Weighing in on the Financial Crisis

I don't think there's been nearly enough careful analysis of the probable causes of the current financial crisis. Lots of finger-pointing, but not enough analysis. One pundit I follow has admitted that he doesn't know what the cause might be. Being somewhat of a government interventionist supporter (albeit with small "g" and small "i"), I'm going with minimalist (read: non-existent) regulatory oversight as the root cause, but what do I know?

So, in case you haven't read enough of other's opinions, here is another, courtesy of CBC's Search Engine.

Exploring the Koots 1019 - Nice Lake by a Dam Site

Another bluebird sky day in the Koots, so we did something we almost never do - we went for a drive, simply to see the scenery. Just north of the end of Kootenay Lake is Duncan Dam, built a few decades ago as part of the Columbia Basin Treaty (to maintain water levels for flood control and power generation), which created a much larger Duncan Lake, now 40 km long rather than its original 14 km. We'd never seen the dam, or the Lake, really, and discovered, once again, great scenery, a nice lake and a beautiful campground (BC Forest Service, by the way) near the settlement of Howser.

We extended the drive to go west along Highway 31 to Trout Lake, mostly just to look at the Lardeau River and to see if any Kokanee Salmon were still around, to watch the Bald Eagles, check out the various FSRs that might be useful for skiing or hiking into the Goat Range Wilderness.... We had planned to have a closer look at the campground on Trout Lake at Gerrard, but a grizzly was feeding on some sort of carcass, so we viewed the scene from the truck and moved on.

On the way back home we had a look at the Meadow Creek Spawning Channel, created during the construction of the Duncan Dam, partly to remediate the disruption caused by the dam. It wasn't all the dam's fault, as it turns out: some time during glacial retreat thousands of years ago, impassable falls were created on the Kootenay River, making it impossible for salmon to migrate upstream. This created a species of salmon that became landlocked, but since they still needed a place to lay their eggs, the spawning channel was created. At the right time of year (early fall), literally hundreds of thousands of salmon arrive here in the process of living out their biological destiny.

The day was brought to a satisfying conclusion at a belated Thanksgiving dinner at neighbours - the first of at least 2 such belated epicurean delights, I hope. The resident pie expert here produced 2 masterpeices created from orphan apples collected a few weeks ago before the bears managed to get them. Ahhhhhh.

Road Trip to Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

With fall well under way and, we hoped, a bit of time before the onset of winter, we decided to take a quick trip to Yellowstone. The idea was to do some hiking in the Park, some shopping in Montana and some exploring in Idaho. Some of this actually happened....

We tried a different border crossing this time, east of Cranbrook, entering the USA at Eureka, MT. We found a small State Park that still had some campsites open (unfortunately right beside a busy rail line), not far from Whitefish Ski Resort.

On through Missoula for food and supplies and some new tires and south towards the Lewis & Clark Trail, Sula, the continental divide and a very nice little campground in the Salmon-Challis National Forest.

The next day we continued south on Rte 93 over the Divide, enjoying sunny skies and warm temperatures and the Salmon River through North Fork, ID that Lewis & Clark explored back in about 1805.

Part of our route east towards Yellowstone went through a dry, almost desert-like valley, just north of Craters of the Moon NP. Stark and dry would describe this area. That night we found a nice campground along a placid and scenic river in the Targhee National Forest, about an hour from West Yellowstone.

The next few days were spent hiking around all the hot springs, geysers and mud flats that we could find along the road, down into the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and on to Mammoth Hot Springs. It was cool, then cold, as a major storm made itself felt, dumping significant amounts of snow on parts of the Park. We spent a couple of days at Mammoth waiting for the storm to pass, finally escaping to the North and the I-90. Many roads were closed, including all in the Park the day we left.

Our choice of routes was intended to get us away from the snow and finally, by the time we got to Missoula again, we seemed to be past it. Some shopping finished out the long day of travel and we only went a short distance south and west before stopping for the night. Once again, we were on the path of Lewis & Clark, crossing the Divide at Lolo Pass and spending several hours following the winding Lochsa River west before heading north again towards Coeur d'Alene. We spent our last night at Heyburn State Park about 45 minutes south of Coeur d'Alene and the next day enjoyed a warm, sunny day for our drive back home, just in time to see the Federal election results.

Pictures of the road trip can be seen at:

http://picasaweb.google.ca/dave.mcc51/RoadTripYellowstoneMontanaIdaho#

True Canadian Sentiments

As seen on YouTube, that source of everything cultural....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auVGvM4_9XU

Turning Up the Heat

There was a Dennis Lee poem that we used to read to our kids when they were little. In part, it goes like this:

I threw my bratty brother
In the furnace nice and neat
I can't wait until December
When Dad turns on the heat

Dennis lives in Toronto, not Vancouver, and we were always amused by his use of "December". Most places in Canada, that month should be replaced by "September".

That poem was running through my head this morning as I hustled around building my morning fires. It was only +12C in the house this morning. Yup - the heating season is here.

The Morning After - Election Hangover

So much for democracy in Canada.

Canadians have, thankfully, denied Harper the dictatorship he was seeking, but only barely. Commentators are already bemoaning the low voter turnout, at 59% pretty much the lowest on record. Various reasons have been run up the flagpole, but I don't think you need look much further than the results. Consider this:

Conservatives 143 seats - 37.6 % of the vote

Liberals 76 seats - 26 % of the vote

BQ 50 seats - 10 % of the vote

NDP 37 seats - 18 % of the vote

Greens 0 seats - 6.8 % of the vote

Independents 2 seats - 0.65 % of the vote

Some low-level arithmetic will illuminate the fact that the number of seats won has no connection with the will of the people (aka - the popular vote). Consider one simple alternative. If there were true proportional representation, this is what the new Parliament would look like (approximate because of rounding issues I didn't want to deal with at 6 am):

Conservatives - 116 seats

Liberals - 81 seats

BQ - 31 seats

NDP - 56 seats

Greens - 21 seats

Independents - 2 seats

What's stunningly obvious is that Canadians DIDN'T ELECT A CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT. The vast majority of Canadians, 51% of them, voted for a left or centre left choice (Liberals, NDP and Greens). There's where Canadian sentiments obviously lie. If you add the BQ to that, the majority would be over 60%. I know that regressive, right-wing dinosaurs out there will belch fire over this, but, other than in Alberta, that's what Canadians are in their souls, like it or not.

(Even in Alberta, proportional representation would have sent only 17 Conservatives to Ottawa along with 2 Greens - oh the horror...).

I pulled the following numbers from a comment on the CBC's website:

Here's a breakdown seats per population (approx)

NFLD: 7 seats. 1 per 72,610 of population

NS: 11 seats. 1 per 85,087

NB: 10 seats. 1 per 75,152

PEI: 4 seats. 1 per 34,852

QUE: 74 seats. 1 per 104,655

ONT: 106 seats. 1 per 121,621

MAN: 14 seats. 1 per 85,449

SASK: 14 seats. 1 per 72,153

ALTA: 28 seats. 1 per 125,441

BC: 36 seats. 1 per 123,009

There are two things that seem broken here. First, the will of Canadians isn't being represented in our House of Commons. Second, the principle of "one person, one vote" isn't even close, and since I live in BC, I'm particularly steamed. Only Alberta fares worse than us.

If politicians are really concerned for the survival of democracy, then it's time they put their self-serving interests aside and fix what's wrong. Oh say, can you see (what it is?).

It's the Election, Stupid

And the election should be about the economy, the environment, health care, hospital waiting lists, government oversight, you know - important issues. But what's it been about mostly? Sweater vests, how well or poorly a given candidate speaks English, and so on. Stupid stuff.

Canadians should be angry that any politician would use the environment to try and score points against a political opponent who is insisting that a carbon tax is necessary. Canadians should be furious that (Conservative) government cutbacks to food inspectors could be the cause of more deaths from contaminated food. Canadians should be fearful about the economy, especially since laissez faire government oversight was mostly responsible for the mess in the USA and which has already spilled over into Canada, remembering that the Harper Government basically espouses the same governmental hands-off approach that got the Bush regime into trouble. And Canadians should be prepared to punish the Conservatives for not daring to release their political platform until after many Canadians have already voted.

Election day is October 14. We will see if Canadians have woken up by then.

Premature Passages

This past week brought with it sad news. From a few of my former students I learned that two other former students had died, both within days of each other.

Gwen was one of my students from about 25 years ago, so far back that I can barely remember the time. More recently, she worked in my old school as a Teacher Assistant, mostly with the Kindergarten kids but also as a Special Education assistant, tutoring older students. As a colleague, she brought a sense of humour and a special rapport with students that I valued, especialy during my last 4 years in the school, when I had time to wander into the Kindergarten classroom to see what was going on. Gwen had just quit her job in Landis and was starting back at University to get her teaching certificate. Diagnosed with heart disease some time ago, something I didn't know about, she died in her sleep about 2 weeks ago. Gwen was only in her late 30s.

I hadn't heard or seen much of Blake for about 8 years, pretty much since the time he left school under rather difficult circumstances. School was hard for Blake and in the traditional school setting, he was often in trouble of one sort or another. In the right situation he had many talents, mostly a keen mechanical ability and a hands-on curiosity about "things". I remember him displaying a restored antique John Deere tractor at school one day. Under the tutelage of a local farmer, he'd completely rebuilt this machine to original working order. When he was younger, he'd come to chat, always with questions about some piece of equipment that he'd dismantled. He died in a motorcycle accident about 2 weeks ago, only 24 years old.

Two deaths of young people from a small prairie town that I worked in for 28 years. It reminds me that you never know how long you'll have to do the things you want.

Monica Meadows Revisited

We took the opportunity a few days ago to revisit Monica Meadows, especially since fall is starting to show its colors.

The picture shows it all: golden larches, contrasted with the dark rock of surrounding mountains, bluebird skies, glaciers all around, weathered wood and the fall meadows.

It's just such a priviledge to live in an area as beautiful as this.

Pictures live at: http://picasaweb.google.ca/dave.mcc51/FallInTheKootenays##