Hair

Max Mertens

When does Ty Segall find time to sleep? It’s a question worth asking. The Bay Area singer, guitarist and drummer has already announced that we’ll see at least three releases from him in 2012. One look at his Wikipedia entry and you’ll see a discography, both as a solo artist and from playing in several bands, that would make many older artists jealous. He also tours North America constantly (if you haven’t seen him yet then you need to make that a priority). Given how prolific he is, you might think it comes at the cost of varying quality. That certainly isn’t the case with Hair, Segall’s collaborative album with San Francisco-based White Fence (aka Tim Presley). While the eight tracks draw on both artists’ influences, including blues, garage rock, psychedelic rock and punk, the album feels like a trip back to the ‘60s. In the hands of lesser artists, it would come across as blatant pastiche, but Presley and Segall make it their own. The highlight here is the winding, surprisingly melodic “I Am Not A Game,” which ends in a frenetic guitar solo and crashing drums. Don’t worry, though, Segall hasn’t forgotten about his punk background either―just listen to the guttural cries all over “Crybaby.” The only complaint about the album is that it’s less than thirty minutes long. Here’s hoping this is one Hair that gets a sequel.

La Fille mal gardée: a fun-filled chicken-and-pony show

Kelsey Rolfe

The National Ballet had me at dancing chickens. La Fille mal gardée was utterly enchanting (and very, very funny). Perhaps best described as the romantic comedy of ballet, Fille was an accessible, charming story that anyone could understand — and that everyone should see.

La Fille mal gardée has been roughly translated to mean “the badly guarded girl,” a theme which persists throughout the show. Widow Simone (Matjash Mrozewski) plans to have her daughter Lise (Jillian Vanstone) married off to Alain (Christopher Stalzer), the dopey son of a wealthy landowner, Thomas (Kevin D. Bowles).

Lise, however, has different ideas: she’s in love with the poor farmer, Colas (Naoya Ebe). Despite Simone’s best efforts to keep her daughter far from Colas, the two find ways to subvert her authority.

Fille was originally choreographed in 1789 by Jean Dauberval, and is one of the oldest ballets to still be danced. In 1960, Sir Frederick Ashton, the principal choreographer and director of England’s Royal Ballet, created his own version, but stayed true to the ballet’s French romantic roots.

The show was dedicated to the memory of Alexander Grant, the former artistic director who brought Fille to the National Ballet in 1976. Grant also created the character Alain, a role that was used largely as comic relief throughout the show.

The last time Fille was performed at the National Ballet was in 2002, and even this year it’s had a very limited run: Feb. 29 to March 4, with a couple of matinee performances.

The March 1 evening show boasted debut performances for Vanstone, Ebe and Stalzer. Vanstone and Ebe had wonderful chemistry as Lise and Colas, and navigated Ashton’s hazardously difficult choreography with apparent ease. The strength in Ebe’s movements was obvious and enviable, particularly when he had to perform jump-turns from a standing position.

Stalzer, however, stole the show with his impeccable comic timing and knack for physical comedy. (Watching him perform a short, clumsy dance for Lise could inspire laughter in even the most straight-faced guests.) He managed to make the role more than just a punchline, and turned Alain into someone you could root for (or, at the very least, find endearing).

As well as a wonderful cast, La Fille mal gardée included a real, live pony (I did a double take, and immediately started looking for signs that it was an elaborate costume), dancing chickens with giggle-inducing choreography, and a very beautiful use of ribbons.

The ribbons made their first appearance in Lise’s act one solo. Later, a single pink ribbon acted as a favour between her and Colas throughout the show, then a prop in their two pas-de-deux.

Ribbons were a recurring theme, especially near the end of act one, when the cast performed a traditional maypole dance with Lise and Colas at its center. A particularly lovely moment — probably the show’s best — had Lise in the middle of the maypole circle in arabesque, with eight ribbons in her hand. Her friends held the other ends and when they danced around her, she turned on pointe, entirely unsupported – a feat of strength and grace.

Other stand-out moments included Widow Simone’s clog dance, a rhythmically and comically perfect sequence, and — spoilers — the final moments of Act One, when a particularly strong gust of wind picked up the awkward Alain and sent him flying into the midst of a summer storm.

If the National Ballet brings Fille back next year, make time to see it. If not for anything else, do it for the dancing chickens.

The Best and Worst of Coachella 2012

Max Mertens

When my friend asked if I wanted to attend the Coachella Music Festival this year, I didn’t have to think twice. One of the biggest music festivals in North America, Coachella took place over two weekends this year on the beautiful Empire Polo Grounds in Indio, California. Here are some of my highlights, disappointments and lessons learned from three days in the desert.

BEST PRE-SHOW MUSIC

When the skies turned grey on late Friday afternoon, whoever was responsible for the PA system before Girls’ set cued up a weather-specific playlist that included The Doors’ “Riders On The Storm,” Albert Hammond’s “It Never Rains In Southern California,” and Nick Cave. It drizzled for a few minutes, but by the time the San Francisco band had finished their set, the sun was shining again.

BEST CELEBRITY APPEARANCE

The weekend featured numerous appearances from none other than the Hoff himself, David Hasselhoff. No word on whether he was there to see a band or simply got lost driving KITT through the desert.

BEST NEW BAND

Manchester, England’s WU LYF. Remember the name, because you’ll be hearing a lot more about these guys in the near future.

WORST SOPHOMORE SLUMP

The Arctic Monkeys’ debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, is a fantastic record. Released in 2006, it was an excellent collection of songs about small town boredom, getting kicked out of pubs and lusting after girls. Unfortunately for the U.K. quartet, they haven’t been able to match that level of success since. I didn’t see too many performances that I didn’t care for over the weekend, but the Monkeys’ set was one of them. The audience was certainly into the set, crowd-surfing and jumping up and down. If only the band had shown even half that amount of energy.

CLEAREST SIGN WE WERE IN CALIFORNIA

Besides your standard music festival’s $7 beers, shitty pizza and watered-down mixed drinks, Coachella also offered plenty of options for health-conscious celebrities and regular people, including smoothies, organic wraps and honest-to-goodness salads. I usually have a rule of not eating overpriced food at festivals, but I found myself breaking that rule on several occasions throughout the weekend.

BEST AFTERNOON PARTY

She might not have a full album out yet, but that didn’t stop 20-year-old New York City rapper Azealia Banks from starting a full-on dance party on Saturday afternoon, ending of course with her breakout hit “212” (which has a mere 13,411,646 views on YouTube). Is it possible to sweat out a hangover?

BEST DANCE MOVES ONSTAGE

There’s only one person at Coachella that could really win this award and that’s Thom Yorke. Sporting a truly unfortunate ponytail (you’re the lead singer of one of the biggest rock bands in the world and you can’t afford a pair of scissors?), the Radiohead frontman shimmied and shook across the stage during the band’s Saturday night headlining set, proving that you’re only as young as you feel. On a related note, a quick Google Search for “Thom Yorke dancing” turns up about 1,060,000 results, including a number of fantastic Tumblr sites.

BEST USE OF TECHNOLOGY COSTING BETWEEN $100,000 AND $400,000

The Tupac hologram. Sure, it was incredibly tacky, but what else was it going to be?

10 Reasons why we’ll miss Rick Santorum

Joseph Lee

Rick Santorum was a presidential candidate who actually believed his own campaign’s rhetoric, which means he was an awful politician. Santorum was the kind of guy who knew his talking points and stuck to them. He was the sweater vest of American politics: bland, shapeless, and in dire need of sleeves. Sadly, he at least had a modicum of conservatism, unlike the winner of the Republican presidential primary, Mr. We-Share-Humorous-Type-Things-At-Our-Dinner-Events Romney. Romney is like sliced white bread, if it was dipped in mayonnaise and thrown in a vat of white glue. Even worse, his positions on key issues change more often than Lady Gaga’s outfits at an awards show.

Needless to say, Rick Santorum was perhaps the only viable, truly conservative presidential candidate in the Republican primary. Michelle Bachmann could have been one had she not been clearly insane, and Herman Cain could also have qualified, had he been more qualified.

But alas, it’s all over now, as Santorum is officially out of the race, and Mitt Romney is the last man standing. In honour of his time on the campaign trail, here’s ten reasons why we’ll miss Rick Santorum:

1 He may have seemed as boring as Mitt Romney (or RomneyBot) but he really wasn’t. He has family in Italy who are —gasp—Communists. I bet that beats Barack Obama and his madrasas in Indonesia anytime.

2 He’s the perfect Catholic. The U.S. didn’t have a Catholic president until JFK, and we all know how that turned out. Also, he has the perfect Catholic family. I mean, with eight children, I don’t know how he pays for the healthcare. (As long as the government doesn’t do it, who cares?)

3 Once, on the campaign trail, he called bullshit on a New York Times reporter for asking him if it was true that he said Mitt Romney was the worst Republican in the country. This was right after a speech several days before where he called Mitt Romney the worst possible Republican presidential candidate in the country. It sure doesn’t beat strangling someone a la Chrétien, but you know, Americans can only wish their politics were as interesting as ours. But the fact that he called out a reporter, that takes guts man, guts.

4 Now there’s no one to tell little boys they can’t bowl with pink bowling balls. While Romney is anti-gay now, it was a completely different story when he was governor of Massachusetts, so you never know. If Romney tests a new position on gay rights, and it turns out that more Republicans support it than oppose it, who’s going to be the anti-gay candidate in the election?

5 Santorum isn’t a Mormon. Now don’t get me wrong, Mormonism’s a perfectly acceptable faith, it even has its own musical. But as the leader of a party where Evangelical Christians are the most solid base of support, Romney’s going to have a lot of trouble convincing those folks, who by the way, don’t believe Mormons are Christians, that he’s not going to have them digging in their backyards for golden plates any time soon.

6 There isn’t going to be anyone waging a war on porn. We all know pornography is a scourge upon this world, but Santorum was the only one brave enough to stand up against all those twelve year old boys with sticky laptops and tell them that it’s time for a change.

7 Romney is a snob who went to university. It’s common knowledge that universities are places of liberal indoctrination. Who’s to say Romney isn’t a liberal sleeper agent just waiting to be activated? Now, Santorum may have went to three post-secondary institutions, but we all know he had enough moral fiber to withstand the liberal brainwashing, which is more than can be said for the majority of American youth.

8 Google “Santorum.” NSFW. Thank me later.

9 He hated libertarians. As awful as social conservatives are, they hold no candle to libertarians. Libertarians are like anarchists who happen to be members of the NRA. Ron Paul was great in that he was anti-war, but awful in that he came across as pro-heroin. Santorum recognized a dangerous, possibly extremist faction in his own party and vowed to combat it. Guts.

10 I may say a lot of outrageous things about conservatives, but I really do respect a person who holds true to their beliefs. In a sea of manufactured personalities, Santorum came across as genuine. As much as I disagree with his politics, and oh, how I disagree with all of them, I have to respect the man for at least putting his money where his mouth is and running on his beliefs. Hypocrites are a dime a dozen, but true-blue conservatives are hard to find.

Finally, let’s all give our condolences to Miss Congeniality, Newt Gingrich, who has finally accepted defeat and dropped out of the Republican primary. Let’s hope the trauma of losing doesn’t make him cheat on Callista.

F-35s and government lies: the Peter McKay story

Joseph Lee

For all the budgetary issues this country has, Canada can add one more to the ever-mounting list. The F-35 Lightning fighter, a fighter jet, is a multinational project that has been in development for a few years now. Initially, Canada signed on to purchase the jets along with the United States, Australia, Japan, Israel, and others. The idea was to spread the costs of the project over all of the nations which bought into it, so that the initial costs would go down. It was kind of like a Groupon discount.

The problem was that we signed on to the project while it was still in its development stages, so, as you know, costs are likely to go up, especially if the product in question is some sort of crazy war machine with a bunch of super-sophisticated bits and bobs.

So now the Canadian people have found out, through the Auditor General, that the cost of these jets is not $9 billion, which was the initial price we were told, or even $14.7 billion, which was the second price announced by the Defence Department. The cost is actually $24.7 billion. That’s a $10 billion discrepancy from the second announced price.

How does a government so enamored by their reputation as fiscally conservative deal with a discrepancy so huge? Well, first, they try to hide it. When that doesn’t work, there’s always the suppression of debate, and then the censorship of those who testify in front of committee.

It’s hard to say which is worse: that the Conservative government didn’t simply own up to the total cost of the program; or that they attempted to cover it up for such a long time. If this information had been revealed prior to the 2011 federal elections, we might be looking at a very different political landscape in Canada.

So who’s to blame?

Well, no one and everyone. Apparently, the good folks over at the Defence Department already knew about the pricing discrepancy, and the Right Honourable Minister of Defence, Peter McKay already knew about the (very generous) rounding down of the price of the jets. The fact that it took a report from the Auditor General to inform the Canadian public of this error is a shaming indictment of the transparency of the current Canadian government.

How are we expected to trust a government that not only actively lies to the Canadian people, but does not see it necessary to have a certain amount of fiscal responsibility in a time where the majority of Canadian people are having trouble paying their bills, much less footing the bill for fighter jets that we may never have to use in a combat situation?

The truth is, we really can’t trust this government. More to the point, we really can’t trust our Minister of Defence, you know, the guy in charge of defending the country from foreign threats. Hell, if you can’t trust that guy, I’m not sure you can trust anybody.

Peter McKay’s not a bad guy. I mean, I’ve always had the sneaking suspicion that he’s only able to get plum cabinet gigs because of his dashing looks and minor celebrity status, but so far, he’s been relatively competent.

He hasn’t been at the centre of as many controversies as the current President of the Treasury Board, Tony Clement, and he didn’t leave classified government documents at a TV station like our current Minister of Labour and union-bashing expert, Lisa Raitt, but as you can see, short of throwing a tantrum at an airport and being married to Rahim Jaffer, there’s really no way to get kicked out of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Should Peter McKay lose his job over the F-35 scandal? Definitely. Will he? It’s highly unlikely. He was the leader of the federal Progressive Conservatives for a good four months, and he’s one of Stephen Harper’s handful of trusty lieutenants, so it’s more than likely that he’s not even going to get so much as a slap on the wrist for his extremely unprofessional and duplicitous conduct.

These are strange times we live in. We all know that politicians lie, but $10 billion is a lot of money, and we’re seeing our government disregard figures as large as this for the sake of complying with our NATO allies. We all have to ask the question: is fighting wars more important to this government than the economic well-being of the people of Canada? If it is, we have to seriously rethink the mandate we gave them in 2011.

The ten commandments of online dating

Kelsey Rolfe

A good friend of mine has always been much more interested in my romantic endeavors, or lack thereof, than I am. She suggested that I sign up for online dating, just for the fun of it. “At the very least,” she said, “you’ll get some funny messages.” After some cajoling, I decided to give it a try.

I’m no expert on dating online, but after a month of being online, as well as hearing friends’ online dating horror stories, I think I have a good handle on what work—and what doesn’t. There’s no shame in dating online, but you have to be smart about it. Take note of these cardinal sins, or else you may find yourself with very few quality responses.

1 “Hi how r u” is not a legitimate conversation starter: It might be in real life, but not as an opening line (especially not if it’s spelled that incorrectly). It’s boring and lacks creativity. The aim of the game is to show the other person you actually took the time to read something about her. Find an interest that sticks out to you, and ask about it.

2 Generic messages are a dead give-away: If you write the same thing to every girl, believe me, it’s obvious. It only takes you a couple of minutes to read the profile of a girl you’re interested in, and a couple more to think of something creative to say. Don’t be lazy.

3 Don’t word-vomit: Keep your opening messages under a paragraph—which is three or four sentences maximum, and that’s being generous. Looking at a wall of text is frightening for most people, especially when they don’t know the sender. And the longer you ramble, the more prone you are to devolving into nonsense. In online dating, as in show business, always leave them wanting more.

4 Ask her about herself: It’s not that she isn’t interested in you. But opening with a paragraph about how awesome you are just isn’t going to get a response, because it sounds narcissistic. Attaching one line to that paragraph that asks her about herself isn’t much better.

5 Backwards compliments will get you nowhere: A “neg” is an insult wrapped in a compliment. Some guys use them as opening lines, in the hopes of catching a girl’s attention. (Like saying, “I don’t usually go for nerds, but you’re cute so it’s okay.”) Be better than that guy.

6 Avoid the ab-shot at all costs: Taking a picture in the mirror of your abdominals is not the best choice here. It’s the equivalent of when 13-year-old girls make the duck-face. I’m so happy that you have a six-pack. But you are more than your abs. Let your picture showcase that.

7 Speaking of pictures, don’t use one of you and your last girlfriend: If that’s the only picture you have of yourself, take a new one. Please.

8 Don’t send photos of your peen to unsuspecting women: Give the poor woman some warning before you unleash the Kraken. Or, better yet, save it for Chatroulette.

9 You’re means you are. Your means your: And yes, it is important. Your sentences take on different meanings if you mess this one up. Same goes for other oft-confused words, such as they’re/their/there and its/it’s. Don’t be ashamed if you don’t know the difference; just Google it before you send the message.

10 Give your messages a cursory edit: A grammatically and syntactically correct message, with proper spelling, shows her you care. And, as an added bonus, you look 30 per cent smarter.

Just take these ten commandments into consideration, and you will do no wrong in the world of online dating. Unless you’re a bona fide creep. In that case, I just can’t help you.

The Limits of DrugsNot4Me

Hana Shafi

Eighteen-year-old Chris Fotos couldn’t turn his brain off. His thoughts were buzzing for hours. Desperate to fall asleep, he alternated between the couches in his basement, unable to stay on one for more than hour, sweating, leaving each couch drenched. Fotos’s high diminished after eight hours.

His experience seemed to resemble the nightmarish scenes shown in Health Canada’s DrugsNot4Me commercials, particularly one where a young boy has a flash-forward about what might happen to his life if he smokes pot at a party. But Fotos, now 19, wasn’t on any socially unacceptable drugs—he took one pill of Concerta, an ADHD medication prescribed to one of his friends.

While DrugsNot4Me attempts to discourage the use of drugs like marijuana, ecstasy. and crack cocaine, there’s no mention of the abuse of prescription drugs, a growing issue among Canadian youth.

DrugsNot4Me is a youth-targeted campaign aiming to decrease illegal drug use among Canadian youth as part of the National Anti-Drug Strategy, announced in 2007 by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and funded by $50 million.

“I didn’t know it’d be exactly like meth,” Fotos says, describing his experience taking Concerta. “I can’t believe they’re giving that to kids.” While Concerta may not be exactly like meth, Fotos’ claims are not entirely false. According to the Canadian Alcohol and Drug Use Monitoring Survey, stimulant drugs used to treat ADHD, like Concerta, Ritalin, and Adderall, are described as “amphetamine-like drugs.”

But while the “Drug Facts” page of the DrugsNot4Me website contains information about the harms of cocaine and meth, there isn’t one category on the page that deals with the harms of abusing prescription drugs.

“Money is not really a huge factor in obtaining and abusing prescription drugs because your parents will have it,” says senior toxicologist, Hana Fikree. “For things like opioid drugs that can actually act on the cardiovascular system, abusing these kinds of drugs is serious.”

Opioids are pain reliever drugs and the most commonly used prescription drugs in Canada. In fact, 18 per cent of students in Ontario reported using opioid pain relievers non-medically. In total, 20 per cent of Ontario students reported using at least one prescription drug non-medically in 2009, while 75 percent got it from their parents.

The first time Fotos used a prescription drug non-medically, he took six pills of the drug amitriptyline. At the time, it was prescribed to his father. “The big risk is prescriptions. You could die. They’re just more dangerous because a lot of them are based on the street drugs that you would never do,” Fotos says.

Many prescription drugs do contain very diluted forms of certain “street drugs.” Taken in excess amounts, they can lead to dependence. “The active ingredient of Tylenol 3 is codeine, which is metabolized to morphine. Morphine is structurally similar to heroin,” Fikree says.

Even non-prescription over-the-counter drugs have potential for abuse. Twelve-hour Sudafed, a cold medicine and decongestant containing pseudo-ephedrine, can be used to create crystal meth, Fikree says. “There’s a reason why the 12-hour stuff is not on the shelf anymore,” she says. “You don’t need a doctor’s prescription for it, but you do need to ask a pharmacist for it.”

However, while the DrugsNot4Me campaign may not address the issue of prescription drug abuse, it does aim to decrease illicit drug use where it’s more prevalent, particularly in vulnerable communities in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Nunavut. The DrugsNot4Me website also includes numbers to various helplines that teens can call if they’re struggling with addiction or feel pressured by their peers to engage in drug use.

Although DrugsNot4Me focuses on the use of illegal drugs, it does support other groups that choose to spread awareness on the abuse of prescription drugs. Partnership for a Drug Free Canada recently launched their first major national multi-media campaign. Their commercials show the statistics from CAMH’s 2009 Ontario Youth Study on how 20 per cent of Ontario teenagers have abused prescription drugs, and three quarters of them get the drugs from home.

PDFC approached Health Canada and the DrugsNot4Me campaign on the issue. “Their strategy did not include that because the research they had at that time, it [prescription drug abuse] was not as significant a problem as it is today,” says Marc Paris, Executive Director for PDFC. “They couldn’t change their course midway,” he added. However, Health Canada was pleased that another group would take the time to address the issue said Paris.

But some young people feel that even with combatting the problem of illicit drug use, DrugsNot4Me misses the mark. “I think that those ads are fear mongering,” says Ryerson’s vice-president equity, Rodney Diverlus. “They play on stereotypes of what a drug-user looks like, it’s portrayed in a really patronizing, negative light.” The DrugsNot4Me website lists peer pressure, pleasure, boredom, self-esteem, mental illness and coping with stress, among other reasons, as to why young people use drugs.

Diverlus, however, believes that there are also other socioeconomic issues that prompt drug use, and believes that addressing those issues will ultimately decrease drug use, whether it be illicit or prescription drugs. “It’s in tackling things like youth poverty and youth homelessness, tackling things like violence and sexual assaults,” Diverlus says. “Telling people not to do something doesn’t work. It’s about providing resources for people, providing rehabilitation, contact for clinics, youth groups, community groups that are catered to actually providing resources.”

The National Anti-Drug Strategy is currently slated to continue until 2015. But, whether or not the DrugsNot4Me campaign will effectively change the drug behaviours of youth remains questionable.

“Most kids are gonna do drugs,” said Fotos, “so, let them know how to be safe. That’s how you’re gonna save lives.”

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