Trip to Vancouver

Generally speaking I don't believe governments should interfere in the marketplace- but if they do I'll take advantage of the situation. For instance, now that I'm a BC Senior I'm going to take advantage of the fact that I can now ride the ferries for free. (As a foot passenger) So now I can take a day trip to Vancouver for the price of the bus fares plus lunch. I don't know how it works. Does the government reimburse BC Ferries for my fare, or does the company have to eat it?
BC Ferries is a crown corporation, which is an entity peculiar to Canada, a hybrid government/private monopoly that is supposed to operate at arms length to government but which is entrusted with advancing policy goals. We have lots of them in BC. The auto insurance company is one, the hydroelectric utility is another. Canadians have always been leery of private companies because we prefer to avoid the messiness of competition in favour of safe and secure jobs and a reliable return on investment- if you know the right people. It's a fantasy world we live in. Sometimes they make sense, like when massive capital investments were needed to finance building of hydroelectric dams and private capital wasn't available. I don't know much about that kind of stuff but I do know the Insurance Corporation of BC has become arrogant and a law unto itself.
I didn't mean to go into the pros and cons of crown corporations in this post but wanted to ease myself back into this blog by describing what a lot of trouble it is to get on and off the island. That can be a good or bad thing depending on how you look at life. Some of us like the semi isolation of living on an island with that buffer zone of salt chuck between us and the big bad world. The last ferry for the mainland leaves at 9pm and the last scheduled flight leaves about eleven. That makes Victoria a sleepy kind of place, which is OK with me. For the young and ambitious it's not so good. And sometimes even low key me gets a little bit of cabin fever. So now I'm enjoying the opportunity to get to Vancouver so cheaply.
However cheap it is in cash, it's not so cheap in time if you take public transit. I've been catching the 9am ferry. For that I need to catch a bus downtown at 7:30. If you were to drive directly from downtown to the ferry dock at the top end of the Saanich Peninsula it would take about twenty minutes at that time of day. But on the bus it takes an hour. However, I don't mind it. When you've driven taxi for 25 years it's quite pleasant to sit in the upper section of a double decker bus while it winds its way north. From that vantage point the lush fields, the islands in the distance, Mt Baker even farther are pleasant to look at. I understand they are going to start an express route to the ferry which would make it a little quicker.
The ferry ride is also very attractive as it winds between some of those islands you can see from the highway. Active Pass between Galiano and Mayne Islands is so narrow that you could throw rocks at the boat from shore. They seem near enough to touch and yet remote at the same time. On the boat you are a creature of the water. After you get through the pass the Gulf of Georgia opens out and gradually the low shore of the Fraser River delta creeps closer. Big seagoing coal carriers tie up at Roberts Bank next to the ferry terminal to be fed by the long trains coming from the interior.
There is no direct city bus from Tsawassen to downtown Vancouver where the ferry docks at 10:30 so you have to wait at the Ladner exchange for a transfer. It's a dowdy piece of pavement with only a MacDonalds a block away in the way of amenities.
In all it's another hour and a half before you get to downtown Vancouver about noon. That makes in all four and a half hours of traveling time between Victoria and Vancouver.
After so long away from Vancouver I was surprised at how much I enjoyed seeing it again. It was a beautiful clear Monday and after downloading a bunch of music at the library I walked down to the West End where I had lived for a number of years. I first saw English Bay in summer of '68 when I wasn't exactly straight after hitchhiking from Edmonton. I had just been dropped off by the hippie couple who had picked me up in Hope a few hours before. The sun was getting low on the horizon and the panorama of sea and mountain was astonishingly beautiful. People sat around on logs on the beach to take in the show as if it was an outdoor arena. I found an empty log of my own and watched an attractive young woman come onto the beach from the street...like a mermaid coming from the wrong direction. Amongst all the other people on the beach she picked me out of the crowd and made a bee line for my log. Wonderful, I thought, thinking I must be lookin' good. But, no. I just looked like an easy mark. Something about me just stands out in that way. It turned out she had some sort of religious pamphlet she wanted me to read.
It's just as beautiful as ever, is First Beach at English Bay, right at the bottom of Davie Street. This is one end of the seawall walk that goes around Stanley Park. The West End hasn't changed as much as the rest of the downtown area, although the shops have different tenants. No more English Bay Books or English Bay Cookies. But the Sylvia Hotel is still there as graceful and serene as ever. I treated myself to an ale in their very pleasant pub.
The return trip to Victoria is another seven and a half hours of travel, but I like the ferry trip. A bluegrass/Nova Scotia type band had set up in a corner of the forward lounge of the ship and judging by all the cash that filled the guitar case, everybody seemed to enjoy the impromptu concert.
As I headed back home, realized I really miss the vitality of Vancouver. As much as I love Victoria, it has a small town mentality that gets wearisome after a while.

Victoria weather

For anyone who doubts that the global warming kerfuffle is anything but a swindle, I suggest reading about the wing ding in London recently where the Goracle got paid about $5000 a minute to deliver his spiel. Having won both an Oscar and a Nobel prize this year, he has become an even bigger ass than ever- a feat I would have thought impossible. Too magisterial to be bothered meeting with the lesser mortals, those guilt and angst ridden attendees who paid thousands of pounds to hear him pontificate were severely disappointed not to be allowed to see speak to him in private. If only they had known, they could have jumped in their personal jets and gone to Bali- the better to save the earth, of course.
My view is that we are far more likely to experience dramatic cooling than warming. I'm sorry about that because personally I think a little warming would be a pretty good thing. More biodiversity, y'know.
More and more I'm coming to the conclusion that 'environmentalist' and 'idiot' are synonyms.
Meanwhile, here in Victoria the fag ends of autumn have not been bad at all this year. It's been a little cooler than usual, with snow falling in some areas of the region from time to time, and the obligatory storm blowing down trees, disrupting ferry schedules and so forth. There have also been floods in Washington state and up Island. Nothing unusual. But we have also had a number of very beautiful days. Since November and December are usually the most miserable months of the year, often almost continual rain and gloom, I am optimistic for a pleasant January and February...but with periods of snow.
The lovely weather last week gave me the opportunity- nay, the duty- to provide photographic comfort to those caught in some of the less temperate climes of our great nation where it's snowing like hell and cold as a witch's bleep.

War and Peace

Sunday was cold and rainy, a foretaste of soon-to-arrive winter, but this morning is almost perfect. The sun is out, a few clouds dapple the sky, the temp is 12C/54F- what could be better for a walk into town along the water? From my place I can take the quick way along Esquimault Rd or dawdle via the Songhees walkway. I like to dawdle. It's not just that Songhees is winding that makes it slower. It's just about impossible not to stop and sit on a bench for a while and watch the harbour sights, so if I'm in a hurry it's not the way to go.
A little drama: a flock of gulls foraging right about where a twin otter was landing. I'm not sure if they all got away. What were they finding in that particular patch of water that made them so reluctant to abandon it? We humans are so wrapped up in our own daily concerns that we tend to forget about the other critters who also get caught up in their daily concerns. That means obeying the demands of the belly. For seagulls, unable to store up provisions for the future beyond the capacity of its belly, as soon as one feeding is done, the next is sought. Urgently. The needs of Safety are always in tension with the need to eat.
We humans have devised ways of storage and distribution that would require a catastrophic and global disruption over a long period of time to thwart. Hunger and deprivation are no longer technical problems, but a really inept and corrupt political structure can do more to disrupt our well-being than all but the worst natural disasters. As examples in recent history I would cite the Marxist- inspired regimes in Russia and China. Stalin's collectivization program in the Ukraine, for millennia one of the breadbaskets of the world, resulted in millions of Ukrainians dying of starvation. Mao, not to be outdone, presided over the deaths of tens of millions of his countrymen. Nowadays we can readily see what Mugabe has done to Zimbabwe. Once the breadbasket of Africa, the country is starving. It looks like Hugo Chavez has ambitions to follow these examples, starting with a campaign against the investors who finance the Venezuelan oil industry.
In our western system of private property and personal innovation, where individuals reciprocally offer up their services to others, it is possible for an individual as low down in the economic order as me to live within a five minute walk of a pleasant waterway and know that my little economic contribution is enough to provide me with comfortable shelter, good food, and security. Capitalism and free enterprise are wonderful ideas. I also am glad that I live in a political culture that tolerates divergent ways of thinking with differences decided through open debate. People forget the most important aspect of freedom of debate: I have a right to be wrong and you have a right to correct me on it. This is how we learn from each other.
We Anglo Americans have lived so long in this system that we take it for granted. We live in such peaceful and prosperous circumstances for so long that we have difficulty with the idea that some people in the world hate us and want to destroy our way of life. But if you pay attention then you will know that the Marxist inspired movements have worked tirelessly against us for nearly a century. Aided and financed by the Soviet and Maoist slave states, they have done a lot of damage. The Marxists have not gone away, they live and breed on campuses all across the continent. They are joined now by the Islamists, a much older scourge with a far deeper hatred than the Soviets had. At least some aspects of western culture were valued in Soviet Russia, and even Maoist China. They may have hated traditional religion but they cultivated many of the western inspired arts. But the Islamists hate everything about us. They hate our belief in freedom of expression. They hate our belief in equal rights before the law. Democracy to them is foolishness. Emancipation of women is lunacy to them. It hasn't been easy for westerners to learn how to live together while respecting different ways, creeds and languages but we have done it. Precariously, perhaps, and always under pressure, but we have done it. Islam proclaims itself the only possible and permissible creed. Every single human on the face of the planet must submit to that creed, either as a full-fledged member or as a lower class being with no rights to protection from the law.
Because of our inexperience with people who hate us just because they hate us and have no compunction against killing us, we have a hard time understanding that there are times when we have to defend ourselves, and that means war. That means a generation or more of young people who will not have the privilege of walking along the Songhees shore without a care in the world. There are a lot of people who refuse to believe that we are in danger. They think that if we stop fighting then we will have peace. Au contraire, mes amis. The reason we have peace now is that we have had generations of citizens willing to fight to preserve our peace.
Wake up, folks

September in Victoria

On one of Victoria's patented summers it's hard not to think you have arrived in paradise. We didn't have much of a summer this year so today was much appreciated- better late than never- and if the weatherman is right it's going to stay this way for a while. Sometimes this kind of weather persists until the end of October.
And I think I must be blessed to live just over the bridge from downtown Victoria. The walk along the Songhees walkway is always full of interest with boats and planes coming and going, joggers and dogwalkers out for a stroll, the sky and the sea always changing, always the same. Theme and endless variation. This morning I stopped for a moment to size up a picture of one of the harbour markers with the tide down. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a little movement on the sidewalk. I had already spotted a mouse (shrew, vole?) scurry into the underbrush. This bit of fluff was a fledgling and at first I thought it was a sparrow or finch or one of the other varieties of small gray birds I am unable to identify, but this one had a bedraggled little crest on top of his head. I think he was a quail. We see a few families of them strutting along the railroad tracks, and somehow they have survived all the construction in our neighborhood. I always enjoy seeing these dapper characters. This little guy looked like he had gotten separated from his elders and wouldn't have survived much longer if I hadn't been there. Three or four drooling sea gulls had also spotted him. A bite sized morsel for a seagull. So I herded him into the shrubbery. See? I may be a paleocon but I've still got a heart. And I like quail a lot better than seagulls.
I often hear locals brag, "I haven't been downtown in years." I never say anything, but I'm incredulous. Are they idiots? Victoria has one of the loveliest downtowns in North America. You wanna see ugly, go to Tacoma. I remember in Vancouver I had a young couple in my cab. We were driving down Arbutus from Kerrisdale, it was a beautiful day, and the North Shore mountains were awesome. The girl was saying how beautiful it was, and then the guy chipped in. "Yeah, but what use is it?" He was from Ontario, of course.
Now that it's September the majority of tourists have gone home, leaving the artisans with slim pickings. But a few die hards are still on the Causeway and in Bastion Square taking care of their customers. Good on ye, guys and gals!

Makin a livin

I must confess I gave up cab driving for lent and have gone over to being a security guy. Instead of driving around I walk around, stand around and sit around. Where I perform these onerous tasks provides some interesting variety. So far I have been assigned to keep an eye on a movie crew while they filmed on a sensitive location. Kirstie Allie said hello to me once, and she didn't look at all fat to me, except for those bulges in the right places that most guys, myself included, like. Next week I willspend a couple of days patrolling a cruise ship while it's being worked on in dry dock. On weekends I am a watchman at a construction site. With all the theft of construction materials going on these days it is one more expense for the contracter to hire me.
They're digging the hole for a fancy condo here. In Victoria that's not such a simple thing what with massive rock formations sticking out all over the place and others lurking underneath the surface soil at various depths. That means the profession of blasting is much in demand here. If we ever get into the IUD thing here we have lots of guys who would know how to do it.
Usually not much happens on a Saturday but today the excavators are scraping away some of that surface soil and loading up trucks with chunks of rock from yesterdays blasting. I've been working on the site for several weeks now and every week I see new extrusions waiting to be blown to bits.
There's something about watching an excavator work that is endlessly absorbing. Beats TV all to hell. (I don't have a TV I should mention and I can't stand to be in the same room with a TV going. I've gone through a couple of generations of TV shows since I got rid of mine. That was the year the Expos were the best team in baseball but got screwed out of their day of glory by a baseball strike) So I've never seen an episode of The Sopranos, never seen an episode of Steinfield, and I haven't played the game of avoid-the-commercials for many a year.
Getting back to my construction site, the most interesting thing, far more interesting than the world's skinniest fat woman (Oprah), was watching a field service technician repair the pin on a thrown track of one of the excavators. That's the picture in the window. Of course, no jack is needed- the excavator just puts his shovel down and presto, the starboard side is in the air.
And it's a nice day today, one of the precious few we've had this spring. But when I read about the snowstorms they are having back east I guess we can't complain too much. Of course to the econazis everything is evidence of global warming-oops I mean climate change- but I say to you that we better hope there is enough warming going on to prevent the return of the ice sheets. But I doubt it. And that could happen anytime.

Willows Beach in spring

It was far too nice yesterday to think deep thoughts so I did a little walkaround through the Willows Beach area and took a few pictures.

High and low

It's a beautiful, clear morning in Victoria and I see from my window that the Sooke Hills are covered in snow. Walked across the Blue Bridge passing the usual bundles of discarded clothing and needle cases that littered my route. Oblivious to the beauties of the day, the "homeless" already on a prowl for the next fix are taking up their favored stations. One regular emotes his pitiful complaint, "I'm so hungry." Formerly his face was a tangle of beard and hair but last week he was shorn like a sheep and now he's not even recognizable except from his oddly stooped gait, like a tall wounded bird and his customary script. I do indeed feel pity for him and wish I could do something to help him because he is a pathetic creature who desparately needs help.
Unfortunately, he's an unpaid prop, a little bit of unwitting propaganda. As large as the drug addicted "homeless" population is, I'm sure it is dwarfed by the size of the social activist crowd who make their living off it. Formerly one of the rackets of organized crime, the shakedown has gone mainstream. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton refurbished the technique and applied a modern gloss of self-righteous anger guaranteed to provoke a cowering response among the prosperous white bourgeois who who have been conditioned to believe that everything bad that happens in the world is their very own fault. Looked at in that way, Jackson and Sharpton sell indulgences to afflicted white souls who can then continue to enjoy their BMW SUVs with a clear conscience.
Native Indians picked up the technique pretty quickly, as did the econazis. As somebody has recently pointed out more money is made off the seal hunt by environmental groups than by the hunters. The last thing the econazis want is for the seal hunt to end. How would the wreck that was Brigit Bardot still get her ravaged mug in the paper without the help of those cute baby seals? And so it goes. Where would the AIDS industry be without lots of dead queers and Africans?
But the biggest shakedown of all depends on everybody believing that free enterprise and the market economy are somehow responsible for the starving children in Biafra...or the "homeless" that clutter every downtown streetcorner. This calls for more social programs, we are scolded. And only bigger government agencies can help, for which it will be necessary to raise taxes of course. What a load of rubbish. What high taxes do is punish people for working hard. What are taxes but a way of confiscating the fruits of somebody else's labor for...the benefit of who?
Certainly not for the benefit of the hapless creature haunting the sidewalk. Whose child, brother, former schoolmate is he? I wouldn't be at all surprised if somebody somewhere still loves him. For the activists these personal details only matter as a propaganda tool. He collects a few dollars every day, enough to buy a hit of something off the scummy pusher man across the street. I would really like to follow these little trickles of cash downstream to the larger rivers and ultimately find out where the tributaries end up. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the money river from that watershed ends up in the same pockets as the the other watershed that starts with your T4 slip. There is a synergy here. The more homeless there are the more money can be collected off them or in their name. Everybody wins! Except the raggedy man on the streetcorner.
There are huge amounts of cash collected by both these methods but very little of it actually gets to this poor sot and his plight is absolutely not the fault of Walmart, MacDonalds or Halliburton. MacDonalds probably feeds more poor people than all the social agencies put together while Walmart clothes them...and it employs the poor too, teaching them how to get up in the morning and go to work, giving them a chance to get out of poverty.
And now we come to the so-called "Peace" activists. Boy, do they ever make lots of money off of war. Look at the Democratic Party in the United States. Where would they be if it weren't for American soldiers getting killed in Iraq? The worse the headlines, the better they do. No wonder Nancy Pelosi is going to Syria. She wants to give Boy Assad a great big thank you, because if it wasn't for him a lot fewer U.S soldiers would be getting killed and how would Nancy get elected and have the taxpayers pay for a jet plane and all. Possibly he has a nice big donation for her Party, too.
It's amazing how far you can go in this day and age with a compliant media and a gullible public. Doesn't say much for the educational system though.