The Squamidian Report – Jan. 10 / 09
Issue #346
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
The towns and cities out here on the west coast have a definite problem when it comes to snowplowing. Mainly, they don’t know how. And that’s assuming that they even have plowing equipment in the first place. Some places have none, other places have minimal equipment. Places like Vancouver have just enough to let them keep main roads open but not enough to let them tackle the side streets. Mind you, many of the side streets are too narrow and too hilly for the plows to work on at the best of times. The surrounding cities are in the same boat. Most side streets throughout the Lower Mainland have yet to see a snowplow, and those areas received several feet of snow during the second half of December and into early January. In most cases, the governing bodies responsible for winter road maintenance simply wait for the inevitable rains to come to their rescue and wash the snow away.
Up here in Squamish there seems to be an adequate amount of snow plowing equipment available but the town bylaws work against the snow plowers when it comes to doing their work. Or perhaps I should say, the lack of bylaws. For you see, there is no town bylaw against parking on the streets anytime, day or night. And here is where that west coast attitude comes in…. why would anyone bother to shovel their driveway when all you have to do is park on the street while you wait for the snow to melt. Doesn’t seem to matter whether it will take a day or all winter to melt away. And here is where you can tell the imports from the locals. Anyone who moved here from somewhere else gets out there and clears their driveway and gets their vehicle off the road so the snowplow can do its job. Anyone who was born and raised here just leaves their vehicle on the road, ignoring their driveway and not seeming to care that they are plugging up the road. After a few snowfalls the streets are so narrow that the plow can barely maneuver on them. Cars that haven’t been moved in weeks are buried under feet of snow as they sit out on the road. Very frustrating.
The official reason that there is no law against parking on the street is that many of the driveways here are very steep. Well that’s dumb. No one can claim that they didn’t know they were buying a place with a steep driveway until they tried to go up or down it with snow on the ground. They could at least get their vehicle off the street and onto the end of their driveway. But no, that would be too much trouble. And so the snowplows have long since given up trying to clear the whole road, they just punch a path through that winds its way between poorly parked cars and trucks. That path just gets narrower with each snowfall. However, the rains do come and the snow does melt so I guess its no big deal after all. They were right all along, at least as long as there is no emergency where a fire truck or ambulance tries to get up some narrow clogged street but can’t.
Oh well, I’ll continue to keep our drive (steep as it is) clear and useable. It’s so easy when you have a snow blower. Only takes about 15 minutes or so. I don’t mind helping out any of the neighbours who make the effort to hand shovel their own drives. I don’t and won’t help the ones who don’t give a damn. Would you believe we have the only snow blower on our street? West-coasters don’t believe in them. They say the snow is way too wet and heavy for a blower to work. Well, ours works just fine, has since we bought it 3 winters ago. And many of those who don’t think such a contraptions is worth it sure watch our’s with envy when it is out there blowing that ‘unblowable’ snow effortlessly. I don’t think that this whole subdivision would average more than about 1 snow blower for every 2 or 3 streets. You can sure tell which homes have them though, they are the ones with clean, wide-open drives and cleared walkways. They tend to stick out like sore thumbs.
And here’s some interesting info… snowfall on the west coast didn’t start till the week leading up to Christmas, yet by the first week of January most cities on the coast and throughout the Lower Mainland had not only blown their snow maintenance budgets but they have gone over them by two or three times.
*
I know that I’ve posted this link before, but it can be kind of interesting for anyone who wants to see what the current conditions are throughout BC. It’s a web site page with hundreds of web cam feeds. Just one word of caution, don’t click this link unless you have a high-speed connection.
http://members.shaw.ca/ruping/webcams/pyrwebcams.html
doug
****
****
Hello everyone!
Getting used to that new “year’ number is still a
little strange to me.
Speaking of new years, I was reminded of an old one
the other day. The year I was reminded of was 1963/64. About two years ago I
made a connection with an old classmate of mine from that year, my first year
in high school at KCI. His name is Ron Such and we were in the same form for
that year. I took a chance and wrote to Ron after seeing his e-mail address on
another e-mail from Clyde. It turned out that he was the same Ron Such that I’d
known back then and we’ve been reconnecting via e-mail and in person ever
since. He was up here a couple of times since and we met for a day together to
hash over old times. We only spent that one year in KCI together but still
stayed in touch after he moved to Grand River CI. He’s now living in Nova
Scotia and has three kids again from his third marriage and is doing very well.
To get back to my point here, I noticed an e-mail
address of a name I recognized from that same class of 63/64 on an e-mail that Ron
had sent to me and a few others. I asked Ron if this person Stu Koch was the
same Stu Koch from KCI and he said yes it was. I asked Ron to say hi for me the
next time he talked to Stu. Ron told me to write him myself and say hi, so I
did! Earlier this week I dropped Stu an e-mail to ask him if he remembered me.
He replied two days later saying of course he remembered me. We talked back and
forth for a note or two and I told him that I was retired from the Waterloo
Fire Dept. He then said that he had a brother Dave that had been on the
Waterloo Fire Dept for many years but had retired a long time ago. Stu said he
wasn’t sure if I would have been on the same time or not. What a shocker! I had
of course been on and worked directly with Dave on my shift for about 10 of my
29 years on the job! LOL! After thinking about it for a while, I vaguely
remembered asking Dave way back when I first started on WFD if he was related
to Stu and he had said that they were brothers. Over the following 28 or so
years I guess I had forgotten about that connection. I’m tellin’ ya, what a
SMALL WORLD! As it turns out, Stu and his wife Jeannie live in King Township
north of Toronto and he’s been teaching at Seneca College for 30 years in the
Landscape Management program. He and Jeannie have been married 38 years now and
he was surprised to hear that I am married to my original love of 36 years come
this January 19th. Until this reacquaintance he was sure that he and
his wife were the only two from that era that were still married, as did Carole
and I think the same! It was quite interesting to talk back and forth with Stu
and hear a little of his post high school history and to tell him a little of
mine. His first comment was how the electronic computer age has shrunk the
world and how it has made it so easy to reconnect with people you haven’t heard
of or from in many many years! I agree with his observation for sure! I doubt
very seriously if I would be communicating with many of the people that now
live far from Kitchener if it weren’t for the internet. It’s managing to keep
all of the Squamidians together and ya gotta admit it’s been pretty cool to be
a part of the Squid gang!
It’s pretty cool to remake these contacts with
people I haven’t seen or heard from in so long and I look forward to the next
time it happens.
That’s about it for this week!
Thanks for tuning in and I look forward to talking
to you all again next week in The Ontarion Report!
Bye for now.. Greg.
PS: Something To Think About>
How many “Do Gooders” that you know who are not
actually “Do Gooders” but simply “Whiners” that spend their time voicing their
opinion about topics they themselves make no effort to improve?
****
Have a good one..
the doug
The Fine Print!
The articles in these issues are the sole property of the persons writing them and should be respected as such.