The Squamidian Report – Aug. 16 / 03
Also in this issue:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
Ryan and I did the Chief again this past Sunday morning. Instead of the usual South peak, Peak 1, we climbed the middle and third peaks. Peak 2 & 3. The climb up to #2 is longer and steeper but more fun than up to #1. There are some spots where you look down chutes for hundreds of feet. Neat. There is a trail from #2 over to #3 that takes about half an hour, leading down into a ravine that separates them and then on up. North Peak is the highest but the best views are from the middle peak.
The trail back down from #3 is steep and rugged. Hands and feet are needed for a good section of the way. Part of the trail follows an old logging skid road, where they had winched logs by steam donkey decades ago. Good thing I phoned Mom from up there because I was too tired to do it when I got home. However, we had a great time, hikes like this are what memories are made from.
Those steam donkeys are kind of neat. I’ve run across the remains of them several times out in the bush. They are basically a steam engine mounted on skids (logs with rounded ends for sliding along the ground). The engine drives a winch. The winch was used for dragging the whole contraption up into where it was needed, then used to pull logs etc.
The four of use decided to go to a movie together as Ryan and Em were running out of time here. We have a choice between driving into Vancouver or driving up to Whistler. It’s closer to drive to Whistler so that’s where we went. The movie screens are small, but the prices are high, like the prices at Silver City back home. It was a nice evening even though I griped about the cost of popcorn.
Sue left Monday morning for Saskatoon. She had to say her goodbyes then.
Ryan and Em hit the road at 6:30 on Tuesday morning. Yogi and I hated to see them go. They ran into the usual delays along the way, construction and crashes clogging up the roads. And very hot temperatures. They had to cut their driving days a bit short when it was too hot to drive. By Friday evening they were at South Bay Mouth, ready to catch the ferry over to Tobermory. Ryan had phoned Sue’s parents who have a cottage there so they were expecting them to get in about midnight. They will be back in their apartment in Kitchener by the time some of you read this.
Sue flew back into Vancouver airport on Thursday afternoon. YVR was a mess due to the blackout back east. There was luggage and people stacked up all over the place because of the canceled flights. There had been 9 flights heading east that were already in the air and had to turn back, so the baggage area was total chaos. It took her much longer than usual to get out of the airport. However, rush hour traffic was over by then so she had clear sailing home.
Well, I’m down to the last of my blueberries. It was a pretty good crop, spread out over a month. There is still about 3 or 4 bowls of ice cream worth of berries out there, won’t be much left by the end of the weekend. Even the little new plants we put in last Fall did quite well. Only one of the new ones didn’t do anything. Must be a slow learner.
Hey, we don’t often find our selves in the right place at the right time, but for once we seem to have lucked out. Check out this article from our local newspaper.
Property
investors who came into the Squamish market this spring are counting their
profits this month.
The
latest statistics coming from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver
(REBGV) show that property values in Squamish took a huge jump after the 2010
Olympic announcement.
The
statistics released earlier this month show that the median selling price of a
home in Squamish went from $200,000 in July of last year to $275,000 in June of
this year.
In
the one month period between June and July the median selling price went up
another $52,000 to $327,000. The benchmark price for a home in Squamish is now
$277,667.
This
community continues to show the greatest upward change in house values over the
last 12 years when compared to other Greater Vancouver communities.
According
to the REBGV, housing prices in Squamish have more than doubled compared to
1991 — an increase higher any other market in the Lower Mainland.
In
the month of July, the median selling price of a home in Squamish was greater
than in New Westminster, Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows, Port Coquitlam, and Port
Moody/Belcarra.
In
July of 2002, the median prices of homes sold in those same four areas were all
higher than the median sale price in Squamish.
Historically,
Squamish was the most affordable place to buy a home in the REBGV and that is
now changing with the community starting to show selling prices that are equal
to and higher than some of the Vancouver suburbs.
Real
estate activity in Squamish is up significantly from last year with 46 houses
sold in July compared to only 28 in July of 2002.
While
things are busy in Squamish, the statistics suggest real estate offices all
over the Greater Vancouver area are busy. Sales of detached, attached and
apartment properties in the region increased by 50.1 per cent in July 2003 when
compared to figures from July 2002, said the REBGV.
While this is great for us, it
is bad news for anyone wanting to get into this market. Ryan and Em will be
heading this way a year from now. They will be faced with ‘Vancouver prices’
way out here in the boondocks. A lot of the purchasing pressure is from people
relocating from Whistler. That town has priced it’s self right out of anyone’s
reach. Maybe I should renovate my
storage shed and create a rental unit.
****
Don’t seem to have anything
to fill this section with!!
****
THE ONTARION REPORT
August 14,
2003
Oh
Oh! Don’t tell me BinLaden has struck again! O…………sama da hydro bin knocked out
in the area! Hell, not just in the area, but from Detroit Michigan to Ottawa, New
York City to North Bay Ontario. I was suddenly stuck in a major traffic jam on
the 401 approximately 20 kms east of Cambridge. I was driving a used ’99 Mazda
back to Waterloo from the Brampton Auto Auction for Waterloo Nissan when it
struck. I thought I should turn on the radio and get the traffic report. It was
3:30 pm and would usually take me about 40 minutes to reach Waterloo from that
point of the 401. I had another fellow following me in a Mazda MPV mini van
that he was driving back as well. He motioned to me that he had to pull off and
get gas as soon as possible. 20 minutes later we finally reached the Townline
Rd cut off for Cambridge. We managed to get off and find an ESSO station. We
couldn’t believe the traffic. I finally heard on the radio that there was a
HUGE power blackout that stretched from Toronto to Ottawa. They said that every
traffic light system was out of order in the Great Lakes area. This sounded
quite serious to me! As I listened to the radio they began to expand the
affected area. Soon they said that the area covered most of the northeastern
seaboard of the United States and also included most of southern Ontario. I
decided to avoid the stretch of the 401 from there to Kitchener and take Hwy
#24 towards Guelph and then cut over to the north side of Kitchener through a town called Breslau.
It’s actually now part of Kitchener. Well, when we got into Breslau, we
discovered that hundreds of other drivers had the same idea. We wound up
sitting in bumper to bumper traffic for an hour to travel a 2 km stretch that
got us to the outskirts of Kitchener. So far, we had managed to travel about 15
kms in the time it should have taken us to drive from Brampton to Waterloo. It
was amazing how the drivers became even more discourteous than usual. In a very
short time that they had been inconvenienced by this power outage, you would
have thought the world was coming to an end. Of course, the first thing that
popped into my mind was “is this a terrorist act that’s short circuited our
power supply on such a grand scale”?
I
was quickly reassured by an announcement on the radio from the Mayor of New
York City. He stated that it was NOT an act of terrorism but a blunder that
originated in of all places, CANADA! He said he was personally in contact with
Canadian Hydro officials and would do his best to urge the Canadians to correct
the problem as soon as possible. What an arrogant SOB this guy must be! We
continued on our journey via the back roads of the Bridgeport area of Kitchener
and finally made our way back to Nissan Waterloo. We arrived there at 5:20 pm.
This trip should have taken from 12:30 noon to approximately 3:30 pm to
complete. With all things considered, I think we did very well to get back in
an extra 2 hrs. The manager of the dealership was happy to see that we made it
back safely. The whole staff was sitting and standing in the dark showroom
waiting for us to get back. They said that all the hydro had gone out
approximately an hour before our arrival home. This made it official, it was a
total Blackout of the power system. We listened to the radio reports and the
two local stations that were still on the air said they had diesel back up
systems to run their broadcasts. The popular opinion was that it would take
anywhere from 12 to 48 hrs to find and correct the problem. They reported that
a major transformer station in New York City had exploded and caught fire,
causing their entire city and most of their state supply to short circuit. This
in turn placed a tremendous load on the adjoining Niagara Falls power grid and
it too went down! Of course the old domino effect was now expanding to other
systems since the whole continent of North America is interconnected. Someone
should contact the Mayor of New York and remind him that people who live in
glass houses…..etc etc etc! I’m sure his face is red at the thought of his
major announcement earlier in the day. It may well be that the actual cause
will turn out to be something else entirely but for now, I prefer to blame NYC!
Well, by the time I made it home to the far southwest corner of Kitchener, it was getting a tad dark. There were no streetlights and no working traffic lights to be found. The radio was announcing that the police were asking drivers to treat all intersections like 4 way stops and be courteous to the driver on your right. Well, it seemed that every driver thought he was the driver on the right and of course there were a lot of fingers in the air and a lot of lip reading going on! LOL!
I
can certainly see how this type of situation can easily breed panic if not
handled properly by the authorities. Without electricity, we have nothing
operating that usually makes our lives easier. For instance, most stores closed
their doors because of darkness and no power to run their cash registers. This
makes for a ghost town effect. Also, the gas stations are unable to pump gas
and anyone that needs fuel is just plumb out of luck. There were several people
seen pushing their vehicles and others parked on the roadsides where they would
not normally be parked. I finally got home and found that my wife had just
arrived home as well. She had gone across town to Waterloo to pick up 3 little
girls that are daughters of friends of ours. They are staying with us for a
couple of days while their parents move. Their ages are 11, 9 & 5 and they
are little darlings. We had all kinds of plans to watch movies and have snacks
etc with them. Of course it looked like these plans would be of no use now. I
said we’d just have to sit around a candle and tell ghost stories all evening.
They figured this was a great idea. Fortunately, our area of Kitchener suddenly
regained its power source. I don’t know why but maybe someone heard my prayers
for hydro so I wouldn’t have to make up ghost stories that didn’t include a lot
of swearing and sex scenes! LOL! Just kidding! I guess we just lucked out and
got hour juice before anyone else.
I made hot dogs and hamburgers on the BBQ and we stuffed our faces. The girls wanted to do something so Carole suggested we take them to the Waterloo Park Zoo for an hour. We hit the road at 8pm and had about an hour at the Zoo. It was quite an experience to visit this place with 3 little girls. It’s been a long time since Adam was that age and one forgets all the questions that can come out of young people. We tried our best to answer them honestly but there are a few birds that I’ve never seen and couldn’t begin to guess the names of at this facility. Once it started to get too dark to see the animals, we piled into the Liberty and headed for Burger King for their special $1.00 milk shakes. Upon arrival of course we found that they were closed. I should have known since we had seen no sign of electricity being on anywhere after leaving Forest Heights area where we live. We decided just to head for home and if the power was still on, watch a movie with the girls.
We
were in a line of stalled traffic on Highland Rd. There was a Liquor Store to
our right and I noticed that there were 4 Police cruisers and a police SWAT van
in the parking lot. When we took a closer look, we realized that they had a
couple of guys in handcuffs and there was a large stash of liquor bottles
standing on the hood of one of the cruisers. Apparently these guys decided to
smash and grab a quantity of booze while under the cover of darkness. Where the
hell are we living, Los Angeles? I expected to see a bunch of crazed people
running down the street carrying TV and Stereo equipment next! Just one more
tidbit of evidence supporting my “crazy people” theory. I’m sure they were
probably Americans that came up here to steal from the Liquor Store because
Canadians would certainly not act this way. Geeze, something tells me that I’ve
been watching too many cop shows on TV! I hope the American people will forgive
me for this one! LOL! I’m sure we have our share of crooks here in Canada too.
Well, we made our way home and within 4 blocks of our street, we discovered
that the streetlights were still on and most of the housing had lights on as
well. There is a gas station at the plaza a block away from our house and there
must have been a hundred cars lined up for gas. We had passed many other
stations and they were all shut down. This guy will make a fortune tonight I’m
sure. Luckily our guests are enjoying an evening of watching Alien on the VCR
with Carole and I have the opportunity to finish my Ontarion Report. I’d like
to thank Ontario Hydro for providing me with something to write about this
week. It’s been and exciting day that ended on a happy note. Carole just tucked
the girls in for the night and they are all sleeping in Adams queen sized
waterbed. I’m sure well be up bright and early to the pitter patter of little
feet, a sound we haven’t heard around here for a long time (excluding Bailey of
course) so I’d better sign off for now. Once again, thank you all for tuning
in. Hope you enjoyed the tale of our Blackout. We’ll have to wait until morning
to find out the real cause of the problem and to see if all power has been
restored. Until next week, be happy and stay safe!
Bye for now! GREG.
PS: Something to Think About<
“A smile is a curve that can set a lot of things straight”!
****
Have a good one..
the
doug