Massage Parlour?
NOT.
Winnipeg holistic health clinics threatened by City bylaw

By SYD BAUMEL
Editor

"A scan of The Aquarian quickly reveals the growing number and variety of local practitioners of nonmainstream healing," Gail Matheson writes in our front page story on professional ethics among holistic healers. As this issue goes to press, the City of Winnipeg's licensing department is scanning those same pages. But they're not looking to crack down on unethical healers. Their sights are set on a different beast: bodywork therapists – reflexologists, Reiki Masters, practitioners of therapeutic touch, and the like – who are violating a city bylaw. It's a bylaw that makes no distinction between a reflexologist and a paid escort, between a holistic health centre and a massage parlour.

"They were in here, and the inspector said he was going to a number of other places using The Aquarian as a resource to find out where people are working," hypnotherapist John Tozeland, owner of the Aurora Center for Well-Being on Portage Avenue, told me on February 26. A day earlier, a City of Winnipeg licensing inspector had come to the Aurora Center and warned Tozeland there was only room for one "massagist" under the Center's roof.

Massagist?

As far as City statutes are concerned, anyone who touches another person's body for money and isn't a licensed massage therapist, a physiotherapist, or a chiropractor belongs to the hypothetical trade of massagist. And two or more massagists doth a massage parlour make.

This was not news for Tozeland.

"When we opened [in 1999], we applied for a massage parlour licence because we were told that's the only thing we could do," Tozeland recalls. "And three days before we opened, they phoned and said 'sorry, you can't have one, you're not in the right area.'"

Back then the City was willing and able to distinguish between a health centre where people come to be touched without hanky panky and a massage parlour. The City backed off.

But this year on February 27th, its inspector returned. He ordered the Center's three unlicensed practitioners of reflexology, huna kane massage, orthobionomy, and Reiki to comply immediately with the bylaw. They did. One applied for a $102 massagist license and the other two began working on anything but people's bodies. Not – says Tozeland – that that means the Aurora Center is going to take the City's spanking lying down.

Neither are Richard Shirray and Lily Gompf.

It was an exasperated Shirray who on February 14th dared a City inspector to scan The Aquarian for bylaw offenders – offenders like himself and Gompf. The two versatile bodywork therapists, who say they have taught medical doctors and received referrals from them, had also come face to face with the City's massage parlour bylaw shortly after they opened their clinic, the Health & Wellness Group of Manitoba, on Ness Avenue. That was seven years ago, and they too were in the wrong neighbourhood for a massage parlour.

"We asked [the City] for a holistic category," Gompf recalls, "and they said 'no, there is no holistic category,' and they gave us a Building Occupancy Permit, because we're doing so many things here." Among those things: Reiki, reflexology, polarity therapy, shiatsu, and (for the mind) affirmations. The City let them be.

That is, until this February 14^th. Suddenly the City was playing hardball, its licensing inspector promising to return the next week with papers ordering them to comply with the bylaw. The couple promptly fired off a long letter of appeal to the City's Acting Chief Licensing Inspector, Bryan Verity. In return they received a stark, nine page fax of the relevant bylaw code. But a week after the City inspector's promised return visit, he still had not materialized. Instead he'd landed at Tozeland's Aurora Center, with assurances that this was the start of a city-wide campaign.

Why has the City suddenly stopped looking the other way? Shirray has no clue. Bryan Verity should, but he didn't return my "I'd like to hear your side of the story" voice mail on February 27 or the day after as this article went to press. But he did return Tozeland's call on the 27th.

Like Shirray and Gompf, Tozeland took the opportunity to try and get Verity to review the bylaw – designed to regulate the sex trade – that now was putting therapeutic bodyworkers out of business.

"What I suggested to him was that maybe the City should look at a whole other category – a holistic practitioner category," Tozeland recalled. "He said there is not going to be any licensing for holistic practitioners. I said, never? He said never. I said how come? He said, because we have massagists, and it's too messy an area."

The conversation then veered into a bureaucratic labyrinth. "But you're in charge of licensing," Tozeland replied. To which Verity "said it's the province that would have to determine the criteria for holistic practitioners." Tozeland countered: "So they're the ones that would tell you whether to do it [create a new licensing category]." Verity shot back: "No, I write the report."

As far as Tozeland could tell, the bottom line was "he's just not going to do it."

For Tozeland, Shirray, and Gompf, the only recourse now is to appeal – to the Mayor and City Council, the Provincial Government, the media, and the people of Winnipeg – through letters, faxes, e-mail campaigns, and petitions. (Shirray and Gompf are also mounting a defense through their lawyer.) Tozeland, who can be reached for more information at 945-9400, wants to band together with other beleaguered and mislabelled "massagists" and "massage parlours." "I don't mind being the coordinator," he says. Tozeland also urges people who support the cause of recategorizing holistic practitioners (or simply allowing them to operate with a business license alone, as is the practice in Saskatoon and B.C.) to phone, write, fax, or email the city and province's movers and shakers. People like your City Councillor, your MLA, and:
 

Bryan Verity, Acting Chief Licensing Inspector City of Winnipeg License Branch 18 – 81 Garry Street R3C 4X3 Phone: 986-6424 His Worship Mayor Glen Murray Mayor's Office Council Building City Hall 510 Main Street Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 1B9 Phone: 986-2196 Fax: 949-0566 E-mail: GMURRAY@city.winnipeg.mb.ca Hon. Dave Chomiak Minister of Health Room 302 Legislative Building Winnipeg MB R3C 0V8 minhlt@leg.gov.mb.ca Hon. Becky Barrett Minister of Labour 156 Legislative Building Winnipeg MB R3C 0V8 Phone: 945-4079 Fax: 945-8312

Signs of a Solution Within days of publication of this story, a breakthrough in the standoff between "massagists" and the City occured. "According to The City and a group of determined holistic practitioners, a solution . . . is positively in the works," we later reported. Read the full article here.