tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32931256.post9107597234679986962..comments2024-03-22T05:20:44.167-07:00Comments on The Disaffected Lib: To All My Progressive Friends, You Dwindling FewThe Mound of Soundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09023839743772372922noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32931256.post-46592430042066032702013-01-19T11:29:04.251-08:002013-01-19T11:29:04.251-08:00Mound, I didn't cross the Strait in a kayak, I...Mound, I didn't cross the Strait in a kayak, I've cruieed around rhw edges, on the island side in a kayak. I crossed on a Norwegian crewed freighter a couple times when that and RivTow barge were the only way to get a vehicle on or off the islands. Sorry for the lack of clarity. <br /><br />Once on the freighter with my pickup (with kayak on a rack loaded on the foredeck) I sat in the lounge below the bridge and watched waves break over the prow and wash over my truck and it was a fairly nice day, but the swells were at least thirty feet. This wasn't really a storm at all. This was the Northern Prince which made weekly trips serving Masset, QCCity, assorted logging camps on the north coast and Haida Gwaii originating and returning to Port Hardy. The schedule was always extremely flexible depending on the tides (and the loading/unloading) and weather. One could cool their heels in PR or Masset from twelve hours to a day or more past the scheduled sailing time.<br /><br />There is a fascinating story of a Haida war canoe being towed to the railhead at Prince Rupert for shipment to the World's Fair in Chicago (I think that one) and with the carver and his wife by their own insistence aboard the cedar canoe the tow line to the tug broke when the weather blew up. Eventually the tug gave up on the canoe and quuit looking for it and focused on surviving themselves only to get to Rupert and find that the Haida and his wife had jerry rigged a sail and beaten the tug (steam powered as I recall) to port by hours!kootcoothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11344208424209840730noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32931256.post-65393225201761400202013-01-18T11:13:38.163-08:002013-01-18T11:13:38.163-08:00Diamond Walker is online here
http://diamondwalke...Diamond Walker is online here<br /><br />http://diamondwalker.wordpress.com/<br /><br />With no damn publisher interested.. I put it online in its entirety.. to see if anyone would steal it. (figuring that might tell me something..)<br /><br />The idea of this as a film came to me while sitting in the English Bay Cafe.. I'd had dinner with Nat Bailey the night before and he suggested I visit the stadium named after him.. so I did.. was inspired ..<br /><br />Later, after the film synopsis disappeared, or was stolen from the 'Pitch This' competition at the Toronto Film Festival, I decided to write it as a novel.. OK .. as The Great Canadian Novel .. <br /><br />Does the protagonist revive the great American game of baseball, while saving the killer whales ? Read and find out.. <br /><br />Does the book need to be re-written with the protagonist, an 18 year old, shamanistic & ambidextrous west coast Indian helping to save Canada's west coast from a disastrous government.. ugghh .. I best get busy ...<br />the salamanderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06853337802990122289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32931256.post-36963182535123407892013-01-18T08:11:33.859-08:002013-01-18T08:11:33.859-08:00Hi, all. I really appreciate your comments and in...Hi, all. I really appreciate your comments and insights.<br /><br />@ Koot - I have read of people crossing the Hecate in kayaks only not living people. Twice? That's just madness. Well, at least now I know someone who survived it, twice. Cool.<br /><br />@ Sal - thanks for the link and, yes, you ought to think about a re-write of your manuscript. Tankers, protests, suppression, the Chinese, the Manchurian Candidate PM. That could be great and I'll bet you would find plenty of interest in it.<br /><br />There's a reason why Enbridge is running so many reassuring ads that are almost totally empty of content and specifics.<br /><br />Do fire up your word processor and get busy.The Mound of Soundhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09023839743772372922noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32931256.post-35893636476966118562013-01-18T02:34:48.842-08:002013-01-18T02:34:48.842-08:00.. fantastic testimony ! .. the comments as well !..... fantastic testimony ! .. the comments as well ! <br /><br />I sent you this a ways back http://tidalstation.blogspot.ca/ and perhaps several other links which included storm anecdotes from a 3 or 4 generation Hartley Bay based fishing family .. Really think it critical these kind of reality based testimonies be moved to the very forefront of the 'sell it to China' scam. I mean after all Mound, China is currently building the fleet of VLCC tankers that your essay refers to.<br /><br />My first (and unpublished) novel, Diamond Walker, is set primarily on Vancouver Island and in Vancouver. The premise included the idea that Japanese marine wildlife brokers looking to buy captured orca were the greatest threat to the killer whales, as was ship based sonar. The book ends with a great biblical storm that sweeps down from Alaska, by the way. <br /><br />I never found a literary agent, or a publisher .. the great Catch 22 of failed novelists. Amen & so what. My protagonist was an islander.. a shamanistic, aboriginal First Nations, Nuu-chah-nulth, 18 year old, who had been swimming or surfing with killer whales since he had learned to swim.. He could throw an unearthly knuckleball .. with either hand.. so he tried out.. as a walk-on.. for the Vancouver Canadians.. at Nat Bailey Stadium (yes.. I met Nat..)<br /><br />Now, though.. I watch and think.. as the ideas and impressions of BC and Vancouver Island, branded by my life experiences into beliefs and creative extensions - inventions - ie fiction.. are threatened by a new interloper.<br /><br />My invented fictions pale before the threat and crimes of Stephen Harper, his Big Energy compatriots and his dull witted accomplices, Joe (felled by heart problems) Oliver, Pete Kent (a zombie) and Keith Ashfield (felled by heart problems) .. and so so many others.<br /><br />The orca will never be stolen or sold under Harper's stewardship. Along with the seals, the otter, the whales, the salmon, the dolphin.. and any other marine creature vulnerable to Chinese sonar.. they will beach themselves, die or be driven from their environment. Goodbye eagles, bears and coastal food chain.. and people and cultures.<br /><br />No more, no less.. than how the boreal caribou, the wolf, the beaver, the bear. the wolverine are being driven from or killed in their Alberta and BC habitat. All for one, one for all .. let's give er for China and Stephen Harper's pipelines.. and just go and die.... fer gawd's sake.. out of sight and mind.<br /><br />I need to update my unpublished novel.. add some disgusting reality to it.. make it deeply more edgy and tragic.. and laced with evil and scandal and blackmail and truly freaky pictures. I need to make it more contemporary and real. My fictional and faceless bad guys were just attacking one species.. when they thought nobody was looking. Now I see reality exceeds fiction.. that the real crimes are committed in plain sight. <br /><br />We have an ignorant and deeply, ideologically flawed prime minister intent on wiping out entire and very real segments of nature's .. ah .. Canada's .. environment and food chains. A Masters degree in Economics you say ? the salamanderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06853337802990122289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32931256.post-48694432050589281502013-01-17T21:49:59.370-08:002013-01-17T21:49:59.370-08:00Oh stop your bellyaching and get with the program....Oh stop your bellyaching and get with the program. <br /><br />Armageddon !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Danahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12465953801145126160noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32931256.post-78148368615615346732013-01-17T18:52:27.361-08:002013-01-17T18:52:27.361-08:00I remember as a kid looking down on the listing Bo...I remember as a kid looking down on the listing Bonaventure from the Angus L. MacDonald bridge in Halifax. T'was a sad sight.<br /><br />An even sadder sight is looking down on the Harper government, where an Imperial Oil mail clerk is dictating the direction of our country.<br /><br />But digging bitumen for corporate profits, with no real advantage to ordinary Canadians and to the great detriment of all humanity, is the saddest sight of all.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32931256.post-42418457375096710342013-01-17T17:32:06.853-08:002013-01-17T17:32:06.853-08:00Mound, back in the seventies I was logging on the ...Mound, back in the seventies I was logging on the northern end of Moresby Island. One morning we went to work and while waiting for daylight in the landing a radio message came to the yarder from camp telling all crews to return to camp immediately, before the roads were closed by fallen trees. While this message was being broadcast we were watching a group of trees at the backend being blown over up to a 170 ft Sitka Spruce with a 10 ft diameter butt (sound) which came down last after its smaller sheltering trees left it fully exposed. (I know the dimensions of the 17 trees because they extended our setting and had to be bucked and skidded with all the re-rigging that involved)<br /><br />We got to camp and I went home to watch my 17 1/2 ft two man kayak blow by the window enroute to the inlet be stopped (and damaged) by a power pole as the wind reached over 100 miles per hour, breaking the windspeed instrument at Sandspit Airport. By noon the storm was gone and Skidegate Inlet was glassy as a millpond at dawn. <br /><br />The Gulf of Alaska is the weather maker for the west coast and Dixon Entrance and the Hecate Strait are the first customers. I've crossed the Hecate Strait a couple times and been on it in a kayak, it is heavy duty even during fairly benevolent weather. <br /><br />Also the Northwest Coast has the highest tides on the North American west coast which also causes incredible tidal currents in narrow passages, some of which become virtually non-navigable under certain tide races. <br /><br />The very notion of running such tankers, especially with entities like China and Enbridge neglecting to actually take responsibility is totally unacceptable and I and many others will simply not allow it to happen, I don't want to live in a world with the north coast buried under bitumen. kootcoothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11344208424209840730noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32931256.post-14226520494822379742013-01-17T14:27:27.024-08:002013-01-17T14:27:27.024-08:00Hi Jan. When I read Jorna's submission a chil...Hi Jan. When I read Jorna's submission a chill went down my spine.<br /><br />Many years ago I was out on the Hecate Strait several miles off the Charlottes (Haida Gwai) for a day of fishing on a 30 foot boat. The sky was clear, the sun was warm, the sea was glassy.<br /><br />Within 15-minutes we went from utterly idyllic conditions into the very worst storm I have ever experienced at sea. We couldn't run for land because we were in the overfall waves Jorna mentions.<br /><br />The bilge pumps were going full blast, the engine was racing, one man was at the wheel and the rest of us were in the stern with buckets furiously trying to keep the transom out of the sea. I was convinced we were all dead.<br /><br />One minute we would crest a wave and I'd be able to see Haida Gwai quite clearly. Seconds later we'd be in a trough with nothing but walls of angry water on every side.<br /><br />My arms were burning with muscle pain and my hands hurt like hell from the wire handle on the bucket but I kept going mainly because everyone else did.<br /><br />Then, almost as suddenly as the storm broke over us, it ended. The wind died, the seas calmed and in short order the sun came through again. We all just looked at each other in disbelief, shook our heads and laughed.<br /><br />We were lucky that the Hecate didn't throw anything approaching its worst at us.<br /><br />He's right. It's sheer madness to run a tanker through there.The Mound of Soundhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09023839743772372922noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32931256.post-37682151394797452422013-01-17T13:59:47.603-08:002013-01-17T13:59:47.603-08:00thanks Mound. not a lib but very progressive.thanks Mound. not a lib but very progressive.susansmithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02573558646874765432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32931256.post-17139667519341283772013-01-17T13:58:30.277-08:002013-01-17T13:58:30.277-08:00I thought you would like the paper, Owen. I like ...I thought you would like the paper, Owen. I like it because of its coastal focus and steady supply of really good journalism. Many issues also have an article by Elizabeth May.The Mound of Soundhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09023839743772372922noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32931256.post-43154280685921417552013-01-17T13:20:29.915-08:002013-01-17T13:20:29.915-08:00Joma's. warning is critical, Mound. If ever th...Joma's. warning is critical, Mound. If ever there was a 21st century example of hubris, putting a tanker facility in Kitimat is it.<br /><br />It's sheer lunacy.<br /><br />Thanks for the link.<br /><br />Owen Grayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06464860078574618579noreply@blogger.com