The Squamidian Report – Jan. 10 / 04
Also in this issue:
Report from Berlin
Wildwood Warren
The Ontarion
Hi All,
In the first half of this week while most of the east was still enjoying ‘our’ normal weather, we were having ‘their’ normal weather. If fact, on Sunday we were colder here on the coast than most areas in the Yukon. Both southern BC and Washington State were right down into the minus teens and even minus twenties. Anyone out here who didn’t originate somewhere else was in total shock. Homes out here are not insulated for those temperatures. Water lines are buried only 18 inches deep. We had ice on the inside of our windows. Mind you, the cold arctic air is so clear that the scenery is even more spectacular than normal.
An interesting side effect of the cold has been what it is doing to the rhododendron shrubs. They keep their green leaves all winter, their buds form during the winter. Those green leaves are so frozen that they are shattering. There is green leaf shrapnel under all our rodos.
Another side effect of the cold is that some enthusiastic people in the Vancouver area have done what people living east of the Rockies take for granted and have build out door ice rinks in their back yards. Out door skating in the Lower Mainland is unheard of. It just can’t happen here. It hardly ever gets that cold. The cold has also meant that many side streets in the Vancouver area are still covered with ice and snow from the storm a week ago. They clear the main roads and highways but don’t have the equipment to do the side street. Why should they, normally when it snows the stuff will have melted off by the next day.
The Squamish area does a pretty good job of clearing its streets. Although we are normally snow free, we are in the mountains and do get mountain weather meaning we get dumped on much more frequently that the city.
And then on Tuesday the whole southwestern part of BC got nailed, again. Some of the towns over on Vancouver Island that can go for years without seeing any snow got a foot of the stuff. The whole Vancouver / Fraser River Valley area got dumped on. Over a couple of days we received about 2 feet more snow up here in the land of Squamidia. By Thursday we were all back into much more seasonal temperatures, nicely above freezing. Now it’s all melting.
Sue was over on Vancouver Island this week doing an audit in Victoria. It takes them longer to get to Victoria than it does to get to Calgary. The ferry terminal at Tsawwassen is a good half hour drive further away than the airport and the ferry crossing takes longer than a Calgary flight. However, they are still in the same time zone, which is always a treat. On her ferry ride back over to the mainland there was a small pod of Humpback Whales following along side the boat. One of the whales stayed quite close, breaching and diving as it kept up with the boat. Perhaps it likes to check out the people on the ferry, just like the people like to check it out.
And oh yes, if I were it include one of those ‘things to think about’ lines, which I’m not but if I were, it would go something like…
Never say “good luck” to a woman who is on her way to a beauty salon.
****
Hi Doug & All,
Here's Jennifer's latest installment to share with the readers of the Squamidian. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Have a good week!
*
Good Morning, Afternoon, or Evening All, and welcome to the next installment of Jen's adventures in Deutschland. First of all I would like to wish all of you a very belated, very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I just got so caught up in the silly season that I never allotted any time to write a lengthy report. There was just too much to do. I hope everyone had a great time in the company of friends and family, and that this email finds you all well.
Christmas here in Berlin was unfortunately not white, however still cozy at the Poeses' place. The house was decked out in more little lights and candles than I have ever before seen, and of course there was a range of those dee-licious cookies, chocolates and good food in general (it's hard to find anything else here). It was quite a special Christmas for them, as Regina's (Ingmar's mom) brother from Canada, her sister (plus hubby and kids) from Australia and myself were all joining them this year. The 24th wasn't their "big meal" day, however, so it was just a choice of salads and sausages for dinner, before the presents were opened.
The kids received a range of toys, puzzles and fun stuff, -which the adults ended up playing with all evening- while the kids ended up in front of the computers. Us older 'kids' ended up getting side-tracked by Ingmar's Lego collection. Fun fun fun. At some point, Opa Köpping pulled out a harmonica and began playing some old Christmas carols, and Ailien (Ingmar's sister) got her accordion, and Regina & Kerstin (Regina's sister) began playing the flute. That produced some laughs, as Kerstin's constantly squeaked on a high note and no one could keep a straight face thereafter.
On the 26th we had the proper Christmas dinner at the Köppings' (Regina's parents). Everyone was thoroughly stuffed all through the day with rich German meats and home baked cookies. Someone got the idea to make our names out of cookies, and naturally, everyone had to see what words they could make out of them before eating them.
Most of the evening was spent just chatting around the table and playing cards. There's one thing I really like about this family. They will sit together and play cards as if the parental/child bond doesn't exist. As if they were all peers. I never get the feeling anyone tries to be superior to anyone else. It's all equality and respect. They're a good lot.
As for New Years and my trip down south...organization was a little bit sloppy on this occasion, as we weren't sure which mode of travel we wanted to take down to visit my Oma's sister in Efringen-Kirchen. Despite not wanting to put Ingmar on the spot with driving, I would have preferred to take Regina's offer of a car than go by train, as one has the opportunity of stopping when one wants, and you don't have to worry about switching trains etc etc. I went to talk to the regional train service, but what connections they had to offer sounded dismal. We ended up somewhat last minute organizing the car and grabbed Martin (our other flatmate -Ingmar didn't want to have to drive the whole way, understandably) before departing the morning of New Year's Eve. Ingmar has a friend in Tübingen, which is about 45 minutes southwest of Stuttgart, and we decided on fleeing the reenactment of war here in Berlin for a slightly quieter version down there. We ended up bringing in the new year atop one of the high points of the city -next to a castle, I think. It had a view overlooking part of the town, and watching fireworks from a distance at a slight elevation really was something. People were letting off fireworks up there too, and unfortunately, there were the odd handful of jerks throwing loud explosives very near to the crowd, or into it. We had one such person near us, but thankfully no one lost an eye -only one's hearing was impaired for the next couple of hours...
It was a real treat to be able to witness fireworks again live and up close like in the 'old days' –in Australia, fireworks are banned (not that that really stops many people) and you can really only see them in shows held by organizations. In some ways I'm happy about that... the fireworks made such a mess of this place, all after I said it was so clean here... Ah well, it's always someone making a mess somehow, no matter where you are.
So. On the first Ingmar and I headed off -we left Martin in Tübingen- for the south of the south, but it was decided that we didn't want to go through the Schwarzwald mountains, because we didn't have chains for the tyres, so we kind of headed around through Karlsruhe and Baden-Baden. We didn't really go through those cities though; rather, took the freeway (it really is free!) around.
At this point, we'd already passed through numerous valleys and hills, the scenery changing quite rapidly from one spur to the next. I mean, in terms of how much snow there was around... Some places didn't have any snow at all, some were thickly blanketed winter wonderlands. I couldn't sleep all the way, for engorging myself in the sights. I tried to take some pictures, but they do not do justice to the spectacles.
Please excuse my avid descriptions of snow-laden countrysides, but it's been some years. I'm sure you'll understand. :}
Anyway, back to the freeway. We were to be driving parallel to the French border for a couple of hours, and had to tank up somewhere, so Ingmar suggested skipping across the border, because sometimes it's cheaper there. I'll just pause here to explain that petrol here is regularly around 105c per liter, and the euro is just a little less than twice as much as the Australian/Canadian dollar. That's about $1.70 per liter. One tries to save where one can... So, I was in France! Briefly, admittedly, but I can say now that I was there. We did find some cheaper petrol there, and had some fun meandering along the backroads, through the little towns, getting used to having a speed limit again. After taking a few wrong turns, (hey! It wouldn't be called Adventure Driving without them!) we managed to get to Efringen-Kirchen, Markgrafenstrasse 20 by about 7.30pm. It was snowing lightly, and pleasantly quiet. The trees looked awesome with about an inch of snow covering the branches, lit soft orange-pink by the streetlamps.
We were greeted by warm smiles and a warm house. Upon seeing and moreover hearing my great aunt, I was instantly reminded of my Oma. It was a bit awkward at the start for both of us -especially Ingmar, not knowing them at all- as I'd only met Elle once, and that was 12 years ago. However, they were very nice to us. Elle showed us the house, built somewhere in the 1700's, and the renovations that they had done, the little rooms in the attic where their son and daughter stayed, and where my mom also spent the night as a child. It pleased me to see her artwork around the house too, and that she is still well remembered there.
They seem to live quite a comfortable, pleasant life there. They have their own house (bought and paid), and Elle, 80 but still a lively, bright woman, runs her shop downstairs. They have modernities like a dishwasher and cable television (Onkel Willi told us he'd seen the Sydney harbour bridge on tv the night before and the fireworks there) as well as a garden around the back where they grow their own fruit and flowers over the warmer seasons. Elle showed me a large store of her home made jams and reserves. We were treated to home grown potatoes and veggies while there, and even some of their home made cherry liquor (on ice cream).
Elle got out some old photo albums afterwards and I got to reminisce over the pictures of the farm and family back in Canada when we seemed to be more of a single entity than it is today. Afterwards, we went for a bit of a walk around the neighborhood, and I even made a snow bunny, as the snow wasn't quite wet enough for anything bigger. It was good snowball snow, but not for snowmen.
Upon our return, we spoke with the Enderlins' daughter Gudrun, who sounds amazingly, exactly like my Tante Gina (Christine) and were going to go visit her in Switzerland (that's still nearby) very close to Basel, but there was some problem with her being snowed in and we would have needed to get some special addition to the car's papers to be able to drive there, plus it later occurred to me that if Gudrun was snowed in, we might get stuck too, so the idea of going there was unfortunately abandoned.
The next morning we had breaky and took Elle with us sightseeing around Lörrach and Haltingen, where my mom lived, and where my Opa lived and the esso station he used to work at, where the Untersehr family lived before that, and we even knocked on a few doors to ask if someone remembered the Gumz family. And there actually were a few that had been there long enough to remember. It amazed me how many people could still remember the exact year the Gumz family left. We also ran into one of their old neighbors, Lieselotte, and she invited us in to catch up a bit. I had some fun trying my German, to explain about the happenings of the last decade with the Canadian relations; who had children, who was no longer with us... It was a bit saddening, to speak so much about death on this trip. I guess that once one gets to that age, it weighs heavily on the mind. But that's life too, isn't it?
Also unfortunate was the fact that we could not stay with the Enderlins longer than that night. We had to have the car back in Berlin as Ingmar's mother would be needing it, so our time was limited. I sincerely want to go back there, especially in the summer months. They were such a lovely couple, and I felt a bit bad about staying there one night and having to leave again. What made the feeling worse was that Elle is by nature extremely generous. She packed us with a box full of home-made fruit jams and conserves, cookies, slices of her home-baked lindser torte, and no less than 18 bars of chocolate. I almost had a heart attack (and probably will later on, from all of this rich food I have been eating).
Our original plan was to go back to Tübingen and stay the night there and leave the next day, but someone decided spontaneously that we would prefer to all get to our beds as soon as possible. We had picked up a fourth person in Lahr (he lives in Berlin and we offered him a ride home instead of having to take the train back) and ended up leaving Tübingen at 1am. The boys took it in turns to sleep and to drive, and we got back to Berlin by 7. No one was really thinking of anything but sleep by that time. After a few hours sleep all was well again though. We still had to go shopping for the weekend, as shops here aren't open on Sundays.
And that brings me to now, where I remember that it's my turn to cook tonite and it's already almost 5pm. I must skedaddle. I wish everyone well, and til the next Squamidian, or report, or whatever and however, I leave you.
Jen.
****
A year ago, Nicola Log Homes from Merrit, B.C. placed a very challenging order with us. The architect of a 7,000 sq. ft. log home he designed, called for a very wild entry to the place. Picture an arched roof formed from naturally bent cedar logs. The real challenge was that they had to be identical in, “loft radius” and butt/top diameters. ( 20 in. butt by 12in. top & 4 ft. radius over 18 feet.)
A high value, lead me to believe they were out there, not to mention I’m a sucker for adventure. Oh yah, I almost forgot! They needed eleven! I found the first five quickly, in my old stomping grounds- Furry Creek. An 800acre tract of land owned by, apparently, one of the world’s toughest golf courses to play. ( no wonder they’re always struggling ) I bartered one of my $1800.00 wildwood benches to them for the,” signature hole” in return for cutting rights.
These I found along their logging road & had them carefully loaded on top of a loaded logging truck going my way. Ya see, there can’t be any machine damage. After 2 or 3 days of four wheeling and hiking,( thank god for caulked boots) in these woods I realized I’d have to venture elsewhere. Six to go.?!!
Two more I discovered up in the hills above the Cheakumus River and negotiated with private landowners for a nice pair. These I had to chainsaw winch them close enough to the road where I could reach them with a hi-ab truck. Four to go.!!!??*&^%$ At this point I’m wondering if it’ll be as lucrative as I’d thought...
To give you an idea of how much time has passed; the log builder called with his order back in early spring and it’s now about late June. A new deadline was set for end of July. The Upper Squamish & Ashlu valleys produced no results so I headed north, past Whistler into Pemberton & Mount Currie all the while hoping “the grapevine” would bring me some leads.
A woodlot in and around Mosquito Lake proved good in many ways; although I soon learned the cedar in this dryer region suffer from dry rot. My reputation as an honest & respectful woodsman granted me a new harvest area and two more trees for the order. But this is where my luck ran out! These two trees were perfect in every way- one had to be discarded due to rot found midway in the curve and the other was a disappointing setback. While arranging trucking, some campers cut it up into pieces for firewood!! %#<|*+$$
With a few days left, a friend offered to help scout out Keats Island. A beauty was found but between costs of extraction and barging, were beyond budget. Just as well, pilfering is not my style, as seemed the only option here.
So, now, with four remaining and time run out, the builder decided he’d have to take his chances with the rejects I’d brought home. Typical Brubacher, don’t waste anything. All’s well that ends well, so they say.
I’d say I ended up again, smelling like a ..........red cedar, this time.
Wildwood Warren.
****
THE ONTARION REPORT
January 8,
2004
Hello everyone! Well, I
guess I spoke too soon about having a green birthday. Only 3 days till the big
day and we’ve got snow everywhere! Guess I’ll have to wait until next year to
try again. That is unless the weatherman decides to go tropical before Sunday.
No big deal anyway, I’m used to snow on my birthday after 55 years of it.
Sheeesh……..55 years! I can hardly believe it’s been that many. Funny that I can
only remember about 25 out of the 55 I’ve been around. LOL! What does that tell
you? Hahahaha.. Oh well, at least I remember close to half. Some people don’t
even remember that many. Like they say, if you remember the 60’s you weren’t
there. I was there and they’re wrong, I do remember them! Actually, I do
remember most of the years of my life but there are some I’d prefer to forget!
The 60’s were great years because they were my High School years and were great
fun. One of the main things I remember from the 60’s is the great local bands
that were around. I went to school with and was friends with the members of a
band called “Copperpenny”. In fact I lived for a short while after high school
with the keyboard player/singer from the band, Rich Wamil. He is still a great
friend of mine and lives literally around the corner from me today. In fact he
has been in a band that only plays half a dozen times a year but is made up of
a mixture of musicians from many of those local 60’s bands that we all
remember. The new band is called GRAVITY. These guys are all working at careers
that don’t include music but they are consummate professionals from their many
years of playing and still love to entertain. They formed Gravity about 3-4
years ago and have an amazing sound. In fact, Clyde and I are going to hear
them play tonight at a local club.
Rich plays keyboards and
their drummer is Blake Barret formerly of the Copperpenny as well. The lead
guitarist and singer is Peter Padalino who played in a band in the 60’s you
might remember. They were called Major Hoople’s Boarding House. It’s an amazing
experience to hear these guys play. Their sound is so tight and well rehearsed
that it’s hard to imagine them not being a full time band. I guess that’s what
comes from playing an instrument most of the years of your life. By the way,
the group of 5 people that Clyde and I are taking with us to the show tonight
are no slouches when it comes to music as well. First and foremost there’s
Clyde Gilmour, the former drummer for an amazing 60’s band called The Thanes. A
fellow by the name of Randy Rolo will be along too and he is the former
keyboard player for the same band The Thanes and is still an amazing musician.
My brother Brent will be accompanying us and he used to sing for a band call
The Trend Setters in the 60’s. My son Adam plays the bass and until a short while
ago was playing bass in a rock band that hadn’t yet been named when they
decided to call it quits due to career commitments. He’s currently producing
his own music in a full recording studio we have built him in our basement here
at home. He’s done some commercial work for several companies here in Southern
Ontario in the form of music CD’s that they’ve asked him to write and produce
to be used as promotional items. Even I spent some time singing in high school
bands that never gelled into anything worthwhile but we sure had fun doing it.
The only band I was in that ever played anywhere was called Tailor Made. I
think we played 3 gigs and packed it in.
It was certainly fun
dreaming about fame anyway. I think most of us at one time or another dreamed
of being a rock star. Even the ones with talent that got anywhere are few and
far between. I’m looking forward to this evening’s nostalgic trip down memory
lane. It should be fun with all the talent and history that’ll be in that club
tonight. I’ll have to chain Clyde to the chair to keep him from climbing behind
the drum kit I’m sure. LOL! If any of you remember the bands I’ve mentioned
here it would be nice to hear from you regarding any experiences you might have
had at their performances back in the 60’s. I know some of you would have heard
Clyde and The Thanes play for sure but let me know if you remember
“Copperpenny” or “The Trend Setters”. Both of these bands played in a lot of
the KW venues back then.
Do any of you remember attending
the concerts that took place in the Glenbriar Roller Rink beside Sunny’s on
Weber St in Waterloo? There were a load of big name acts that played there back
then. Gary Pucket and the Union Gap, Gary Lewis and The Playboys, Roy Orbison,
Frankie Valley, Paul Revere and The Raiders and on and on and on………! Man we had
some good summers in KW! If you’ve got any good stories about those times and
concerts, let’s hear them. Well I guess I’ll call it quits for this week. Let
me know if this stirs up a few good memories for you.
Thanks again for tuning in and I’ll let you all know what tonight
turned out like.
Bye for now…Greg.
PS: Something to Think About>
A small leak can sink a great ship.
****
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