irrelevant joke

 Saw my GP yesterday. I hadn’t seen him for some time, he being unusually busy, and I, after spending some time in our (excellent) local hospital, having been referred to a number of specialists.
Our brief conversation went something like:
“So how are you doing?”
“Just fine, but I suspect I’m being propped up by the handful of pills I take every morning. I’ve become a good example of ‘Better living through chemistry’!
He could tell I had just made a small joke; I could tell it probably didn’t register.
Time is short when you’re talking to your GP. We went on to the business at hand.

Today while walking in the Beaver Lodge Lands as I do most days, I thought back to that conversation.
That little joke, a favourite of Simpson J, my colleague at the Island Centre for Child Development and a whole generation of other serious hippies, is probably out of reach for my own kids, now in their 40’s, never mind a person who had grown up in South Africa!
Not to even mention that the passage of time has rendered it entirely irrelevant.

I’m glad I didn’t try to explain it.

Radioactive

Here’s an anecdote that’s almost certainly apocryphal. But it’s not entirely impossible either, and was passed on by a reliable source. 

Anyway, I like it:

On Monday I presented myself to the Comox Valley hospital, Medical Imaging Nuclear Medicine, to be injected with a small dose of pyrophosphate, a radioactive substance. I was advised not to travel out of the country for two weeks.

Why? you may well ask, as I did.

By way of answer we arrive at the driver of a 16-wheel truck, who was crossing into the USA with a load that was urgently required.

He’d been given the same advice, but he needed to deliver his load. so he thought he’d give crossing a shot.

Everything was like normal. Until the last set of wheels.

Which showed up as a large black area on the border scan.

He was instantly pulled over, and swarmed by people in hazmat suits.

The explanation? 

There was no radioactivity found in those tires and wheels. But he had needed to relieve himself earlier in the day, so he had briefly pulled over, gotten out of the cab and urinated on the truck’s rear wheel.

That’s some sensitive equipment! of which the people who do the PR at the Pacific Northwest National Lab are, I would say, justifiably proud.

(And no, PNNL is not my source.)

Wildfires and Social Media: a letter

Isn't it bizarre that various levels of Canadian government have come to rely on American social media to communicate with their citizens? 

And how now suddenly we see the catch? 
But there's a logical solution, which I haven't yet seen described anywhere: the CBC. 
It's a public broadcaster, heavily subsidized by Canadian taxpayers, available to anyone with an internet connection: surely the CBC could be "encouraged" to have a dedicated space for public service announcements! 
When we lived in the Cariboo in BC's interior in the 70's, local radio had a program (quite the most popular program among that listenership) which involved intensely local news, gossip, and information especially for people living in the outlying areas who had no telephone access. Obviously people in the area knew exactly how to operate the system, and as far as I know, it worked just fine. 
The CBC already runs a fine online digital news service. A dedicated add-on should be no problem, and we'd quickly get used to consulting it. 

Letter to the Globe, sent August 21, 2023 

published in slightly abbreviated form August 23

Letter to the Globe

 

    I'm not even remotely Chinese, but if I were I'd be outraged that Globe journalists Chase and Fife have swallowed the apparent CSIS line, hook, and sinker that Canadian citizens of Chinese origin are so easily influenced that if China "tried to elect 11 candidates..." it had a reasonable chance of doing so.
    I remind the Globe that only Canadian citizens can vote in Canadian elections, and it is profoundly insulting to suggest that Chinese Canadians would be particularly susceptible to the blandishments of a foreign state.
    As a former Dutch citizen I can assure you that in the unlikely event that the government of The Netherlands wished to put its oar into Canadian elections, this would not influence me in the slightest!
    I would also point out that if we were truly concerned about foreign influences in out political life, we need look no further than the flood of MAGA propaganda and financing from south of the border, as evidenced by the recent "Freedom Convoy" protests.
    We have strict rules concerning election funding and influence in Canada. If any of those rules were broken by any group or government, that should obviously be dealt with in the usual way, not by rumour and innuendo.

submitted March 9, 2023

On losing your coffee maker and your mind

     Just a few days ago we narrowly averted a disaster.

        Or rather, I did.

    I’d just finished reading the New York Times, the “wire cutter” section, where the writers were discussing coffee makers. This attracted my attention because the reviewers were particularly unimpressed by the Keurig, and proposed several recommended alternatives.

    Excellent alternatives, several not as expensive as the Keurig. We have a couple in our cupboards. In fact, Sandy habitually uses the highly-recommended Aeropress, of which we have two, originally bought for use in the van. They do make exemplary coffee. 

    (You’re probably aware that one can buy packs of Aeropress microfilters. But did you know you can buy replacements for the rubber seal at the end of the plunger? The one that, if it wears excessively, renders the press useless? Anyway…)

    But the Aeropress is slower and not as convenient as my Keurig, which is consequently my go-to coffee maker, and, as far as I’m concerned, consistently makes an excellent cup of coffee. 

    In seconds, furthermore, which also feeds a preference.

    Of course we don’t use Keurig pods, which I wouldn’t dream of recommending and which, I suspect, is the reason for the Times columnist’s disdain. Rather, we use refillable cups, packed with freshly-ground coffee. 

    And that, as far as I am concerned, points to the real secret of making a great cup of coffee: it’s not the method; it’s the beans.

    Here’s a little byway/advertisement, en route to the averted disaster. 

    Back when we were considerably younger –– not to mention poorer –– we were already supporters of Oxfam Canada. And one of Oxfam’s initiatives and offshoots, called “Bridgehead” signed up Central and South American coffee growers to participate in “Fair Trade” schemes, in which they would be paid above market rates for sustainably-produced and harvested Arabica coffee beans. So although that coffee was considerably more expensive than the stuff you could buy in grocery stores at the time, we purchased it in 5-pound bags that Canada Post delivered.

    I suspect Oxfam probably borrowed the concept from the Max Havelaar company, with its Fair Trade coffee shops in Europe. Or vice-versa. 

    Eventually Bridgehead (https://www.bridgehead.ca/pages/copy-of-history) apparently became more than Oxfam was interested in maintaining, so it became its own company with a roastery and coffee shops in the Ottawa area. We have dealt with Bridgehead ever since. Still excellent coffee; still expensive; and still absolutely worth it.

    Back to the averted disaster.

    The Times column raised a little spectre of doubt. Should I be considering a different machine? Was the Keurig getting too long in the tooth to do an adequate job? Did I really appreciate the last cup it had produced? Should I maybe clean it?

    Clean it. I should definitely do that before deciding on something more, like replacement. And how does one clean a coffee maker? Vinegar, obviously.

    So I filled the reservoir with vinegar, turned on the machine, and waited until the cup was full. The vinegar was the right temperature and quantity, so everything appeared to be working fine. But the liquid was pretty brown, so go for another shot.

    At which point it balked. A dribble of warm vinegar, sputters of something that looked vaguely like steam…I shut it off. Had I broken it permanently?

    Remove vinegar, fill reservoir with cold water, and try again. And again. And again. And yet again.

    Very gradually the Keurig started to produce heated water, and eventually the brown disappeared. When I got it to make me a coffee, that worked, and the coffee was fine: no residual vinegar. Success!

    But here’s the kicker: some time passed, and I couldn’t get rid of that feeling that I’d been here before, that I’d maybe even written about filling your Keurig with vinegar. I went on a small search of previous posts, and look what i found! From as recently as October, 2020: https://occasionaljustus.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-vinegar-solution-meets-new.html

    So now I get to worry about losing my short-term memory instead of my coffee maker!

letter to the editor, Campbell River Mirror

 

The Editor,
Dear Sir:
Congratulations to Campbell River's new City Council, who managed, as one of their very first acts, to put Campbell River in the headlines.
And not just locally, but nationally and internationally!
I suspected there would be some blowback in their handling of the street drugs and homelessness issue, but knew for sure when I heard Counsellor Lanyon making a hash of explaining the bylaw on national CBC Radio. And then or course the issue was picked up by many others, including the Globe and Mail, the Star, the New York Times, the BBC, and the Guardian.
That will draw the tourists!
The cherry on the top of this confection will be when Pivot Legal, represented by Sarah Runyon (who not that long ago made the news  herself by winning a case at the Supreme Court of Canada) gets the bylaw tossed, generating even more national and international attention.
Well done!

submitted Feb 15, 2023

printed in the Feb 22, 2023 edition with the headline, "Way to put us on the map, city council"

Friday, Feb 24: The councillors withdrew their motion at their next meeting!

The day I almost burned down George's shop

Got an email from our friend Geoff today: George Longden died, quite unexpectedly.

This –– when I was on my daily ramble –– led to thoughts about all the colleagues from my Carihi days who have died: an astonishing number; I must be getting old.

The news also reminded me of my one George Longden story.  Which isn’t really about George at all, but is worth telling. It requires a rather extensive preamble, at least in the way it makes sense to me. So bear with me while I get to the point:

Already before we left Quesnel and my first teaching gig, Sandy’s father, who was a lifelong enthusiast of innovative European cars, had given us the Fiat 128 he had bought when they were first on the Canadian market. We drove that car for quite a few years until I crashed it one evening driving home from Carihi. 

I’m sure I was driving largely autonomously as I followed the same route every working day: Alder, South Murphy, Evergreen, and Dogwood in the morning and the reverse after school. This route was necessitated by the fact that neither Dogwood nor Alder went through the forest which today is the Robron Centre, the Shaw offices, the Merecroft playing fields, and the Merecroft shopping plaza. 

When I went to school in the morning everything was as expected, but when I drove home the town had completed the South Alder connection... by removing the stop sign on Alder and placing it on the Evergreen corner. (Nowadays we get weeks of notice when this happens, but Campbell River and it’s municipal workers have become much more sophisticated!)  

Anyway, I ran smack into the one person in Campbell River –– totally in the right –– who wasn’t accustomed to stopping on Alder. Because he was new to town.

The police were very understanding; I wasn’t charged; we needed another car.

My parents had a slightly-newer Fiat 128 and bailed us out by passing it on to us. 

I never liked that car nearly as much as the first one. I suspect it wasn’t as well-made, because, among other things, after a number of years I started to notice that the steering was starting to feel odd. 

When I looked under the hood everything appeared quite normal, until I noticed that there was a crack developing where the part of the body that supported the engine was separating from the unibody that supported the wheels and the passenger compartment. The wheels, in short, were threatening to go in different directions. Not ideal.

And this is where George comes into the picture. 

I used to see George quite regularly because we both had rooms in the new Carihi shop building, which had more spaces than were required for the shop classes on offer. I found my assigned classroom delightful because, while it was a long way from those of my Humanities colleagues, it was bright and large and had reams of storage space. Also my students could make all the noise they needed to.

George ran the automotive shop, and he and his students –– some of whom were also mine –– in addition to working on their own projects, quite often helped out by doing small jobs on the cars of some of the staff. 

So I showed the problem to George. He was unenthusiastic about a permanent solution, but suggested he could try to spot-weld the two parts of the body, in the hope that would hold long enough for me to get rid of the vehicle. I jumped at the offer.

One Friday shortly after, he told me the job had been done. I went to the shop after everyone had gone home intending to drive the Fiat away. Popped the lid, started the engine, leaned in to see how it was holding together before driving off. Looked surprisingly good. 

Then I smelled gas. Couldn’t see why.

Finally I saw a very fine stream of that gas coming from the after-market in-line fuel filter I’d recently installed. And pooling on the block.

Almost immediately there was an enormous “WHOOOF!” and a sheet of flame shot out of the engine compartment, well above the car’s roof.

That got my immediate attention! 

Fortunately I had the presence of mind to shut off the engine, grab the fire extinguisher from the wall, and pull the trigger. 

A cloud of CO2 and the fire was out.

I don’t actually remember how I dealt with the defective fuel filter, but I must have because I drove home.

And George appreciated both the story and the fact that I hadn’t burned the building down when I told him the next Monday.

Good guy, George.

Response to the Public Order Emergency Commission request for comment

 Sent: Sunday, October 2, 2022 12:34 AM

To: Perspectives (POEC/CEDU) <Perspectives@poec-cedu.gc.ca>
Subject: Emergencies Act

 

I live on Vancouver Island but can report that the longer the occupation of Ottawa lasted last February, the greater the schism opening up here, to the point that a fringe minority, driving pickups festooned with upside-down Canadian flags and obscene posters, organized their own mini-Convoy to Victoria to scream about oppression. Not once, but twice.

There were many instances and an increasing frequency of public figures being harassed by obviously-uncontrolled men shouting about "freedom", mask and vaccination mandates, and hatred of our government.

We wanted it shut down before it turned into something more serious.

Consequently, the vast majority of us here supported the invoking of the Emergencies Act.

We applauded Parliament's action to cut off a more widespread insurrection when it finally did.

(The last remnants are with us still.)

And the response from the Commission, received today:

Good day Mr. Havelaar,

 We have received your submission and we thank you for taking the time to provide us with your comments and observations. Public input is an important part of the Public Order Emergency Commission’s investigation.

 If more details are needed from you, the Commission will contact you directly.

 Again, thank you,

Letting her run

The case of “Appadurai vs BCNDP” has revealed some very interesting misconceptions, the most galvanizing of which –– to me, at any rate –– is that many commenters apparently believe that the leader sets party policies. (Because if it’s recognized he/she doesn’t set policy, what’s the point of her campaign? Destruction of the BCNDP? Catharsis?)

I don’t know much about the inner workings of other parties, but that notion is demonstrably not true of the BCNDP. 

Actually, I suspect it isn’t true of most parties, ie UK Conservatives, who have recently turfed two leaders elected by the party membership over policy differences with their own Caucus, whose members could smell personal political defeat in the air. It’s also not true of the CPC, whose Parliamentary Caucus removed Erin O’Toole for less-obvious but similar reasons. As for Danielle Smith of the UCP, whose members appear to have temporarily fallen into line with her craziness, that jury is still out, but stay tuned: they haven’t yet faced the Alberta Legislature with her at the helm, and there’s a May election coming right up.

That’s why the leadership ambitions of an obviously talented and charismatic would-be leader of the BCNDP were always doomed to failure, even if she and her Dogwood friends had signed up enough “members” to win the contest. 

The BCNDP is built on its constituency associations. Besides electing candidates for Provincial election, those associations elect representatives to attend regular Provincial Conventions, where BCNDP Executive members are elected and provincial political policies are debated and created. The mechanics aren’t important here, but the fact that the Constituencies control the membership and consequently most BCNDP financing is crucial, given that in BC political parties are exclusively dependent on personal donations. 

As far as I know, Ms Appadurai has no local Constituency behind her; her members identify as former Greens, Dogwood members and followers, and disaffected, former NDPers. Would they have stayed around long enough to complete the process? We’ll never know, but we do know, from previous elections, that Green Party members don’t fund the “backrooms” and candidates of their party the way the BCNDP does. They don’t organize campaigns the same way either: they simply don’t have the resources or manpower.

So let’s engage in a bit of fantasy, and imagine that in spite of the odds the Appadurai campaign, were successful and she were elected Leader. She has no seat in the Legislature, so she’d have to try to direct things from afar until she had achieved one. Not very effective, and, because she ran a campaign literally against the Caucus (from her publicity: “Views + positions may not represent those of the BC NDP, Caucus and Government.”) she and her team would find some steep hills to climb, not the least of which would be, who would represent her in the Legislature in the interim, almost the entire Caucus having declared for Eby? Then she’d have to find a seat to contest. Would she run in any vacant seat? Would a sitting member offer up his/hers? Would their Constituency Association concur without a local nominating convention? Would the Provincial Executive parachute her into a constituency without constituency consent? Could she possibly be successful, assuming everything else (funding and manpower, principally) was in place? (The BCNDP isn’t the BCLiberal Party, where Christy Clark, already Premier at the time, having been defeated by David Eby in Point Grey was able to bribe her way into a seat in the Okanagan. ) 

To dive even further into fantasy: assume she has won a seat and therefore a place in the Legislature. Does the Caucus follow her in implementing her promises: stop Site C, stop fracking in the North-east, stop LNG Canada and the pipeline that supplies it, stop all old-growth logging, including Fairy Creek, etc.? No, the Caucus does not, because that’s not NDP policy, and in any case the Premier doesn’t set policy. Her platform was the Green Party’s platform, and they have a caucus of two.

So, never going to happen. The Appadurai campaign was a clear attempt to skip around conventional parliamentary democracy and get the government of the day to bend to a very small minority of BC electors.

Had they been successful, they would have destroyed the infrastructure of the BCNDP and made it unelectable in BC. 

        And they wouldn’t have done the Green cause or Ms Appadurai any good at all.

 

Defeating the Trojan horse

    This morning all NDP members received an email from David Eby, the new leader of the BCNDP. I thought it excellent: just the right tone and content; absolutely without any sign of triumphalism; no condemnation of either Anjali Appadurai or the people who supported her bid; apparently sincere hopes that the new members would go on to become dedicated NDPers.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that this attempt to take over the BCNDP to make it, in effect, a clone of the Green Party was driven by a coterie of very dedicated fanatics, who will undoubtedly ensure that the smell of their attempted coup and its abrupt conclusion will linger for some time.

(Aside: for those of you still unfamiliar with the details, I recommend a Twitter feed by Rob Shaw: https://twitter.com/RobShaw_BC/status/1582548584808882176 

And for commentary, Vaughan Palmer’s column on the subject: https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/vaughn-palmer-report-stuffed-with-evidence-against-anjali-appadurai-campaign)

This encounter with the Trojan Horse of radical environmentalism is not, I think, as problematic as it might be at first glance. I think I detect the problem. It’s inherent in the BCNDP’s processes and procedures. 

I make that analysis because we experienced, in North Island, something similar, so as a former activist I’m well-placed to present this illustration: 

When Colin Gabelmann retired and Glen Robertson became the MLA, the North Island locus moved up-island and became much more directly union-influenced. So some of us, me included, took the opportunity to follow Colin’s example and step back as well. That lasted also during the term of Glen’s BCLiberal successor, Rod Visser. We got seriously active again before the next election, during the drive to name a new NDP candidate to take Rod on. Brian Giles, who had been Colin’s constituency assistant, dropped out well before the vote, which left Brenda Leigh, Area D director of the Strathcona Regional District, and our candidate, Claire Trevena, a former Green who lived on Quadra Island and was new to NDP politics. 

By the time of the nominating convention, by all accounts and evidence, Brenda’s crew thought they had the nomination in the proverbial bag: they had solid union support and organization, North Island Constituency did not have a large membership, and they knew they had signed up literally hundreds of new members. 

Mostly $10 memberships, the minimum permitted by NDP rules. This fact turned out to be important in a convention nomination; they were both incredulous and indignant when Claire was declared winner. 

After Claire’s committee took over the constituency reins we discovered that North Island had acquired one of the largest memberships in BC, at around 1300. We also discovered that many were located in Area D, where Brenda was (and continued to be, until the recent election) a popular representative. When renewal time came round, almost all this new “membership” vanished; in fact, some people we knew in other contexts who had been signed up had no idea they had become NDP members: they thought they were just giving Brenda a few dollars to run her campaign.

And of course Claire beat Mr Visser, and won the next few elections until she retired in 2020.

I don’t think the Appadurai campaign would have had exactly the same problem that the Leigh campaign had; I think their new “members” were probably very motivated, and would have voted, given the chance. And they would certainly have been reminded. But they wouldn’t have been very representative of the rest of the NDP membership, and they would almost certainly have faded away shortly after, even if their candidate were successful.

So how do we prevent a future takeover event, now that Avi Lewis and his fellow-travellers have set the template?

Happily, a fix is not very difficult.

I think the world has changed, and with it the incentive to join political parties. Consequently, we need to dump the $10 minimum, which has evolved from being a socially-responsible policy to being an incentive for larceny. It doesn’t even cover the cost of administration for these new memberships! 

These days, $10 is a couple of cups of fancy coffee, and most of us think nothing of spending that much if we feel it’s worth it. So I suggest $50 be the new $10. That’s enough to make people think, not enough to dissuade the dedicated, and if anyone genuinely needs to pay the lower sum, that need is easily accommodated, just as we have always accommodated people who couldn’t pay $10.

We really admire John Horgan and the present government and, although we’re both past active participation in the Party, we have high hopes for Premier David Eby’s leadership. He has been an excellent Minister on a number of difficult files.

        Would be nice if he occasionally showed that sense of humour that he’s hidden so thoroughly, though!