Spectacular Skeena River Valley. Photo © Sam Beebe, Ecotrust

Spectacular Skeena River Valley. Photo © Sam Beebe, Ecotrust

Enbridge first proposed Kitimat as the West Coast terminus of its Northern Gateway pipeline a decade ago. The company has been defending the choice ever since.

For much of the ensuing time, attention has focused tightly on that project.

Oh, sure, the deliberations and demonstrations about the Keystone XL pipeline project in the U.S. were noted, but, until recently, B.C. has concentrated on the Northern Gateway proposal….

Read the rest of this editorial at the Victoria Times Colonist….

Manhole cover in the rain. Photo © Scott Schiller, via Creative Commons

When government officials and industry specialists gather downtown on Tuesday, they’ll be discussing an issue rarely off the public radar for long in this region: water management.

The Partnership for Water Sustainability in British Columbia and the Irrigation Industry Association of British Columbia are hosting the one-day workshop, Convening for Action on Vancouver Island: How Managing Water Now Will Shape the Future.

The forecast calls for rain.

Sure, we enjoyed one of the region’s drier summers. Rivers dropped to worrisome levels. Water restrictions up Island were extended past their usual end dates.

We’ve also experienced the soggy lash of Hurricane Ana’s remnants. And, in September, a storm so sudden and intense hit the region that water gushed out from beneath manhole covers onto Victoria’s streets. In October, the beach at Cadboro Bay was closed to the public yet again, because high-rainfall mixing of stormwater and sewage in Oak Bay’s aging drains system flushed human waste into the bay.

And the City of Victoria officially announced its new stormwater utility.

As mentioned, water and water management are perennial topics for discussion here….

Read the rest of this editorial at the Victoria Times Colonist….

YYJ control tower. Photo © Brian Burger WireLizard via flickr and Creative Commons

YYJ control tower. Photo © Brian Burger WireLizard via flickr and Creative Commons

A Supreme Court of B.C. decision confirmed earlier this month that the air-traffic control tower at Victoria International Airport should be valued at $20. The property had been assessed at $1.43 million.

The ruling came after a long battle between North Saanich, where the airport is located, and Nav Canada, which owns and operates Canada’s civil air-navigation system.

The court-confirmed value of the property means about $26,000 less annual tax revenue for North Saanich. The municipality has already reimbursed Nav Canada $43,000 for taxes paid for 2011 and 2012. It is now expected to refund $55,000 for 2013 and 2014.

The ruling also applies to three other Nav Canada properties in B.C. The air traffic control towers at the Castlegar, Penticton and Pitt Meadows airports had originally been assessed at between $270,000 and $423,000.

And it sets a precedent for Nav Canada’s appeals of assessments of 120 other properties in B.C., including properties at the Vancouver International Airport valued at $9.9 million.

It sets a precedent also for other properties with single uses and low market exchange.

It has been pointed out that Nav Canada’s legal weaseling out from its property-tax responsibilities is yet another way in which other governments—with significantly larger revenue bases—are downloading responsibility for services and their funding onto municipalities….

Read the rest of this editorial at the Victoria Times Colonist….

YYJ from the air. Photo © Brian Burger, WireLizard, via flickr & Creative Commons

YYJ from the air. Photo © Brian Burger, WireLizard, via flickr & Creative Commons

Sign of the foo. Photo © TimParkinson, via Creative Commons and flickr.com/timparkinson/

Sign of the foo. Photo © TimParkinson, via Creative Commons and flickr.com/timparkinson/

In the recent Incident of the Abandoned Ford Thunderbird, the Sooke resident who found the abandoned car, complete with registration papers, in the woods near Bear Creek posted a scathing rant online and notified police.

Instead of immediately fining the car’s owner under the conservation and motor vehicle acts, the RCMP turned the incident into a learning opportunity. They gave the owner a choice: remove and properly dispose of the vehicle within a given timeframe, or face fines of up to $3000.

The related media and online coverage served to remind us all of the laws against dumping garbage and unwanted goods on private and public lands.

The Capital Regional District defines illegal dumping as any activity by which waste materials are intentionally disposed of in an unauthorized location. This includes abandoning used goods on sidewalks, in alleyways and other public spaces. It includes the dumping of waste on logging roads and other rural spaces, and other ways of ridding oneself of garbage at another’s expense.

A 2011 survey of the region’s municipalities, recycling depots and non-profit recycling organizations indicates the most common materials illegally discarded here are furniture and mattresses, and the most frequent locations are along municipal boulevards.

I beg to differ. Far fewer sofas, mattresses and so on are left to rot along the region’s roadways in any given month than bags full of dog doo are left to decorate the bushes, trees and trails of our parks and green spaces….

Read the rest of this editorial at the Victoria Times Colonist….

Dog doo wars. Photo © Newtown Grafitti, via Creative Commons and flickr

Dog doo wars. Photo © Newtown Grafitti, via Creative Commons and flickr

Poison Hemlock flowers. Photo © Paige Filler, via creative commons & flickr

Our benign climate welcomes yet another uninvited transplant to the region. Poison hemlock joins hundreds of other invasive plant species that make themselves at home here.

Like some of those other plants, it contains toxins. Unlike most of them, it resembles a common cooking herb, and can be easily mistaken and ingested as such.

Native to Europe, poison hemlock gained lasting notoriety 2,413 years ago as the poison used to kill Greek philosopher Socrates. In 2002, two people went into respiratory arrest and were hospitalised after eating parts of the plant.

Poison hemlock is to be handled with care and gloves. Consider the precautions part of the evolutionary arms race between plants and animals….

Read the rest of this editorial at the Victoria Times Colonist….

Poison Hemlock has purple-splotched stems. Photo © Jerry Kirkhart, via creative commons & flickr

These image files are intentionally large, so that you can read the text. While you wait for them to load, feel free to read about the project.

The mission: Create an exhibit for less than $5,000 and in less than two months. Use existing trade-show exhibit armatures, and scrounge props and artifacts from researchers’ labs.

An extra challenge: Design and produce the exhibit in such a way that it showcases the capabilities of the large-scale printer that was available for use by researchers at Pacific Forestry Centre and maintains all the design guidelines prescribed for Natural Resources Canada displays and publications. As well, the exhibit had to satisfy requirements of the Official Languages Act, and all interpretive panels had to include text in both English and French. I developed the project plan for Alien Invasives, an exhibit to be installed on the mezzanine level of the Pacific Forestry Centre in time for National Forest Week. I worked with researchers, technicians and managers from Pacific Forestry Centre to develop the interpretive concept and text for the exhibit panels, large and small. Avril Goodall, the Natural Resources Canada graphic designer, determined and executed the design concept.

The Big Idea: Scientists and policy makers at the Canadian Forest Service, Natural Resources Canada, were working to protect Canada’s forests, economy and trade from alien invasive insects.

Audience: school teachers and students who visited Pacific Forestry Centre for National Forest Week’s Forest Fair celebration, staff and visitors.

Key Messages: 

  • Invasive alien forest species are non-native organisms that thrive in Canada’s forests.
  • They can be introduced to Canada’s forests both intentionally and inadvertently, through many different pathways.
  • They can seriously alter Canada’s forest ecosystems, causing environmental, economic and social damage that can be irrevocable.
  • The Government of Canada (Natural Resources Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency) is working to prevent the introduction and spread of invasive alien forest species, and to protect Canada’s forests, economies, communities and trade.

Design and Installation: Each of the attached panels was attached to a 3.66 x 2.44-metre trade-show exhibit armature. Two of the backdrop panels were placed side by side in an arc (exhibit area 1), with the third backdrop facing it across the mezzanine (exhibit area 2). The backdrop panels were designed according to departmental common-look-and-feel design specifications, thereby allowing all other panels greater flexibility in design and presentation. Banners (~8 x 2 metres) with giant, high-resolution images of invasive species draped from steel cables framed each display area. In addition to the backdrop panels shown here, displays with interpretive signage in exhibit area 1 included:

  • A vine maple sapling, with holes drilled into the trunk. Life-size models of Asian longhorned beetles were glued into the holes.
  • A wooden spool for transporting cable, with an interpretive panel discussing how wooden packaging materials such as industrial spools and pallets transported many invasive species from other countries to Canada.
  • A display box of various invasive beetle specimens, on loan from the Pacific Forestry Centre entomology collection.

In exhibit area 2, displays with interpretive signage included:

  • A 1/2-metre-long, super-sized model of a mountain pine beetle.
  • A tree cookie and debarked log section showing beetle galleries.
  •  A funnel trap and bag, similar to those used in a recent lab study on how beetles breed and colonize new trees.

In addition, Avril Goodall designed, fabricated and installed a mobile of Asian gypsy moths in the middle of the Pacific Forestry Centre Atrium to complement the exhibit.

Myrtle warbler. Photo © zenbenscience, via creative commons & flickr

While we await the region’s autumn rains, the rest of the country prepares for winter. After last year’s ordeal, flocks of Snowbirds east of the Rockies are preparing their escape routes.

Some will visit our region. Others will head south.

Our behaviour mirrors a time-honoured tradition begun by our feathered friends eons ago. Scientists recently established that the region’s migrating birds are at heart northern residents that, like their human counterparts, head south to avoid harsh winters.

For years, scientists believed migrating birds first started leaving southern territories to travel northwards across and between continents because of intense competition for space and food in the crowded tropics. After all, most songbirds in the Americas, including those that don’t migrate, live in the South American tropics, and most migratory species have close tropical relatives.

But that theory is now turned upside-down, geographically speaking. After analyzing the family trees and territorial origins ofsparrows, warblers and blackbirds—which together make up the largest group of North American songbirds—scientists found that long-distance migration was twice as likely to arise among bird ancestors from temperate regions than among ancestors from the tropics.

The majority of the species started migrating by moving their winter ranges southwards.

Read the rest of this editorial at the Victoria Times Colonist….

Lancaster Bomber. Photo © SNappa2006, via flickr Creative Commons

More than 70 years ago, Marcel Croteau, a veteran of the Royal Canadian Air Forces’ 425 Alouettes Squadron and my uncle, was flying nightly bombing raids over France.

Because of his role in those long-ago missions, Croteau is being inducted as a knight (chevalier) into France’s Order of the Legion of Honour today. It is the highest honour the French government confers.

It is one of many ceremonies taking place this year in which the French government is paying tribute to Canadian veterans who participated in the 1944 D-Day invasion to liberate France from Nazi Germany. This event is taking place in Sechelt, where 91-year-old Croteau, a former Victoria-area resident, now lives.

The smiles and congratulations of the 100 friends and family who will gather later today will provide a marked contrast to the night-time tensions experienced during the D-Day–related raids….

 

Read the rest of this editorial at the Victoria Times Colonist….