Nostalgia II

Nostalgia really isn't fair to the present. This was in a day when cars were hot and girls were not. Girls were good looking chicks but they weren't "hot". Even when mini-skirts and bra-less shirts were the thing. Today you have hot girls and sweet cars. Go figure.

Still, cars were hot; gas was less; the dollar bought more (two bits bought more than the loonie today); the summers were hotter; the winters were colder - well you get the drift. However, it is only the baby-boomers or older that have that backward-glancing perspective to say that it was better then or nostalgically "Remember when". People born into the post '80s economics just see it as the regular hard scrabble to make ends meet. Taxes are high; my job doesn't pay enough; school is expensive; I can't find a doctor, place to live, job - well, you get the picture. No nostalgia there.

Basically, the problem is that the economic system is hooped; it doesn't work for everybody; it puts marketers and shareholders ahead of all other values that define a civilized nation. When shareholders require that their investments show a year-over-year guaranteed growth, all I see is greed. A fair return on investments is to be expected but to expect that the return is to increase every year by double digit percentages is just greedy. This expectation has degraded everything that we hold dear on this planet.

When a system no longer works for the majority of people, it will inevitably change. The present system only works well for that top 2% of the population who hold 90% of the wealth. It doesn't work for the under-employed or unemployed youth. It doesn't work for the overworked and underpaid middle class. It doesn't work for the civil service, educators, or doctors who must do more with less because of resource cut-backs. The system no longer works in crime prevention or law enforcement. The system of courts certainly doesn't work or is badly limping. Farmers and fishermen are declining and looking for other work. Look at any aspect of our civilization and try to find what works well for everybody.

Indications of a necessary change to come is evident on the streets. Disaffected people rioting after a hockey match. Occupy movements spreading to most major cities. Homeless people in every town large or small. Governments are unable to do anything to fix the situation because they are themselves part of the problem. When did the whole system become topsy-turvy where the government calls the shots and we work like hell to pay the bill. Don't they work for us?

I suppose nostalgia has us looking back to the heyday of the industrial revolution in the post-war years. Workers were paid a wage that had value with regard to prices. A father was able to house, clothe and feed his family and still have money left to save. How many have money left over at the end of the month today? That is another indication that the industrial revolution has run its course and we are coming to a paradigm shift.

Turkeys to Arrow

Yesterday, we took a load of frozen turkeys to Arrow Branch. Arrow Credit Union once had the distinction of being the smallest credit union in British Columbia and perhaps smallest in western Canada, situated in Edgewood on the shores of Arrow Lake.

 The village of Edgewood was once on the shores of the Columbia River where the Inonoaklin River and the Columbia met. However, in 1968, the Hugh Keenleyside Dam was completed, flooding the Columbia Valley for 230 km to  Revelstoke. The village of Edgewood had to be moved to higher ground.

 The residents of Edgewood make their living mostly from forestry and agriculture and are known for their rural and individualistic lifestyle, as in most rural towns and villages in Canada. People work hard, know their neighbours, and are connected more to their communities than in urban areas.

 Back to turkeys. VantageOne Credit Union in Vernon, BC, gives a turkey for Christmas to every member household, as a token of appreciation for the banking partnership. When Arrow Credit Union joined with VantageOne, members of the board and management began making the drive over Monashee Pass with a trailer full of frozen turkeys.

 

 The arrival of the birds has been known to cause a traffic jam in front of the Arrow Branch.

 The Great Gobble Give-Away has turned out to be a great means for credit union board members to meet many of the membership who they normally would have no contact with. Normally, the tellers in any bank are the "face" of that bank but this is an opportunity for the behind-the-scenes people to directly pitch in.

 

Merry Christmas.

Playing With Fire

When I was growing up, everybody knew how to deal with fire. There were no worries about climate change due to CO2 and smoke in the air was just a fact of life which nobody thought anything about. Everybody burned garbage out back, construction scraps went up in flames, and many people still cooked with wood. Dad bought a partially finished house around 1956 that had a huge pile of roots and branches from the virgin forest that had been cleared for the house. For a couple of years he hacked and burned that pile of wood so there was always a fire outside the kitchen window.

I remember being disappointed, when we moved up to the end of Austin Road, that we didn't have a wood burning stove so I could have chopped kindling like the Treger boys had to. We used stove oil. It came directly into the kitchen stove from the 45 gallon drum on a stand outside the kitchen. We also had a stove oil fired space heater in the living room to which I had to carry stove oil in a container. The outside drum had a tap at the other end from the kitchen line from which to fill a gallon container. I think that it is from those days that I got my liking for the smell of diesel - stove oil just being a little more refined.

The appliances that burned stove oil had a regulator near the bottom that had a dial from 1 to 6 or 8 that determined the amount of oil that came to the burner. You had to be  timely with your match too because if you allowed too much oil in, it was hard to light. Then you had to light a piece of newspaper to get the oil to light. Fishing boats still have diesel fueled stoves that work the same way. Lifting the lids would give a puff of exhaust. Perfume.

So growing up, most of us kids knew how to deal with fire. We could get a fire going in the dampest of forests. Sandwiches toasted over an open fire in some ravine, while fishing for little trout, still stirs my memories. We also learned how to start fires with fuels. It was easy, when you knew how, to toss gas onto a reluctant fire from an open can and avoid the WOOOF. In those days, people thought nothing of inserting an old tire into a pile of stumps and then using gas or diesel to get it going. A burning tire was sure to keep that fire going and the black smoke would be like a magnet for the local kids.

Most homes had a burning barrel out back and it was a kid's job to take the combustibles out and get them burning. That's another childhood smell memory, when paper started to burn, and sometimes the popcorn smell of singed hair. And you couldn't just light it and leave it. There was usually a stout stick involved that was used to poke at the fire to keep everything burning. Most construction sites had a fire burning and all the wood cutoffs went there. Nothing that could be burned was hauled to the landfill. Grass along ditches and in unused fields was also burned. The spring air was often filled by the smoke from burning grass. This was usually done responsibly and a hose was handy, or a kid with a rake or shovel, to keep the grass from burning where it shouldn't, like up a fence post.

Now, everything goes to the landfill. Smoke is obnoxious to some and there are regulations in most jurisdictions about burning. Paper products get recycled and so they should, but wouldn't it be nice to be able to burn your garden prunings instead of lugging them to the landfill? It doesn't make any change to the amount of CO2 let into the atmosphere whether natural products decompose in the ground or burn. Exactly the same amount eventually goes into the atmosphere, burning is just faster. And more fun.

Time Travel

It really is amazing how the sense of smell can instantly bring back memories that otherwise are buried so deep that the recall time can stretch into days. You know the feeling. Try to remember something, that will come back to you much later, usually in the middle of the night. But smell a certain odor and memories will come streaming back in technicolour.

I had that happen as I passed some creosoted poles on a hot day. I was instantly transported (not by Scotty) back to the docks on the Fraser River on a warm summers day. Creosote does that to me. I know it's not ecologically friendly but I love creosote or rather the smell of creosote. The same with Stockholm Tar. It's a great friendly smell of tar distilled from pine trees and used for centuries in ship building. The smell of tar instantly takes me back to a long, dim shed in the 1960's in which I "wormed and parcelled with the lay, turn and serve the other way" on ships rigging for a three-masted barque.

Some smells are dusty. My old friend creosote has a dusty smell to it in railway yards. I suppose it is a combination of creosoted ties, rock ballast and whatever leaked out of old leaky boxcars. Walking along tracks sometimes makes you wonder whether some cars arrived at the destination with anything left. Lots of grain is sprouting next to the tracks, mixed with white sand and wood chips.

This smell thing often takes me on a little side trip (mind trip). The smell of raw diesel will put me in a boom tug at the Crown Zellerbach mill in Kelowna. Diesel exhaust will take me to any number of boats at the coast. The fresh ocean smell of fish takes me to the cannery on the Skeena River. Wood smoke is a winter smell. And who can sniff a freshly sharpened pencil and not remember their first day of school.

I know that people often talk about the smell of fresh mown lawn but unfortunately for me that is just a bad smell. The same for me with the smell of plywood. Many people like the smell of plywood but it just brings memories of unpleasant work for me. Other wood smells are fine. A logging truck load of freshly cut trees has that forest smell. Making sawdust from fir or hemlock will take my mind back to building houses with dad. Of course, yellow cedar and teak will instantly transport me to a boat shed on the river.

Taste will also do that to a lesser degree. Just a sip of Retsina will take me back to a winter in 1971 when that was all we drank because it was cheap. Carole King singing a song from her Tapestry album (vinyl you know) will take me back to that same winter. It's funny how that part of memory works but as I get older, regular memory seems to work in fits and starts. Maybe we just need a collection of familiar smells, bottled and boxed, that we can tap into when we need to jog ourselves back to certain places in time. Mind travel seems to be the way to go if we could just figure out the forward gear.

Fate

Life has a funny way of leading you from strength to strength, or job to job, with each one building on the experience of the previous without which you couldn't get to the next. For instance, I started wiring boats, on the side, for Neil's Electric in New Westminster. I had no qualifications other than I looked handy to the boss and he needed another guy to pull wire. Even that is a wonder because as he was leading me to the boat being built on a side creek of the Fraser River, I rear ended his car at a stop sign. No damage except to pride.

I then went on to do other jobs unrelated to pulling wire - Federal Fisheries, B.C. Research Council, Department of Agriculture, teaching school (notice that school is the only one not capitalized. Strange eh?). After teaching ended and I had worked construction for a few years, and then two years away from home because B.C. was in one of the busts following the boom times of the 1970's, I started installing burglar alarms for Ver-Tel Alarms in Vernon. This was almost twenty years after working for Neil's Electric but based on the hours there, I was able to challenge for the restricted license required for alarms.

The next leap happened when I installed a burglar alarm at Vernon Kiln & Millwork. They were expanding at the time and needed an electrician/millwright. I signed on as the work at the mill was a lot steadier than installing alarms. In those days not everybody was spooked enough by the daily news to want an alarm like they seem to be today. The mill had an annual electrical permit so I was able to do the wiring, occasionally inspected by the Electrical Safety Branch inspector, and over time and based on the restricted license, I was able to write for my Class C, which allowed for wiring up to 240 volts.

Vernon Kiln & Millwork was one of those small mills that once were common in rural B.C. They employed unskilled labourers and skilled millwrights and machine operators. During my time there in the late 1980's the labourers were mostly Vietnamese boat people. Friendly and hard working. There was also a Quebecois, a Golden Gloves boxer, and a heavy drinker who was ten years younger than me but looked ten years older. A binge would have him disappear for a while but then he would be back and carry on working hard. A smattering of young kids from high school would also start their first jobs at the mill. These mills gave work to many who otherwise wouldn't have been able to make such good wages.

In 1988 I was hired by Silver Star Mountain Resorts to lengthen an existing T-bar ski lift. The lift had once been twice as long but had been shortened because they had trouble with keeping the haul rope on the sheaves were it became negatively loaded where the hill got steeper. An engineer had designed a new tower for this spot to hold the cable down and they needed somebody to build it. It was kind of a "let's see what you can do" job offer and I was left to work on it by myself. I just needed to build the concrete base as the tower was being manufactured in a machine shop and the rest of the lift meant installing the towers that had previously been taken down. No problem.

After that lift was complete, the Maintenance Manager, Dennis O'Ferrall, found more work for me and every two weeks or so for about three months would come and say "I've got another two weeks for you but I just can't promise full time". It of course developed into full time and I ended up as Supervisor of Utilities which meant looking after water, sewer, electrical power and telephones. Based on my Class C ticket acquired at the mill and the level of work required on the hill, I was able to upgrade to a Class B which allowed work up to 750 volts. Dennis himself had worked for a long time with the telephone system and he and I then would fix the many breaks in the cables that snaked around the mountain under ground. It seemed for a while that whenever a backhoe put a bucket in the ground a communications cable would be dug up. I eventually mapped all the locations of buried cables.

You see what I meant though, that one led to another. If I hadn't wired boats I wouldn't have installed alarms. If I hadn't installed alarms I wouldn't have gotten the Class C at the mill. And the Class C got me in the door at Silver Star and allowed the upgrade to Class B. And that Class B led me to the job at the City of Vernon which led to retirement, almost forty years after that first boat. Fate. It has to be.

Revolution

"When the revolution comes" was the by-word of the early 1970's, to fix all the ills that were perceived in society in those days. Protests happened, largely against the war in Vietnam but not against the multi-nationalization of industry, education, health care, agriculture, transportation, banking, communication and just about any other area of endeavour that you care to mention. Globalization became the new by-word in the next decade and multi-national corporations discovered that they no longer had to fear protests, unions or governments. Multi-nationals could do as they pleased.

The idealism of the '70's, baby boomer population strong, lasted for the instant in time that it took for the boomers to start having families and have to become earners. And life takes a toll, no matter how idealistic. To be sure, some were able to carry on, particularly in environmental causes, for instance Paul Watson who is still leading the Sea Shepherd Society, but by and large, the revolution never came.

Whenever I heard of stupid government policies that yet again sold out benefit to our country in favour of industry and multi-nationals; of industrial degradation instead of environmental preservation; of taxation for the middle classes and not corporations (I know, I know - you say the corporations are just made up of the middle classes. Smoke and mirrors).   Whenever I heard of inequities I whispered "When the revolution comes".

Now we have NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), which covers everything from the food we eat to the electricity we produce. However, our standard of wages, healthcare, food quality, resource production or extraction must now meet the standards of the lowest quality participant in the agreement. The largest participant refuses to accept rulings of the courts when it transgresses the agreement yet insists on payment when it perceives a transgression by others. Slowly our farmers and fishermen are going out of business because of dumping from across the border. Our resources are being sold to other nations without adequate royalty agreements to sustain our own industry. And the government in the east is trying to get tied up in a free trade agreement with Pacific Rim countries. When the revolution comes.

Now that I am no longer that idealistic youth, I had a moment of expectation; my heart beat a little faster, when the occupy Wall Street movement spread across North America.  The media failed to report about the underlying causes of this unrest because, after all, the media is big business and in the hands of the people that the Occupy movement was protesting. The police, always doing the bidding of government, and the winter weather did away with most Occupy sites.

What any movement takes to survive is the unquenchable idealism of youth. There is that short span of time between last year of high school, when most realize that they are free to do anything, to when they commit to partners and families and have to somehow earn a living. That is what has given the multi-national corporations in North America so much power. They know that at some point everyone must trade in their idealism for dollars. It doesn't make it right, it just is. Some remember to try to vote idealistically but unless wholesale change happens to the system, nothing will change. When the revolution comes.

Note to My Son

I write this because I have always been unable to speak to you without pushing buttons. I realize that parents and children do that to each other but it short circuits any meaningful discussion. Children, as adults, seem to stick to the rules of communication that they grew up with and imagine what a parent may be thinking when in fact the parent has also evolved over time and moved on.

It is important for both sides to understand that they are now dealing adult-to-adult and as family members, take each other at face value. What I say is what I mean and not something that as a child you thought I meant. You and I, son, have always had to explain ourselves so that there were no misunderstandings. I get that. Our take on the world has always been from slightly different angles. As a result I listen very carefully to what you say. I believe what you say. I do not try to twist your words into a convenience of my making.

Since I listen carefully to you and try not to interrupt while you make your point, I expect the same courtesy. I know, that's old fashioned of me but there you are, I've become old in the decade that you have been away. When you were young, I tried to respect your views and not overpower you with my own baggage.

I need to say that we have always been proud of you and have given positive support to the best of our abilities. And as with every other person that your mother and I know, we try not to judge. That is not for us to do. We like to take people as we find them.

No doubt there is a generation gap between you and me. It has ever been thus between father and son. Your skills, dreams and wishes are not mine. I would not wish in any way to diminish yours. I only wish the best for you. If I ask questions, it is because I am interested, not because I wish to interfere or impose my ideas. I am just plainly interested in what you do and hopefully I could learn something from you. Your ways are new ways and I have always been willing to listen to new ways. And I have never doubted that you would find your own way.

Dogs I Have Known II

Sam had been gone a few weeks when, on a trip to Kelowna to do laundry, Paul Nowell saw a notice pinned on the wall that some Malamute cross pups were available. We went to an orchard in E. Kelowna where under the porch of a pickers' shack there indeed was a litter of roly-poly husky looking pups. We picked out a cute sable-coloured female and took her home. She was saddled with the northern name of Tuktoyuktuk or just Tuk Tuk for short.

Tuk Tuk proved to be an amazingly easy going farm dog who travelled well in the back of the Beetle and was just a plain good companion. She vocalized a bit like Malamutes do but she never barked. We didn't know that she could until we moved to White Rock when Tuk was three or four years of age and I had climbed out of reach on "the" rock, when to everybody's surprise, she barked. Tuk travelled with us everywhere - back and forth to Vancouver; trips around the province; and on our honeymoon to Newfoundland - all in the back seat of the Beetle, often hemmed in by boxes or luggage.

Tuk learned to fish on the shore of Okanagan Lake when we lived in the Postill's orchard and would sometimes immerse her head completely and come out with a Kokanee delicately held in her teeth. She did the same trick with Oolachon on the Fraser River, right under the present Port Mann Bridge. Placid and easy going though she was, Tuk could not abide porcupines. Whether it was a feud born of generations or whether she somehow found them obnoxious to her sensibilities, she continued to come home with a muzzle full of quills. There is nothing more humble than a dog who has taken a bite of porcupine. You can just read it in their eyes, "Shit, I forgot about this part". Tuk had been our constant companion for a few years when daughter Erin was born. As the baby consumed more and more of our time, Tuk one day refused to have anything to do with us, instead just lay down with her face in a corner. This pout only lasted a little while and Tuk became quite lenient in allowing a toddler to prod, poke and pull.

Just prior to Tuk passing away at age sixteen, we heard of another litter of Husky cross pups and Betty came home with another sable coloured female which we named Suki. This dog was like Tuk in colour only. In temperament she was like anything but placid. She talked that Husky talk in full sentences. When anybody came over that she had bonded to she would squeal. She didn't travel with us much because she was a non-stop back-seat driver and that was hard to take. When Suki was still young we had Satu and Howard's dog Robbie staying with us for awhile. The two of them became great friends and would often lie nose to nose or do that doggie tug of war on a work sock. We would have to be alert though, if Robbie prevailed, that sock could disappear down his throat like a noodle in a Japanese noodle shop.

Of all our dogs, Suki displayed traits of the wild. When she ran in unknown territory, she kept her head high and continually glanced over her shoulder. She had that feral, coyote look about her. Suki had some weird genetic memory because she went bananas when lamb was being cooked. She ran about holding her nose high in the air even onto her hind legs and howled. She just refused to settle down. In a former life she must have lived in Britain during the war. Some people react the same way about mutton.

Our friend Baxter came to stay at about a year of age. He belonged to daughter Erin but she broke an ankle and couldn't run around after a young dog. Baxter was a Turkish Akbash and Husky cross. The cross showed in his ears that didn't stand up like a Husky's or didn't hang down like an Akbash's but stuck out sideways and flapped up and down when he loped along. And he had a very peculiar gait which gobbled up ground in a hurry. Like a moose, he would move both front and rear legs on one side at the same time, and of course this just made his sideways ears just bounce more.

All of our dogs had that doggie personality. You know how you can see it on their face - happy, sad, ashamed, oops. Baxter had that too but when he was extremely happy to see you, he would curl up one side of his lip into a snaggle-toothed smile and squint his eyes. Baxter had more mannerisms than any of the others too. He had learned to ring a jingle bell on the door when asking out and quickly learned that as we were getting up anyway, we might as well detour by the treat bucket. He would butt our leg for a noogie or back into us for a butt scritch. Baxter would hoist a hip onto the couch and watch tv and he would watch a whole hour if there were dogs and other four-legged animals on the tube.

Akbash (white head in Turkish) dogs are raised with sheep and goats as guardians of the flock and as such have been bred to be independent thinkers. Baxter obeyed commands but delayed just enough to let me know that it was really his idea. They have also been bred to not chase so any kind of fetch game just didn't work. I think his greatest joy was out in field of tall grass through which he would just naturally quarter and put pheasants, grouse, and quail to flight. After a successful birding, he would give that huge smile. It meant "wasn't that great" or "didya see that".

All of our dogs had that understated doggie humour that has kept us laughing all these years. That must have prolonged our lives somewhat. They have always given more than they have gotten. We get to be friends with a handful of dogs in our longer lifetimes but they generally stick to one family. Baxter got old and too tired to carry on. Good bye old friend.

Life Events

I first spotted my lovely wife in the library at SFU in the fall of 1965 but didn't really summon the nerve to ask her on a date until after New Years in 1966. In my defense, the fall was terribly hectic anyway. Making the naive transition from high school to university was an eye-opening experience and then my fall was spent playing football as my tuition was paid by an athletic scholarship. I didn't have much time for anything else until after the season.

I had of course noticed Betty right away bustling about our study area in the library. Short skirt, long legs, effervescent personality - certainly caught my attention. When I first engineered a meeting, under some pretext, it was starting to verge on stalking as I just couldn't think of a smooth way to do it. I drove a '56 Consul, so a pick up in a hot car was out of the question. Did she even follow football? She was seen hanging about with another football player. Hmmm.

Some of the more mature ball players, who had gone to other universities, had rented a heritage house near Deer Lake in Burnaby to serve as a fraternity house so a natural first date was to one of their dances. Betty wore a short, sleeveless dress of a turquoisy satiny material. Yowser. I've forgotten what I wore but no doubt I was blinded by my date. And I still am.

Quite a few dates and years followed before we were married and raised kids and did all those things that make successful families. Through it all my date continued to smile and tickle my funny bone. Now she is turning 65 and we increasingly wonder where the years have gone. We have weathered a bit on the outside but we still laugh at each others jokes and bicker about stupid things, but I still see that young girl that I spotted in the library. Every day in the intervening years I have been thankful that this beautiful, bright and funny woman chose me to hang out with. I love you Betty. Happy Birthday.

Close Shaves

If a person can stack a respectable number of years behind him then the law of averages also sticks a number of close calls in there. And it feels a little like tempting fate to talk about your close calls but if you wait too long you won't get a chance to talk about it at all. Fate seems to be the right word in all of this. A flip of a coin. Mere chance. Or good luck. Any of these events could have ended in a bad way but I'm extremely happy that they didn't.

I don't clearly remember my first close call as I was mere hours old but family lore says that I was rushed by dad to a childrens' hospital where they had a then very new incubator. I was born premature in November in Finland and the prevailing medical idea was that babies needed lots of fresh air, even in winter. My parents had lost a child who only lived for a few days the previous winter so I suppose they weren't taking any chances. Thank you folks. I have lately wondered how they managed to snatch me to another hospital. I can't imagine that happening today. And how did they convince the other pediatrician to play along? I later heard that dad found enough sugar and flour on the black market (all food being rationed just after the war) to have a cake baked for the nurses at the kids' hospital.

Likewise, my next close call is a little hazy in memory as I was less than a year old and in a pram. Mom left me outside a store (no worries of being snatched back then) and was horrified to see the back wheels of a coal truck nudging the pram. Mom was one of those people who could really imaginatively use the language so I bet those truck drivers learned some new words. From that time on, my close calls were only of the everyday variety.

We came to Canada when I was five and a half. That in itself wasn't terribly risky although I was sick and running a fever all the way. Just one more thing to add to mom's load, traveling with a teenager and two little kids. Less than a year later, I had just wandered out of a local store on the old King George Highway at the bottom of Peterson Hill when a motorcycle-riding bully picked me up by my shirt and pushed me up at eye level against a wall and held a knife in front of my face. I hadn't seen any movies (no tv) about that sort of violence so I wasn't particularly frightened. I can still remember that he was wearing one of those captain's caps that Marlon Brando wore in the Wild One and I thought "What a great hat"! I think that my fascination with hats started then. Anyway, parents even then were on a "need to know" basis so I never mentioned my little adventure.

As I got older, risky behaviour also increased in frequency. But this was everyday risky behaviour that every kid in those days was subjected to. That's why I think that fate has so much to do with it. It's not that we were so much more competent than the next kid but that it just wasn't our time. My friends and I were continually on the go when we weren't in school. Down to the river, fishing from the log booms; wading across the inlet at low tide; playing in the rail yards; building rafts on Mundy Lake.

One bona fide close call happened when I was seven or eight. My friend Ronnie Garneau and I had wandered over to the dump on Como Lake Road (where Dr. Charles Best Secondary is today). Some kid had found five bucks in some old clothes there so that became a stop on our rounds. It was about three miles from where we lived, no bikes, so we did range quite a bit even then. A couple of men were using a revolver to plink at tin cans on the frame of an overturned car and a ricochet creased the back of Ronnie's head. It was just enough to draw blood but as we were walking side by side either one of us could have been really nailed. Again, my parents didn't need to know. I wasn't the one bleeding.

Once I started driving, the chance of mishap increased exponentially, especially as I had the unfortunate habit of falling asleep. I have woken up at 60 mph (100 kph) and found that the driver's side wheels were on the divider of the old Lougheed Highway only inches away from a row of light poles. I just opened the window to clear my head and carried on. Sleeping did catch up with me a few years later when I rear-ended a guy who had stopped for a cat. I was almost home and did walk there minus my front teeth. I don't sleep at the wheel anymore.

Once I started working, the chance of mishap again ratcheted up. One had to be careful in large rail yards where switch engines were making up or tearing down trains. Rail cars would be separated down long individual tracks with a hard shunt and then left to roll on their own to smash into another line of cars. The action wasn't necessarily where the switch engine was because a lone car could be silently rolling elsewhere. Again fate played a part when I was climbing between cars. Just as I got up on the knuckle hitch, the whole line of cars gave a mighty lurch forward. A few seconds earlier or later and I would have been under the wheels.

Working construction also brought its own dangers. There was always the chance of something falling from overhead. The chance of falling from high places oneself wasn't really such a big risk. I found that most people working up high really were careful. Usually one hand or a safety belt kept you safe. On one commercial job, dad and I happened to be partners. I had built lots with dad so we knew what to expect from one another. In this case, we were working on a plywood mill expansion at Pacific Veneer in New Westminster. The crew had to dismantle some construction from the beginning of the 1900's. The walls of the mill were built with beams that measured about 2 foot by 2 foot and thirty feet long. Each beam probably weighed 1000 pounds. This one beam became wedged between some posts and wouldn't come down so the kid on the job was sent in with a sludge hammer to wail away at a post to bring it all down. Well it worked and I found this beam coming in my direction. Things do really slow down to slow motion. I remember putting my hands out and levering up and that beam pushed me back about eight feet. If my feet had been on the pavement at the time of contact, I would have been under it. Oh well. All's well that ends well. Right? Dad just said later "Boy that looked bad". I don't think that he ever told mom. Needs to know basis only.


I did have later close calls in planes and boats and some confrontations with bears but I am convinced that fate played a role. I don't think that people that have catastrophic things happen are any less skilled than anybody else but are on the unlucky side of that flip of the coin. Fate for some reaches the end of the line and for others continues on.

Night Flight

We left Toronto just as dusk fell, heading west. West is really a misnomer because you head north from Toronto but as the flight takes you on a curving path, the imaginary lines to the magnetic north pole, somewhere around or under Victoria Island in the Northwest Territories, keep changing in relation to the plane until at the end of the flight you are at the west coast but flying south.

Leaving to head at 472 miles an hour in the direction that the sun appears to be setting is neat because dusk lingers a lot longer and the sunset seems to hang on the horizon. We cleared the people-packed areas quickly and followed the north shore of Huron, with a twinkling of lights along the waters' edge, passed the Soo, and then along the northern shore of Superior. These aren't known as the Great Lakes for nothing; we were in the air for over an hour before we reached the western edge.

Flying over the prairies at night, at 36,000 feet, should be experienced at least once. If you peer out of your little window carefully, all the towns and villages of the prairies are laid out right to the horizon in little twinkles. Any town with an airport presents itself with a blinking strobe like a lighthouse on the dark ocean. Lots of lights coming into view on the starboard side; must be Saskatoon because Regina would be on the other side of the plane on the horizon.

In the day time, haze over the prairies prevents one from seeing the detail at six miles up. Oh,you can see all the great features, lakes, rivers, reservoirs and even larger buildings and roads, but not the sheer amount of habitation. But at night. Yowser! A reflection of the universe.

Dogs I Have Known

Sometime in 1952 or early 1953, we got our first house in Canada. To make it a real home, a pup soon followed. I think dad got him from someone at the Burns Bog peat company. He was a collie something cross - same colouring but short hair. We named him the traditional Finnish dogs' name, Peni.

That house was on the flats behind the Turf Hotel and close to Peterson Hill leading to Patullo Bridge. The river flats was nothing but a build-up of silt and peat. You could take a walking cane and push it easily into the ground right up to the handle. Outhouse holes never filled up but just kept turning into more peat. Anyway, Peni got to running around the house from back door to front door in an effort to catch either one open and wore a foot deep grove into the peat, all around the house.

When we moved to the fish & chips shop in Coquitlam, Peni would lie in the front entrance to the cafe and customers would just step over him to get in. He only roused himself to any excitement when Finnish speaking people came and he would rush down to the road to greet. We moved from the shop to a new house a street away and Peni would accompany all the kids in the block. Unfortunately, in his excitement to play, his tooth snagged a neighbour girl's leg while she was on a swing. The girl's parents weren't bothered by it but the mother of one of the other kids called the cops and we came home from school to find that Peni had been arrested, with no appeal.

In those days in Coquitlam, the cops were in the basement of the municipal hall. They had a couple of cars out back and a doghouse with a hose attached. I was probably eight or nine years old when I finally made the connection to that little house.

In 1956 or '57, we moved up to the end of Austin Road onto a couple of acres. A black and white, sheep doggish puppy came to stay for my sisters tenth birthday. He got the name Rusty because there was a freckle faced kid on some sit-com named Rusty. He was a guy to follow all of us kids around wherever we went. My proudest moment was when I heard a ruckus around the shed and two cats came streaking past in tandem, like Roman chariot horses, with Rusty in full pursuit. Old Rusty just wanted to be one of the gang but he knew the words "Go home Rusty" better than "Come here boy".

That was the last dog in my growing-up years until I moved to the Okanagan, and Sam and Vince from Camp Kopje brought a black puppy with a white star on his chest to stay. I had to name him Sam and he was brother (not in looks) to Fudd, who went to Dave Galloway. I don't remember where the pups came from but no doubt these needy kids had accepted the brothers from some farmer at the mall who had a litter to give away. Sam got to riding in the back seat of the '71 Super Beetle and he would rest his head between the seats and keep a sleepy eye on the road. Just can't trust those humans to drive properly.

I was coming from the Kootenays, down the Blueberry-Paulson hill, at the type of speed that a VW could do going downhill, when I spotted a black bear lazily walking away from the highway up a logging road to the left. The timing was perfect. I swerved off the road at speed, closing on the bear. Sam's eyes opened wide and he went "Woof". The bear looked over his shoulder and exploded into action and disappeared up a bank. Sam just smiled with his tongue hanging out. Great fun. Both brothers, within a year or so, met unfortunate ends. Sam crossed a busy road and got clipped and somebody shot Fudd in an elementary school yard.

To be continued......

Coffee in Bastion Square

It's morning again, with the sun coming up behind Mt. Baker. Early spring, cold mornings. I've been watching this pretty little cutter sail on the morning breeze from behind Cormorant Point in Haro Strait. The north wind is soft this morning but she is on a broad reach and making fair way. The sun is warm on my cheek.

I'm on the edge of a high bank overlooking the strait but old habits make me scan to the horizon every ten or fifteen minutes to check for traffic. Winter/spring traffic is sparse except for the commercial traffic to Vancouver, which stays in the VTS lanes closer to the San Juan Island shore.

Yesterday, we had coffee with old friend and sailor Doug in Bastion Square overlooking the inner harbour. Lots of traffic on the water there - float planes, tugs, water taxis & little busses. A large power boat is slowly feeling its way in past Laurel Point. Tall masts appear over Shoal Point and a pretty schooner rounds into the harbour. She is a hundred feet or so and the deck crew is busy with lines and fenders. Easy to see what Victoria harbour was like one hundred years ago, except she would have sailed right up to the dock. They were real sailors then. Come into the tight harbour with a bone in her teeth, douse the jib and staysail, turn up into the wind and drift into her spot at the dock to kiss the pilings, all in one smooth motion. The watchers (and there are always watchers, seen or not) on the dock know that the master knows what he is doing. The master, calm and collected on deck, disappears below to have a nip and be thankful that he didn't mess up coming in.

Now that the sun is firmly up, the soft morning wind is giving way to a northerly of 15 knots or so. Cordova Bay is covered in small whitecaps and spinnakers like little jewels are skirting James Island from the north. The wind has cleared the air and the Golden Ears, in snowy white, are visible 85 nautical miles to the south.

Mornings

Mornings. I love mornings. Right now I am overlooking Haro Strait in early spring with the sun rising behind Mount Baker. The morning is cold but the sun already has enough heat to warm my cheek as I watch the ship traffic. Steaming cup of coffee.

Mornings have always been my time. Even the dog is still trying to keep his eyes shut after a perfunctory tail thump. It's quiet. I've woken in a rocking anchorage at sun up and even the birds have stopped bickering as the first heat of day spreads across the bay. Steaming cup of coffee.

The smell of coffee perking (there's a word from the past), is the smell of plans being made, courses being plotted, finances sorted. Warm up that diesel engine while the coffee is on. The soft rumble of the diesel is almost as pleasant as that steaming cup of coffee.

Mornings are a promise of new things to come once the chores are done. Sometimes small adventures or new people are on the way, unbeknownst. Adventure can be found every day in the most ordinary of circumstances. Not anus-clenching adventure to be sure, but adventure just the same. Steaming cup of coffee.

Morning has started and others are stirring. The river otter has brought her kits out for breakfast and the turkey vultures are soaring as the ocean breeze kicks up. The engine is warm. Steaming cup of coffee.

Politicians

I was always optimistic, when I was younger, about politicians. After all, they were working for us, weren't they? My voting awareness started when "Honest John" Diefenbaker was just ending his era in power and he really was the last of the Conservative Party that the populace believed in. However, Dief ended his time in power and he ended the hopes of the nation almost forever when he killed and destroyed Canada's aero-space industry by ordering the end of the Avro Arrow, a fighter plane that was superior to anything known up to that time. The engineers of the Arrow were then hired by NASA to put a man on the moon. The following elections saw the Conservatives defeated but giving the Liberals a minority government, twice.

The Liberal PM, Lester Bowles Pearson but known to everyone as Mike, was a man of great potential. He was a diplomat and had won the Nobel Peace Prize for orchestrating the United Nations into ending the Suez Crisis. Not a fiery orator, soft-spoken with a lisp, he nevertheless could move intransigence. With a minority government, Pearson was obliged to use some of the ideals of the leftist CCF Party, led by Tommy Douglas. During Pearson's tenure, he brought in Universal Health Care, the Canada Pension Plan, and in 1964, our own flag, much to the dismay of royalists who continued to wave the Red Ensign.

The Pearson era was possibly the last in our political life that diplomacy and statesmanship ruled over brute force. With a minority government, Mike Pearson saw fit to use policies of the left, much to the ongoing benefit of the citizenry, to remain in power. Unlike today, when the minority Conservative Party prorogued rather than face a confidence vote.

The real age of optimism in politics began when Pearson stepped down from the Liberal leadership in favour of Pierre Trudeau, who won the next election at the age of 46 in 1965. Baby boomers were just beginning to graduate from high school and endless optimism reigned in spite of, or maybe because of, President Kennedy, Martin Luther King, freedom marches, ban the bomb, anti-Vietnam War. In Canada, Bill of Rights, universal suffrage (finally), first nations could finally vote, go to bars etc. Elvis was King, the Beatles invaded, and the Rolling Stones, well, were the Stones. Dylan, Baez, Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Leonard Cohen, the Beach Boys. This was the decade of counter-culture, of be-ins, love-ins, weed, grass, pot, and mary-jane. And don't forget LSD, CIA, NSA, IRA.

When Trudeau campaigned, he was mobbed by young women who flung themselves at him. He was the rock-star of politics. Nothing like it had ever been seen. A few years later, President "Tricky Dickie" Nixon, in the White House Tapes, just referred to Trudeau as that asshole up there. Canada, however, had never seen anything like it. A young, intelligent Prime Minister ready to lead the country into a bright future. However, militant separatists in Quebec took to bombing and kidnapping to, finally, murder to push their agenda which resulted in Trudeau declaring Martial Law through the War Measures Act.

Now, for the first time in Canada, the true power of the PMO, the Prime Minister's Office, became apparent. The power to act, without consultation with the democratically elected opposition, was there. Canadian politics would never be the same. When Trudeau finally wore out his welcome, unlike in Pearson's era, minority governments were unable or lacked the will to include the policies of other minority parties. A number of minority governments, both Conservative and Liberal, followed.

The Conservatives, ascended to majority under Brian Mulroney in 1984 and proceeded to use the power of the PMO to reduce taxes to the rich and industry, to align with the objectives of the United States (right down to singing Danny Boy with Reagan), and tying us to a free trade agreement that appears to be lop-sided in favour of the US. Rules for foreign ownership were diminished or disregarded and deals made with disregard for democratic debate. Finally, Mulroney was thrown from office as the most reviled and corrupt PM in our history and the PC Party lost almost all their seats right across the country.

Enter Jean Chretien who had entered politics under Mike Pearson and was Finance Minister under Trudeau. The "Little Guy from Shawinigan" was really aware of the PMO's power and continued to use it. Fortunately, for the citizens of the country anyway, Liberal doctrine was much more benign than the Conservative doctrine. Government was to be seen as doing the bidding of the country. Yes, the Liberal Party still had to answer to their benefactors but not outrageously at the expense of the electorate, until later years.
The Liberal government pulled the country out of the deficit and debt hole that Mulroney had plunged us into. Unfortunately, ten years in power led to a flaunting of power. Chretien famously said of parliamentary debate, "This is question period, it isn't answer period". Chretien resigned under increasing pressure for the misappropriation and misuse of funds in Liberal ridings. Paul Martin's Liberal government was never able to overcome that scandal.

In the downright absence of Conservative seats in Western Canada, a ground roots party emerged, the Reform Party. Again, famously, Chretien with a French-Canadian accent referred to it as the "T'ird Party". The party was developed in the framework of the Social Credit Party of three decades earlier and still right of Attila the Hun in doctrine. The far right was so fragmented in the face of a Liberal majority that some provincial Conservatives and the Reform Party combined to form the Conservative Alliance or the Alliance Party. In 2003, the Conservatives and the Alliance disbanded to form the Progressive Conservatives which eventually became the Conservative Party of Canada, again. Steven Harper, from the original Reform Party, rose to the top as leader.

And the rest you know. The Conservative agenda has always been to dismantle social programs (insidiously by under-funding), reduce taxes to multi-nationals (by downloading onto the middle class), and generally aligning itself with the direction of the United States. This isn't by accident. Powerful and rich corporations are headquartered in the US and funding for political campaigns flows across the border. The prospects of the rich and powerful are aligned with Conservative ideals. The Bush/Oil cabal still calls the shots. Left leaning ideology just costs money. After all, the citizens of a country are only there to support the bloated Conservative bureaucracy, aren't they. Politicians work for the elite, don't they? Until they get chucked out.

Tooth Fairy

We found a note the other day, dictated by my six or seven year old son Shane to the Tooth Fairy. The scribe was his nine or ten year old sister Erin.

Dear Tooth Fairy,
When my uncle was a little boy, he got 25 cents per tooth. So, because of inflation this tooth should be worth about $1.25. I've considered inflation and my needs for nowadays. It now costs $2.50 or $3.00 for a matinee at the theatre, it used to be 25 cents so that means it has increased by 10 or 15 x that price, the same with jawbreakers. They used to be 3 for a penny now for a package of 12 jawbreakers (gobstoppers) is about 45 cents which means the price has been raised so it would be 11.25 cents for 3 which would be about 3 for 11 cents. It has be raised by about 4 x. Most things have had the price raised by quite a bit so that's why I would kind of like $1.25 for my tooth tonight because of inflation 5 x 25 cents = $1.25.

Thanks a lot,
Shane
(P.S. $1.25 or Nothing!)

Now, I can't for the life of me remember whether the Tooth Fairy succumbed to the economic theory or whether he/she responded to the all or nothing threat but it just illustrated that rising costs were a worry for everyone. Some families, of course, had affluent Tooth Fairies but the ones that found our house had always seemed to be the dour "you-need-to-learn-the-value-of-money" or "money-doesn't-grow-on-trees" kind.
I feel that this good effort of putting a case forward for an increase should have received a reward. Fairies are made of money anyway.

Good Neighbour Fences

Good neighbour fences, as they are called, look the same on both sides. One neighbour doesn't get the 2 x 4s and the other gets only the finished side. With a good neighbour fence both neighbours get a finished side. Our house started in 1972 with good neighbour fences and an original is still standing on one side. A little worn and sagging here and there but still standing.

On the other side of the house, the original fence had been made from slab wood so it looked a little rustic. Four or five years ago, the good neighbour on that side got a smoking hot deal on some fencing wood so he and I rebuilt the fence. We're still good neighbours.

Across the back, the neighbour had a boy friend about ten years ago who decided to replace the good neighbour fence on that side. In a conspicuously un-
neighbourly way, without consultation, the good fence was taken down and the new one was built backwards so that we ended up looking at the back side of the fence. The materials were inferior as were the specifications.

Some years have passed and the fence has continued to rot. I have doubled up on the posts with treated stakes and 2 x 4s but the neighbour has neglected to refasten the boards as they fall of on his side. Unlike a good neighbour fence, this one is starting to really piss me off. At some point, the neighbour is going to notice that the fence is down and will then expect me to take part in replacing the inferior fence that they put up.

Good neighbour fences really are useful in marking out, without prejudice, each neighbours property. The fence removes the stress, usually on only one side of the property line of unfenced property, should the other neighbour inadvertently live beyond his borders. His animals - dogs, horses, or goats, could wander.

I see this morning that a section of the disputed fence has fallen into his garden. I wonder when he will notice?

Make-Do

I started thinking about a couple of words that you rarely hear anymore - make-do. These words were used a lot in my parents' generation and earlier. On the face of it, make-do sounds like settling for less but it was exactly the opposite. Those two words meant that if you didn't have it, you made it or if you had an income, you waited until you had saved up enough to buy it - you made-do in the meantime.

In the days of make-do, people acquired prestige and standing by their ability to make- do. If a mechanical part was needed, a hacksaw, file and the forge would make a piece of iron into a piece of function and beauty. A fisherman didn't buy boat and nets, he hewed the wood and knotted the twine. Young women filled chests with hand made linens and clothes. Of course, this process was labour intensive but people in the age of make-do had more time than money.

Somehow, the words "make-do" were turned around in meaning to imply that something or someone was not quite good enough. Someone who stood on his own two feet and didn't ask for help was just making-do. Farmers who fixed their equipment, buildings and animals were haywire and making-do. No longer was there prestige in building your own, but a sly winking by the neighbours that he was just making-do.

I was a product of the make-do generation and still had the tendencies, to be stamped out, in my genetic makeup. One look at my basement will show all the good stuff that would come in handy sometime. Oh, don't throw that out, I can use it for... Part of the problem is that I have the manual skills, if not the initiative, to make just about anything. Going to a craft fair is often an exercise in self abuse. Oh, don't buy that, I could make it better, cheaper, etc. When I first moved to the Okanagan Valley, I was able to live rent-free in a pickers' shack. It was more than a shack, it was a small one bedroom house built into the hillside about thirty feet from the edge of Okanagan Lake. The floors, however, were bare boards between which the wind off the lake would blow through. We got roll ends of carpeting for free from the carpet mill in Kelowna to cover the gaps. Now the carpet mill didn't give away good carpet for nothing. These roll ends were the junction between one carpet colour to another - purples, oranges and lime greens. And shag was the "in" thing that year. Making-do.

In the early 1970's, the movement of young people "back to the land", meant that a whole new generation was making do. Houses were being built from cull lumber (sawmill cast-offs) or from farm sheds moved and joined together. Once again, there was prestige within the community of young farmers in making do. Val built a beautiful house of cast-off lumber from the mill in Canoe and even plastered the interior walls with a white home-made plaster rich in barley straw. Don built a house of logs taken from his own forest. Art built with lumber sawn on site from his trees.

It was the same with pick-up trucks. The community became rich with the treasures of 1940's and 1950's trucks that were found in disuse on farms and in orchards. It wasn't unusual at a birthday gathering to find a fine collection of Fords, GMC's, Dodges and Cornbinders (International Harvester) in the yard. What wasn't a pick-up was then probably a Volkswagen.
Make-do doesn't seem to be in the public consciousness at all anymore. Newly-weds will not live in a pickers' shack or an old, small house for a start in life. Buy it new and buy it big. I would like to know what percentage of the huge personal debt that we carry falls into the decade age groups - twenties, thirties, forties. Yes, granted, those of us in our sixties have had more time to work off our debt but typically we started out in a more modest way. I am not slamming the young; they are not only a product of the changing ideas from peers, parents, and marketers but may not have have had the good fortune of having had the exposure to someone making-do. The recent economic nose-dive should have shown that not everyone can afford to have a huge house. Make-do.