The Squamidian Report – Jan. 20 / 07
Issue # 243
Also in this issue:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
Last weeks addition came out rather early because I was having trouble sleeping and so was up wandering around the house at 1:30 AM. This weeks is coming out early because we have to leave the house at 6 AM to take Sue to the airport.
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Eagle watching is part of this area’s tourist industry. They (the tourists) come from all over the world to see the big birds. So when you go to the dyke overlooking the river you see and hear all sorts of people and languages. Everyone has a camera or binoculars or scopes with them. And everyone seems a bit surprised when they find out you are a local. I guess for some reason they don’t expect locals to be there looking at the birds.
We dropped by the eagle viewing area last Sunday. It was clear and bright but a tad on the cold side, like about –10 or so. There were lots of eagles perched in the trees across the river and quite a few down at the waters edge. A young one was sitting on a stump root eating a fish. Through the scope you could see the young teenager type look of mischief on its brown face. It won’t get that signature white head for another year or so. The majority of the birds were off up the valleys gliding around on the updrafts, which is what they seem to like doing. Kind of a bird hobby I guess. We often see them fly low over our place on their way up into the Mamquam area. Must be good updraft areas there.
The coolest thing when standing on the dyke is when an eagle comes gliding in at eye level over the river on 7 foot outstretched wings. Kind of like a small airplane going by.
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I actually got to use our snow blower this week. We received a few inches of snow and it needed to be cleared from the driveway before work. So out came the blower and it was done in no time. Then once I got to work the decision was made that to pack it in for the day because the snowfall was increasing. We are laying the sani and storm lines in a new small subdivision and by work time another few inches had fallen. The installation of these pipes requires that they be laid laser straight and surrounded with bedding sand. It is kind of important that there be no snow mixed in with the sand because when the snow melted it would leave soft spots that would lead to the pipes sagging. Lets face it, you can’t have a sag in your sewer pipes. Those turds need a nice smooth downhill slope to carry them away. Funny how most people don’t give much thought to where their dirty dishwater and excrement goes once it disappears down the drain. There is a vast and complex array of underground plumbing throughout our modern world dedicated to dealing with that stuff.
We go through an incredible amount of bedding sand when lying piping here. The ground is very rocky. The area this little subdivision is in is very, very rocky. Its up at the north end of the Brackendale section of Squamish and like that whole end of Brackendale, it is on top of the Cheekey Fan. This is an area of boulders and ground up rock that came down from the side of Mt Garibaldi about ten thousand years ago when the glacial ice sheet gave way out from under the lava flows and spread out over that part of the valley as a big massive debris flow. The results of the side of the mountain falling away are visible as a huge unstable scar on the mountainside. In fact, that whole area is considered unstable, classified as a level 4 hazard zone, what ever that means. I guess it means don’t buy a house there if you are concerned about earthquakes and debris slides.
doug
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Hello everyone!
We’ve finally got our snow and it looks like it’ll
stay for a while. I just finished blowing the driveway and the sidewalk and
before I finished, we had another inch of the stuff back where I’d started. Oh
well, that’s what winter is all about. I really don’t mind having the snow now
that we’ve only got a couple of months to go till spring. By the sounds of
things Doug is enjoying his new blower and it’s making clearing his drive a lot
more bearable. Maybe after this BC (new style) winter he’ll think twice before
rubbing their “year round” nice weather in our faces as often! LOL! Just kidding Digger we all have a little
envy for the usual mild winters you guys have. We’ll see if your weather will
continue to be different in the winters to come. Good luck!
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I can’t help thinking back to the winters we had in
the 50’s and 60’s when I was a kid. I know we all marveled at Vivyan’s
descriptions of winters when she was a kid. Other than the horse and sleigh
only, as well as no ploughed roads, her snow depths reminded me of winters in
the North Ward of Kitchener. We regularly had only one lane for the cars to
drive up the street and at times it was so plugged that they couldn’t even do
that. I realize that our street was a small side street that didn’t demand as
much attention from the ploughs but the surrounding streets were not much
better. The city tried to make sure that the bus routes were clear but with the
amount of snowfall we had almost every day that was a difficult task to
accomplish in itself. We never heard of snow blowers back then. Most people
were out for hours at a time to clear the snow with shovels. We had so much
snow piled on our boulevard that we could stand on top of the pile and touch
the hydro wires with our shovels. Of course we weren’t that brave (or is it
stupid?) that we actually touched the wires, we just knew we could if we wanted
to. Of course there were kids in the neighbourhood that we tried to goad into
touching them but I guess even the neighbourhood dorks new better than to
actually do it! LOL! Those were the days when there was so much snow piled
along the roadsides that we made forts at each end of the boulevard and also
made tunnels adjoining them. Now that I think of it, it was a very dangerous
thing to do. We had the Beal brothers that always made the best fort in their
back yard. They took wooden boxes that once held Corned Beef from Burns Meats
plant that our dads worked at and used them to pack snow into. The boxes were
about the size of today’s concrete blocks. They turned out about a hundred
blocks and then began to lay them like bricks to build the walls of the “fort”.
We helped these brothers every year to build this masterpiece and spent many
hours playing in the resulting structure. We usually finished with two or three
rooms to the building. We managed to make the roof out of sheets of plywood. We
always left one of the rooms with an open roof. It was fun to play in the
evening when we could sit in that room and watch the stars. It seemed that in
winter there were always lots of shooting stars that could be seen in the night
sky. Those were the days when all the kids on the block would be out playing
even in the dead of winter until after dark. Most of us had to be home when the
street lights came on. On weekends we had to watch every so often to see if our
folks had put the front porch light on. If so, that was the signal for time to
be heading home. It always seemed that the wind blew like crazy during the
daytime and settled down after supper in time to make for a more pleasant
playtime. We always bundled up with touques, scarves, ski jackets, mitts and
rubber boots that buckled up at the top. We weren’t like the kids of today that
are seen on the winter streets wearing spring jackets or some even in tee
shirts and running shoes. I watch the kids passing our house on their way to
and from school every day without hats or mitts and most aren’t wearing any
sort of winter foot wear. What the heck are their parents thinking? These kids
must spend half the winter home from school on sick leave. I guess with the
warmer weather we’ve had a lot of people have become complacent and think that
this cold snap is only temporary. I’m sure another week of real winter will
make them start wearing proper warm clothing. This winter is really a minor
inconvenience when compared with those we had when we were kids. I can’t remember
many winters where the normal snow wasn’t deep enough to be over the tops of
our mid-calf rubber boots. The winds always blew so much that it was difficult
to see more than a few feet in front of us on our walk to and from school. In
fact, most of the time we were walking backwards to keep our faces from
freezing in the wind. Frostbite was a common thing to experience for every kid
back then. Our heat registers at home were always covered with wet socks and
upside down rubber boots trying to dry them after a days outings. I can
remember having my fingers and feet so frozen that they tingled for hours after
getting home from tobogganing or just walking home from school. If you held
them over the heat or put them under warm water, it felt like they were going
to burn off and leave stubs at the end of your limbs. Even with as many warm
clothing items as we wore, the winters were so cold that we still suffered from
this type of minor frostbite on a regular basis. If this warming trend
continues in our weather, it’ll be a long time, if ever before our children and
grandchildren experience the cold and snow that we knew as kids. Let’s hope
that this “Global Warming” thing isn’t as serious as some organizations are
touting and we get back to normal weather patterns in the near future. I
personally think this is part of a cycle in weather changes that occurs once or
twice a century and is nothing to be so worried about. Let’s keep our fingers
crossed and continue to improve the environment in any way we can so the world
stays habitable many years to come.
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Carole and I spent Friday our 34th
wedding anniversary at home. We had talked about going out to a fancy
restaurant to celebrate but decided we’d rather just stay nice and warm at home
and enjoy each other’s company and also that of Adam. Carole prepared a
wonderful meal of steak, baked potatoes, escargot and veggies. Adam brought out
one of his prized bottles of wine and we had a terrific dinner. We are now
looking forward to another 34 years of continued bliss.
WOW, it sure doesn’t seem like 34 years!
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I guess I’ll say good bye before the shock of that
many years sinks in!
Thanks for tuning in 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>
It’s not just 34 years, it’s 408 months, 12,410
days, 297,840 hours or 17,870,400 Minutes of time we’ve spent together. Whew!
How ‘bout that? And we’re still talking!!! LOL!
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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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