Crank

Easter weekend. The tourists and second home owners from Alberta are running amuck. CBC says money is tight, the US is going to swallow us up whole, but you wouldn’t know it looking at these folks.

The Flickers and Starlings are fighting over the holes in trees to build nests. The Ospreys are back working on their home beside our old house. They seem to be the only commuting second home owners I have any use for. A Bald Eagle is perched over the river below the bridge an eye out for easy prey. They better do it quick before the river is covered in white bloated tourists.

***

The town as we turn into a small city stinks. The sewage lagoons are not working again, the bacteria having died. A common problem as we outgrow our infrastructure. The sewage will get flushed into Toby Creek that will soon start to back up into Lake Windermere. Invermere officials thinking it is long gone flowing downstream once in the creek, while they allocate funds to grow business and entice more second home and short term rental investment. I haven’t met one small town politician who didn’t think it is money that makes the world go round.

***

The US Whitehouse continues to implement and sustain tariffs. It is difficult to know their reasons, they say it is to bring manufacturing back to it’s home soil. But what if it does what economists say it will and make everything too expensive to buy? Would that be such a bad thing. I think our appetites could use being curbed. That is probable not the intention of the US. Sooner or later though we are going to have to slow consumption. Fill these big second homes, that are only lived in a couple months a year, with people who need housing. Wouldn’t that be something.

***

Canada is in the throes of a federal election. In our riding it will be an easy lay up for the incumbent, Rob Morrison of the Conservative Party. Mr. Morrison was parachuted into the riding in 2019 to challenge the hapless NDP candidate, Wayne Stetski a true dullard. It has been a lucrative and easy position for Mr. Morrison. One that he can keep doing for as long as he chooses.

The Conservative Party of Canada, under the leadership of Pierre Poilievre, looked like it would hop, skip and jump over the listless Trudeau into power. But not so fast, with the US in the state it is. All of a sudden conservatism doesn’t look as sweet to Canadians.

The CBC is firmly behind The Liberals and Mark Carney. So much for impartiality in media. And why not, their bloated budget is on the line as Mr. Poilievre threatens to cut their funding if elected. The CBC is fighting for their life even if it means getting behind Mr. Carney, a high minded banker who has never garnered one vote from the Canadian electorate.

The theme is we need someone to stand up to Donald Trump in the Whitehouse and their desire to make Canada the 51st state. Something first said, as a barb to Trudeau, that didn’t even dignify a response has now become our main election issue, ramped up by social and mainstream media.

It is with this in mind that Poilievre and Carney are offered up as saviours. Like most politicians, two guys I wouldn’t trust to lead me across the street.

***

Behind Swansea, down on the creek, the rain kept up. A few buntings topped the trees. Deadfalls snapped half way up blocked Novembers once clear path. My pant legs soaked through keeping up with Willow.

Fires

Stepped outside a few minutes ago and took a photo of the sun. It is red from the forest fires burning nearby. It has been hot and the smoke has rolled in the past few days. It can and probably will get a lot worse. The moisture seems to be getting sucked out of the earth.

Giant sunspots can be seen on the sun. The photo was taken with a 200mm lens. I have cropped a great deal of the photo as the sun took up a small part of the frame.

It is the smoke acting as a filter that makes this photo possible, but it also shrouds the detail.

Still the sunspots are big. Every bit as big as the one that erupted in early May that caused those magnificent auroras.

The moon will come up shortly when the sun dips and could be as red rising in the east. These colourful cosmic bodies could be a harbinger of doom, yet in their own right, hold an otherworldly elegance. Nature’s reminder that we aren’t in charge nor ever will be.

It’s a little foggy!

Now I am getting older it’s important to remember where I left the truck.

Fog, rain, snow. It’s a little bit of everything. I was hoping to get in one more hike into the mountains with the kids from work, but it doesn’t look good. Today brought soft wet snow in the high country. If the sun decides to shine and the temperature drops we still might get a chance. A few years ago I took out a young couple from Scotland in mid November. It was a brilliant clear cold day and they got to see some sites from the top of a snow blown ridge.

***

Willow and I were out on Sunday driving the backroads. We managed to bring back a load of pine firewood. The roads were muck and very slippery, Lisa would have hated it. My father used to call those roads ‘gumbo’. I switched the beast into four-wheel drive and managed to keep it between the ditches.

***

As I get older I wonder if I will succumb to the many conspiracy theories that are so prevalent and popular these days. I say this, because so many of my older friends have bought into the many out there.

I don’t spend much time on social media so I am not being bombarded with bullshit. Older people have more time with some of these platforms such as Facebook.

It’s possible that a good conspiracy is easier to believe than the truth. Conspiracy wraps things up nicely and also puts blame or vilifies an organization or government. God knows some are not trustworthy. However, let us not forget, they are mostly incompetent thus making them trustworthy in what they can and can’t actually pull off.

It is upsetting to see people who were once able and healthy skeptics believe nonsense. I think it is human nature to want to understand events. Unfortunately, many events, illnesses, etc are random.

I will use the moon for an example of randomness. From earth we only see one side of the moon, because it takes the same amount of time to orbit the earth as it does for it to spin on its axis. That is quite a coincidence. It also appears about the same size as the sun in the sky. It almost completely blocks the sun in a solar eclipse except for a thin outline. Yet the sun is massive and much further away. What a coincidence that just the right distance and size allows for this coupling. Are we to believe such random serendipity? The mathematical possibilities of these facts are, well, astronomical.

Or would it make more sense that the moon is projected onto the roof of the sky? And we are just living in a giant dome? And? And?

Although I am making fun here, it does bother me to see people who were once so sharp not able to see when they are being fed bullshit.

I will no doubt be there one day. One thing for sure, there is no shortage of bullshit in this world and people peddling it.

Late October

Chilly at -9°c this morning. The window scrapper I bought seems to work good. A skiff of snow here and there. Nasty roads going to work last Friday. Quite a few vehicles in the ditch. The first touch of winter can be that way with people learning how to drive icy roads again.

***

British Columbia and Canada had a bad forest fire year in 2023. Locally we had several fires burning close by, however I have seen worse years. Still, it has been reported, BC had one of the worst years in history, if not the worst.

Smoke engulfed many American and Canadian cities making breathing difficult for residents. In our part of BC the smoke wasn’t too bad. I guess it depends on the winds. We have definitely had worse.

Here is a scary statistic; according to Natural Resources Canada forest fires caused triple the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere, then from all other sources in Canada, including the burning of oil and gas. Most would have come from BC.

Wildfires are considered a natural source and are not counted towards Canada’s emissions or climate targets.

In other words; Canadians could achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and we could still have run away global warming due to the forest burning and other natural disasters.

I also fear British Columbia Foresters could use these statistics to cut down every tree in BC. They are well on their way to doing it regardless.

***

Considering these statistics, even if we were to stop burning oil tomorrow we had better figure out how we are going to live on a warming planet. It is beyond humans control now – if it ever really was in our control.

Why Did the Yahoo Cross the Road?

I mentioned in my last post the tourists seem to be doing crazier things. On the weekend Lisa and I saw something that made me write that.

Last Sunday we went to go for a walk in the bush. Once we started walking we heard gunshots very close to where we were. The shots were close together and continual, with no breaks too unload and they just kept going.

They were coming from above us at an old mine. People have practiced shooting there in the past until the mining company put a berm to keep people out.

We decided to turn back in case they decided to start firing below them where we were. We went back to the truck.

I wanted to continue up the road to the old mine just to see what these yahoos were doing. I make Lisa nervous at times because she knows what I can be like.

A short drive and we came upon about seven men. They were on one side of the road with their trucks, leaning on tailgates and over box walls. There was a skeet throwing machine on the other side of the road launching skeets above the berm, where they each took turns firing, explaining the reason there was no time between shots to reload.

The road they were shooting across was a bush road, but a busy one, especially on weekends as there is several popular hiking trails further along the road.

When I was a youngster my father and I used to hunt. While driving to our hunting areas we would often come across wild chicken (grouse) along the side of the backroads. When I say backroads I mean not nearly as busy as the one Lisa and I were on last weekend. Occasionally back then Dad would stop the vehicle and let me get out to shoot a chicken for mulligan stew. The rule was, you never shot across the road under any circumstance. Because it was the law. Even though we were probably the only vehicle on that road in the past week, we didn’t do it. Plenty of chicken got away because I had to cross the road to raise my rifle.

When these tourist yahoos saw us they stopped shooting, a fat bastard, looking annoyed, walked out and tried waving us through.

To go through would have meant driving by seven dip shits holding loaded shotguns at window level. Now, they may have been the safest guys in the world with tons of firearm experience, however I doubt it. They didn’t seem to know you don’t shoot across a road. Regardless, I am not driving, walking or flying in front of someone with a loaded gun no matter who they are.

Plenty of people would have had to drive by them, however.

We turned around. I wanted to have a word with them, Lisa talked me out of it. I could tell she was scared how that might go. She was right of course. Arguing with tourists while they have guns in their hands, especially right wing Albertans who figure it’s their God given right to do anything they want, is never good policy.

When I relayed our experience to a friend, they said we should have reported them. The reason I didn’t was it would have done no good. Law enforcement, I believe, turns a blind eye to tourists breaking the law, unless it is something extreme. A bunch of tourists shooting skeets would have not even registered, the RCMP members might have even joined in shooting with them.

A few years ago the Province of BC implemented a law that if you are going 40 KMS over the speed limit your vehicle would be impounded.

The RCMP patrolled the highway through Kootenay National Park and caught one after another. They had several tow trucks there to take the vehicles to impound. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.

Cripes, what an uproar, our local politicians went on CBC radio to say this was no way to treat the Calgarians coming to the valley to spend their hard earned money.

The patrols stopped, I never hear of anyone, from then on ever after, having their vehicle impounded.

During the summer, each day, coming home from work, I am passed continually by folks in red and white plates, plenty going 40 over the posted speed limit.

I also see plenty of RCMP on the road. Sometimes they have someone pulled over and it is always a vehicle with BC plates.

I believe they don’t bother with the tourists to keep the local politicians at bay. As everyone says, we need their money.

A bunch of yahoos with guns shooting at clay pigeons is the last of their worries. For Lisa and I, we have to find different places to go.

The joys of living in a tourist trap.

Late August

Darker mornings. Cooler and it feels good. Been rearranging the wood pile to make sure last years wood gets burned first.

Good to get out mid week and walk up the mountains.

There is still a lot of tourists doing dumb things. Lisa and I ran into a bunch today. They can’t help it. They have been told they can’t do the things they have been doing for years due to Covid, and the recent forest fires.

It is a free for all now. Just look at the news.

Tourists, especially from Alberta, have taken a stand and, damned and determined, hell or high-water, regardless of right or wrong are going to do as they damn well please. They have been held back long enough. Unfortunately, they exercise it on vacation.

I mention Alberta, but it’s the same everywhere in cities. Too many people too close to each other with the only thing in common is buying shit.

If you live here you see it. Even the part time workers can’t wait to get away come September.

It’s a different world. One where you can’t believe the news, reliable sources have become sketchy pushing an agenda.

Everyone has bought in, taking from what they want to believe. Forgetting there is only one truth and importance, helping.

take the duck

I’ve made a terrible mistake. In the spring when the grasshoppers were eating the garden I started planting things that they didn’t seem interested in. They ate every carrot so I didn’t replant them figuring it was pointless. The grasshoppers left the small zucchini plants alone. So I planted more of them. Now I am overrun with yellow, green and patty pan zucchinis.

It has become impossible to manage. I can’t give them away. A small one today is a wooper tomorrow. I’ve made a terrible mistake!

***

The skies cleared last night. It’s the first time in weeks the mountains have made an appearance. It lifted everyones mood.

***

It is busy at the resort. Everyone is frazzled. Moral is good. It is an amazing bunch of workers. Most are young adults from throughout the country. They are expected to work hard and without exception they all put in a full shift.

I have worked in places, including the government, that that wasn’t the case, and the people there were getting paid twice what these kids make.

***

A coworker showed me a photo they took of four woodpeckers in the same tree. Two woodpeckers in the same tree means a cold winter.

Wasps, this year, have been building nests under ground, that means a cold winter.

My good friend Scotty from the Secwe̓pemc First Nation used to say, it will be a cold winter because the white man has a big woodpile. Damn, we used to laugh.

Shit! My woodpile is over flowing.

It could be a cold winter.

Scotty, if you are listening, kick me in the nuts and take the duck!

Early August

Horsethief Fire. Taken in the evening by Lisa.

The valley bottom is thick with smoke. Plenty of fires burning. So far nothing threatening. Just a lot of smoke making it hard to breath for people with lung issues. Plenty of people walking around with masks.

Jimmy says he has to smoke a cigarette just to get some fresh air.

The Resort is busy, as is the valley, on the long weekend. I am on my fourteenth straight day and it will keep up for awhile.

We have been furnishing a house to be made into a BNB. Our job is to put together furniture made in China. It is amazing stuff. You start off with flat box with panels and a freezer bag of assorted hardware. When you open it up and take everything out all you can think is, FUCKKK! But somehow it all goes together. None of it is high quality. The wood is manufactured from sawdust and glue. The veneer has been printed on an inkjet printer and the vinyl fixed to the ‘wood’. It all fits in a flat box that can be stacked miles high in a shipping container. That’s some crafty engineering.

The garden is out in full force. The smoky air acts as a flat filter giving the same light to the bottom of the leaves as the top. It is like the plants are in a green house.

The youngsters at work, from the UK and Ontario, have their belongings in their vehicles just in case they have to make a run for it. They haven’t seen anything like this. I tell them, it is good to be prepared but not to panic. I don’t say it, but it can get a lot worse.

The Albertan tourists and second home owners keep flocking in like nothing is wrong. They bitch that the pool isn’t crystal clear, like they haven’t noticed burnt ash has been falling on it nightly.

It will keep up for awhile like it always does. August has become a bitch.

Travel

If someone asked me what has changed with the weather, I’d say, it’s windy now especially when it is hot in July and August. You can almost feel the moisture being sucked out of the ground. I can’t remember it that way when I was young.

I may be wrong. I am often called an imbecile by plenty of folks because I’ve never travelled. I can’t argue with them. However, I know what I see, the garden backs me up as well as the lake and mountains. I feel sorry for them, they are changing, some would say dying or even burning. I feel sorry because of the abuse. Still, they will be here much longer than we will.

We had word a fire was threatening the power supply to the valley. I thought about the food I have in the freezer. I thawed a leg of lamb and made vindaloo for the clan. Not a summer meal, but cooler than roasting it in the oven.

Several fires have started near by in the past couple days. The Horsetheif Fire came over the ridge this afternoon. It looks to be moving quickly. Edgewater, a community 25km north of us, is reporting burnt ash and needles falling on decks and vehicles.

The wind driving the fire is blowing south/east while a thunderstorm came in heading north/west. A double whammy.

Meanwhile, I am on my perch, where I’ve always been, the imbecile that I am, listening to tourists from Alberta race up and down Main Street in loud cars, RV’s and motorcycles.

This weekend I encountered a group of old bastards about my age, there must of been thirty of them, riding Indian Motorcycles all dressed in chaps and leather vests with the Indian insignia. I couldn’t help but think looking at these dip shits that we are all doomed.

It won’t be coking coal making steel that is our demise. It will be rich fuckers getting on planes, entitled to do as they please, without consequence, that will catch up to us.

Not that anybody’s listening, if you want to make a difference, stay home. Don’t bring millions of dollars worth of toys into a place you know nothing about just because you can. Stay home and make a life there.

July Garden

Even Willow was powerless against the grasshoppers.

The garden is doing it’s best after being ravaged by grasshoppers. The grasshoppers are still around in abundance but not eating as much as when they were small. When we have vegetables from the garden for dinner I remark my thankfulness that the grasshoppers were kind enough to leave it for us. They were ravenous bastards.

No carrots this year. Almost everything had to be replanted. Strangely they didn’t like peas, which are about 6 feet tall and covered in pods. The tomatoes, they mostly left alone. Same as the zucchini. Everything else was at their mercy.

The cannabis is coming and I’m about to trick it into thinking it’s dying so it will flower. The grasshoppers ate it as well, but it fought back on its own. The grasshoppers who indulged were last seen, wearing dark glasses, listening to jazz, riding vans, driven by a ladybug, down to SF, Haight Ashbury, to find themselves. I’m happy I could, at least, convert a few. The stoned grasshoppers remaining are degenerates, happy to listen to Led Zeppelin overflowing from the gardeners earbuds. They are hard to motivate, but great to have a conversation with once you get them going, unfortunately they still like to snack.

We will miss the carrots. I planted zucchini in many of spots in the garden that the grasshoppers destroyed. We are going to have ‘chini coming out our ears. I won’t be able to give them away. My friends will see me coming and scatter.

Palliser Pass

Primary Menu

Tag: news