Cain and Abel and the salmon wars

When my family first moved from Terrace to Victoria we attended the United Church in Langford, where my mom played the piano and my dad was an elder and taught Sunday School to the older children, like me.

(A few years later that church hired a minister from Ontario whose church had been inundated by the St Lawrence Seaway. According to my dad, he was an anti-Semite, and consequently our family separated its connection with both the church and  formal Christianity. But that's another story.)

One of the stories I remember most vividly from my dad’s class was the story of Cain and Abel. Because my dad took his job as a new teacher seriously, he wasn't prepared to just recite stories: he wanted us to get at what these stories, so obviously symbolic, were actually about. We had discussion groups.

Given that my parents had recently survived occupied Holland in WW2, it is perhaps not very surprising that the story of Cain killing his brother Abel turned out to be about the evils of internecine warfare and the importance of loving your metaphorical brother, regardless of his skin colour or religion...

But it doesn't require a lot of pondering to realize that's only one interpretation, one which really doesn't doesn't get at some of the more ambiguous aspects of the story: why does God reject Cain's offering? Why is He delighted by that of Abel? What motivates Cain to kill Abel? And what’s with Cain, cursed by God Himself to be a perpetual wanderer, setting up both a lineage and a city in the Land of Nod?

Wikipedia provides a better solution to these puzzles: “Modern scholars typically view the stories of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel to be about the development of civilization during the age of agriculture; not the beginnings of man, but when people first learned agriculture, replacing the ways of the hunter-gatherer.” So that's what I'm going with.

It's pretty clear, if one uses this template of the story, that the reason God prefers Abel's sacrifice over that of Cain is that His is a romantic, nostalgic Sensibility. According to the story, God prefers the herder, the hunter-gatherer, the one who lives closest to Nature, over the farmer, the fencer, and the house-and-barn builder. 

Although, as we see from the story and as milennia of history have demonstrated, the farmer invariably replaces the hunter-gatherer-herder.

That God of the ancient Semitic Tribes, however, is very much with us still, and especially on the West Coast of Canada, where I live.

How else to explain the prevalent antipathy towards salmon farms that one finds here? The answer, it seems pretty obvious to me, is romance and nostalgia for a bygone time; it is pretty obvious from their rhetoric that the God of Nature is with the passionate “activists” and “environmentalists” who espouse the cause of wild over domestic, free-swimming over penned.

Which is interesting, because in other parts of the country we don't often see movements to ban pastures, feedlots, and slaughterhouses in favour of everyone hunting. There isn't, as far as I know, a campaign to remove all the fences and have bison reclaim the Prairies. No one is suggesting we cease breeding chickens or revert to stealing eggs from the nests of wild birds.

But that's essentially what many of us advocate for the West Coast salmon fishery. You'd think that, after we've seen what happened to the cod and salmon fisheries on the East Coast we'd understand that our continued exploitation of wild salmon is ultimately unsustainable, no matter how well we “manage” the fishery: in blunt terms, the commercial harvest of wild salmon has to end if we are to maintain any sustainable population of wild salmon.

That's not the way those who worship the God of Nature see things, however. They remain quite firmly convinced that, if only ocean-based salmon farms were banned from our coast, everything would return to as it was 50 years ago. 

As if.

When we first came to Campbell River, I accompanied my friend and colleague Ray out fishing several times. We'd take his boat to Quathiaski Cove, and there, working the eddies near the mouth of the harbour, we'd “rake” herring. That involved a long foil-shaped pole, the last several feet of which had many sharp needles driven into the leading edge. That was passed through the water where there was evidence of herring, the herring were caught on the needles, and then swept into the back of the boat. Salmon loved those herring.

I haven't fished for years, but as far as I know, nobody near Campbell River rakes herring any longer. There simply are not enough of them for the method to be reliable. Instead, fishermen buy bait herring at the dock; where the vendors source these I have no idea. But I do have an idea that accounts for the paucity of herring in our waters: One of my first years of teaching here I had a first-nations student who, in the Spring, suddenly disappeared from his Grade 12 class. I heard that he had “gone fishing”, but that he'd be back. Two weeks later, he was, and he was pretty chuffed. According to him (and I have no reason to disbelieve his account) in those two weeks, “I made more money fishing with my uncle than you make in a year!” He'd hit the jackpot fishing herring on his uncle's seiner in Barkley Sound. Roe herring: the expensive roe for the Japanese market, the nearly worthless herring bodies for fish fertilizer and catfood.

Need I mention that salmon eat herring? There's still a herring fishery on the coast every Spring, but it's a shadow of what it once was, just as there is only a shadow of the salmon fishery that once - quite recently - was.

So what about the salmon farms? I'm going to have to make a bit of a disclaimer here: I'm not unbiased. Our daughter was a fish-farmer, working for Stolt, between sessions of undergrad study. So I met and talked to a lot of people interested and working in the business. What I heard wasn't always laudatory, but on balance, I thought then and still think that if we are going to eat salmon, they'd better be those raised in pens.

And we are going to eat salmon, right? That’s pretty much a given.

When salmon farms first came to our coast in the 80's there were a large number of startups. Consequently, many were located in unsuitable places (eg Baines Sound, off Denman Island, where there is very little tidal action), generally many mistakes were made, and there was a good deal of environmental degradation as a result. But things are very different now. The industry is controlled by a few large players, and, as their publicity puts it, “the industry ...now contributes over $1.1-Billion annually into B.C.’s economy and provides thousands of steady, year-round jobs in coastal communities – which pay 30% more than the average median income in B.C.” In other words, they are big economic players in places like Campbell River, and hire a lot of people, including, unsurprisingly, a lot of first-nations people.

While it is true that all commercial farming has an environmental impact, and that salmon farms are no exception, it is obviously not in the interests of these companies to degrade the environment in which they exist and on which they rely, although you would never know this if you listened to only the critics of the industry.

Two recent stories involving salmon farms are illustrative of some of the prevailing if largely misguided narratives of the “God of Nature” folk: the “occupation” of a Marine Harvest site near Alert Bay by a group of “traditional first-nations leaders and environmentalists” and the escape of some 305,000 fish from a farm in the San Juan Islands. 

The escape story from the Guardian covers the issues particularly well: we have the person involved with the harvest of wild salmon who worries that, “We don’t want those fish preying on our baby salmon. And we don’t want them getting up in the rivers.” And we have the more unbiased observer, who notes that, “These things are kind of couch potatoes... They are domesticated. Imagine a dairy cow getting lost out in the Serengeti. It doesn’t last very long.” As Uvic’s Professor Volpe points out, there’s a history going back to the beginning of the last century here: no Atlantic salmon has ever successfully populated the Pacific coast. And it has been tried many times. In fact, Professor Volpe and his graduate student wrote a paper about it after that student had apparently found evidence of Atlantics breeding successfully: “Feral Atlantic salmon juveniles were found in three Vancouver Island, British Columbia, streams (Tsitika, Adam, and Amor De Cosmos) in 1998 (Volpe et al. 2000), indicating the likelihood of successful spawning of net pen-reared fish in the wild. In reviewing the scientific literature that is available through September 2006, there have been no further reports of Atlantic salmon successfully spawning on the West coast in the wild (i.e., discovery of wild juveniles) since the 2000 British Columbia sightings.” So we can probably retire that one.

The other story is more problematic, in that it largely involves unresolved emotional issues. Chief Alfred’s reported complaint is that, “the farm is threatening [his] traditional way of life by impacting wild salmon and herring stocks” and “the company does not have a formal agreement with the 'Namgis to operate in their traditional territories”. Chief Alfred is likely to be correct on the latter point; he has no way of knowing if he’s correct on the former, because that case, in spite of the best efforts of many people, is far from proven. The other part of that story is about photos of deformed fish in the pens. As if deformed fish happen only in pens! ( Spoiler Alert: the seals get the wild ones.) We’ll rely on a spokesperson for Marine Harvest to make the case: “...deformities are very rare in salmon, but like other animals and humans, they can occur. We are able to remove any poor performing or deformed fish from our farms before they are sent to market," he said. "Our salmon are very healthy, are regularly checked for health by licensed veterinarians and audited by Fisheries and Oceans Canada."

One last point: one cannot visit this issue very often without coming across references to the closed-containment land-based fish farm, which has long been the holy grail of the opponents of ocean-based net fish farms. It’s hard to see how this would work, as any economic study would suggest that the energy inputs outweigh the economic outputs. However, we no longer need to rely on theory: the ‘Namgis in fact started just such a farm, Kuterra, “with $9.5 million in government and charitable funding, including $3 million from Tides Canada”. They even harvested and sold some fish. But it’s far from a success, let alone making back its investment, so in spite of all the claims that this is the future of fish farming, I’m not the only one to have my doubts.

I know this issue isn’t going to go away, and I know there is a dedicated lobby whose aim is to end the fish farm industry on our coast. As you can tell, I think they’re misguided, and that we’d better do something real about wild salmon socks if we want to keep them viable. Closing the salmon farms isn’t a realistic option, and, anyway, wouldn’t accomplish the desired end.

In other words, I’m pretty sure Abel loses again; let’s hope that, in the meantime, we don’t lose the wild salmon as well.

Small triumph

Our 18' clothesline pole finally, after some 20 years, pulled its base out of the ground, leaned that up against the neighbour's fence, and stayed sort-of-up only because of three metal fenceposts propped into the ground and spiked into it.
The last pole came from the beach, but it took two fit men, with considerable effort, to carry, and I destroyed a car-top carrier getting it home.
I discussed the issue with Hubert, who suggested recycled aluminum pipe, which is, of course, potentially much lighter. Apparently fish farms sometimes recycle it.
As it turned out, the only available aluminum pipe was both much shorter and rather lighter than he had suggested: what I found available at our local metal recycler were two 9' sections of 2.5" aluminum pipe and one 8' square piece. Then a piece of good fortune: the round pipe fitted neatly into the square pipe.
It was pretty clear 2.5" aluminum pipe is really not rigid enough in a 20' length to keep a clothesline happy, especially on a windy day, and I had to, somehow, put the pipe together to make 20'.
Getting someone to weld everything together seemed a troublesome option; besides, I'd still have the issue of getting a 20' pipe home.
In any case, the pole would have to be supported from the back with stays.
After much thought, plus some further advice from Hubert, I elected to cut about 30" off the square pipe, stick the two round pipes into that to meet in the middle, fill most of the gaps with dowling, and then fill any remaining voids with low-expansion foam. Just in case there was any chance of shifting, I added one aluminum screw to the top.
Then I did the same for the base, making sure I had 20' of pole plus about 2' to go into the hole I would prepare to receive it.
The pole was finished off with a rounded length of 2X4 in the top, more foam, and a cap to keep the elements from attacking the vulnerable bits.

Digging the hole was pure grunt work. I knew from experience that not far from the bottom of any hole one digs into Rockland is a rock slightly larger than the hole from which one is trying to extract it. This hole was no exception, but in the end I had a very satisfactory, largeish hole, and a significant pile of boulders with which to refill it.

Recycling the old clothesline, I attached 4 stays, two for the top, and two for just above the join.
Then I got Jay to come help erect the pole while I backfilled the hole with a bag of concrete mix and the boulders.
I cut one of the metal fenceposts in half (love my angle grinder!), pounded each half into Rockland, and drilled holes in them to accommodate the stays.
When everything had set next day, it was time to rig the stays and attach the clothesline to the pulley, readily-accomplished once I had our 21' ladder in place.
And that's another job I won't be doing again in my lifetime!

Care card: a proposal

This essay is, ultimately, about technology and why the emergency room doctors at Nanaimo General, in dispute with Vancouver Island Health over keeping their prescriptions and notes electronically, need to get with the times and embrace digital record-keeping. However, first we need a little background:

Until the last few years, I have always been a very occasional user of medical services. Like most of us, in many years I never saw a doctor at all. When I did, the visit and any subsequent tests and procedures  were recorded on paper and kept in a folder kept centrally in the clinic. That folder went with me whenever I saw a doctor at that clinic: standard medical practice of the time, in other words.
Then our fine but old-school GP, the one who delivered all our kids and who Sandy and I had had since arriving in Campbell River, nearly replicated Icarus’ death spiral by running his plane into the Nanaimo Airport tarmac. I was sad for him and, like much of Campbell River, seriously worried about his survival, but didn’t spend much time wondering how our future medical requirements would be met.
Happily, we live in Campbell River, possibly one of the most desirable places in the entire world to live, so when I finally needed a consult, I phoned our clinic and was immediately given an appointment.
A young man the age of our kids, the doctor immediately impressed me by coming to that first appointment carrying his laptop. He dealt with my issue (annual prostate check) and took a complete history, including prodding all my body’s corners and byways. All was entered into the computer.
Having found something he wasn’t sure about, he sent me to a urologist in Courtenay to have that checked out. And here’s the point: the urologist had my complete history on his computer when I saw him a couple of weeks later. No trees had been sacrificed; no postage had been purchased, and nothing had been held back.
Repeat exactly for the allergist I consulted in Victoria.
Our GP’s laptop has subsequently morphed into a tablet and then a smartphone, and there’s a computer on his desk which gives larger-format access to everything medical that has gone on with me since we started with that initial visit, including the results of the referrals to specialists and of various lab tests.
You can probably see where this is going: there’s also a computer on the desk of the specialist who has treated me since my GP ran out of ideas for dealing with my cough. Everything available to my GP is available on the specialist’s computer as well: the results from all the blood and sputum tests, the X-rays, a CT scan, the bronchoscopy results, all the antibiotics I’ve ingested, the courses of prednisone I’ve taken, what we’ve discussed at every visit, etc.
And when that specialist thought maybe it would be helpful for me to see another specialist in Comox for a second opinion, I wasn’t at all surprised to see he had my complete medical history on his computer as well.
Not a sign of a folder, but entirely dependent upon my GP piloting my health care through the system and documenting it.
This was brought home to me when I ended up first in emergency and then in the hospital overnight after I reacted badly to the bronchoscopy: I obviously wasn’t at my best, so when the docs there wanted to know what drugs I was taking I knew there were only two, and I knew what they do, but could I remember what they’re called? Could I remember what colour puffer? Not a chance. Furthermore, the very competent emergency room doctors knew nothing of my medical history beyond what I could tell them, because they had access to none of my files. So they sent me for yet another chest X-ray, just in case it would be needed, and put a call in the specialist who had performed the bronchoscopy.
The same shooting-in-the-dark thing happened another time when my GP wasn’t available and I had to deal with a doctor at a drop-in clinic.
This doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s 2017, and we have a unified provincial system of health care.  There is no technological reason why my files cannot follow me around, at least in my own province. If systems are “incompatible”, as is sometimes argued, hire someone who can make them compatible!  Other agencies do it all the time. “Privacy issues”? Bogus argument. They’re my files, ultimately, and I should be able to give permission for any doctor I need to consult to see those files. Too expensive? So is the system we have, because it’s terribly inefficient.
So I have a practical suggestion: if a central registry for all clients of our health-care system is simply to cumbersome or ethically-challenged to imagine, how about issuing each patient with his own digital card, containing all his own records. This would be updated every time he sees a doctor or pharmacist, and only doctors or pharmacists would be able to read it, because to do so they would need to enter their own personal code. We all already have such a card in BC called a “Care Card”, but it is, at present, singularly useless to the client, in that it only gives access to treatment, and doesn’t tell the provider anything useful for the care and treatment of the patient.
My experiences with our present system have all been excellent, but I recognize that a major reason for this is the fact that my GP and my other providers have coordinated my care, thanks to the process my GP started. I realize I’m very lucky, and that not everyone – because of where they live or circumstances beyond their control --  can count on the same level of service. What I have proposed, I believe, could narrow the gap.
However, all the doctors working in the public health care system, even the Nanaimo emergency doctors, would have to learn how to use a computer!

When our mailbox vanished

June 27, 2017

CANADA POST CUSTOMER SERVICE

PO BOX 90022
2701
RIVERSIDE DRIVE

OTTAWA ON K1V 1J8

Dear Sirs,

A few weeks ago, when I went as usual to pick up our mail from our (relatively) new community mailbox, the box had vanished. Only a rather mangled concrete base remained. One of my neighbours subsequently told me that someone had backed out of his driveway early that morning rather too briskly, demolishing it.

We speculated that perhaps our mail would be delivered to the door while we waited for a new box.

But that didn’t happen, so after a few days, and after considerable searching of your website, I found a phone number to call.

The person who answered could not have been more helpful. He took my particulars, and assured me someone who had answers would get back to me.

Which is exactly what happened: A couple of hours later I learned why our box had vanished, when we could expect a new one, and how we could access our mail in the meantime. So no complaint there.

We have no problem with the community mailbox; in fact, we appreciate that we can get parcels there. But here’s the thing: while people like us get almost all of our bills and the bulk of our other mail online, we still have neighbours who are not comfortable on the internet, and do not. I know for a fact that some of them did not know where to get their mail until that information started being passed around informally in the neighbourhood. I expect some of them never did find out.

I get that re-instituting door-to-door for the two weeks we were without delivery was probably impractical, but you will understand that I find the fact that Canada Post did not do anything to explain the situation and give pickup instructions extremely unimpressive. (We’re only talking a maximum of 32 households!)

It certainly does nothing positive for Canada Post’s reputation.

Sincerely,

More adventures in medicine

I had a bronchoscopy on May 8, in the morning. This is the email I sent on May 9 to various friends and relatives who had asked to be kept current...

I had my bronchoscopy yesterday morning. As predicted, don't remember anything of the actual procedure, although I wasn't put under, merely "sedated". I remember gargling some bitter stuff, then the doctor putting a curved syringe down my throat to freeze the vocal chords, then nothing until I was lucid again. Apparently I had a discussion with Dr Allen, but I don't remember that. I felt fine, but they kept me for another hour, making sure my oxygen levels and heart were fine.
Got home, had a much-needed coffee and some lunch, then started to feel tired, so I lay down. Got cold, so I covered up. Got really cold, and Sandy pointed out that the sheet Dr Allen had provided said if this happened to go straight to emergency.
So I did that; they triaged me to the head of the line, I was seen by a nurse, put on a saline drip, and into a cubicle. Leanne, who was in seeing a patient, came by. (They all love her in emerg!)
By the time the bag was empty, I was feeling much better, so the fact that I didn't see a doctor until after their shift change didn't matter. When I did see him, J was there on his way home from work. The Emergency doctor took extensive notes, did some tests, ordered an X-ray and a bunch of blood work, then phoned Dr Allen. They decided I should be hooked up to oxygen and stay overnight.
This morning I saw, in order: Leanne, who brought me a thermos of coffee, a sheaf of drawings, and some muffins before attending to her patient in the other bed; Robin, who brought me a Globe and more coffee; Dr Allen, who discussed the procedure (according to him, there's so much mucus in my lungs he had to clear the probe three times!), unhooked my oxygen, gave me a prescription for another antibiotic, and said he'd see me in a week when the first results are in; Leanne, between patients; Dr de Bruin, my GP, doing rounds, who was surprised to find me there, and who finally got me my discharge from the hospital...
So I'm home. It's a zone house (it being Election Day) but I'm not allowed to drive and coughing more than would make me useful on the phone.
So I'm totally redundant, but very pleased to be home. 

May 11, 1968. Trail, BC.

Sandy’s dad had a very fancy new Pentax SLR camera, so he assured my dad, who didn’t, that he could be counted on to take the photos.

Unfortunately, although Sandy’s dad took many, none turned out: he had – it being a new camera, and unfamiliar to him – loaded the film incorrectly, so that it didn’t advance.

This photo was taken either on the day by someone else, or some months later when San and I returned to Trail.

The wedding was held in the living room, and conducted by the United Church minister. Besides the principals, in attendance were: Sandy’s parents, Fred (who was still in high school) and my parents. Possibly a couple of my siblings. Also several neighbours. Our memories are distinctly hazy on this point.

The ceremony must have gone well, because we were duly married.

The only other really memorable thing I remember was that the fireplace had been crammed with paper. Sandy’s dad asked me to put a match to it, so I did; the house immediately filled with smoke and fly-ash. He had forgotten to warn me that the damper would be closed, and I had forgotten to check.

Luckily for me, he took the brunt of Sandy’s mom’s fury, and the room had been cleaned and aired by the time the ceremony happened.

Note after posting on Facebook and acquiring some more information: apparently Fred took the photo, and Sandy's Great Aunt (in every way!) Neva and her Grandfather Robinson from Saskatoon were also in attendance.

Toll politics and the BC economy

The first time we visited Enid and Isaac in Austen, we went to a gathering of a number of their best friends. It was all very congenial; it never occurred to me some of them saw the world in a fundamentally different way until we were talking health care. Several of them didn't have any. I thought this outrageous, and said so: “I know this is very Canadian of me, but I cannot understand a society that doesn't have universal health care.”

To which one clever young graduate student replied, “Well, I don't want it. I don't want to pay for all the people who smoke, or do drugs, or are too fat or stupid to look after themselves.”

And there was no dissuading her from that position: she simply could not accept that a system that covered everyone, even the fat and stupid, was actually less expensive than hers, and had much better outcomes.

Yet that is pretty-much universally understood in Canada, and one of the significant ways we distinguish ourselves from our neighbours to the south, for most of whom a universal-anything is anathema.

Yesterday, while listening to Stephen Quinn's afternoon show, I heard essentially that same American argument: why should someone in Fernie or Fort St John pay for the bridges into Vancouver? Even Quinn felt it useful to point out that if the tolls were removed the people who used the bridges would still be paying for it.

Of course they would!

Just like they and we pay for all the roads in BC. At present the government, leading up to the election, is playing “blacktop politics”, with roads that are paid for by all of us. They're part of the infrastructure we hold in common as citizens and tax-payers of BC, the very stuff that helps keep our economy rolling.

So it is really surprising to me (well, OK, I confess: not really) that somehow we have managed to get it into our heads that the bridges of the lower mainland are not part of the BC transportation system. Yet all pundits and experts appear to accept that this is the case: the CBC's legislative reporter, Richard Zussman, talking to Quinn in the episode I mentioned, took it for granted that both the BCLiberal and NDP positions on those bridge tolls was mere “retail politics”, implying they made no economic sense, and Gary Mason, in today's Globe cavalierly tosses off the following line, just as if he has some special knowledge: “Both policies are short-sighted and idiotic, but the NDP's perhaps more so.” 

Let us examine that proposition.

The bridges in question are the Golden Ears and the Port Mann, plus the proposed Massey Tunnel Replacement. Now either there is a compelling economic argument to be made for those crossings, or there isn't. I have no special insight (and here's a free hint: neither do Zussman or Mason!) but let's assume for the moment that the government knew and knows what it was/is doing in building all three.

If that's the case, what's important is that they serve their purpose, not that we build in a cost-recovery program. But the government built in that supposed cost-recovery anyway, and in doing so seriously distorted the transportation plans for the Fraser Valley. Both the Golden Ears and the Port Mann bridges and their respective tolls, are to this day avoided by many of the very people they were meant to serve, and the result has been not only a negligible cost recovery, but also more, not less, traffic gridlock on alternate routes.

That's a pretty poor return on significant investment!

In our very province, courtesy of the very same government, we have another case history which is a remarkable contrast to this rather obvious piece of mismanagement: when the BCLiberals decided to go all-in on the Winter Olympics, it soon became clear that they were going to have to undertake a very expensive upgrade of the road to Whistler. They bit the bullet, invoked yet another P3, and built it. 

It works; many, many people use it. The Olympics were deemed a success. Squamish, Whistler, and Pemberton have grown dramatically. Investors and developers have been emboldened. We ourselves quite often find ourselves on the Duffy Lake Road, in transit to the Interior, because the road to Whistler has ceased to be a problem.

Did you know that every time you drive that road the government pays a toll to the P3 on your behalf? Probably not; they haven't exactly been forthcoming on the subject!

Which suggests the question: if improved transportation is the object, just exactly how is a new bridge across the Fraser different from an expensive upgrade of the road to Squamish? Or serious upgrades of the Cariboo and John Hart highways? Or of the Trans-Canada through Yoho National Park?

I cannot see how it is, except that the government of the day, entirely for political reasons, thought they could convince people that no new taxes were needed for bridges into and out of the economic engine of the province, because the users would pay.

Thus the next question: just who are those users?

They are the people who either can no longer afford to live in Vancouver or need more space than Vancouver affords. They are, among others, the teachers, the paramedics, the firefighters, the policemen, the small-business owners, the workers, the... we could go on and on. They are, in short, the people who Vancouver cannot do without but can no longer house. For some reason our government thought it would be equitable to charge them not only the gas tax we all pay for maintaining our movement infrastructure, but also a surcharge in the form of tolls.

None of this is a persuasive argument for tolls; all of it suggests the NDP has the only tolling plan that is likely to actually prevent the Golden Ears and Port Mann bridges from becoming BC’s version of white elephants.

A dedicated “transportation tax” on all of us would be a more equitable and superior plan. It might even come to grips with the inequities of ferry fares and the need to build rapid transit.

I live in Campbell River, so cannot possibly benefit except through an improved BC economy. And maybe, in the future, a ferry-fare rollback.

But I can dream, can't I?

Fever dream: a short personal narrative plus several light excursions

There was a low-lying fog carried on the breeze over the field. As the fog approached, however, I could see it wasn't fog: it was long strands of clock gears, held together by the untentioned springs of the machines. They were undulating and groaning, drawn in black ink by a draughtman's finest-tip pen...
I woke up coughing uncontrollably, cold with sweat, and my hair wet as though I just come from a shower. I also felt objectively better.
I knew I’d had a flash of inspiration just before I woke, and when I thought back, this was it: “the world is full of non-stuff and stuff.” Like most such midnight revelations, that now seems distinctly underwhelming. It’s probably not even true anymore, and certainly not if some team actually detects dark matter!
Excursion 1:
At the time I thought this might make the basis for a children's book, but that's clearly delusional; children's books should always amuse the adults who read them as well as the kids. It's why we weren't Richard Scary or “Mr” book fans at our house.
Excursion 2:
My end-of-the-dream inspiration reminds me of a quote I read in a Reader's Digest essay when I was a teenager: “The entire universe is permeated by the strong odour of turpentine”. I can’t remember who the original story was about, but do remember it was about a man who woke up having just discovered something wonderful in his sleep, wrote it down so he couldn’t forget it, and that’s what he saw in the morning. Since the internet, some of the charm has unfortunately leaked out of that anecdote. Now it's usually attributed to Dr Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr) and his experiments with ether, and is rendered as “a strong smell of turpentine prevails throughout.”
Anyway, I’ve led a sheltered life. That was about the sickest I can remember ever being.
Excursion 3:
Apart from that time in Smith, Alberta, when I hallucinated for the best part of a week before pulling myself together enough to hitch into Edmonton. The doctor feared encephalitis, and I lived with that for two days until the tests came back: negative – fortunately it was just heat stroke.
I’ve had a much higher temperature and have thrown up more before. It’s just that, this time, my physical decline came on so gradually I hardly noticed it at first. I coughed and coughed up phlegm a little more than usual in the first weeks, then found I couldn’t ski, then found I couldn’t walk either my usual pace or usual distance, then found I couldn’t walk at all without feeling awful. I ended the last week before my visit to the specialist basically feeling more miserable day-to-day, unable to speak above a whisper, unable to keep anything down except water, dozing under a blanket on the couch.
This does not go well with my self-image!
Then, Prednisone! And, after only five hours, the fever dream, where I started this story.
Excursion 4:
Prednisone is a temporary game-changer for people with asthma-related problems but dangerous to stay on. So I’ll do what I can to avoid that; I’ve done it before.
 My dad always claimed aging wasn’t easy. In this, like in many things, I think he was probably right.

Electoral reform: letter to the Prime Minister

Dear Prime Minister,

I just wanted to let you know how profoundly disappointed I am that your government has abandoned electoral reform.
It’s true that I am a lifelong NDPer, and that I voted NDP in the last election, but I was, like so many others, so unhappy with the direction our country was headed under the Harper Conservatives that I would have voted Liberal without hesitation had that been the best way of getting rid of the Conservative MP from my constituency. I’d done it before. (the first time in 1968 when I was a University student, voting for David Anderson in Saanich)
As it turned out, my constituency went NDP, and we won on both counts.
So I celebrated, along with the vast majority in my constituency (and, I daresay, my party) the fact that the country had elected a Liberal government, and, probably more particularly, that the Harperites were in disarray.
But I’m not naive: I recognized then as now that history has taught us to be wary of Liberals and the cynicism that power breeds. In short, I was prepared to be disappointed by a good many of your government’s initiatives and moves.
I was not prepared, however, for your government to abandon electoral reform, not after having promoted the concept so vigorously both during the election and after you formed government. Not after you expressly promised that election would be the last decided by FPTP. Not after your government proved what most of us have long known: we may differ on the specifics of any alternative, but FPTP is a tremendously unpopular electoral system.  
What is particularly galling is that your government abandoning electoral reform leaves the door open for another Canadian encounter with radical neo-Conservatism after the next election. (Frankly, having it next door is more than scary enough.)
Like most NDPers, I believe MMPR is probably the fairest method. However, it’s pretty obvious that this would be a difficult sell to the Canadian public. So it’s probably off the table, if we’re being realistic.
Alternate Vote, which you claim as your preferred option, however, wouldn’t be a hard sell at all. It’s easy to understand and implement. It gives definitive results. Admittedly, it’s not easy on minor parties, but not, I should mention, impossible: the Liberal-Conservative coalition that brought it in in BC in the early 50’s lost to an upstart Social Credit. (Who promptly abandoned it after they had a majority, no doubt recognizing that the very same thing could happen to them.) The CCF survived the experience.
I don’t understand why you didn’t campaign for AV at all vigorously, and I don’t understand why a government with a solid majority didn’t just impose it for one or two elections, by way of a test drive and to prove it is a better system.
As I said, I’m profoundly disappointed, and I’m sorry those who tell us not to trust Liberals to keep their word are, once again, correct.

Letter to the Globe, sent 12 December 2016

After several months of almost daily reports that Liberal MP's attend Liberal Party fundraising events, it's astonishing that only 62% of Canadians disapprove. (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/majority-of-canadians-surveyed-object-to-liberals-cash-for-access-fundraisers/article33294902/)
Of course, the per-vote public funding of political parties was also widely disliked, and the Conservative government received plaudits from -- among others -- the Globe's editors for doing away with it.
Apparently we all insist on a responsive, responsible government that does what it promises and also does what we want it to, but we don't approve paying for the politics that make this possible.
This is one circle that cannot be squared, and Jean Chretien was correct. Stop the fundraisers; bring back public financing of political parties.

Published in the Globe, December 14, 2016