Town Centre Park renamed > Public space and corporate interests intersect Colten Kamlade Staff Reporter t was recently announced on the Coquitlam City website that the name of Coquitlam Town Centre Park is being renamed TD Community Plaza. TD Bank Group is sponsoring improvements to the park, totaling $250,000. The park is used for sports, performances, and other gatherings. Though Coquitlam City is clearly enthused about this new partnership, some have reservations about renaming public spaces after private corporations. Eugene McCann, professor of geography at Simon Fraser University, said there are clear reasons why the City might be tempted to accept such an offer. “Public spaces are crucial for urban life and for democracy ... parks, plazas, squares etc, are places where people come together to express their political opinions, for example ... So, what might be the implications of a public space being funded and branded by a private corporation? On the one hand, obviously, a local government might be attracted to such a funding arrangement because it means they can pay for physical improvements and also programming that they might not have been able to provide otherwise,” he said in an email interview with the Other Press. Despite these benefits, McCann says that there are other potential social harms that should be considered, the least of these being how we perceive our city. “We find it harder and harder to look in any direction without seeing a brand. Our world moves closer to the science fiction of films like Blade Runner or Minority Report. Many people might not be bothered by this, but others are. It influences our experience of cities,” said McCann. He said that there are other, likely more important issues that should be discussed. These include the control of public space. For instance, who can enter the space, for how long, and what they can do in it. “Corporate funding of public spaces and amenities has potential implications for control and decision- making in cities. Geographers and other urban researchers have pointed to a general erosion of the true publicness of public spaces in recent decades as existing ones are increasingly privatized,” McCann said. According to McCann, there are subtler ways that spaces can become less public. “Sometimes, the space is still largely public, but it becomes more and more reliant on private funding from sponsors to be maintained and for festivals, concerts, etc. take place init. In those cases, city governments might worry about not offending funders when they make decisions about how they should use ostensibly public spaces ... so this is the second way in which public spaces become less public—the scope of potential uses can be constrained by powerful private (funder) interests and decision- making can become less democratic if these criteria are not made explicit to the general public” said McCann. McCann emphasized that he did not have extensive knowledge of the TD Bank Group sponsorship, but that these are some of the questions that geographers and urban planners think about when faced with similar situations. Photo by Analyn Cuarto Aboriginal Garden flourishes at Douglas > Traditional plants bring people together Colten Kamlade Staff Reporter he Aboriginal Garden, which was planted with seedlings in April, has fared well over the past few of months. The tobacco lies close to the ground, towered over by the sage and sweetgrass that blow in the wind. These plants are sacred to Indigenous cultures, and according to David Seaweed, Aboriginal student services coordinator, the garden has, and will be, the focus of numerous events. “We actually did a planting lunch in early April for a large number of college folk. We also had three more dinner workshops in April for the garden. We will probably try and incorporate the garden in one of our National Aboriginal Day events in June. The Advanced Student Leadership Program also want to do [an] event that they can also include the garden in,” Seaweed said in an email interview with the Other Press. When it comes time, the harvesting of the plants will be an event itself, Seaweed said. “When the plants have grown, we will pick and process through ceremony, and then re-plant,” he said. Seaweed also mentioned that they are partnered with the Sol (sustainability, outreach, and learning) Garden at the Douglas College Coquitlam campus. This garden was created as part of a partnership between Douglas College and the Institute of Urban Ecology (UE) in 2016. Though there are no plans for future expansions to the garden, benches were just installed last Monday near the garden on the roof of the campus. The garden is open for anyone to enjoy, and the seating is certainly an incentive to visit the peaceful spot. It is located on the fourth floor of the New Westminster campus, near the Aboriginal Gathering Place, which is also open to the public. According to the Douglas College website, Seaweed said that the placement of the two spaces next to each other was an important consideration when choosing the location of the garden. “We wanted the garden to go hand in hand with the Aboriginal Gathering Place, and we wanted to create a garden that would provide medicinal value as well as enhance the spiritual essence of the space,” said Seaweed on the website. Douglas student embroiled in kidnapping scam > Student safely located after leaving country Jake Wray News Editor student in New Westminster was recently caught up ina kidnapping scam orchestrated through social media, according to the New Westminster Police Department. The student, who attended Douglas College according to an article from Tri-City News, received a threatening message on Chinese social media service WeChat. The message, sent by scammers, said the student’s parents would be harmed unless she followed the scammers’ instructions. The scammers forced her to leave Canada. Meanwhile, the scammers used WeChat to contact the student’s family claiming they had kidnapped her. The scammers demanded ransom from the family. The student was safely located in another country and the New Westminster Police Department is investigating the incident, according to a press release issued by the New Westminster Police Department. “When incidents like this occur, students are threatened, defrauded of money, and coerced to go into hiding,” Sergeant Jeff Scott said in the press release. “Once the online scammers have intimidated the student into hiding, they contact the parents and defraud them out of money.” This scam template has been used to target Chinese and Taiwanese university students across Canada and around the world. News reports indicate victims in Vancouver, Calgary, Halifax, Montreal, Australia and numerous other locations. Two students in Vancouver were targeted by the scam in early May, according to a report by CBC News. A separate CBC News report says two students in Calgary were also targeted in early May. “The duress it puts the family in is unbelievable,” said acting duty inspector Jeff Bell of the Calgary Police Service, according to CBC News. The scam has targeted at least 25 families and netted approximately $2 million AUD in Australia, the Australian Federal Police told ABC News.