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British Columbia

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Snow angels

“When it snows, you have two choices—shovel or make snow angels”

Unknown

Following a number of false alarms Vancouver Island finally succumbed to one of the snow storms that have already been prevalent in other parts of the country. In the usual manner – and for the familiar reasons – the BC capital failed to deal particularly well with what was in fact not really a huge amount of snow.

Those further east – where the winter weather is considerably more serious (snows that fall in November or December may still be lying in February or March) – are won’t to sneer at us coastal British Columbians for our general feeb-like response to this natural phenomenon. We simply smile at them and point out that the six inches of snow that fell here on Thursday will be gone by the weekend – and in four week’s time the city’s streets will be emblazoned with spring blossoms.

Yah boo sucks!

Of course, that means I have to whip my camera out sharpish and dash off a few snaps. I really like the way the snow makes these images look like monochrome ones – with just the odd Spielbergian splash of colour giving the game away.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidI loved the juxtaposition of the bright saturated colours of these flowers in our dining room against the black and white of the snow outside the window.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid

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So late so soon

How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before it’s June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

Dr. Seuss

It is high time that I finished posting photos from our recent travels to a variety of locations around British Columbia (not all of which we had originally planned to visit!). Let’s see if I can wrap things up in this one post!

We spent a night in Nanaimo – largely so that we could have lunch with The Girl’s mother and a dear friend of ours from Duncan. Whilst there we also indulged in some retail therapy and I took the opportunity afforded by being on the 14th floor of the Coast Bastion hotel to take some pictures of a favourite subject of mine – float planes!

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid

Well – they are something that we just don’t see in the south east of England!

From Nanaimo we drove up the east coast of Vancouver island to Courtney/Comox, adjacent towns in the Comox valley that I had somehow contrived not yet to visit. We really liked the feeling of Courtney – the which has a sort of artsy vibe somewhat akin to Salt Spring island (should one be in BC) or St. Ives (should one be in the southwest of England.

In spite of its charms I somehow I managed not to take pictures of Courtney (not sure where my brain went!) but I did take the camera on an excursion to nearby Mount Washington – ski and outdoor resort.

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid
No snow at this time of year, of course, though no shortage of wildfire smoke.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidThis little chap is a jay known as a Whiskey Jack – the which is Canada’s national bird (who knew? – certainly not this recent Canadian)…

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidThese apparently fearless little birds are not named with reference to the Irish grain-based alcoholic beverage, but from the Cree word ‘Wisakedjak‘. This makes the cheeky little fellow the only Canadian bird commonly known by a traditional indigenous name.

Here he is – ready for his close up:

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidHere he is – gone!…

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid

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“You don’t take a photograph. You ask quietly to borrow it.”

Unknown

The cabin by the lake in the North Thompson to which I made reference in my last post (which body of water I will refrain from identifying any more closely) is one of my favourite places in the world (as much as I know of it anyway) to take photographs. The constantly changing light means that from one minute to the next the subjects of my eager snapping metamorphose into ever more sensational phantasms.

For evidence of this supposition – see below. I strongly recommend clicking on the images to gain the full effect.

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Log cabin

“In Canada, anything that’s not in the city is referred to as a cottage. Or a log cabin”.

Dolores O’Riordan

As detailed in my last post – having fled the wildfires in the Okanagan The Girl and I took refuge in her cousin’s cabin in the North Thompson. There was still plenty of smoke from the Adams Lake fire just a few miles away on the other side of the mountain, but the lake and its surrounds were mercifully calm.

Naturally I had the camera with me…

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid
These guys weren’t going to let a little smoke interfere with their wakeboarding.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidWe went out driving one day around Clearwater and Birch Island – this being the area from which The Girl hails. We worked our way back down the logging roads through Little Fort and Chu Chua and met this unexpected fellow traveler. Hard to tell who was more surprised…

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid

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Photo by Andy Dawson ReidAs trailed in my recent post The Girl and I have been (and are still at time of writing!) traveling within British Columbia. This trip had several purposes – to attend an engagement organised by The Girl’s First Nation – to (re)visit friends and family – to explore parts of BC that I, at least, have not yet seen – and to compensate in some small measure for our disastrous venture abroad earlier in the summer…

In this latter regard I am reminded of Lloyd Bridges’ running gag as Steve McCroskey in the classic 80s film comedy – ‘Airplane’. As things veer from bad to worse McCroskey repeats the mantra:

Looks like I picked the wrong week to give up smoking/drinking/amphetamines…” etc, etc

Well – it looks like this has been the wrong year for us to go out traveling!

Now – it is clearly in poor taste to make jokes at a time that other folk have been suffering terrible loses (though mercifully not in terms of life and limb) but that is fundamentally the way that we Brits cope with such things.

A week and a half ago we headed for Kelowna in the Okanagan for The Girl’s three day engagement. Those readers who do not live in Canada may not have been following recent events in BC too closely, but that Thursday was the night that the big wildfire north of Kelowna swept down over the mountain and devoured the first of the several hundred properties in West Kelowna that have since been burned to the ground.

The image at the top of this post was taken from our hotel room shortly after we arrived. By the next morning very little could be seen at all.

The engagement was cancelled late that first evening and we were advised to retreat from Kelowna the next morning so that hotel rooms could be made available for those who had been forced to evacuate their homes. We made an early dash for Kamloops whilst the roads were yet open.

Following the engagement we had planned a few nights further south in the Okanagan – at Peachland – but by the Sunday evening travel orders had been issued to prevent tourists from driving to various critical areas of the province, the which was necessary so that the emergency vehicles would not be hampered in their operations and also so that further souls would not be put at risk, adding to the heavy burden already upon those services.

We were extremely fortunate, then, in that The Girl’s cousin – who lives in Kamloops but who has a lakeside cabin in the North Thompson which has previously been featured in these ramblings – invited us to spend a few days in that smoky but relatively safe part of the province.

This offer we most gratefully accepted. Pictures and further excursion meanderings to follow…

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Good grief! ‘Tis well into August already. Where is this year going and how come the months have been slipping away so dashed rapidly?

As regular followers will know, the year has not – thus far – exactly gone to plan. I am about to tempt the fates by looking at some of the things that are in the calendar for the next few months, in the firm expectation that our ill-fortune is now behind us and that I will have only positive things to report.

Fingers… etc, etc… firmly crossed!

Disregarding completely the year’s previous disappointments we are once again leaving the island later this month. We will not – however – be venturing abroad, but traveling instead to the interior of British Columbia.

We have been aware for some time that we have perhaps been neglecting family and friends who do not live on the island. For a period COVID gave us good reason (or perhaps excuse) for this omission, but as we have now apparently joined with much of the rest of the world in deciding that the pandemic is over (or at the very least not worth bothering about) we figure that it is time to get some skin back in the game.

The trigger for this excursion has been an ‘engagement’ in Kelowna (in the Okanagan) organised by The Girl’s First Nation. Using those three days as a core we have planned a trip to Kelowna, Peachland and Kamloops on the mainland, followed by a visit further north on the island to Courteney – a place to which I, at least, have yet to go. We are looking forward to the trip and I will be posting updates, images etc as we progress.

There is a fair bit of music in our immediate future as well. There are still several weeks to go in the Brentwood Bay Music in the Park season and we are also in the coming week going to be attending one of the Butchart Gardens concerts.

Come September we will be seeing Bonnie Raitt at the Royal Theatre here in Victoria – and at the start of October we are going to Vancouver for a few days to see… wait for it… Peter Gabriel! You might recall that The Girl and I saw him the year after we moved to Canada – in Edmonton – on the Rock, Paper, Scissors tour that he did with Sting. I really thought that this time he had retired from the road, but here he is – back again and with a new album about to drop as well. Being a subscriber to Gabriel’s Real World studio I have been in receipt of pre-release tracks from the album at each new moon (it’s a Peter Gabriel thing!) and I can report that it is going to be a good one.

We also get to see one of our favourite comedians – Dara O’Briain – in September here in Victoria, so there is much to which to look forward.

We can’t wait…!

 

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Photo by Andy Dawson ReidIt is a pretty extraordinary thing – particularly here on the west coast of Canada – but we do seem to have skipped a season this year.

Completely…!

I know…! With climate change so much of the world’s weather seems to have lost track of what were once familiar patterns. It has become the norm to read of unprecedented weather cycles or events. The ‘new normal’ is clearly that there is now nothing normal about anything.

What a strange and unsettling time to be alive.

Regular readers of this journal will already have picked up references throughout this particular year of weather patterns not occurring as expected. The spring here on Vancouver Island was wet and cold and dank – and seemed to be stuck in that state for ever, instead of flowering into spring and early summer as is usual.

It wasn’t until we packed our bags and  set off to Europe in July that the weather here in BC really picked up. One result of this was that exposure to the heatwaves that afflicted Europe throughout the middle of the year came as a considerable shock to the system for travelers like us.

When we returned to Canada summer seemed finally to have arrived. At the southern tip of Vancouver Island the season is usually warm and dry – with little or no rainfall for the three summer months. It was good, finally, to be able to get out into the garden to do some barbecuing and entertaining.

Come the dog days, however, when the temperatures usually fall away and the summer drought is broken by the first welcome showers of  the advancing fall, the temperatures remained stubbornly in the mid twenties Celsius and there was no rain in sight. Serious concerns about the lack of rainfall were voiced and gardens and agricultural lands alike began to shows signs of stress. An Indian Summer can be a wonderful surprise at the end of a disappointing season, but when one follows an already extensive dry period farmers and gardeners start to worry.

Naturally, when the weather finally broke in late-October it did so in true ‘wet’ coast style – with yet another Atmospheric River providing us with many days rainfall in a few hours, accompanied closely by the autumn’s first wind storm.

Then, as we crossed into November, the temperatures dropped abruptly – as did the first snowfall of winter. I know that some gentle readers will still – even after all this time – cling to the notion that the whole of Canada is a snowy wasteland for much of the year. There are indeed some good reasons for so doing. Here on the west coast, however, that is not the norm; winters in Victoria are not unlike those in the south east of the UK for most years.

So – we seem to have skipped autumn (fall) this year and gone directly from late-summer to winter. I’m not sure what Mother Nature will make of all this, but I have a feeling she will adapt to it with rather more sang-froid than do we.

Brrrrr!

 

 

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A snippet of trivia that somehow typifies life here on the island – and some pretty images from some recent sunny days…

We are signed up to our local ‘Block Watch’. In the UK this would be the ‘Neighbourhood Watch’ – and you can make you own judgements as to whether it is better to keep an eye on the block – or the neighbours! I jest, of course…

Our local Councillor forwards items of interest from the equivalent of our local ‘Bobby’. Here is today’s message:

“Hi everyone,

Couple of items from overnight;

          1. A small dinghy was stolen sometime over the last month from the area of North Saanich Marina.
          2. A large cougar was reported in the Ardmore neighbourhood, last night.

Cheers”

Several points about this tickle my fancy… Obviously the typical small town mix of dingy theft and wild animal sightings speaks volumes about the place that we call home – but I particularly like the fact that the small dingy was stolen “sometime over the last month”! “Yeah – I meant to get round to reporting it!”.

Images from Sidney on a sunny day and a walk to Gowland Tod.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid

 

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…and washed the snow away.

But not before we went for a walk in a very snowy Centennial Park in Saanichton.

Just a few snaps – which were not that easy to take given that I was wearing two pairs of gloves to protect my aging hands against the icy wind-chill. Walking is fine; standing still is a mistake!

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid Photo by Andy Dawson Reid Photo by Andy Dawson Reid Photo by Andy Dawson Reid Photo by Andy Dawson Reid

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One of the dubious ‘pleasures’ of ‘getting on a bit’ – and in particular if one takes a diuretic (for hypertension or suchlike) – is that it is much harder to sleep through the night. The call of nature is loud, clear and impossible to ignore.

Thus it was that I was up at 4:00am this morning, availing myself of the facilities!

I had just got back to bed and was drifting off into much appreciated slumber when – all of a sudden – I heard through the quiet of the night a rapidly growing bass rumble. I felt the bed move under me as the crescendo ended in a loud-ish thump and all manner of things on walls and in cupboards rattled vigorously. Then all was at once quiet again.

In my sleep be-fuddled state two thoughts made it though to my consciousness. The first was that a truck had hit the front of the house; unlikely because it was the middle of the night and we live in a place where trucks are not wont to go. The second thought was that there had been an earthquake!

Now – one’s first response to such an eventuality is meant to be to leap from one’s bed and to take shelter underneath some well-reinforced structure. My first thought was to grab my iThing and to look up ‘earthquake‘ on Google. There it was – within 30 seconds of the thing occurring – an entry much like that at the top of this jotting.

Goodness me…” – thought I – “that’s jolly efficient!

I guess I really should do some more work on my priorities.

It has been more than six years now since we moved to the part of the Pacific Rim that forms the North Cascadian subduction zone – one of the well-known hot-spots for tremors that make up this part of the ‘Ring of Fire’. I figured that at some point I would experience a quake – even if it were a small one like this (for those who wish to know the details this one registered 3.6 on the Richter scale, with the epicentre some 10 miles beneath Galliano Island – about 15 miles north-west of us here. To The Girl – who is, naturally, an old hand at such things – it was hardly worth waking up for. To me it was an experience…

…which – having had – I wouldn’t mind not having again!

By a strange co-incidence this quake occurred on the same night that a very different (metaphorical!) quake shook the folks back in good old Blighty! I am referring, of course, to the Liberals defeating the Tory candidate in the North Shropshire by-election… which seat had been held by the Tories for more than two hundred years! As a judgement on the performance, record, behaviour and character of Prime Minister Johnson I find it hugely encouraging that the electorate has finally spoken with such eloquence and clarity.

Let us have much more of the same, say I…

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