The Squamidian Report – March 5 / 05
Also in this issue:
Fern Glen Update
The Ontarion
Hi All,
The District of Squamish held a tax referendum. They had decided that new sports facilities were needed as well as some other buildings, rinks, etc. To get started on their ambitious plans they would need to borrow 20 million dollars. That would add over 2 hundred dollars to each person’s property taxes from now till forever. So anyway, they figured it would be best to take the idea to the tax paying public in a referendum. Turnout was very high with the NO side winning by a margin of 3 to 1. With good reason, Squamish has a dismal record when it comes to expanding and maintaining its infrastructure. They can’t seem to do anything right, end up with vast over-runs and basically just screw everything up. To hand them a blank cheque, signed by the taxpayers would have been very foolish. We need expanded sports complexes and such but we need other more basic things here first. One thing at a time and each thing planned right and finished right. Hopefully City Hall will get the message that we want to move ahead with these things but that we require accountability and solid planning.
*
A group of use were out again exploring the backcountry on our bikes. Ryan had to sit this one out as he and Emily went into the city to do their own thing. So because I’m the only one of the ones that went out that is street legal we trucked the bikes up the Squamish River Valley to the bridge at mile 21. From there we headed up Branch 100, which is on the north side of the valley, meaning it gets full sunshine all day long. The riding was it’s usual scenic self, the road steep and interesting. It was down right hot along the sunlit slopes yet it was ice and snow that turned us back. We reached the elevations where that stuff is still on the trails in the shaded spots. Won’t bore you with too many details. Anyone interested can see the shots I took by clicking this link. One word for anyone on dial-up, because there are 10 pictures on this page the download size is almost a meg.
http://www.thedougsite.ca/Pictures/Branch100/branch100.html
Because it was such a nice day to be out riding I drove the bike the 35km home rather than trucking it. The road up the valley winds it’s way through dense forest as it follows the river, with mountain views through every break in the trees. Gotta love it!
By the way, someone from DualSports BC, a group of street legal dirt biker in the Lower Mainland that post their pictures on line found my pictures and has invited us to join them. Might be worth thinking about.
*
Hey, cool infrastructure changes to Squamidian Central, at least on a technical level. After procrastinating for the past couple of years I’ve finally set up a dedicated web domain to house the Squamidian Report web site. You may have already noticed some of the links in this letter point to a new URL. While the location of my Brubacher Family web site will remain unchanged, the Squamidian moves over to www.thedougsite.ca, notice the classy .ca domain. Nothing but the best for the Squamidian. It isn’t easy coming up with a name so the one I’ve settled on is sort of the least bad. Oh well, we have our own web home now so enjoy. There won’t be any changes to the site itself for now, it has simply moved over to the new address. The original site will stay up for a while until it sort of fades away. Actually, it is fading fast. I’ve put up re-direct pages in place of the original home page and other main pages that automatically take whoever were to follow an old link to a given page over to that same page on the new site.
I’ve been posting so many pictures to the site that I’ve run out of room. The new site gives me lots of room, its storage space can be expanded and I can also spill back over into the old site’s space so we should be good for quite a while. All past and present Squamidian issues are of course be available on the new site as well as the dirt biking pictures I love to bore you with and any of the computer articles I sometimes write. In other words, it is the old site moved to a new address.
But wow, the hoops you have to jump through to get a .ca domain! Any of the normal domains like .com or .net are cheap and easy. You just register, pay for it and away you go. No mess, no fuss, no questions asked. However, the .ca domain is an extra ten bucks a year more for starters. That money is for the CIRA registration fee. The CIRA (Canadian Internet Registration Authority) requires you to read about a zillion pages of fine print, requires a bunch of forms to be filled in and requires you to be a Canadian citizen, of legal age and your web site has to be for a group, organization, Canadian content or whatever. Our newsletter seems to qualify and so do I of course so here we are. Leave it to Canada and it’s love of red tape and bureaucracy to invent and require a CIRA.
****
You may remember Carol mentioning that she had some old pictures the pertained to Vivyan’s recounting of life on the farm. With thanks to Brenda, they have scanned them and sent them along for posting. So here they are.
http://members.shaw.ca/doug_b/Pictures/old.htm
****
It's official. I am now a full-time resident of Ontario's Near North. A week ago Friday was my last day at work. I then hung out with some friends in the city before heading home for good last Sunday evening.I would've written an update earlier--there's certainly been plenty to write about--but I've been SO busy the past few weeks that I barely had time to catch my breath. My last weeks of work were busy wrapping things up at work, doing some "big-city" shopping and visiting friends. It was quite nice, actually, to be in such high demand as people wanted to see me before I moved a 2.5 hour drive away. It was emotional saying goodbye to people at work, and in some ways difficult to leave the job as well. I've worked hard to build and nurture a strong team, and I'm proud of what I've accomplished. But I'm also proud of the person who will be taking over for me, and I started grooming her for the role long ago, so at least I know my department will be in good hands. Still, to say I'm closing a chapter in my life would be an understatement. If feels more like I'm closing a hard-cover book in a series, and the next installment hasn't even been written yet.Before I move on, I'll take the opportunity to give Ewan more kudos as host extraordinaire. It was really great to have his apartment as my home base while I was "between homes" as I like to say. (Thanks again for breakfast on Saturday!)
So Monday was my first full day in my new life! As it turned out, we celebrated it in fine fashion with Sylvia and Bruce! For those who don't know Sylvia, not only is she a member of the Squamidian readership, she's family but just not actually related. This was the first I've spent significant time with Bruce, and he seems to be equally wonderful.
Anyway, Sylvia and Bruce live near Bracebridge, which is just 45 minutes away from us, and they were going snowshoeing at Arrowhead Park, which is just 15 minutes away from us. So we joined them for the outing. We had a beautiful sunny day and we stomped through the woods to see the waterfall. It was just gorgeous, half frozen, undisturbed snow all around. Maybe Bruce will email some pictures for Doug to post. Jim and I somehow forgot to bring our camera.Sylvia and Bruce then came to see our place. It was great to be able to actually show it to someone! There's still SO MUCH work to be done, but that didn't matter. It's just great to show it. Buying this place and having no friends or family see it is like buying a new dress and then being told I can't wear it to school until next month. Added bonus: Bruce knows trees, and he's offered to help us figure out what to do to take care of ours. Yay!
The four of us wrapped up the day by going out for a good steak dinner at a nice restaurant in Huntsville. Another bonus...the entrees were 50% off. I'm learning to love the off-season perks that come with living near a vacation town. I told Sylvia she's going to get sick of me. I came down to Bracebridge Wednesday night to have dinner with the businesswomen's networking group she started; and both Jim and I will be back on Tuesday for a haircut and a home-cooked dinner a la Bruce.The rest of my week has been busy with meetings, a seminar, banking, laundry, errands, business-planning, phone-calling, networking, research and snowshoeing.
The work on the house is crawling forward. At this point, I think we'll be lucky if we can move in to the main house before April. I think we'll be open for business just in time for the quiet season. Oh well. One reason we moved up here was for the slower pace. Boy are we getting it. The irony is not lost on me.
There's so much more I could say. Like how stunningly beautiful it is. How we went to Brook's Falls in Emsdale and saw a deer at the river bank. How we saw a big bright halo around the nearly-full moon a couple of weeks ago (any explanation Doug?). How the snow was sparkling in the moonlight like it was covered in billions of tiny diamonds. How the cedar shingles that are being installed on the side of our house permeate the whole area with their wonderful aroma. How it's warm enough in the late afternoon sun to sit in our beach chairs. How funny the dog looks after she roots face-first in the snow, looking for her latest stick or for rabbit poopsicles (yuck).It's really amazing up here. I can't wait to share it with more of you. But for now, I better get some sleep. We promised Saba a long walk in the morning.
Take
care, folks!
Jackie
****
Just sittin' here and watching American Idol at the same time. Carole placed a little 9" TV we've had for years next to the computer and I thought I'd never use it but it kind of fills the blank spots between creative (or duhhhh) thoughts. Being a person that has always had a liking for good voices I enjoy American and Canadian Idol shows. I've been watching these shows for a few years now and it's surprising just how many people do have good voices. The only thing that bugs me is the number of contestants that think they have to have an excessive amount of vibrato in their voice to sound good. It seems to be a "black thang" ....if you know what I mean? Whatever happened to singing clear steady notes that don't sound like their producer has one of those 60's vibrating, weight reducing waist belts around their asses, shaking the sounds out of them? LOL! Actually tonight the first 3 singers did their number without that effect and they sounded much better for it.
I would like to see a "mature" version of one of these Idol shows. There's a Canadian by the name of Michael Buble` that is singing Sinatra style stuff and is making a killing. It would be nice to see people our age making a start at a new career. Michael is only in his late 20's but his style is refreshing. I think the music industry needs more singers in this niche (Balladiers). Harry Konic Jr is another singer of this type. I think it's time we had more songs that have lyrics that we can understand without cringing over the cursing they contain. I was always a Roy Orbison fan and don’t remember ever hearing a song by this artist that didn’t directly relate to true life. I still to this day listen to his recordings whenever I want to enjoy good music, not to mention bring back many pleasant memories of years gone by. It’s amazing when you think that music is so timeless. I’m sure you all have your favourite artists both from today and many years ago. I guess when I think back, my parents didn’t take to well to some of our music choices and now we’re in that same position today. Actually I think we’re past being involved in most of Adam’s musical choices. He’s got an amazing computerized recording studio in the basement and does some very interesting production in his studio.
I believe there’s a lot of great undiscovered talent around and the “Idol” shows prove this. Maybe the day will come when we’ll see a “mature” Idol show but I won’t hold my breath. On the other hand we may be subjected to another “Gong Show” if they do try to interest older adults in performing live on TV. I would hope our generation would be able to hold their own in the talent field. Let’s hope the producers give this a try. It would be interesting to watch and I’m sure it would be a hit show.
I should go for now. Thanks for joining me again this week. I’ll see you all again next time in The Ontarion Report.
Bye for now…GREG.
PS: Something To Think About>
Dream, when you’re feeling blue. Dream and it might come true. Things never are as bad as they seem so dream dream dream!
****
The Family and the Squamidian sites:
http://members.shaw.ca/doug_b/ and http://www.thedougsite.ca
Have a good one..
the
doug
The Fine Print!
The articles in these issues are the sole property of the persons writing them should be respected as such.