Issue #903
Including:

Sus Responds To Rosemary’s Query
From Russ
The Ontarion

Hi All,

As the more observant of you probably know, the day with the most daylight is on or about June 21^st and the day with the shortest amount of daylight is on or about December 21^st. The actual ‘days’ are not longer or shorter, they remain at about 24 hours in length, it’s the distribution of hours of sunlight that change due to the tilt in our planets orbit. At least that is the case for us who live north of the equator. You guys south of the equator are on your own. Anyway, here we are about half way through September and just about half way through the June – December stretch and our hours of daylight have shrunk, at the latitude where I live, by about 3.5 hours. We’ve lost 1.5 hours of light from our mornings and an incredible 2 hours from our evenings. With the federal election having just been called, I think we as tax paying citizens should be demanding that this become an election issue, that our noble politicians be held accountable and that they should be doing something about it. (I used the term ‘noble’ in jest). We need to be demanding more daylight per day, not less. Mind you, if they did grant us a better allotment of daylight, they’d turn around and tax it all right back so we’d be no further ahead than we are now.

But get this….. as you also probably know, every time it’s time to switch between Standard and Daylight Saving Time, everyone complains about how useless that exercise is and how tiring and costly it is. Its been proven that vehicle crashes go up during the week following the change in either direction, heart attacks go up, people run around angry and sleep deprived and so on. At the time of the last change, the one that took us from Standard time to Daylight Saving Time, there was the usual uproar of BC citizens demanding that the provincial government put a stop to the lunacy. Our premier came on the news lecturing the province that no one, especially businesses, wanted the practice of time switching to end, everyone was quite happy the way things were. He went on to say that regardless of the wishes of a small, fanatical group of people who wanted the switching to stop, we would continue to make the bi-yearly changes.

Much to his uninformed surprise, he then heard from all sorts of businesses and organizations etc that he was wrong and that the vast majority of everyone were fed up with the time switches and putting an end to it was what everyone wanted. Then, he heard from the governors of the three States south of us, all stating that they were in the process of ending the time-changes there. Our lazy misinformed premier came back on the news stating how that most of BC now wanted to end the changes and our businesses that wanted to stay in sync with the States to our south. He had originally stated that our businesses had wanted to stay in sync with the provinces east of us, which is obviously where all of them are, even though we are never in sync with any of them. An on-line poll was set up to see if there was indeed merit in pursuing the idea of dropping switching and therefore staying year round on one time system. The polls came back showing 92% of the respondents were very much in favor of dropping, forever, the practice of switching times, and of them the vast majority indicated a desire to stay with Daylight Saving Time which much better suited the daylight window that this province gets. As well, this poll had the highest participation numbers of any poll to date.

Our brave premier is now in conversations with the governors to the south and it looks like the biggest hurtle to overcome will be that the US States must have congress pass some bill that would permit them to adopt dropping the time changes. Everyone however is in agreement that we should all stay on Daylight Saving Time. Of course, knowing how bureaucracies work, they will probably get it wrong and lock us into Standard time but we can hope for the best. Whether or not the various legislations are in place in time to avoid the ‘fall back’ switch this fall remains to be seen. Again, we can hope. If not, we’ll have to go through one more round of useless traditions and then be locked into DST next spring. Either way, as hard as it is to believe, there is actually some progress happening at government level on something so simple that could make so many lives so much better, but, don’t tell them that or they will change their minds again.

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Latest update on the gondola situation…. There is a short video on Global BC Tv that gives a tiny bit of info regarding how repairs etc are coming. If this link works, you can watch it but be aware there is a 12 second commercial at the beginning. So, give it a try, kind of interesting although short of any actual technical details.

https://globalnews.ca/video/5897340/new-look-at-repairs-to-the-sea-to-sky-gondola

doug

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Sus Responds To Rosemary’s Query

Hi Sus.

Those of us tucked up safely in Ontario are hoping you Atlantic Canada folks have successfully battled that awful storm. Is everything OK where you are? Did you get much damage? It sounds like it was very scary.

Would like to hear from you when you can send an update.

Rosemary

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Hi

Yes we survived the hurricane thank goodness! Saturday night was kind of uncomfortable with big wind gusts hitting the house most of the night.

I even wondered if we should have slept downstairs in case the house got hit by a tree. As it was we lost at least 10 trees, luckily falling in good places.

Three of them landed on our bunk house, actually they rested on it in such a way that we could tie a rope to them and pull them away with the tractor from the building

and then land them on the ground. Sunday turned out to be a beautiful day for us to clean up the yard from bits and pieces of leaves and twigs and then cut up the fallen trees for firewood. We lost power Saturday afternoon until Monday evening. We were lucky as some people still have no power. The good thing is we are safe and sound.

Thanks for thinking about us,

Sus

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From Russ

Then & Now

The Kitchener Police Department receives a complaint from Lovette’s Sporting Goods store on King Street, West: (about 1954)

“Someone made off with one of my revolvers; some kids from KCI (Kitchener Collegiate Institute) were in my store over the noon hour, admiring some of the new revolvers I just got in, and I suspect that’s where it went”, said the owner.

“Send Juvenile as it’s likely a “kid”, (under 16) ordered the Duty Officer.

I’m the only Juvenile Branch cop on duty (and the only cop in the branch at that time – I am the “Branch”, as it was in it’s infancy)

Responding to Lovette’s, in ‘plain’ clothes, and in a ‘plain’ car, I don’t look much like a cop. I have to show my badge to convince Mr. Lovett I’m really a cop before he answers my questions. Receiving the details of the “theft”, I respond to KCI where I speak with the Principal.

“My information leads to Tommy Vogt (not his real name), a student at KCI”, I explain.

“Well, let’s have a look in his locker”, says the principal cheerfully, while he removes a ‘bolt-cutter’ from the lowest drawer in his desk, “you’d be surprised how often we have to cut a student’s combination lock around here”.

Note: As a cop, I’d need a “search warrant” to bust the lock and search a student’s locker, but the principal is the kid’s ‘parent’ while he/she is attending his school.

“’Yup – here it is”, says the principal, who seems to enjoy being “Perry Mason”. I take possession of the ‘evidence’, while Tommy is requested to “attend the office”. He’s a smart-looking kid with honest eyes, well dressed, and polite. I introduce myself, and do the ‘interview’ (with little interruption from the P.)

To make a short story shorter, Tommy ‘owns up’ to stealing the gun and hiding it in his locker. There was never any intention of his obtaining ammunition for the firearm. His ‘motive’? “Notice me”.

Conclusion: Mr. Lovette got his new gun back, and didn’t want to lay ‘charges’.

I completed a “Police Contact” occurrence report, which ‘Offense’ was “cleared by confession”, and a Protected Juvenile “card” filed in my office. No persons have access to a Juvenile’s file except a ‘Court of Law’, and only then, if it contains information which could assist the court in ‘aiding’ said juvenile in a “finding of delinquency”. (except, of course, if Tommy again comes to police attention in any future ‘contact’ while still a ‘juvenile’, and Juvenile Court is an ‘option’)

To keep this story short, and to get me off my “pressure ulcer”, we’ll do the comparison of this week’s column to NOW.

Corporal R.G. Brubacher

I forgot to mention the ‘punishment’ meted out Tommy, age 15: KCI suspended him for 3 months (but ‘sentence’ was not passed based on ‘good behaviour)

After my parental interview, Tommy was “grounded” for the same 3 months; no bringing home friends; to go straight home after school and to finish his homework before suppertime. He was also “banned” from Lovette’s until further notice. Mr. Lovette “banned him for life!”

RGB

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THE ONTARION REPORT

Hello everyone!

With fall coming on strong, so is the barrage of political adverts on TV. It won’t take long for the nasty to come out of each party criticizing the other. Of course the federal Liberals have given the other parties lots to complain about so my personal opinion of their chance of being reelected is easy to guess! NOPE! I don’t think Trudeau will be heading our government a second time! Of course that’s just my take on things at this time. There will be loads of die hard Liberals that will still support this jerk but hopefully not enough to put him back into power! I had a young fellow knock on our door tonight and when I answered the door he tried to hand me a flyer entitled “Our Liberal Government” and all I could do was smile and say “No thank you!” The young man just smiled back at me and with several lawn signs over his shoulder made an about face and headed on to his next stop. My guess was that he knew what I was thinking without asking for any details. LOL! I’m sure that mine wasn’t the only negative response he’d already had so early in the evening of his campaigning for what has been a failing party for our country! It will indeed be interesting to see how many “Liberal” signs show up on lawns this time around. Not many I dare say!

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It’s that time of year when the kids are back to school and the speed warnings are out once again for those who don’t respect the 40km/h limit in school zones. The Waterloo Regional Police had their radar set up on our local streets the first morning of school and it was reported that they charged over 20 drivers with speeding in school zones. It was noted on the news that several of the people charged were actually parents that had just dropped their children off at the very school in front of which they were speeding! What morons these people must be and they deserve whatever fine is laid upon them! Let’s hope they at least learn from their mistakes!

As if the local police force doesn’t have enough on their hands without having to police the speeders in school zones. Surely at least those who have children in school would be smart enough to obey the speed limits imposed in the zones where their own kids spend every weekday! If these parents can’t set an example for other drivers then who can? Maybe it’s time to increase the fines for speeding in the city! The regional police chief was on the news the other night stating how many overtime hours were accumulated last year compared to previous years. It was horrendous how much of an increase in hours there was when compared to the last couple of years here in Waterloo Region. Two years ago their budget showed a savings of $49,000.00 due to the lack of overtime hours and this past year there was an accumulation of more than 70,000 hours of overtime facing the police budget! This boiled down to more than ¾ of a million dollars in overtime that had to be added to this year’s budget! The chief stated that of course with the increase in serious crime here in the Region the overtime hours coincide accordingly. The more serious the crime the more hours it takes to try to solve the crime and catch the criminals involved. Makes sense to me! When the crimes in the past were petty theft, speeding and lesser serious ones than we have happening today the overtime hours were not required to be put in to solve them. Nowadays with the proliferation of more serious crimes happening in a growing region it stands to reason that the cost will increase along with the number of hours needed to solve the crimes. Guess that’s just the way things go with an increase in population!

When big budgets to run the city or region have to increase, so do the taxes we all have to pay to support these needs. It’s just one of those things I guess!

That’s about all I have to say for this week folks!
Thanks for tuning in and I’ll look forward to talking to you all again next time in The Ontarion Report!

Bye for now … Greg

PS: Something To Think About>
Curiosity is the only intelligence test, which tells what one may become as well as what one is!