Busy week in the media

When you're in the newspaper game, nothing's more likely to get you ribbed at your place of work than appearing in the competition's paper . . . especially twice in one week! Last week, I was one of a group of local media "celebrities" (a term I use loosely) -- including with Time Colonist theatre critic Adrian Chamberlain -- who agreed to help out Kaleidoscope Theatre with their annual fundraiser. No surprise, then, that a group shot appeared in the TC (which, for those of you reading outside the Victoria area, is both the daily newspaper in town and Monday Magazine's longstanding rival), which naturally resulted in some good-natured mocking of me at work that day.
And then, two days later, guess who ended up in the TC again? Yep, me. This time, I was the focus of Adrian Chamberlain's weekly "Backstage" column and while the piece was technically to push my upcoming "History of the Disc Jockey" course at UVic, it ended up being mostly about my background as a witch. (What does witchcraft have to do with DJs? Uh, absolutely nothing.) I can only imagine the ribbing I'll be in for at work on Monday. Sheesh!

Pagan Spin Enlivens Course on DJs
by Adrian Chamberlain
Times Colonist, Saturday March 11, 2006

In Victoria, it's possible to take a university course about disc jockeys from an honest-to-goodness witch.
Isn't this city wonderful?
John Threlfall, 42, is a journalist, pop-culture aficionado -- and witch. On March 22, he'll teach a two-hour course for the University of Victoria's continuing studies department: Play That Funky Music: Sixty years of Disc Jockey Culture.
I may be going out on a limb here, but in my opinion, Threlfall doesn't look anything like a witch. No broom, no cauldron, no black hood. He does have a tattoo of a great big beetle on his forearm, but it possesses no witchy significance. For an interview in the study of his Fernwood digs, he wore a Rheostatics T-shirt. He could pass for a Monday magazine arts writer, which -- in fact -- is exactly what he is.
I've gotten to know John a little in the past few years. He's a nice fellow, and a good theatre critic. I want to ask him about his DJ course and all. But first things first . . . what about this wicca stuff?
"I just use [the term] witch," said Threlfall, "because wicca, it's so confusing."
It turns out this is his 20th year as a witch (what do witches receive on such an anniversary, a gold pentacle inscribed with one's favourite rune?). The Burnaby native was initiated in 1986 by a female coven member. The ritual took place on the University of B.C.'s endowment lands, with a crackling fire and a gaggle o' witchy folk.
"You could see it as being stereotypically hokey," he said. "But no more so than a baptism."
Victoria is reputed to be Canada's witch capital. The late writer and lecturer Robin Skelton was one. Past TC stories have chronicled the exploits of witches who gathered in sacred circles on the beach -- or even Beacon Hill Park -- to sing and chant. One article said 5,000 witch-types showed up in Victoria 24 years ago for a "congress of the covens." (My colleague Jim Gibson says this is untrue. His rationale may be shaky, though. He phoned all the hardware stores to see if pitchfork sales were up. They weren't.)
There is, says Threlfall, a pagan group at William Head prison. "And there's a woman who does pagan chaplaincy at Victoria General Hospital." (A hospital spokesperson said there's no one on staff who does this, but added it's possible a pagan chaplain visits patients on an informal, unregistered basis.)
Some locals mistakenly equate witchcraft with Satanism, perhaps because of the notorious 1980 book Michelle Remembers, in which a Victoria woman described "recovered" memories of having survived ritual satanic abuse.
Threlfall says conventional wisdom pegs the combined witch population on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands at 5,000. But some could be witch variants like "small 'P' pagans" and new age goddesses.
Threlfall professes to be the real deal, though. He's taught courses about witchcraft for 13th House Mystery School, which, apparently, is a Victoria witch school (who knew?). He also taught two continuing-education courses on all things witchy for UVic, entitled Out of the Broom Closet. He and his wife, also a witch, don't get out to wicca activities so much anymore. But that's because they're too busy raising two young children.
So how does one become interested in becoming a witch? By listening to too many Black Sabbath albums in junior high? Threlfall says it may stem from having read Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy as a 12-year-old. He also had some ghostly ESP-type experiences as a kid.
"I remember thinking, 'It's too bad witches don't exist anymore, because I'd be a great witch.' "
As a teenager, Threlfall shared his interest in witchcraft with just one other friend. He passed for a regular high-school dude, sporting the regulation mullet cut and jean jacket. In those pre-Internet days, he haunted bookstores for witchcraft lore, finally scoring the motherlode at Surrey's Phoenix Metaphysical Books. Through the bookstore, he tracked down a few witchy contacts. Before he knew it, Threlfall was entering witch-dom in the dark forests of UBC.
If I had become a witch as a young man, I think the most difficult thing would be telling my parents. You know, "Mum, Dad, I have something to tell you. I'm a, um . . . I'm a witch." They would have been really, really annoyed. They wanted me to be an architect.
But for Threlfall's folks, it wasn't such a big deal. His parents, now Saltspring Island sheep farmers, are pretty hip, after all. His dad's a former jazz bassist, his mum's a watercolour painter.
"I had always marched to the beat of a different drummer, anyways," he says.
Note: Threlfall's course, Play That Funky Music, covers New York DJ pioneer Martin Block, Adrian Cronauer of Good Morning, Vietnam fame, Alan Freed and Vancouver legend Red Robinson. It runs 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday, March 22. Tuition is $15. For information, call 472-4747.
© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2006