Lifts on Silver Star

 When I started working at Silver Star Mountain in 1988, they had three Mueller double chairs, three T-bars and one ancient Poma that was powered with an old Caterpiller diesel that had a gas pup attached to start it. The mid T originally ran further up the hill but at a level spot it became negatively weighted, causing continual haul rope derailments so it had been shortened. I was hired to construct the base for a newly designed negative tower and then to reconstruct the lift to its original length. I was at the right place at the right time and got to work. Afterwards, my boss Dennis O'Ferrall, came to say, "I can't hire you full time but I have another couple of weeks work". This scene happened a few times and then I was hired full time and ultimately was in charge of infrastructure - power, communications, water and sewer.

Like many ski areas in British Columbia, Silver Star Mountain Resort was in a provincial park and thus didn't own the land. This created a problem for expansion as income just from skiers wasn't enough to justify expansion. However, at this time, the Province allowed ski hills to open up residential areas on the mountain, sell building lots and then tax the homeowners just like down town. Suddenly there was money available for expansion. Now we had to sink wells for domestic water, expand the sewage treatment and of course start shopping for ski lifts. 

At this time, in the late 1980s, high speed lifts were just being introduced. Fixed grip lifts could not go any faster than it took for skiers to get on and off, often causing long lift lines. High speed (3 metres per second or 10 kph) lifts would detach the quad or 4 person chair at a  terminal, slow it to allow on and off and then launch it again to attach to the haul rope. I got along very well with my boss Dennis and we travelled to ski areas to check out lifts. Sometimes just the two of us and sometimes the whole maintenance crew when it was combined with a ski areas conference. The front runner in lifts at that time was Yan Lifts (Lift Engineering & Manufacturing Co., in Carson City, Nevada) mainly because they were a million dollars less expensive than the competitors. Yan detachable lifts were being put up all over North America.

Dennis and I flew to Reno, were picked up and taken to Yan's home on Lake Tahoe. He had an indoor pool that had a movable roof constructed with lift parts. We had a tour of the plant and the electrical-whiz engineer toured us to nearby Squaw Valley and a few other hills that had Yan lifts. Yanek Kunczynski was a Polish engineer and ski racer. He started his own lift engineering company in 1965, met and married the daughter of the founder of Squaw Valley ski area and convinced his father-in-law to purchase lifts for the Olympic Hill. Other ski hills soon followed suit. Incidentally, the electrical engineer (I have forgotten his name), had worked doing the electronics for Disney World in Paris.

Silver Star first bought the short lift Silver Queen to get skiers back to the residential area. I was able to buy a new transit to be able to ensure that the lift line was straight. A crew came from Carson City to do the erection and some of the semi-truck drivers delivering parts came from Southern States and weren't prepared for the snow. We had to paint the towers, which only had a primer coat, which we did by mounting a scissor lift onto the back of a flatbed truck and spraying. Fortunately, we were entirely covered or we would also have been tower blue. I later saw a man in town who was just that shade of blue but unfortunately he had a reaction to sunlight which made him that way.

The following year saw the Vance Creek lift erected and then the Putnam Creek lift which at the time was the longest detachable in North America. The haul ropes were manufactured in Europe, came by ship to Vancouver and then by train. They had to be made in one length so they were extremely heavy and special trucks were needed to get them up the mountain.

We had dismantled the old Vance Creek and loaded the chairs onto the train in Vernon. I can't remember for sure where they went, perhaps to the Smithers ski hill. The Silver Star maintenance crew strung the haul rope and worked with the wire rope splicer to make the long splice in the large rope. We also strung the communication cable from tower to tower. A Lift Engineering electronics guy came to program the the electronics and wire in the 1,000 hp motor. The motors were locomotive traction motors married to a Caterpillar gearbox to turn the bull wheel. Standby power was a 6 cylinder Cummins diesel on the Silver Queen and Vance and a 16 cylinder Cummins on the Putnam Creek. This lift did have a 6 cylinder for lift evacs but the 16 cylinder was married to an electrical generator in the event that hydro was lost to the hill.

After I had left the ski hill, a Yan chair or gondola fell from a lift at Black Comb Mountain, the grip was deemed to be the problem and several ski areas got the resources together to redesign the grip. However, this proved unsatisfactory in the long run and most Yan lifts in Western Canada have been replaced by Doppelmeyer, Garaventa, Laitner or Poma.

English Class

 Since sometime in high school, I wanted to be a writer. Ideas came and just flowed out of the end of my pen. It really was not a struggle at all, it just happened. I enjoyed my English classes, at least early on. In grade eight, I had an English teacher who liked everything that I wrote and went so far as to say, "Have you ever thought of being a writer?" Well, yes I had. I advanced into a grade nine English class where the teacher just could not believe that an immigrant boy, who was also a football athlete, could write such stories. My homework would come back covered in red ink - source?; where did you get this?; is this your own work? A little off-putting to say the least.

Our guidance counsellor at the time was of little help. Mr. Sniffles we called him as he had a perpetually runny nose. Allergic to students, I think. When I revealed to him, in a guidance one-to-one, that I wished to be a writer, his immediate response was "Oh, you can't do that". Well, darn. I thought that I could.

Advance to grade 10. Our English teacher was like a little martinet, although quite friendly. He always wore a corduroy suit and wore a flat cap when cruising around outside. At the end of that school year, our family had planned a trip to Finland, the first since we had immigrated to Canada. The problem was that the charter flight left from New York City and we would have drive across the continent. This necessitated leaving before the school year was quite finished. I approached my teachers whether I could pull out early and still get a passing grade and all assured that was fine, including my English teacher.

To my surprise in the fall, I discovered that I had passed everything but English. It seems the teacher had forgotten our discussion and refused to pass me. The English classes that I had enjoyed now became least favourite and steered me in a different direction. My total high school English experience blasted me into Sciences instead. Instead of being a positive, uplifting, engaging experience, it became a burden to bear. As a result, I didn't graduate with my cohort but with kids who had started school a year later.

It all ended well though since I knew all those kids anyway. In order to get all my English classes since I repeated grade 10, all my other classes were grade 13 in my grade 12 year. When I started university, I was already beyond first year classes. Bonus. A few years after leaving high school, I ran into Mr. MacKenzie, our principal at the time. He enquired what I was up to and since I was a little undecided he declared that I would become a teacher. It took a few years for that prophesy to come true. However, high school put writing right out of my head until I reached retirement. Now I dabble. 

Letter to the Editor

 Letter to the editor by Peter Dascavich. 

News Advertiser, March 9, 2022.

A false flag operation . . .

Driving north into Penticton on a fine sunny Saturday the mood was soured by a convoy of cars and trucks bedecked in Canadian flags heading to Osoyoos to jam up the border and disrupt the lives of people living in that small town under the pretense of freedom.

What I find most infuriating is the way this small bellicose crowd of science deniers, far right fart sacks, willfully ignorant mouth breathers and credulous conspiracy consumers pretend to represent Canada by flying the Canadian flag.

They have taken the beloved Maple Leaf, the flag our soldiers fight and die under, the image that our athletes tearfully wrap themselves in on the Olympic podium, the symbol Canadians proudly attach to their luggage when travelling abroad and besmirched it in a tawdry display of selfish intolerance. Even hanging it upside down on a statue of Terry Fox, a national hero who believed in science.

These convoys have nothing to do with the Canadian government mandating vaccines for truckers who cross international borders. There is only one border by land from Canada, and the U.S. requires vaccines to cross it. The Trudeau government has zero control over that. End of story.

These faux patriots, either through choice or the luck of the birth lottery, live in one of the greatest countries on earth, a place where hundreds of millions dream of immigrating because it is a global bastion of freedom and opportunity and one of the world's oldest democracies. Yet for reasons few faux patriots could articulate, they advocate the overthrow of the duly elected government, replacing it with a committee of their choosing.

What could go wrong, Canada?

First off, in a democracy, the majority rules. This is a plain and simple fact that every child learns early in their schooling. The majority of Canadians want vaccines and mandates, another simple fact even the most obtuse mouthbreathers should be able to grasp.

This is not taking away freedom from a minority, this is fulfilling the will of the people who elected the government. This is the way democracy works.

The majority of Canadians want drivers to have a license to operate motor vehicles and to obey the rules of the road. They do not want our streets and highways to become deadly free-for-alls for anyone with access to a vehicle. We accept this because it is sensible.

Similarly, the government requires people to show I.D. when purchasing liquor or marijauna or upon entering a bar or strip club. This is because the majority of Canadians think protecting children from the temptations of the adult world is the right thing to do.

Our kids require vaccines to attend public schools because the sensible majority believes in science and sees the benefits of eradicating diseases like smallpox.

In short, a democracy functions because people respect the will of the majority even when it goes against their personal beliefs.

This is not to say people do not have the right to protest if they don't like a particular government policy. This is the unalienable right of people living in a free society, a cornerstone of democracy that we all cherish. Have at it.

Honk your horns. Hold hillbilly tailgate parties. Howl at the moon. Just do it somewhere where you are not infringing on the rights of other Canadians to go about their lives. Don't harass health care workers or children at school. Don't intimidate employees at stores and restaurants who are working to keep the system going. And don't do any of it under the auspices of the Canadian flag.

You do not represent Canada. You are a national embarrassment, a tiny minority having your 15 minutes of fame giving the finger to the majority, who in your paranoid conspiracy-addled world you imagine look down on you from positions of privilege.

You revel in the size of your Trump-inspired rallies, citing the thousands who turn out as an indication you have a lot of support. You stand proud of your stupidity. The truth is if the tolerant majority runs out of patience with your continued belligerence and perceives you as a real threat to our cherished democracy, you will be swamped in a sea of millions of righteous freedom-loving Canadians who will send you scurrying down conspiracy rabbit holes with your bunny tails tucked.

The support you are getting from right wing extremists in the U.S. and throughout the world should signal Canadians to be on guard. When Ted Cruz is on your side... well, enough said. The Canadian flag is a proud symbol of our multiculturalism and our national tolerance of diverse viewpoints. It should never be dragged into politics or be flown at rallies rooted in hate advocating the overthrow of our elected government. It should never be seen in the same picture as the Swastika.

Tolerance is one thing, but history tells us that allowing extremists to flaunt the law without consequences never ends well.

Short Course in Buying a Boat

 Short Course in Buying a Boat

Buying a boat, more than buying any other thing, is a matter of mind over heart. Falling in love with a boat is easy but it could be very difficult to undo a "blinded by love" purchase.

The first step is viewing a boat from a distance. Does it look "right". Does it have a nice smooth sheer or is it hogged (the bow and stern droop).

If the boat is on the hard, what does the bottom look like. Glass reinforced plastic can have blisters and delaminations which show up as pits and bumps. Steel might show patches where rust scale has been chipped away and been painted over. Aluminum may have had holes patched or dents hammered out. Wood could have soft spots; caulking could be starting to fall out; rust from fasteners could be leaking through the paint. All of these are a proceed with caution notice.

Climbing aboard, check for tell tale signs of any fittings to the deck having moved or lifted. Is the deck spongy when you walk on it. Does the rigging look old and worn out. Is the dodger or bimini worn out by the sun and wind; are plastic dodger windows all yellow and hazy. Are the binnacle instruments all yellow and hazy or are they well covered.

On a sailboat, how many sails come with it; is the stitching and cloth in good shape.

Going down below, follow your nose. If it smells musty and moldy then water is sitting somewhere, causing a problem. Does the bilge smell nasty. Does the ice box or fridge smell nasty. Bad smells can have bad causes.

Check the bilge for water, or worse, oily water. Where are the bilge pumps. Is there more than one. If the engine is rusty and nasty looking, it hasn't been looked after internally either. The engine should have an hour meter, anything under 2,000 hours for a diesel is acceptable (the lower, the better).

In the engine room, is the wiring neat and workman like or is it haphazard with house wiring added in. Are the fuel filters a mess. Are hoses a mess or are they tidy with the ends double clamped. What do fuel tanks, water tanks, sewage tanks look like.

Does the boat have a main circuit board for both AC and DC. Is the wiring neat and workman like.

Now, you can begin to look at the accommodations. Is the paint up to date. Does the paint show signs of water leaks. What does the head look like. Smell like. Does it have a sewage holding tank. Does the shower have a separate stall. Do the bunks look comfy. Do they come with mattresses. Are the mattresses musty.

Is the stove alcohol, oil, or propane. Does the propane have a solenoid shut off. Is the propane bottle in a locker on deck with a drain overboard. Is the stove gimballed.

Final Word. If the boat that you are looking at, looks clean in all areas then it is likely that it has been well looked after and deserves to be looked at further. For a boat that you like what you see, it is always good to engage a marine surveyor to check the boat out. The surveyors report will let you know what areas you have to fix over time or what areas need immediate attention. The report may also be a document with which you can bargain on the price of the boat. The report will also give you some peace of mind.

Monte Cristo

 In the late 1960s, word of mouth lead me to where the Monte Cristo was being built. She was a barquentine, planked with mahogany on sawn Douglas fir frames. Four disparate dreamers had combined efforts to bring this tall ship into being. Alex Brigola, an Austrian of lousy disposition, was the main push and promoter to build this ship. Joe was the partner with the building skills and like most builders was easy going and calm, confident in his skills. Jiri Novak was the muscle. He was a deserter from the Czechoslovakian army and was a whirlwind of energy and raw strength, with flowing blond hair. The fourth partner, whose name I can't recall, was of equally foul temper as Alex and rode a Triumph motor cycle. Then of course there was a handful of dreamers and waterfront hangers-on of whom I was one.

I found out about the ship from my friend Bob whose brother Bill Ingersoll was likewise 

Bill Ingersoll and blonde Jiri Novak

working at building the Monte Cristo in any spare time that he had. Bob and Bill's dad had a bare hull that he was finishing off at Mosquito Creek Yacht Basin in North Vancouver. Bill and I, being the youngest of the group, were interested in how a traditional vessel went together. The building of the hull was the same as any wooden vessel we had been involved with but just much larger. But the rigging was where traditional, almost lost, skills came into use. All the hardware had to be fabricated, by Joe, for the spars for the square sails, for the stays and bowsprit hardware, for the shrouds and ratlines, for the blocks and lines and pin rails. Shrouds of 1" wire rope had to be "wormed and parcelled with the lay, turn and served the other way", as was the ages old method. Everything was covered in, rare today, Stockholm tar. Joe turned the blocks, belaying pins and deadeyes from Lignum Vitae, a wood so dense that it did not float.

In time, the Monte Cristo was ready to be launched to be rigged, but the problem was that she was a quarter of a mile from the water. The Canadian National Railway lent us the ties and rails to build a railway to Burrard Inlet.  

Launch day, Ironworkers' Memorial Bridge 

Photo Vancouver archives

Someone lent a front-end loader so the work was not entirely by armstrong. I don't know who of the partners had a friend in the provincial government but highways minister Phil Gagliardi, an ordained minister of a church in Kamloops, came to bless the vessel, and my Canadian flag draped the bowsprit. Phil Gagliardi was of that larger-than-life era of politician who were a little outrageous in what they said and did but by-and-large were important to the development of the province. If what they did in the 1950's and 60's were left to the study-it-to-death and contract-it-out-overseas politicians of today, nothing of any size and worth would have been accomplished. Indeed, today's politicians have dismantled some of what was accomplished at great expense to the province. 

After the launching and the obligatory visits onboard, we were able to spend the first night afloat on the Monte Cristo. She was then towed to Burrard Drydock to have one of

the dockside cranes slide the sticks into her. The spars had been acquired from the then Queen Charlotte Islands, now Haida Gwaii, and floated to Vancouver in a log boom. Now, quite a few old retired seamen, who had learned the trade from the iron men of sail, appeared to help rig the masts and tension the shrouds and stays. Everything was done by eye. She had to look right, not some copy from a book.  

Coming into the CPR Pier, where the old convention centre, The Sails, now sits.

Photo Vancouver archives

This is where I left the Monte Cristo as I had gotten a job with Federal Fisheries at the Research Station in Nanaimo.

Unfortunately, after the ship had been rigged and the sails bent, I heard later from somebody, Alex Brigola tried to motor her singlehandedly through the First Narrows, against the tide, and had to be rescued and towed back to dock. This was deemed as running out on the other partners and of course it went to court. Ultimately, she was sold and the new owners sailed her into the South Pacific. The last I heard of the Monte Cristo was that she had become embayed on a lee shore in New Zealand in a gale and was driven ashore and was a total loss.

Miscellaneous Photos

 

Shirtless me at launch. 

Adventures with Ken

 My friend Ken Parker had an irrepressible grin which no doubt helped him get on in life. I first met Ken when we both worked on the Centennial Caravan #7 in 1967. For Canada's Centennial year, a number of tractor trailer caravans of ten units each had been developed to tour through the provinces, depicting Canada's history from pre-ice age to the then present. The trailers were set up so that people could enter at one end of the string of trailers and walk through an advancing depiction of key historical events and then out the other end. We boys, most in our early twenties were hired as attendants to set up the display in each new town, usher folks through and then tear down for the move to the next town. 

Ken had travelled out from Ontario and I joined the Caravan in Milk River, Alberta, in May 1967. The Caravan had a route that spiralled from small town to small town, moving northward, to eventually cover the majority of Alberta, Yukon and western Northwest Territories. As prairie folks know, May can still be winter and two others and I landed in Lethbridge in a snow storm. The Caravan was already set up in Milk River and we started work there. We were supplied with summer blazers, shirts, trousers, coveralls and a rain coat. However, this was not enough to stay warm. We shivered through a couple of small towns and as winter gear did not seem forthcoming, the attendants held a strike. This is where I got to know Ken.

I had worked for Great Northern Railway in Vancouver and when rail workers needed time off, they "booked off sick". I suggested we all book off sick. We did and of course the Caravan left without us for the next town. Ken got on the phone to our bosses in Ottawa to say what had happened. Our instructions were to get ourselves to the next town and winter coats would be on the way.

I can't remember in which town Ken had bought a 1947 Studebaker pickup but that was our transport to the next town. And it was chilly in the back of that truck. We must have made quite a sight, scrunched low in the back, singing folk songs from the era, bombing down the road. Ottawa sent fleece lined, canvas army coats for us until summer arrived.

In most prairie towns, the highest landmark is either a grain elevator or a water tower. Ken and I and sometimes one or two others would climb the water tower for great aerial photos of the town. No drones in those days. And so it went.

Most of the little prairie and northern towns centred their Centennial activities around the arrival of the Caravan. We boys were invited to homes and ranches for meals and cookouts. A memorable cookout was on the beach of Great Slave Lake, N.W.T., outside Hay River. Huge (longer than I was tall) whitefish had been caught and were being grilled over an open fire with the aurora borealis running riot overhead.

Somewhere, north of Edmonton, Ken bought a 1947 Harley Davidson motorcycle. Beautiful. It was cream in colour, had a suicide shift, a great big seat that would have looked good on a tractor. My last memory of that bike is riding behind Ken towards Edmonton. He had a fringed buckskin jacket and I was bundled up in a sheepskin. Ken then bought a 1953 Chevy.

Soon after that we left the Caravan as the World's Fair was on in Montreal but only until November. We left Edmonton with one guy driving while the other slept in the back and made it to Toronto in 54 hours. This was fairly good going as normally it takes three days to drive from the Manitoba-Ontario border to Toronto. My wife, then girlfriend, was staying with her parents in Mississauga so I was able to catch up on sleep there and then Ken and I headed to Montreal with the '53 Chevy.

On the dodgier side of things, Ken had traded a guitar for a German 9mm luger, which was with us. We stopped in a forested area along the highway to try it out. No worries back then. The first night in Montreal was spent at the foot of the big cross on the hill, sleeping in the car. Looking back, we might have been in some trouble if police had searched the car. However, all was well and we rented a room in a boarding house and went to the Fair. Driving back to Toronto at night, I was stopped by the highway police. I guess I was tired and wandered somewhat. He asked me how long I had been driving. "Since I was sixteen" was my reply which got a roll of the eyes. Tonight is what he meant. He told Ken to drive and shooed us away.

Back in Toronto, Ken had bought a pair of MG sports cars from somewhere and they needed to be driven back to Woodstock, Ontario where Ken's father ran a garage. So off we went. Halfway to Woodstock, one of the cars ran out of gas. Ken didn't bother with the Automobile Association but went to the nearest farm house and borrowed a gallon of gas and away we went. That irrepressible grin paved the way.

After that, I headed to Ottawa with Betty and then back west. I didn't see Ken again for over a decade when we were both married with kids. In 1984, I was working in California and Ken came for a conference and got in touch. I picked him up at his hotel and we went to see the sights of San Francisco. I had a 1979 Volvo that had the unfortunate fault to shut down when driven at night. First the lights would go out and about 15 minutes later the engine would stop. On this night, at about 2:00 am and not far from Ken's hotel, the lights went out. We proceeded, sans lights, around the next corner right into the midst of a police convention of several squad cars. Needless to say, we got pulled over. Our cop was one who really relished his role, right down to tight leather gloves. As he was writing the ticket, Ken decided to test the waters. "Are those scratches on your hood from slamming perps against it?" Crowbar hotel here we come. Just as it was dawning on the cop what Ken had said, he got a radio call about a break and enter in the next block. He ripped the ticket out of his book and threw it at us and disappeared. See, it was Ken's grin.

Acme Novelty

 I worked for the Centennial Commission in 1967, Canada's Centennial year, on Caravan 7.

We were one of ten caravans across the country comprised of ten tractor trailer units which could be formed up into an interactive display of Canadian history from stone age to the then present day. Caravan 7 travelled throughout Alberta and into the Yukon and Northwest Territories. While travelling, many of us mailed our photos to be developed to the Acme Novelty Company in Edmonton. They developed the film and sent the results back along with a roll of undeveloped film.

Acme Novelty brings to mind Wile E. Coyote opening a new Roadrunner trap from Acme. We laughed about that in those days but still, Acme provided a good service. I had my photos made into 35mm slides at that time and through almost a year of travelling, accumulated quite a few hundred slides. When I returned to Vancouver, where there was also an Acme Novelty branch. I went there to buy a slide projector. 

I can't now remember what else Acme sold, wholesale and retail, but they had a large camera department. I was there just before the Christmas season and was probably wearing my Centennial Commission blazer, wine coloured with the Canadian government logo in silver wire on the pocket (wowee). I made my projector purchase and as I exited the store, the manager ran after me and asked if I wanted to work in the camera department. How often does that happen? Certainly never nowadays.

I worked there over the Christmas season selling cameras. I sold more Konica cameras than any other because that was what I used and was very familiar with it. I still have that Argus projector but a while back I scanned my slides into digital form. Slide projectors and film cameras, indeed film itself, have all gone the way of the dinosaur. I'm probably on that track myself.