The Joint Review Panel (JRP) ‘reviewing‘ the proposed Enbridge pipeline approved the proposal yesterday.  After a year or more of public hearings in which 1200 submissions spoke against the project and only two spoke in favour, the panel (after much consideration) decided to approve what Stephen Harper and the Conservative Government of Canada has already been selling to Asian interests for the last three years.  The decision was not a surprise.

I suppose a rejection of the pipeline proposal could have proven embarrassing to the government.  But, then again, nothing seems to embarrass them so maybe not.  Don’t forget, Harper and Flaherty are good friends with Rob Ford.  They appointed Duffy, Wallin and Brazeau to the senate.  They have a high tolerance for embarrassment.

More likely, the fix was already in and the panel was not reviewing anything and only providing ‘window dressing’ to the public.

I confess to suspecting that early on, myself.  All of the members of the panel were appointed from the petroleum industry.  All of the panel members were already deeply in the pockets of that industry and not one of them had a history of ever doing anything but what they were told.  They had spines and hearts of heavy oil.  There was not even a semblance of neutrality in their appointments.  It was a violation of administrative justice from the get-go.

A female friend of mine who belongs to a bookclub asked me the other day, “We, in the bookclub, are getting a bit fed up with the erosion of Democracy in this country but we don’t know what to do about it.  If you were making suggestions, what would they be?”

“My first suggestion is to pay for everything in cash.  It is a very small and quiet protest and largely ineffectual but it is easy and it hits Big Bro at least a little.  Makes you harder to track, too.  Plus it will help you manage your own budget.  Also buy local only if it is made or grown locally.

(Another friend wrote: I am into reading about GMO’s and our globe food supplier. Corporate Agriculture (land grabs, deforestation, mono-crops, herbicides, pesticides, artificially produced nitrogen fertilizers, usable phosphorus depletion, Monsanto and patented food crops, seed control, changing global eating habits, packaged convenient foods for the working world.) 

“But the main thing is this: people do not vote anymore.  They do not write their MP/Mla anymore.  They don’t even watch the news because they know that, too, is a waste of their time.  They know that their media only lies and entertains and their government is out of touch with the people.  They know their government is more invested in the corporations and big institutions than it is the people.  They know that they-the-little-people don’t count.  Sadly, they have largely opted out of the too-big-to-fail system.

“So, that means that we have to create a new parallel system.  We have to enact people politics and see that local decisions get made by local people.  That means a lot of social media, a lot of citizen participation and a lot of rule-breaking if the rule does not benefit the community.  Basically we have been rejected by our own governments as too insignificant for them to care about and we have to conceive of a replacement for that.  We have to organize and act on our own behalf because those who are elected are not doing that for us. 

But we don’t have to fight.

Civil disobedience is not necessary.  Think instead: workaround. 

“We have to do what is right and workaround the government when we can.  And that does not mean fighting the state in any kind of getting-tasered way.  If we do that, we lose.  We go to jail.  We might die from chronic tasering.  We have to simply do what we can to take the government out of ‘our‘ equation.  Passive rebellion.  Resistance by parallel paths.  Ignore tham in every way possible.  Shun the bastards!”

“How do we do that?”

“I am not exactly sure.  But I do know that resistance in any form is useful.  And passive resistance is the safest.  Pay cash.  Drive less.  Barter.  Grow your own. Buy and sell direct amongst community members.  Never, ever give them permission to do anything in your neighbourhood.  Ever.  Reject, refuse, rebel and be legally as uncooperative as possible.  In all things. 

“And never ever vote for the mainstream political parties.  Ever!  They have all drunk the Kool-Aid.  They are all in on it. They believe in the system.  We don’t!

Well, vote for me if I run Green, OK?  They are trying to be mainstream, I admit, but they have such a long way to go, we may be able to keep them rooted in the community for a while longer.  And, so far, Elizabeth May is excellent!

“Pass the Kool-Aid!”       

So, I am an old guy.  You know.  Kinda.  And my kids are away.  My parents are deceased.  The larger family isn’t all that close.  And my friends are busy over the next few days and well, Xmas doesn’t mean as much to me right now.  Not really.

You know how it is…?  We have some lights but no tree.  That kinda says it all……… 

I am afraid it is a combination of anti-consumerism sentiment, been-there-done-that-ism and a hereditary Grinch gene mixed in with a little humbuggery.  I am not so much a downer as an outer.  Maybe a down-‘n-outer, I suppose, but it seems more like just not wanting to go the party.

‘I vont to be alone’.

Mind you, after reaching that major milestone of cynicism at seven years old when I learned there was no Santa I have never liked Christmas.  And it has been downhill ever since.

Well, so I thought, anyway.  As my daughter reminded me today, ‘Dad, that is what you always say and then when it is over, we get all those maudlin blogs that jerk tears from us….I can’t take it anymore.  Oh Gawd!  The humanity!  Please…just stop it!’

Sheesh.  And I thought I was just being a sensitive, new-age guy…?

Anyway, my friend – the one who dragged us kicking and screaming into this hell-hole of a city, the one who shanghaied us into Shanghai-on-the-west-coast, the one who bosses around a crew of tough worker-bees every day on the building site dropped by unannounced and gave Sal and me presents.  We got heated coats.  Milwaukee worker-dude heated jackets with little ‘lights’ on the front to tell everyone how cool we are by being warm.

So we walked around outside for a while being toasty and happy.  It was nice.

Xmas – for me – is for others.  If I am gonna participate at all, it is usually to make things nicer for others.  I don’t want anything I don’t already have or can get fairly easily.  I don’t need anything hardly at all.  I am about as happy as I can be for a curmudgeon and even amongst the curmudgeons, I tend to violate the happiness allotment.  They are always sending me notices to ‘curb the joy, dude!’  I verge on the cusp of curmudgeon and contented.  I could lose my membership card.

I’ll never get elected to the board.

But the present was a treat.  It really was.  It is not so much the coat (tho that is pretty neat and several of the worker guys stopped me today to tease me about it – “What?  You getting chilly sitting in front of the TV, Dave?” ).  It is more the fact that my friend put himself in my shoes.  He knows those shoes are usually gumboots and we are in inclement weather a lot.  It can get pretty chilly in an open boat.  He knew that a heated jacket would really be appreciated by us.  He also knew that Sal would look cute-as-a-bug’s-earmuff in one. 

Put another way: it was a very thoughtful gift.

And it is only December 19th!

What else ya got?

I feel a bit that way right now.  Like an impostor.  This blog is supposed to be about living off the grid and no one is more ON the grid than me.  Smart TV and all. I am an impostor.  It is a bit embarrassing.

But, in an effort to stay true to the message, let me cite two incidents that reinforce my committment to getting back out there as soon as possible.

One involves a cavity search.

Seems some female Indian diplomat has been accused of underpaying her domestic help.  Nasty behaviour but not unexpected amongst the elite.  So, when she comes back from abroad and has to go through US customs, she is given the full treatment – she is strip-searched and cavity-probed.  Seems the government has the power to probe your parts on whatever basis it wants to use and, in this case, it is about alleged underpayment of wages.  Probing for cash, perhaps?  Call me crazy but that is a major abuse of power that underscores the whole of the Big Brother problem in a minor cavity-kind-of-way.

The second incident involves an older woman in Florida living off the grid.  She owns her home outright and her taxes are paid.  But she lives in a tract home in the burbs and so the city of Coral Gable is not accepting of her refusal of grid-based services such as water and electricity.  She collects rainwater and uses propane.  They don’t like that.  They want to make more money off her and they have a monopoly with which to do it – the grid.  She jumped off and so they want to evict her.

That kinda says something about the grid, don’t you think?

Seen the actions of BC Hydro lately?

Of course I know that these are isolated examples of the abuse of power but, on the other hand, I do not think them as uncommon as they might seem.  Big Brother touches us all one way or the other and some are touched so hard they are hurt. Big Brother is a bully.

I can’t imagine my dealing with a cavity searcher in an obedient manner.  I am sure that I would escalate the incident, be tasered, arrested and likely jailed.  God knows, they might actually kill me in the process and, after the cover up, all the parties would go about their protected business of bullying people.  City living at it’s best!

That sort of thing used to outrage me.  I’d get worked up.  It was wrong and I would argue, resist, refuse, object and fume about it.  Rant, even.  Sometimes I actually did something about it.

But not so much anymore.  Now I have an alternative.  I can leave.  And so I do.  When I am off the grid, I am largely exempt from the insanity that passes as civilization these days and, despite the lack of regular tasering, enforcement officers, cavity-probers and document-servers, life is surprisingly much, much better.  More civilized, if you want to know.  Seems we don’t need no stinkin’ badges forced on us to behave.

The point: we have come to accept too much forced intervention in our lives.  Too much regulation.  Too much control.  But we did not do this willingly, knowingly or even consciously.  Big Bro (institutions) has the benefit of a never-ending life.  It can afford the time it takes to impose its will.   And so more and more incremental control has been imposed over the years and each generation is born into it and accepts it as ‘normal’.  It is not.  It is erosion by drips.  It is insidious.  It is like a disease.  And we were infected a long time ago.

“Dave, you are an anarchist!”

“No, I am not.  I do not want chaos.  I like a bit of order.  I am actually quite sane (as all crazy people think of themselves)”.  I am just saying that bit by bit, law by law, rule by rule, social manipulation by social manipulation and forced-by-circumstances controls (like traffic) we are becoming more and more controlled.  We may not realize it but we are jailing ourselves!

And it is all that that makes me an impostor.  Hypocrite at the very least.  I know this is wrong but I am going to stay awhile anyway.  For me, it is like visiting friends in jail.  I can do it because I know that visiting hours are limited and, even if they weren’t, I’d limit them myself.  And I will.  I will hand back my security pass.  I will allow them to pat me down.  And then I will get the hell out!

It is an option open to every one.

At least for the time being. 

OMYGAWD…bad habits never die.

We are busy and we do things and the day wears on and we come home and then………….well……there’s a lull and….well, (I am so ashamed) I pick up the remote……press a button…….and, for the next hour or so watch mind-numbing drivel.  Nothing in particular, actually…..just channel surfing…watching a bit of this…..moving on…….fifteen minutes of football……….move on……and..time….goes by.

Still staring at the screen I say to Sal, “I am going to rip that thing from the wall and trash it!”

“Why don’t you just turn it off?”

“Can’t.  Anyway, that super long pass is being shown again……..”

“Haven’t you seen it already?  Like five times?”

 “Yeah…..  But it is super long!  Oh God, I need help!  Please, try to take the remote from me.  I’ll resist you but keep trying.  It is our only chance.  Oh God, phone someone!”

I have mentioned several noble reasons for moving to a remote island.  Going green.  Anti-materialism.  Learning new skills.  Adventure.  And all of them are true.  To an extent.  I have also mentioned things about city living that irritated me like traffic, rules, routine, paperwork and well, the giant paranoid-based conspiracy theory that they are trying to control me  (which comes from having to line up at BC Ferries mostly).  But I have never really ‘fessed up to the growing awareness I had that I was losing my life to the TV.

I wasn’t that bad.  Not really.  But I would come home from a busy day, eat dinner, drink wine and then plunk myself down in front of the screen and kinda zen-cum-hypnotize myself into a semi-comatose state until I had ‘come down’ from the stress of the day.  That something interesting might come on was a complete surprise and usually would only delay the onset of unconsciousness.  Totally unnecessary.  I didn’t watch TV for the interest, I watched it for the medicinal effect.  I zoned out.

I suppose TV watching is better than heavy drug use.  Cheaper, anyway.  But it was a habit.  And it was addictive.  And there is no doubt that it was unhealthy.  It did not make me want to strip copper wires from abandoned houses but neither did it prompt the energy expenditure that such a little hobby would have required.  My neighbourhood copper was safe but so was everything else that required physical activity.  I wasn’t going anywhere but deeper into the couch.

That’s not good.

And so we changed it.  We went all feral on ya.  That much you know.  But what you might not know is that the tendency to watch never fades.  One has to take it one day at a time, trust in a higher power and remove temptation.   I have to accept that I am not in control (unless I get the remote!) and adhere to the program.

‘Program’?  What channel is it on?

The place I am staying at has some old, excess building materials that need getting rid of.  So, I volunteered to try to sell some on Craigslist.

Normally, used materials wouldn’t mean much but this place is 20,000 square feet and so there is a considerable amount of everything.  Put another way: one can get enough cast-off materials to do a whole small to normal sized house! Furthermore, the previous owner hadn’t really lived in it and so a lot of stuff was used but very good.  And amongst that stuff was a bunch of tongue and groove clear cedar 1×6.  The kind of stuff I can’t really afford new.  But we are selling it for 25 cents a lineal foot or 50 cents a board foot and it is a bargain.

I may even buy some….but it smacks of carrying coals to Newcastle….

So buyers are coming.  And that is good.  It is fun.  But here’s the weird thing…..makes no difference how good the deal is, each buyer feels obliged to bargain.  I just laugh.

“Waddya gonna do?”, I say, “That parcel of 12 planks is $22.00.  And I only count 3/4 of it anyway in case there are splits or whatever.  There’s 28 dollars worth of wood in there and that was calculated at the 25 cents rate.  Bought new it is ten times that.  Ya wanna bargain me down to $20.00 a bundle?  Really?  You should know that the proceeds of this sale go to charity.  We give it to sick children!  But, if you can’t pay that, I’ll just give you the wood.  For free.  Why not?  Maybe you need it as much as the little sick kids.  Do you?” 

But I am saying this with an obvious tongue-in-cheek tone and smiling.  Sometimes I affect an accent, like some kind of middle eastern bazaar rug dealer.

And the buyer says, “Uh, no…I was just kiddn’…no, really…$22.00 is fine.  By the way, which charity is it?” 

“I dunno.  I made that up.  The owner gives money every Christmas to sick kids so I just said that.  I have no idea if it comes from the sale of used building materials or not.  I just said it to mess with ya.  Just bargaining back at ya.  ‘Sick kids’ is always good.  But he really does give money away to sick children so it is not a real lie.  Maybe a little bit, tho.  Fun, eh? So how much do you want?”

“So, no bargaining?”

“Nah.  But now that you introduce the subject, I may try to bargain you up, if you want?  That could be fun.  How about $25.00 a bundle?  You know, for the sick kids….?  C’mon, I’ll even help you load the truck.  Hmmmm….gimme $30 a bundle, waddya say?…going once…?”

“No!  No!  $22.00 is fine.  C’mon, I’ll take ten bundles…sheesh…you are a weird guy!”

“Soooooooooo…could I interest you in a pallet of granite…It’s that fine quality stuff they don’t make anymore, ya know?  Not in North America, anyway.  Sometimes you get some from Europe, eh, but man oh man, that European granite is not cheap, know what I mean?  Not like that cheap Chinese crap granite.”

“Really…well, I don’t know…

“C’mon…think of the kids…and nothing says Christmas like granite, eh?”

“I remember it distinctly.  It was 1985 we last saw you two!”

“And I remember seeing you guys after that but it was just for a few minutes around the turn of the century, I think…………But we saw J last year sometime when he whupped me in a game of chess!  Haven’t seen D in years!”

And so it was that six old friends got together for dinner at a little greasy chopsticks Thai restaurant last night to reacquaint ourselves after a long time apart.  It was a lot of fun.

Despite a few encounters remembered or forgotten in the interim, the basic, regular-gathering-type relationships ended some thirty or more years ago.  No bad memories, we just wandered off in different directions.

We had started out as three college friends who played chess into the wee hours of the morning and shared coffee and our twisted senses of humour while doing so.  Twisted being the operative word.  S was married to Jo but Ja and I were single at the start.  Within a year or so that imbalance had corrected itself and so the six of us became a loose and friendly social unit.

But it wasn’t for long.  S & Jo took up their professions outside the city soon after and started to act like a family-in-the-making, Ja and D were doing much the same thing albeit a year or so later while remaining in the heart of the urban beast.  Sal and I kinda wandered some, traveling and moving, undertaking different jobs, eventually forming the basis for a family unit much later and half-way out into the burbs.  Our friendship was great but our synchronicity with each other was out of whack.  We grew apart for reasons logistical more than anything.  Life just got in the way and the lives we  eventually chose were not as compatible as the ones of the college chess players.

I am sure that the above is not an unusual story.  College friends grow apart over the years and then get together and reminisce about old times, do some catch-up and plenty of hugs are shared.  And that is what we did last night.  And, as stated, it was fun.

‘Cept my old friends are whacked!  Omygawd! I haven’t laughed so hard in years.  These lovely people are truly great characters.  They are so different.  In some ways they are not-so-different and then, just as you are lulled back into a sense of knowing them again, out comes some quirky eccentricity that just puts me on the floor.  It was like an episode of Seinfeld last night.  It was great.

Of course, any reader wouldn’t appreciate reading about this (it is clearly one of those ‘had to be there‘ moments).  And, for the most part, these kind of moments require thirty years to set up.  But I was hysterical.  “I really missed you.  I love you guys!” 

D – the clear and distinct winner in the eccentric category – gave me a suspicious look and, with an accusatory tone to her voice, admonished me sharply, “How can you say that!?  You don’t know us any more.  We have all changed.”   And she glared at me as if I was wrong and bad and slightly insane.  Classic D!  The sentiment and delivery, of course was said in exactly the same way as she might have done thirty years ago.  It was as consistent with her character as anything.  It could have been 1985.  And I broke up.

We parted at about 9:00 pm and I laughed all the way home and found myself grinning and shaking my head for hours afterwards.

Yes, of course, we’ll do it again.  And soon…….there is so little time and so much laughter to be had.

So, Fukushima, eh?

Two years ago a tsunami hit Japan’s national power producer’s (Tokyo Electric) nuclear reactor there and virtually wiped out the area including the ocean in front of it.  Gobs of radiation leaked out of the plant.  Tons of destruction.  All sorts of things died.  People getting cancer.  It’s a horror show.

And now it is coming our way.

The hysterical media (the blogger-sensationalists) are warning of ‘desolation’ on the west coast and the whole of our waterfront from Alaska to California being uninhabitable by 2030.  Already there are reports of sea lion infant mortality rates in excess of 42%.  Herring up our way are found to be inexplicably bleeding from gills and eyes.  Sea birds are floating dead from no visible cause.  T’is the end of days.

And one science-oriented resident up the coast I know of goes nowhere without a geiger counter.

The good news?  The geiger counter has not yet registered anything but normal since the scientist started carrying it around.

So, what is the truth?

My sources say, “There ain’t any we can find!  Lies by omission.  No news is good news, it seems.  Can’t find out much.  We believe there is a conspiracy of silence around the whole thing.  All we do know is that every day for the last two years 300 tons of radioactive water has been discharged into the sea and that has to add up.  And it is still flowing in to this day!  But neither Japan nor Canada is saying anything.”  

My point is: If Rob Ford picks his nose, I hear about it.  If he picks his nose at a hockey game, I hear about it for a week.  The CBC and Global and even some of the US news corporations will report that kind of nonsense all day long.  But real news?  Really important information?  Stuff that really matters?  Nothing.

Our definition of news?  Which hockey player got hurt or what body parts Miley Cyrus has been exposing lately?

On an obvious level, news is a travesty.  Dig a smidge deeper and one wonders if there isn’t some kind of policy or quasi-agreement to well, keep the people stupid.

But keep ’em entertained, too.  They are easier to handle that way.

The truth is, of course, that Miley Cyrus and Sidney Crosby and even Rob Ford have an interest in staying in the news and so it is easy to ‘report’.  My quess is that Rob Ford has a publicist!  But reporting on nucear accidents in foreign countries?  Well, that would require real reporters doing real work and incurring real expense.  And that cuts into the bottom line of the so-called news corporations.

It also cuts into our collective intelligence.  Methinks we are getting stupider.

From good ol’ Sherlock Holmes: lack of evidence when there should be some is still some kind of evidence….Sherlock pointed out that the dog NOT barking in the night was an indication that the thief was known to the dog and therefore the suspect list in the case of the horse being stolen was narrowed.  In the same way, we are learning about our life off the grid…………….OK…..it is a bit of a stretch but bear with me.

We found that our lifestyle changed living feral and reported the changes in the blog over the last few years as we became aware of them.  Basically it was comparing rural to our former urban.

But, by coming to the city and living urban, it has been revealed other changes that are now seen from the opposite perspective.  Now we are comparing rural to urban from the urban perspective.

For instance; I was shocked to find myself filling the tank of the old Pathfinder five times already!  We have been here just over two weeks and I have spent a minimum of $300 on gasoline!  That takes five months to do up in fantasy land.

I won’t describe again the monstrous amount of time wasted in traffic getting anywhere but I can add that, despite vast square miles of commercial and industrial sprawl we still seem to have to drive half way across the metropolis to get something relatively ordinary.  Seems odd to me, anyway.  It is not like I am trying to build a heavy water nuclear reactor or anything.  My goals are modest.  Take a tool in for repair, find a welding helmet, that sort of thing…………and I went to Richmond and Burnaby to do that.  Started out full of gasoline, filled up when the day was done.  Crazy.

Here’s one: it is significantly more dry.  When we live at home (same basic climate) we live outside and we live on the water.  Our heat is derived from the wood stove.  We are ‘moist’.  But down here we have a ‘modern’ heat source, we are back from the sea and the building is ‘temperature controlled’.  As a result of this minor change, both Sal and I are noticing how dry everything is. Static-y, too.  We are ‘dry’.

Don’t see many bugs either.

Already watching more TV.

That one is not fair as an example urban/rural comparison ’cause, in theory I could have a workshop here and be doing chores and building sheds and reverting to my new-old ways but I don’t have my tools, I don’t have a shop and most of my projects are home related so there is no point to trying to do that down here.  ‘Pass me the remote, sweetie’.  Bottom line: I am watching more TV!

And I could go on.  But I won’t.  ‘Nuff said ’bout that.  You folks already know the city.

So, I’ll end with a tie-in to the dog not barking in the title above………………….our dogs aren’t barking!  Firstly, they can’t really bark as they were larynx-lasered by the breeder when they were young so that they would ‘show’ well and not be heard.  A crime, we think.  But Fid has half of his voice and he is our alarm system up the coast.  He ‘owns’ the ten or so acres of space around our home and he sees and notifies us of any changes or trespass.

Not here.  Down here, he has staked out a ‘dog’s territory’ around the yard but has become so used to the comings and goings of strangers (the trades engaged in the renovations) he barely looks up.   It is the equivalent – literally – of him saying, “pass the remote sweetie.”

It’s creepy.

I have very few heroes.  Maybe none.  We all have feet of clay.  But Nelson Mandela?  Maybe.

I never knew Nelson.  Not personally, anyway.  He was media acquaintance only.  But I felt I knew him a bit.  A very little bit.  Like one might feel a ‘connection’ with Ghandi or Churchill or JFK.  He was one of the good ones.  And, I think, one of the BIG ones.

I never felt a connection with Mother Teresa……..maybe she was too good, ya know?

Most people are not known at all.  They are just part of the madding crowds.  Fodder for someone else usually.  Corporations, always.  They are the hoi polloi, the strangers, the foreigners.  They are the ‘others’,  the more-poor, the more-rich, the lame, the pigment-different and, of course, the ‘celebrities’.  They are the madding and maddening crowds.  I don’t know most of them. They certainly don’t know me.

We also have the bad ones.  Ones we don’t really want to know but become known despite that.  Rob Ford, politicians-in-general, bosses-of-bosses, dictators, criminals and others that don’t seem to exhibit any real ‘connection’ with the common people.  They may be good in some way.  But they seem bad.

I did some kind of loose calculation some time ago and figured out that we were lucky if we ever got to know closely say, as many as 700 people in our life-time.  I have no idea how accurate that crazy estimate is but one thing is for sure: we don’t get to know any kind of a significant percentage of the people-on-the-planet.  .00000001.   Even the celebrities and the famous don’t.  For the most part we and they are all unknowns in intimate and personal terms.  So, at best I know 225 or so good ones, 225 bad ones and 225 who-knows?  (Twenty five or so are family and they are exempt from this critical analysis for reasons of personal safety).  Maybe the ratio is different…I seem to know many more good ones…..but I dunno………..

So, it kinda boils down to the good, the bad and the ugly, doesn’t it?  Enemies, allies and cannon-fodder is another way to look at it, I guess.  Them and us and those who don’t count.

That’s not good.  Because we are all in this together.  Separation is not in our best interests.  And the Nelson Mandelas seemed to know that.  They lived and died for that.

I am not that good.  Never was.  Never will be.  Couldn’t even cut it in Boy Scouts.  I’d drill for oil and sell Meth before I did 27 years in jail like Nelson.  I am clearly in the ‘fodder’ category.  Neither good nor bad.  Just fodder.  OK, a smidge bad, perhaps.

And that is why this blog is about Nelson Mandela.  Even if he wasn’t all that good (who really knows?) he represents that which is good in people and, in this day and age, that is worth noting all by itself.

In a time when senators cheat on their expenses, Prime Ministers lie and crime is made into a video game and criminals are an accepted part of the neighbourhood, when morals have become so fluid and flexible as to mean nothing anymore and when money is the new symbol of worship, it is only right that we at least acknowledge the passing of a good person.  God knows they are an endangered species.

Maybe extinct.

I am currently writing about the shock and awe of ‘coming home’ to Vancouver after being feral for ten years.  ‘Course it is NOT home anymore for me and Sal.  It is yesterday’s home.  History, really.  The shock and awe we feel comes mostly from the fact that it is not the way I remembered it.  Not even the way I experienced it during those somewhat regular but still infrequent visits over the years.  Back then I went from the ferry to see friends – do a little shopping or something – and then back to the ferry.  I did not spend a lot of time in West Vancouver, the North Shore or Downtown.  And that is where the biggest surprises were!

Soon we will go further afield and I suspect to be just as surprised by what has changed out there, too.

Well, these are not really BIG surprises, I guess.  We have spent some time in Hong Kong, after all.  We have seen the proliferation of high-rises and shopping venues gone insane before.  And we have been in enough cities around the world to know even heavier traffic, crowded stores and sidewalks and madding crowds to extreme saturation levels.  Been there.

I guess the real issue is…..kinda……that I didn’t expect Vancouver to ‘be there’.  Not yet.  Not so quickly, anyway.

It feels as if the Vancouver skyline has doubled and the streetscape has thickened.  It feels as if Vancouver traffic has tripled (at the very least) and it feels as if, somehow, time has been altered.  Like I was Rip Van Winkled or something.  It is a strange feeling for me.  I am a bit out of sync I think.

Don’t get me wrong.  I can still drive.  I can get from A to B.  I know where New Westminster is.  I can find ‘ways’ through traffic and locate favourite haunts (those that still exist) and the basic landmarks of yesterday are still there.  But the tempo, the heartbeat, the pace.  It’s different.  It’s almost foreign…getting oddly Toronto-ish.

It is hard to describe it, actually.  My hometown is starting to feel foreign to me.  I don’t belong here anymore.  My ‘center’ has shifted.  And, weirdly, as comfortable as I am in our new home up the coast, that house has not quite become the new ‘center’.  Not yet anyway.  It is definitely home but I know that it is a remote home, a distant place, a bit more home-base more than a home-home.  If you know what I mean…….?

I guess we are still in transition.  After ten years.  Who would have guessed?

To be fair, our adjustment to being out there and our adjustment to returning for a month or so is much the same kind of ‘change-adaption-process’ and so a little confusion or disorientation is to be expected, I guess.  It is just that this is my old stomping ground. I mistakenly expected the same and I got different.

New Guineans have had it much, much harder.  Seventy five years ago they were naked bush people with bones in their noses and marvelling at great silver birds in the sky.  Today some of them are airline pilots and software engineers.  They all have smartphones and TV.  They don’t hunt.  They don’t try to kill the strangers.  They buy Nike.

THAT is shock and awe.  Us?  We are just a little slow to catch on, I guess.