Yer man posing beside a fully assembled steam donkey including mounted on a sled.
We’re on our annual retreat in Powell River, a place we have come to for the last five years to rest and reflect on the year that has been and think, ever so gently, about the year to come. Every year when we visit here we do many of the same things – walk the same trails, buy food from the same farmers, paddle or swim or visit the same places. And then we always do something a little different too, even small things.
Today was one of those things. We went for a walk to Willingdon Beach which is a pretty special site right downtown. It consists of a park and a beach and a campground with a trail that extends down the shoreline through the forest and is littered with old logging equipment. The gear has been left there along with interpretive signs as the outdoor part of the collection of the Powell River Forest Heritage Museum. We’ve often strolled by the steam donkey and the beached sidewinder and the steam shovel, but until today we’ve haven’t set foot inside the museum, which houses the collection in a couple of rooms.
It’s worth dropping in, if only for the language. The language of labour in the woods and the mines and the sea is old, technical and almost constitutes a dialect of its own. My friends Rika Ruebsaat and Jon Bartlett spent a substantial part of their lives capturing songs written in these languages. Reading the interpretive plaques in the museum gives life to the equipment and artifacts they have dating back 150 years.
Sometimes Geist Magazine publishes lists of words and terms and perhaps I’ll submit this list to them. I won’t even define what these terms mean, just let them clatter around in your ears and mind. In context most of them are really descriptive and self-explanatory. But out of context it seems like a mysterious technical language.
- High rigger
- Drag saw
- Butterfly
- gunning
- Falling, bucking and yarding
- Steam donkey
- Caulked boots
- Horse hames
- Yoke
- Gilchrist jack
- Sky hook
- Guy line shackle
- Roles on the steam donkey: Hook tender, chokerman, rigging slinger, whistle punk, fireman, chaser, woodcutter.
- Shinglebolt
- Flume
- Froe and mallet.
- Spike puller
- Double butted axe
- Spring board
- Butt swell
- Notches
- Back cut
- Jointer and raker
- Boomboat
- Sidewinder
What a poem.
Anchored at Ruxton Island, peering into the Trincomali Channel across a submerged shoal.
As we cruise through these islands I am travelling with David Rozen’s 1985 Master’s thesis, Place-Names of the Islands Halkomelem Indian People. It’s a useful collection of knowledge he recorded with Elders from the Halkomelem communities in these territories and records the many dialects and names of places and some of their stories in these islands. We anchored last night at Ruxton Island, a place that doesn’t show up in Rozen’s study so I don’t know the original name for it. Ruxton is one of the islands in this archipelago that shows off the tectonic forces at play here, tracing long thin reefs and shoals along the direction of geological uplift. We anchored in a narrow bay at the north end of the island with all kinds of little reefs and shoals upon which rest seals and oystercatchers until the tide flows in and washes them away.
We are near the original village site of the Lyackson people which lies across the channel on Valdes Island. There is a great story in Indiginews about how this community has finally found land for their village.
Last night a tsunami advisory was issued for nearly the entire coast of BC except for this part of the Salish Sea, where these islands and shallow channels protect us from damaging effects of most trans-oceanic tsunami waves. Damaging tsunamis can happen here, but only from local earthquakes or landslides. Trans-oceanic waves do enter this region (the linked paper has some great examples) but not in any damaging way. Thankfully this morning I’m not hearing of damage or injuries here, and only a little in Kamchatka and Kuril Islands and Hokkaido and Hawaii where these quake took place. The advisories have all been cancelled.
One of the things I love about my adult son is that he works a job he is good at and fills the rest of his time by what he calls “doing fun stuff.” When we traveled together in England back in April, he was up for anything. Museums, visiting the places I lived as a child, meeting cousins. All these ideas were met with “sure! sounds good!” and truly not the dismissive “whatever” that one sometimes worries about. He was able to find the fun stuff even between the six football matches we went to in ten days. For him, in his life, “fun stuff” might be downhill mountain biking or skiing or going out with friends or ripping around in a small boat or getting into all manner of mischief. He is capable of enjoying himself almost anywhere. He’s nailed it. Brian Klaas would approve:
“To me, the good life has more aimless wandering, less frantic racing, more spontaneity, less scurrying. It comes with a slower pace that allows us to catch our breath, to soak up wonderful moments, to savor what we have. It gives us the space to do one of the most important things a human can do: to notice and relish the joyful, the fulfilling, or even the merely pleasant bits of life.”
Philip Meters writes a very thoughtful meditation on Chekov, happiness and misery and the need for the contented among us to be reminded that people elsewhere are struggling. As Ivan Ivanich says in “Gooseberries:”
“At the door of every contented, happy man,” Ivan says, as if appending a moral to the end of his story, “somebody should stand with a little hammer, constantly tapping, to remind him that unhappy people exist, that however unhappy he may be, sooner or later life will show him its claws, some calamity will befall him—illness, poverty, loss—and nobody will hear or see, just as he doesn’t hear or see others now. But there is nobody with a little hammer.”
Meters also quotes from Martin Luther King Jr’s Christmas Sermon for Peace about the interconnectedness of the contentment and suffering of humans and how even before we have finished our breakfast we have become dependant on the people of the world.
Here in Canada the federal Liberal austerity program will go ahead. The CCPA published a piece based on this study which shows that austerity generally increases populism because it affects folks who are already disenfranchised to begin with. It is amazing the lengths that to which neoliberal politicians will go to ensure that rich folks aren’t taxed at the expense of a broad program of social welfare and decent services that can look after literally everybody in a society.
Our TSS Rovers men’s team had a brutal end to the season, having our title snatched away with a last minute penalty. I haven’t been able to write about it yet, but in the meantime my fellow Rovers owner Will Cromack has penned a beautiful piece on Socrates and the 1982 Brazilian side that hoped to deliver both politically and in footballing terms the revolution that Corinthians began in Sao Paolo.
When he was Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney presided over the release of a remarkable report called “Money Creation in the Modern Economy” which skewered the idea that governments print money and create inflation when it is actually private banks that do that. David Graeber’s 2019 paper “Against Economics” came at a time, perhaps the last time, when I think we could have retooled economics to redistribue wealth through policies more in line with the ones that created the prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s. Alas. The populists and oligarchs have now combined to divide up the world and everyone else is scrambling for cash. Carney knows better, but the coming federal government austerity is just what the richest want: make credit cheap so that more money is created that eventually ends up in their pockets. We are not on a track to create a prosperous society let alone use the money we have to reverse the social, educational and climate crises that require resources and public infrastructure investment to address. (H/t to Harold Jarche for the links).
While following a thread about systems thinking I was led to this blog called Perspicacity from cognitive researcher John Flach. Flach has recently co-authored a book called “Do Systems Exist: A conversation” which I am interested to read. I think there is a lot more to say about this, but if you were to ask me the question right now I would say “yes and no.”
I’m in Canoe Cove this morning which is a small boat harbour near Swartz Bay on the northern tip of the Saanich Penisula near Victoria, BC. This is a popular destination for the road bike riders who come up the peninsula from the City on a weekend morning. While having an espressos I. The very good Fox and Monocle bakery cafe, I saw a woman in a bike shirt that read “Samsara” on the sleeve. I am unsure if this is an ironic branding.
It’s late April on the coast. Huge flocks of geese are finding their way north making a beeline from their stopping grounds in the Fraser River estuary and heading straight over our island as they follow the inlets and mountains on their journey to Alaska. The sea lions are still out there barking and normally their presence would be a sure sign of spring as they come in with the herring, dragging all the mammal eating killer whales with them. But this year has been weird and we’ve had a herd (pride? flotilla? complaint?) of sea lions in Mannion Bay since November. Several docks have orange storm fencing around them so the lions won’t take refuge on the floats, but a couple of absentee dock owners don’t and so these amazing creatures encamp on the floats down below our house and bark 23 hours a day.
The only thing that frightens them off is a killer whale and the news came this week that 79 of them have been spotted in the Salish Sea this month, including a new baby for J-Pod, the group of orcas that are resident to the souther Gulf Islands. A grey whale has been hanging around English Bay and the humpbacks will soon be back. The abundance of Átl’ka7tsem/Howe Sound, a combination of local recovery and globally warming waters, continues unabated.
This is a brief touch home, to try to get some crops in the garden, do a little maintenance work with clients and finish up some writing. My son and I were in England earlier in the month on a long awaited father/so soccer trip, and we had an epic time. We got to see our beloved Spurs in a rare patch of good form beat Southampton 3-1 and then draw Eintracht Frankfurt 1-1 in the Europa League quarter final. We also caught games at Watford, Charlton Athletic and Notts County before ending our trip as the guest of a friend at the Etihad in Manchester for an epic 5-2 victory for ManCity against Crystal Palace.
Getting to spend time with my 24 year old son is a gift and this is the longest we have spent together ever, just the two of us. I was able to take him around the places I lived in Herts as a kid, and we met some cousins and visited museums in-between football matches and early morning drives across the Pennines.
Soccer continued unabated, as we went to the inaugural match of the Northern Super League this past week, contested between the Vancouver Rise and the Calgary Wild. A couple of former TSS Rovers were in the squads for both teams, keeper Kirstin Tynan for Vancouver and defender Tilly James for Calgary. Our TSS Rovers women and men played on Friday night in a couple of disappointing losses to Langley United in League 1 BC, which is the second tier of Canadian soccer. Lots of soccer in my life these.
This has been a year of travel., so coming home to familiar things for a few moments is nice. A long awaited holiday in Italy awaits so I am savouring the coastal springtime as much as I can.
I’m here in Columbus, Ohio doing my annual gig with the Physcians’ Leadership Academy. Every year I get to run a half day complexity workshop for local physicians. It’s a fun gig and gets me a chance to see friends in this region and make a stop in Toronto on the way.
Today was a weird day to cross the border though. For the past month, and especially the past weekend, the conversation that almost everybody in Canada is having is about the US tariffs that came into effect at 12:01 this morning. Blanket 25% tariffs on everything that crosses the Canada-US border. The US tariffs instantly triggered a trade war and Canada retaliated with about two thirds of a full tariff schedule which will rise to 25% retaliatory tariffs on about 1200 US products. It’s anyone’s guess whether this is a permanent state of affairs or not. The tariffs were imposed – under dubious legal authority it must be said – through a Presidential executive order which is nearly unheard of in US governance. It is usually Congress that does these things, but the President has the power to impose tariffs for national security reasons if these are the result of a declaration of a national emergency. Donald Trump made 23 pounds of fentanyl and some unknown number of migrants crossing from Canada to the US into the national emergency that has allowed him to by-pass Congress and impose tariffs, and threaten the future of our country.
So naturally in Canada, everybody has been talking about this. It is the single topic of conversation. American liquor is being romped from store shelves. “Buy Canadian” website have popped up everywhere. Premiers are talking about cutting of electricity to millions of Americans. And while we have had trade spats with the USA in the past, Trump has also signalled his intention to annex Canada, if not militarily then certainly economically. You just have to watch what he is doing to Ukraine to see what the plan is.
But the moment you cross the border, nothing. No one is talking about this. Very few people even really know about it. A few might have seen Justin Trudeau or Doug Ford on CNN today but hardly anyone has any context for what they are saying or how it might affect them.
So it’s a bit like those weather moments when it’s pouring rain on your side of the street, but your neighbours are in full sunshine, enjoying the afternoon. I don’t blame Americans for this state of affairs. Unless you follow politics closely and these kinds of things interest you, your average Ohioan is probably not giving more than a few minutes thought to this. The President is giving a State of the Union address tonight, so it’s unlikely that any of the protestations from north of the border will show up in the news cycle.
This is a feature of North American society, by the way. Americans are no more ignorant or apathetic than Canadians when it comes too politics, economics or global trade. I mean, Doug Ford got elected to a four year majority mandate in Ontario with only 19% of the electorate voting for him. There is, however, an asymmetry to this situation that leaves us booing at the US national anthem being played in our hockey and soccer arenas in response to naked threats against our sovereignty, while Americans wonder what bee got into our bonnet.
Now my friends and colleagues here know I’m Canadian, and so our conversations are sprinkled with a bit of humour and maybe some teasing back and forth, but while I love banter generally, my heart isn’t in it. The existential threat is the thing that keeps it serious. And most of my friends here are either solidly progressive or at least thoughtfully conservative and hardly anyone thinks picking a trade fight with Canada or Mexico is a good idea. Still, the words I hear most out of their mouths are “I’m so sorry.” Despite what you read on social media, most Americans are not red-hatted MAGA dupes running around yelling nonsense into the void. Life just seems to go on.
It’s just that, for us, it feels like life has changed quite profoundly. we are certainly facing a recession, we may be facing many years of recession that leaves us economically vulnerable to annexation and it’s unclear if anyone in the US or elsewhere really cares about that. I don’t know what the future holds holds for us. So we wait, because there isn’t anything else to do right now. We are in the dumbest of times and they don;t look to be getting any smarter.