A few months back, my outboard (an old Evinrude 45) got wet feet. A pneumonia of the mechanical kind spread upwards and the resulting congestion blew the head and did irreparable damage. It was junked.

Sometimes I feel one with my engine and this was one of those times.

But I am not yet destined for that great salvage yard in the sky and so the hunt for its replacement was begun. Last week I found a good used Honda 50 and bought it. The 250 pound, awkward shaped apparatus was deftly put in to the back of the Pathfinder by two burly, monosylabic mechanics under Sally’s supervision. “Hey! Shouldn’t that motor be sitting on it’s other side. What with the oil filler tube being where it is and all……?”

Wondering who the hell he was dealing with he replied, “Yes, maám. You are right. C’mon, Charlie, let’s take it out again and turn it around.”

Sal’s good. I arrived after doing the paperwork and payment, we then proceeded to fill the rest of the back with steer manure (bagged) and a couple of totes and a cooler full of groceries. We stopped by the wine store and picked up five boxes of wine and then stopped at the hardware store for sundries, the Japanese store for gyoza and frozen fish and then we added a couple of 50 pound bags of dog food together with two 40 pound frozen-but-raw-meat boxes of dog food added later. I guess we were carrying about five hundred to 600 pounds in the back of the SUV.

“Not as much of a load this trip. Just as well since we are using the little boat. And it is kinda blowy. Those clouds look bad.”

“We should be good. It is blowing all right but it’s a Nor-wester. We are going with it. No freeboard to speak of, tho. Glad the dogs aren’t with us.”

“I think – to be on the safe side – we’ll leave the motor in the car until I have the big boat in the water. Come back then. May as well leave the steer manure, too.”

“Good idea”.

It’s been four days and everything is still in the parking lot. We’ve been busy. The big boat got it’s bottom painted yesterday and the holes I had addressed earlier were sealed up. It should float now. Later today, we’ll lash it against the little boat and, like a tug with a barge, head over to the other island to get the stuff.

The technique is to drive the car down the hill and over the beach to the water’s edge. Then we get everything out and into the big boat leaving the engine for last. When that is done, we spin the boat around so that it is stern-to and then we ‘wiggle’ the motor out of the back and then tip it onto the close-at-hand stern. With it weighing more than me that means the placing and tipping points we choose are critical.

We can do this. Once it is on, we tighten it on using the convenient but largely useless hand-tighteners and the little boat Siamese tugs it back to the house where I will spend a bit of time bolting it on and hooking up gas and electrics.

Should get done by tomorrow at the very latest. ‘Course we will have to get the manure and stuff up today.

It is not much of a chore, really. Just a shopping trip. With a bit of boat maintenance interrupting us and the sheer bloody weight of everything. But we had to do other chores, too, like take apart the chainsaw winch for the umpteenth time, do some volunteer work, write some stuff up for a friend, entertain two separate parties and keep the dogs and homestead humming along all at the same time.

Not to mention Sal’s making every meal from scratch and doing so to a whole raft of new recipes.

A woman’s work is never done, eh? Despite my scheduling and best efforts at supervision, Sal seems to be falling behind more and more these days. But, you know, yelling doesn’t really help, does it? Mind you, she also worked the garden and cleaned the woood stove, replacing all the firebrick. I should cut her some slack, I guess. I’ll lighten up.

Her annual review is coming up in a few weeks, anyway. I hope she gets a good report, don’t you?

In theory, I work every Wednesday renovating the old Quonset hut up on the community grounds with a bunch of old geezers. I say, “in theory”, because we don’t go in if it is cold, snowy, too rainy or we are busy doing something else. It is not a job so much as a pastime (we pass-the-time semi-constructively). Nobody showed up the last three weeks. Too cold. Our working policy is: if it’s not fun, don’t do it!

It should come as no surprise that we have been working on (and off) the Q-hut for about a year now. We are almost done. Kinda. Fer sure by 2012.

We are slow for more reasons than weather delays and the desire for fun. We are all a bit eccentric, it seems. Independent. Lone wolf-types with a bit of extra ‘wolf’ thrown in now and then. Makes for interesting team dynamics.

In actual fact, each guy is a great guy and has a lot to offer. But each also has their own style and, at our ages (everyone is 60 plus except maybe a couple of 55 year-olds)that style is not particularly social or team-oriented nor is it necessarily even similar to another guy’s style. Their urban counterpart encounters dozens of people a day. Our guys encounter dozens of people, too, but it takes three months to hit those numbers. You can lose a little on the tact and diplomacy scale that way.

But the real rift in our cohesion is the simple fact that everyone but me is hard-of-hearing, deaf-as-a-post or somewhere in between. I am the leader-of-sorts for no other reason than I can hear.

So, if Bill says something like, “Hey, isn’t it time for lunch?” and no one answers, it is because no one heard him but me. So, knowing Bill wants to stop and have lunch, I go around and yell at everyone, “HEY!! LUNCHTIME!!”

Everyone thinks I am the boss.

The truth is: each guy is more skilled, equipped, experienced and knowledgeable than me by either a reasonable amount or by a country mile. One of the Dougs builds boats (that look great!) and starts by heading off into the forest to cut the tree down for the wood he is going to use! Another guy machined up his own bearings for his diesel! A third…………well, as I have said before; these guys can do just about everything a homesteader needs doing.

Except talk.

Well, they can talk. Of course. They just aren’t too used to it. When you head into the forest to get your boat building materials, you do so at the cost of conversation at the very least. Who ya gonna talk to?

Throw in deafness and you have a bunch of eccentric semi-deaf-mutes trying to ‘work together’. It’s not easy.

Well, actually it is easy. They are a lot of fun. I like Q-hut days. I just have to remember to look at each guy directly, over pronounce my words at a high volume and look like the boss.

The ones who can hear the best think I am weird when I do that.

I told you we are all a little eccentric.

As everyone who reads this blog and/or who knows us already understands, I am a huge fan of my wife. It is as it should be. She is the greatest and, employing some sort of weird angel-like magic, getting greater every day. I am very lucky. Yesterday – though not an extraordinary day – reminded me of that in an amusing-to-me kind of way.

I cut the logs for hauling up the hill in 10-12 foot lengths and that weigh no more than 500 pounds each (estimated). Hemlock weighs the most (when wet) and Cedar the least so the lengths have to vary a bit. I aim for 400-500 pounds per log because ol’ Sal only weighs about 120-125 pounds. It is all muscle and sex appeal but it just doesn’t add up to much heft. And her heft to the log’s weight has to be in the right ratio. The block and taykle gives her (theoretically) a four to one advantage so her weight is just enough to lift the log.

Most times the weights are balanced or, sometimes by mistake (mine), in the logs favour. That is where the fun begins. Sal will pull and pull and the log will slowly lift. Part of it is still on the ground or in the water and so, by pulling it up by one end, she gets an added weight advantage. In the initial pulls only. And she needs all the help she can get.

Yesterday we were doing the logs for the first time this year and I guess my estimating was not ‘dialed in’ as accurately as it should have been. She started with a particularly heavy Hemlock. My guess: about 3% heavier than she can pull.

After pulling in the slack on the rope I could see the rope tightening and the choked end of the log lifting a bit. I usually watch from on high to make sure things work out. And I watched as the log lifted higher. The higher it went, the more weight was transferred to the lifting rope and taykle. At one point, before the log was raised high enough to clear the entanglements on the hill, it seemed that a ‘stand-off’ had been reached. Sally was pulling with all she had and the log was not budging.

When that happens, Sal gets pretty stubborn. She is going to lift that log, she is the one in control , she knows that she is the Bull o’the Woods!

God help anyone or any log that won’t do as it is told!

She takes as high a reach on the rope as she can and then lifts her entire weight off the ground. The log moves upwards slightly. Not releasing the rope at all, she begins to bounce the log and herself to some sort of jolly jumper rhythm and, with each log bounce up, she tries bouncing herself down. This little bit of applied mechanical physics adds another five pounds or so to her weight and the log moves up and up a couple of inches at a time.

She keeps up this Church-bell-ringer-style strategy while she and the log slowly rotate on the the spot. Sometimes she is hanging just a foot off the ground and sometimes, after a half-rotation, she is hanging five or six feet off the ground. Swinging with a 500 pound log pressed into her face, she is suspended by a rope and holding her entire weight in her hands and arms.

This whole process is all done on an inclined slope, as I said before. With a bit more bouncing she can sometimes rotate back to solid ground.

When the log is as high as she can get it, she has to get to her feet again (slipping slowly down the rope sometimes) and then ‘tie off’ the end of the pull-rope to somewhere on the log so that it stays in place.

Like an experienced ‘whistle-punk’ she wraps the excess rope, ties it to the log and then, wildly circling her arm over her head to indicate that I should start the ‘wind-up’, she moves to safety.

I am grinning from ear to ear as I start the winch.

As a rule, I am not a sunshine-seeking guy. I prefer the shade and I have no problem with light rain – makes the air smell clean.

I am generally uncomfortable on hot, bright August days. Hurts my eyes. Burns my skin. Makes me sweaty. I associate hot sunny days with mosquitoes and the constant seeking of ‘cool and wet’. That is a drag. I actually enjoy the cold, brisk, windy days and, for me, that is the best kind of weather. Makes me feel alive, alive-o.

Spring and Fall are my favourite seasons.

I mention this because the last two days have been glorious. And they were sunny and warm. And I liked it. I think this unusual-for-me feeling is because of what seemed like an extra long winter. You’d think I’d be used to that, living in Canada but it’s different now.

When I lived in the city, I went from one climate controlled building to another by way of a climate controlled car. It could be snowing, sleeting or freezing. It could be pouring. It could be windy. Whatever. My exposure to it was minimal. I really didn’t care about the weather. Not a bit.

Not so out here. Out here, you are either deeply involved with the weather or hunkered down and staying put and watching it. Weather here is, of course, like the weather the city dwellers experience but it just feels like it is more so.

And so yesterdays and today’s Spring-like days were much more appreciated than ever before. Out here, I can tell you the day Spring arrived. It was yesterday. It was intense.

Yesterday we started to pull up logs from the lagoon. The logs come up by way of the ‘highline’ I installed a few years ago. We run a block and taykle down the line on a winch cable and haul the logs up the 35 degree incline for about 125 feet. Sal ‘sets the choke’ on the log at the bottom of the hill, pulls one end of it in the air and then I run the winch and unhook it when it arrives at the top.

Each ten-to twelve foot log takes about five minutes to ‘choke and lift’, five minutes to winch and another five minutes or so to unhook and roll out of the way. If we work hard, we can do four an hour.

We need between 45 and 60 such logs every year. Somewhere around 750 cubic feet or three cords. With ‘finding and salvaging’, wrangling and herding and tying up, the above-described highline work and then the cutting, splitting and stacking, it takes about 100 man/woman-hours. At $10 an hour, it therefor costs us (in theory)$1000.00 in labour to get our wood in. Mind you, we work slow, we stop a lot and we spread it out over months. If we lived in town and bought from a local wood-guy, 3 cords would not likely cost $600.00.

Interesting.

We are, at the same time as ‘getting the wood in’, putting in the garden and I am also doing some needed boat maintenance. None of that is much of a workload but, of course, there are the inevitable stripped threads that have to be replaced or re-cut with a die. There is the reluctant winch engine, the broken cable, the sealant that won’t set up (or which set up in the tube) and that sort of thing. Every two hour job takes us 6 hours. Two hours to prepare for it, two hours to do it and two hours to clean up but that includes two, maybe three tea-breaks and looking for stuff.

It is like we are unionized and working to rule except when we take extra breaks.

Tomorrow is supposed to be another nice day. Sunny and warm. I am looking forward to it.

Last time we were in town, I bought a mini oxy-propylene torch kit. It’s used for cutting and brazing. I think you can weld thin materials as well. I have no idea, really. I got it because it is one of those things out here that a real man should have in his workshop. John has one.

John’s is a real one. Man-sized. Big tanks. Scary flames. He whips it out, fires it up and dials in a perfect blue flame and then fabricates up a new part for his transistor radio or whatever. He never cuts or burns anything but what he is aiming at. He let me try it once and I seared the back of my left hand when lighting it and then, aiming it away from me while I examined the burn, almost set his woodpile on fire. I decided right then and there that neither John nor I could afford to have me learn this stuff on his equipment and in his workshop. If someone is going to die-by-BBQ, it should be me. Alone(maybe with the right sauce).

So, I bought one. It is little. Girl-sized, if you will. I figure to go out, fire it up and melt a few things that shouldn’t be close to an open flame, cut a few things that don’t need cutting and try to stick a few things that have no future together. In other words, ‘mess about’ while I try to get a handle on this thing.

I don’t have to be good. I just have to ‘feel’ as if I can do this. Then I can leave it alone and simply hope that I never have to reconfirm the feeling. Especially in front of anyone. In a way, it is about facing one’s insecurities. In a way, it is brave and pathetic all at the same time. In a way, it is a stupid waste of time and money. One thing is for sure: it’s a man-thing.

When I was young, I would play sports and keep at it until I was no longer picked last on a team. And that was good enough. I played chess and kept at it until I had, at the very least, memorized the names of all the pieces and how they were to move. I played and soundly defeated my young children just to hone my chess skills. I drove my car too fast (but not tooo fast). I kissed girls that were not keen on the experience. And, generally speaking, pushed my (in)abilities to the mildly uncomfortable stage in as many areas of human activity as I could. Getting good at something was not the goal. Being familiar with it was.

And, anyway, I was never really into hard training. Sweating and suffering suck. No pain, no gain is just stupid.

As a consequence of this somewhat superficial approach to learning and skill building, I can do a lot of things at a D or C- level. So, I call myself a trivial generalist with inadequate skills but with still enough to register really low on the scale.

Not even a Jack of all trades. Nowhere near a master of even one. I am like an idiot/savant with all the savant in the eclectic variety of where I am but an idiot.

Works for me.

But that is not the point. The key word for me is the word ‘all’. I need to get my fingers cut, burned, crushed and scarred in the pursuit of as many exercises as I can. In that way, I can always say, “Hey, I may not know how to use an Oxy-Propylene torch but at least I have one! I am pretty sure I know how to fire it up. Let’s get it out and start from there.”

Most people don’t even have one.

The effect of that very powerful statement of fact is somewhat diluted by my increasing reliance on Sally to tell me where these things are. Still, I have the tool and she knows where it is!

This sort of mini-macho thing plays better in the urban cul-de-sac than it does out here where the guys say, “I can help you with those logs on Thursday, if you want. The plane is bringing in the parts for my D-9 Cat and I’ll have the engine and transmission back together by Wednesday night. Gotta weld up a new blade and machine a couple of new bearings, too, but I could be at your house by noon, if you want? Just gotta load ‘er on the barge and I could be here for coffee. You gonna be up by then or would you prefer I come later?”

Pretty impressive stuff. I’m trying to keep up. The mini-oxy-propylene torch kit is just a start.

Until I feel good about it, anyway.

Had to go to town yesterday. There was a bit of concern about getting in. The storm had passed but it dropped a lot of snow and the logging road keeps its snow long after it melts everywhere else. As we drove out, we passed three abandoned vehicles where the owners had decided to walk in (or out) and keep going without the aid of a vehicle. Not an easy choice to make when you are looking a long, hard, cold trek in the face at the end of a busy day.

Case in point: A friend of mine underwent an operation in Comox. He’s mid 60’s and the surgery left him bedridden for three days. Big wound. When he recovered enough, he came home. He, his wife and their two children arrived at Quadra island late in the day. They needed to take their vehicle to the top of the island so the mother and children drove it up while my freshly-sliced-and-diced friend loaded the boat and headed out to take the boat up the coast to meet them.

The car-part of the family got stuck about 3/4 of the way there. So they abandoned the car and hiked the rest of the way in the dark. She has a bad leg and hip and walks with a cane. It is not a minor limp. Nothing seems to stop her but the hike in the snow in freezing darkness up and down hills made the going a bit more difficult to say the least.

My friend waited at the dock with worry and a sopping bandage for an extra two hours or so before he saw them coming down out of the forest.

They packed up and headed across to their truck. Their property is on the other side of the island and so they need an old ‘beater’ truck to get back and forth. Battery was dead. Too many days away. Too cold.

So, there they stood, wet, cold and hungry about six miles from home facing yet another trek in the snow. My buddy looked over, saw a neighbours truck parked there and, knowing the neighbour wasn’t needing it for a day or so, he hot-wired it and brought his family home in time to start the fire, get dinner on and in and change the bandages.

After that had been done, he called me to answer a message I had left earlier to see if he was OK after the operation.

“Yeah. Hey, I’m fine. Gotta go back, tho, ’cause they kinda botched it but they’ll give ér another whack in six months when they think I am strong enough to do it again. No, we’re fine. No problems. How are you?”

We talked for a bit and then, in bits and pieces, their story getting home came out. “Well, if you are going in to town, you might wanna check on the road condition. We got stuck last night and had to leave the car. Wife and kids hiked in. I am going in today with #1 son to get the car.”

“But, but, but…………like, you just had your guts opened up and it is freezing and there is a huge storm forecast! You are mad to even consider it.”

“Nah! We’ll be fine. Boat is good. #1 son can hike in from the shore and drive it up. I can get back to wait for him. We’ll have to return neighbouors car, anyway. And I have a new battery to put in the truck. So long as there aren’t too many trees down, we’ll be fine. I’ll have to give #1 the chainsaw ’cause that road is always strewn with fallen trees in these winds but he can do that.”

The really interesting part: none of that information would have been forthcoming had I not mentioned that I might be going into town the next day. A story from which I would have written a novel and a screenplay starring Harrison Ford and Susan Sarandon was considered ‘just another day in the life’.

And this story is like a Johnson and Johnson ad for kids band-aids compared to what happened to my other buddy a year and half ago. That one truly is an epic film waiting to be made.

They breed ém tough out here.

It is snowing like mad. White out! The weatherman predicts a storm to follow with winds up to and maybe exceeding 100 kmh. Even the locals are battening down. Tís weather not fit for man nor beast.

But exceptions can be made.

Bad weather is not such a big deal for us as a rule. We have ‘cocoon-ability’. And not much of a schedule to keep. The house is warm and comfy. We’ll be fine. We have all the food, wine, wood and shelter we need for at least week, probably two. The basics are covered.

Mind you, fresh air is a basic…………..

The real problem this time is only indirectly related to the weather. When it is cold or snowy, we (Sal) lets the dogs in. And we have done so these past few nights and even for good portions of the day. Some might call this ‘being humane’.

I have my doubts.

Sadly, I have to report that Meg has abused this privilege of extended hospitality. She is like fish and/or guests who have stayed more than three days. Odiferous in the extreme. It seems that Meg has discovered the motherlode of all otter latrines and has reveled in it. The smell is more than skin deep. Dogs like that sort of thing; eau d’otter.

I don’t.

So, what we have here is failure to relate on basic standards of hygiene. Communication is clear but polarized: she thinks she is irresistible. I think she is revolting. And Sal is trying to mediate this.

It is not easy. A cigar can be just a cigar but sometimes a dog is an otter’s anus.

Yesterday Sal washed the dogs and I dried them off. After drying Meg, it was worse. So, into the tub she went again. She emerged still stinky but not because we were running out of PERT Shampoo. She had been ‘perted’ generously. So, weakened in my resolve by PERT and OH! de POOP stench, I relented. She came into the house like the smell of a pulp mill in August.

Sal took them swimming this morning in the lagoon. She was the black creature from the lagoon. And she still stinks.

You might think that I should simply adjust. I can adjust to freezing temps, no water, isolation and, most of the time, to the inane nonsense spouted by CBC announcers (All Points West is so bad, I listen just so that I can write in to complain) but this is asking too much.

Tomorrow is a howling gale-cum-storm. I am going to lash her to an exposed tree. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Schlepping is a drag. Especially as you get older. It is inevitable, of course, if you live remote. You simply have to bring stuff in less frequently which means you schlep in larger quantities when you do.

Living out here, we naturally do with less. Somewhat. As I mentioned, a big portion of consumption is simply a result of exposure and opportunity. Without that, you buy less and, we are without that relentless exposure. In fact, we hardly participate at all in the three biggest discretionary purchases currently popular in North America. We rarely go to restaurants. We rarely buy tickets to events and we don’t continually buy electronic gear. The fifth biggest is tobacco products and we aren’t much of a player there, either. We still read, travel, drink and have dogs, tho.

And some things – and you’d be surprised what – are consumed at the same, if not greater level than when living in the city.

Like hardware and building supplies to state the obvious.

Food is consumed at the same, maybe a smidge less, since things like ice cream melt before getting them home. And we live and are influenced by a sub-culture that values home-made and home-grown. We do like to keep up with the Hatfields and the McCoys. But, generally speaking the consumption levels remain the same. The receipts seem to say that, anyway.

Then again, we try to buy in bulk and the social currency out here is in providing meals and hospitality to visitors and that happens at a greater frequency than in the city. So, there may be a bit more food that is consumed. Whichever the difference, more or less, it is negligible.

Booze is much the same but that is due to good planning, really. We have ‘wine on the go’ at the local DIY store and, when I buy scotch, I buy enough to keep abreast of needs. Rice, butter, milk……..we may run out; scotch? Never. Good planning.

Mind you, as we get older, we seem to drink less. So, I dunno.

Stuff and stuff-getting is still an issue to some degree, tho. Weather, topography, boats, ferries……..all the logistics come into play for everything – even a roll of toilet paper. But, by and large, after seven years or so, we have got our systems down pat and that is an accomplishment. Getting your systems working makes it do-able.

And so we come to one of the great ironies of ‘getting away from it all’. You spend a lot of time still getting some of it all and, even more ironically, you spend a lot of time designing ways to get more of it all easily. The irony, of course, is that getting stuff and getting it easily is best accomplished by living in the city. Sheesh.

The hardest items to schlep (for me) are food, gasoline and propane and, when we had to do it the hard way, water. The basics: water and fuel and food. Before the cabin planning: plan those.

We eventually ‘bit the bullet’ and now have propane and gasoline delivered. A few years ago, John plumbed in a mile long one-inch pipe that carries enough water from our distant stream to our cistern. 85% of the on-going heavy lifting was alleviated by just those two decisions. And by heavy lifting, I mean 40 pounds plus. Under 40 pounds doesn’t count.

Get used to it.

Bookclub day today. Sunday. It is a local community habit of unflinching regularity. Regardless of the weather, the women travel by small boat every month from various islands to some pre-designated site and talk about their latest read. Wine and home-cooked dishes augment the literary and topics-of-local-interest-laced conversations.

I doubt very much that Christy Clark being ‘appointed’ premier by the Liberal cadre of ‘select electors’ will even come up in conversation. These women are too practical to bother with such nonsense. The Canucks don’t rate highly, either. Neither would the Oscars or Obama or any of the other more typical water-cooler topics of urban folks.

They might discuss their gardens, home repairs, boat repairs, dead sea lions and other local live and dead fauna, though. Wolves, for sure. Recipes, too, maybe. An environmental issue probably. I think. But I am not sure. I really have no idea what they talk about actually but the meetings take up about 5 hours and less than hour is spent discussing the chosen book.

“So, do you guys ever talk about me?” I once asked Sal.

“No, sweetie. We never talk about you or any of the husbands. Sometimes a kid or grandchild but never a man.”

“But what about some guy who sets himself on fire, falls out of his boat or runs off with a bar-maid from the Heriot Bay Inn?”

“Nah. Men do that all the time. These women have all had those experiences with the men in their lives already. It’s old news, like ‘Dog Bites Man’, ya know?”

“So, we never come up?”

“Well, generically, sometimes. You know, like when the subject of the book is a heel, a scoundrel and a creep who brutalizes the mother and children. And the dog. Then we talk about men but, generally just to condemn them all to hell and then we move on to lunch or gardens or something nice.”

As you can gather from that, men are not particularly welcome in bookclub. Which is OK, mostly. None of us brutes afoot would read the books they chose, anyway. But, sometimes, it seems like a bit of a harsh policy.

Dodger was always welcome in past years because he had a big boat and took several women with his wife when she attended. And then he’d sit there in the boat until he could take them all home again. He stopped doing that after about seven years. They may have talked about him now and then. But not much. Maybe the boat.

Last year I stood in the food shed for three hours until Sal came out and said I could join the dogs in my room if I kept as quiet as they did, kept the door closed and stayed put! So, I got to spend the last two hours of book club locked in my room with two dogs and happy for the concession. It was bloody cold in the food shed.

Today, however, they are meeting at Discovery Islands Lodge, the main disembarkation point for a Kayak Outfitter in the area. Discovery Islands Lodge is centrally located and makes winter travel a bit safer for all of them as a result. You can Google it. Plus more of the Quadra women can attend since the lodge is on that island and connected by road.

Bookclub has been regularly held for over twenty years. On average about 12-16 women attend each meeting. There are about 25 to 30 members in all. They were recognized by the CBC two years ago as one of Canada’s most interesting book clubs which, when one considers the CBC, is an unfairly diluted complement. They deserve better but, then again, so does Canada.

Don’t get me started on the CBC.

Regardless, they are an interesting group. They are quite neat, really – their book topics chosen and read notwithstanding. The Discovery Islands Book Club is as close to an institution as we have out here. And, unlike the institutions we have come to recognize in our society, they are growing, changing, learning and a vehicle for spreading good will in the community.

Better than that and most modern institutions – they do no harm.

BC Marine Mammal Response Network
IS LOOKING FOR PRIMARY RESPONDERS

The BCMMRN is a Fisheries and Oceans program which tracks natural and human caused threats to marine mammals and sea turtles in order to aid research and recovery. The Network’s members respond to reports of distressed or dead marine mammals and sea turtles to gather data and provide assistance where possible.

I had no idea. It is all voluntary, of course. And it is not like DFO has any boats at their disposal. But, they do seem to have a ‘program’ in place to keep track of such things.

So, I stand (seated, actually) corrected. Thanks, JW. Just one more thing out here amongst a gazillion that I have no clue about.

It is a veritable feast of learning out here. Every day!