The Squamidian Report – Nov. 19 / 05
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Hi All,
For the last couple of weeks or so there has been a film production company camped out on the Chief’s parking lots. There are trucks and tents down on the main lot, as well as spread all the way up the access road and on the upper lots. I have no idea what movie they are filming but they seem to be doing it at night. Each morning on the way to work while it is still dark, sections of the bush by the cliff are illuminated brightly. Same thing each evening on the way back from work. There are bright lights back in the rocky treed areas lighting the surroundings.
This is a popular section of the country for filming movies. It is quite common for sections of the highway to be closed off while something is filmed. The shoreline of the Sound is often a filming location. The many island, bays, old building and streets all seem to be good candidates. Same with down town Vancouver. It is used for both TV and movie filming of a regular basis. A lot of TV and movie stars have homes in the city or the Whistler area. And it is not uncommon to see some of them on the sidewalks or in the malls.
*
We are currently running the hydro and phone duct banks up the new roads on the mountain side at Britannia. That means a lot of trenching for the conduit as well as the vault boxes and transformer bases. That kind of stuff normally requires about a meter of cover but there are sections where the road base is still a meter below finished grade. That makes it kind of hard to bury the banks and set the boxes. I have to scrape for every bit of backfill material I can find to use as protection cover over the conduit and to place around the boxes until the road is brought up to grade. It also means I use up many extra loads of bedding sand in an effort to protect the installation. Don’t know who is paying for that stuff but I’m glad it’s not me.
This development is on the north side of the Britannia Bay valley system which means it gets some sunlight during the day. Preliminary work is starting on the next phase of development. It will be on the south side of the valley which means it will get almost no sunlight during the late fall to early spring section of the year. Very similar to the Valley Cliff section of Squamish which is in the shadow of ‘The Chief’ during most of the year. I don’t think I’d want to spend half a million bucks on a lot in Britannia and build a million dollar house on it, only to find out it gets almost no sunshine. But that is common in mountain terrain. Each east / west running valley has a sunny side and a shaded side. North / south running valleys get to share the sun during the day. The west side gets the morning sun and the east side gets the afternoon sun.
The Squamish Valley where we live runs north / south so it gets sun all day. Even at that, down in the valley bottom it is dark until later in the morning and earlier in the evening than up here in the Highlands.
And there, I’ve just managed to fill up my column without writing anything meaningful what so ever. And now on to stuff that is much more interesting.
d
****
Winter has arrived at Fern Glen Inn! Here it is, mid November with half a foot of snow on the ground, and I haven't written an update since hot and sunny July! At lot has happened in the past three and half months, too much for me to try to recount at once. So for now, I'll just update you on the past two weeks and hopefully share some of my summer stories another time.
Big City, Bright Lights
Jim and I had our first getaway together since moving up here in February. Our trip was a mix of business and pleasure in the booming metropolis of Sudbury. I'm only half-joking when I refer to Sudbury as a metropolis. This city of 150,000 people would seem pretty small-potatoes to those of you in southern Ontario, but it's crowded and bustling compared to our local town of Huntsville, population 18,000.
We were in Sudbury for two days for a convention of B&B owners. That in itself was very interesting with the opportunity to talk shop with others in the business. We also had plenty of time for fun. For starters, admission to Science North was included with the convention. Science north is like a smaller-scale version of Toronto's Science Centre, which I've always loved visiting. I'm proud to report that I faced a major fear of mine while at one of the Science North exhibits: I actually went into the butterfly room!!! Although fascinated by their beautiful colouring, I've been seriously afraid of these winged beasts for as long as I can remember. In the conservatory room, they were loose and flying around, but I kept my wits about me and even though I couldn't exactly relax, I did enjoy the close-up view of the ones that were nice and still on a tree or something. Another highlight of Science North, Jim and I got to test drive a Segway scooter! Most of you will have seen on TV or read about these neat two-wheeled scooters that have the amazing ability to balance themselves and their rider. Controlling the machine is quite easy to get used to, it responds remarkably well to subtle movements of the foot or shift of balance. It was worth the drive to Sudbury just to try it out. I believe it's a regular exhibit at the centre, so if you're ever in the nickel belt, do check it out.
While in Sudbury, we also had a great chance to reconnect with some of our B&B guests. We had a couple from there stay with us twice over the summer (and then the wife and her girlfriends came back a few weeks ago for a 50th birthday celebration). The husband, Adelmo, told us he works at the mine and that he'd give us a tour if we were ever in the area. So we took him up on the offer and had the coolest experience. First we had to put on white overalls, boots, safety belt, goggles, helmet and head lamp. Then Adelmo took us in an elevator, "the cage", in one mine shaft down 4,000 feet below ground! Our ears were popping the whole time. We didn't get to tour around down there, just down and up again, but we got glimpses of the different mine levels when we stopped to let miners off.
Next, Adelmo drove us down to another mine. They call it a trackless mine because the vehicles are all diesel with wheels as opposed to rail cars on tracks. We went down about 1,000 feet, driving down a spiral like a parking garage. Except this parking garage looked like it was from the Flintstones because it was all tunnels blasted out of solid rock. We got to see the mechanics garage where they service the mining equipment and talked with a miner who started giving us the "death tour", as I like to call it, pointing to various locations where someone had died, and explaining how they died. Definitely not the typical tourist tour. We got to see the drilling equipment that drills the holes and fills them with explosives. Adelmo is an engineer and his job is to provide specs on where to drill, how many holes, how deep, the order of timing for the explosives. I think what I liked best was watching the scoop trucks at work. These are the big, articulated vehicles that have bulldozer-like buckets on the front for scooping the muck (blasted rock and ore) and taking it away for processing. Now I have an inkling of why little boys get so excited about tractors and big machines. I'm not usually into these things, but it was really neat.
To finish up our little getaway, we had dinner with Adelmo and his wife, Nancy, AND another couple who were our second B&B guests way back in May. The wife of this couple also worked at a mine in Sudbury. When we mentioned this to Adelmo on his first visit, he checked it out when he got back home and discovered she worked at the same mine. So Adelmo invited the May couple and the six of us had dinner together. It turns out the two couples, although they hadn't met before, had some common childhood connections. Small world. Or I guess Sudbury isn't as big as we thought.
Unique Birthday Present
I got a real live fireman for my birthday on the 11th. Not what I had on my wish list, but certainly unique and rather thrilling. Jim was called to his first house fire that afternoon. He's been on the volunteer fire department for a number of months now and has been to some bush fires and vehicle roll-overs, but this was the first time battling a significant blaze at a family home. The fire was at a house in the town of Burk's Falls, just 20 km north of us. I don't know how the fire started, but no one was home and there were no injuries. The Burk's Falls fire department had to call for backup from two neighbouring towns, including ours. Jim was up on a 20 foot ladder, manning the hose, in full gear including oxygen tank. He was also in the burning house briefly. He sustained a minor steam burn on his temple but nothing serious, and his brand new fireman suit is now dirty. He came home stinky, smoky and sweaty; and proud to be a fireman.
Interesting Guest
Many of our guests are interesting in a myriad of ways, but most recently we had a lady who is the basis for a character in the recently released movie, The Constant Gardener. This guest is a doctor who, while working at Sick Kid's Hospital, blew the whistle on a drug company. She was subsequently fired (four times, after numerous appeals) and sued by both the drug company and the university which receives a lot of money from said drug company. This all started 10 years ago and it is STILL in litigation. Talking with her was a fascinating eye-opener on just how vulnerable we all are to the few that have the big bucks. Both the movie and the book of the same title have been getting excellent reviews. I probably won't see the film until it comes out on dvd, so if any of you go to see it, I'd love to read your review.
Did I mention it's winter here?
We had a lovely couple stay with us last night. They arrived late in the afternoon and were heading out for dinner in Huntsville around 6:00 in the evening. They were back at my door within 20 minutes, which surprised me because Huntsville is 25 minutes away. They told me they had a car accident just a few kilometers down the road. They were going down a hill, there was a curve at the bottom, but the road was too slippery and the car just would not respond. They ended up hitting a rock and flipping over onto the roof of the car. Remarkably, they were able to undo their seatbelts and crawl out the window, unhurt. A local fellow driving past gave them a ride back here. They were quite shaken, obviously, and a little stunned. The husband, Scott, called his insurance company, who called the OPP, who came out to investigate. The officer hadn't even seen the car in the ditch on his drive out here, but did see another Jeep that had spun out. When the tow truck came to flip the car back over and tow it away, the tow truck spun out and couldn't make it up the hill. They had to call the township to come sand the road. We're getting our snow tires on the SUV on Monday! The first snowfall is the worst for driving. When there's a good base of snow it gets packed hard on the frozen gravel and provides exceptional traction.
This couple wasn't lucky with their timing, but they were certainly lucky with the results. The roof is apparently squished in, both windshields shattered, stuff (including a bulky camera) was flying around inside while they were turning over; yet they walked out without a scratch. They woke up pretty stiff and sore, but hopefully that's the worst of it. They were also very appreciative of our hospitality, although I didn't do anything I wouldn't do for a friend. I made them a nice dinner, got some hot herbal tea in them to calm them down, and set the wife up comfortably in our living room while the husband was out at the wreck with the OPP officer. All in a day's work, right?
Enough Already!
Wow. I can't believe how much I rambled on and that's just a two week period! I didn't even mention about the power outages all around us but--knock wood--not affecting us for more than two hours. Or the strange local artist who had lunch here with our doctor guest. Or our busy days hauling wood out to prepare for the winter and some neat fallen trees out there. Or the heart-stopping beauty of our forest under it's thick blanket of snow. All that for another time. I have a feeling I'll be racking up more stories as I go along.
Take care for now,
****
Hello
everyone!
Well it
looks like we may be heading for an election within a few weeks. What a lousy
time to be heading to the polls! We seem to be on the edge of winter and will
probably be knee deep in show by the time we head out to vote. Not to mention
Christmas is just around the corner and another question comes to mind “Will
the upcoming election be lost in the middle of all the pre Christmas hubbub?”
I’d be willing to bet one or the other will suffer at the hands of the other. I
personally don’t care what time of year we have the next election as long as we
get a government that will make an effort to stop lying to us and stealing from
us. Hahahahaaaa…. Fat chance of that! It really doesn’t matter which party is
in power there will be corruption of sorts in Ottawa. The fact that the Gomery
Inquiry cost the tax payers another 25 million dollars is just another pin in
the public Voodoo Doll. The Liberals will shrug this off like a flea off the
back of a hound and live to rule another day. Our present PM is a Liberal
through and through and I do not believe he knew nothing about the pilfering of
public funds that went on in the Previous Liberal PM’s office. When you are in
charge of the finances of a business or a country, you either know where every
penny is or you’re lying when you say you don’t! Mr Martin had to know when
that much money was being moved out of the coffers. I guess I could go on and
on about this but no matter what I say or believe governments will always be
shifty and there’s very little we can do about it.
Let’s do
our part and get out and vote in the next election and maybe we’ll get a
government that will at least be so shit scared of making the same mistakes
that they’ll be honest for a while anyway. Don’t worry about the PM being out
of a job, he’ll just have to go back to running his little family business.
*
Believe
it or not, I took a stab at a political career many years ago. When I was in
high school I was elected to the students council as a class rep. I was
subsequently appointed to be chairman of the students “Parking Committee”. It
was a pretty important position to be in. After all, not just anybody can
choose what colour to make the windshield parking stickers for 45 cars. I
served on this committee for two years and by grade 12 was a pretty confident
council member. The suggestion that I run for student council “Head Boy” (a
title that I never really liked) was made to me early in the school year. I
gave it some thought and figured since there was little chance of me making
much of a mark as a scholar while at KCI I might as well give the top council
position a try. The first hurdle to clear was to get elected. I attended the
meetings with the School administration and had to promise to bring my grades
up to a new high. They told me that I would be removed from the position for
poor performance in the classroom should I be elected and not live up to the
“marks” standard. That was the least of my problems at the moment. I first had
to get a few students to act as my campaign committee. The guys that had
laughed at my jokes and hooked off with me to play pool over the years were all
too willing to help me with this project. We put on a blistering campaign of
posters, lapel buttons, promises of better food choices in the cafeteria and
shorter detentions. Man I thought I was a shoe in! Well, the campaign lasted
two weeks I believe and then the election. I ran against a “Tech Bum” as we
called them by the name of Steve Calma. We’ll in the end, Steve whipped my ass
by a sizzling 54 votes. I had to admit he did take the whole thing a little
more serious than I and in the final analysis did one bang up job of being
“Head Boy”. I went on with my usual “As long as I pass” attitude and finished
grade 12 with little or no fanfare. I guess “Head Boy” was enough of a
political experience for Steve too. He joined the Kitchener Police force and
ended his career as a Detective Sergeant with the Waterloo Regional Police
after more than 30 years. He’s now retired and enjoying a hard earned break.
I think
it takes a special person to be a successful, honest politician at any level
and of course there are many of them. Like in any other profession, it only
takes one bad apple to cast a shadow of doubt on the quality of the rest.
Unfortunately we’ve had a run of bad bruises in the Liberal party barrel. Let’s
hope things improve with the next governing party whoever they may be. Be sure
to Vote!
Gotta go
for now!
Have a
good week and I look forward to talking to you all again next time in The
Ontarion Report.
Bye for now…. GREG.
PS:
Something To Think About>
Two men
look out through the same bars.
One man
sees the mud and one sees the stars.
****
The Family and the Squamidian sites:
http://members.shaw.ca/doug_b/ and http://www.thedougsite.ca
Have a good one..
the
doug
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