Watching the river rise takes a keen eye

“Flood watch” or “river watch” has a different meaning to those who live on the river than it does to everyone else.

In the newspapers, it’s an official-sounding term, sort of like forest-fire alert, as in monitoring the situation. Down on the river, though, the “watch” is exactly what it says — sitting and watching the river, mostly as a source of curiosity and entertainment.

The object is to see what floats by — snags, beaver huts, livestock, that kind of thing — and to speculate about when it will crest. River watching requires at least two people to be effective. It’s even better when there’s a neighbourhood party, but as long as there are a few cold ones in the ice chest, it’s all good.

A typical river-watch conversation might go something like this:

“Yep, she’s comin’ up all right, Mother.”

“Sure is, Father.”

“Could get as high as ’48.”

“Doubt it, Father, but could hit ’72.”

“Think she’ll peak tomorrow?”

“Nope, maybe Monday.”

“Whoa! Is that a house comin’?”

“Could be the McTavishes’; they sit pretty low.”

“Probably just their barn, but it’s movin’ along pretty good.”

As important as sitting and looking at the river is to the people who live on it, the media are more choosy. The “flood watch” becomes of interest to them mostly when there’s an actual flood, such as what’s going on with the Nechako in Prince George right now. Up until then, it’s regarded as something of a non-event.

Each afternoon, a few of the editors from this newsroom gather in my office to sort out what’s likely going to be on the front page for the next day’s edition.

A couple of us happen to live on the river. I didn’t take exact notes, so I might not have this down perfect, but Thursday’s discussion was roughly this:

CITY EDITOR: “… and then there’s the flood watch story, but there’s nothing much going on there yet.”

ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR: “I’m not so sure. At our place, the North Thompson is higher than it’s ever been since we’ve lived there.”

CITY EDITOR: “Oh, how long have you lived there?”

ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR: “Two years.”

CITY EDITOR (slight pause): “And so you’re saying the river might be higher than it was last year at your house, and that we should put this important piece of news on the front page?”

EDITOR: “I have to agree with our associate news editor on this one. The retriever is even afraid of going for his morning dip right now.”

ONLINE EDITOR: “You’re not supposed to jump in after the dog if he falls in.”

EDITOR: “I didn’t say I’d go after him; I’m just saying, I think he’s onto something.”

CITY EDITOR: “Have you ever thought of retiring?”

One spring, I sharpened up the ends of a bunch of two-by-twos, painted stripes on them at one-foot intervals and pounded them into the riverbed at various distances from shore.

I figured I’d watch the water rise and do a journal and compare levels each year. Watching me do this, my wife decided it was the sort of thing an old geezer would do. From that day, she’s referred to the experiment as “geezer sticks.”

When the river rose that first spring, the geezer sticks floated away, every one of them.

Every spring since, in a not entirely sincere way, she remarks as we sit watching the river, “Too bad about those geezer sticks.”

 

As Vince would say, ‘You know we can’t do this all day’

A friend forwarded me a list this week. I don’t know who the author is, but it made me laugh.

It’s about being in your 60s.

1. Kidnappers are not very interested in you.

2. In a hostage situation, you are likely to be released first.

3. No one expects you to run — anywhere.

4. People call at 9 p.m. (or 9 a.m.) and ask, “Did I wake you?”

5. People no longer view you as a hypochondriac.

6. There is nothing left to learn the hard way.

7. Things you buy now won’t wear out.

8. You can eat supper at 4 p.m.

9. You can live without sex but not your glasses.

10. You get into heated arguments about pension plans.

11. You no longer think of speed limits as a challenge.

12. You quit trying to hold your stomach in no matter who walks into the room.

13. You sing along with elevator music.

14. Your eyes won’t get much worse.

15. Your investment in health insurance is finally beginning to pay off.

16. Your joints are more accurate meteorologists than the national weather service.

17. Your secrets are safe with your friends because they can’t remember them either.

18. Your supply of brain cells is finally down to a manageable size.

19. You can’t remember who sent you this list.

If you’re in your 60s, you will find the foregoing hilarious. If not, well, wait till you get there.

I’ve noticed a few things about being in my 60s, too. I’ve noticed, for example, that I’m the only one left in the office who pounds on a computer keyboard as if it was a typewriter. I’ve gone through three of them this month.

I’ve noticed there’s a note taped to my monitor that says, “Have you tweeted today?” and that I just ignore it.

I’ve noticed that I’ve started accepting the 10-per-cent discount on seniors day — something I vowed never to do. I even cracked a copy of Zoomer magazine one evening.

I’ve noticed that my friends keep getting older.

I’ve noticed that, almost every day, somebody asks me if I ever think about retiring. Most are just making polite conversation; some sound hopeful.

I heard recently there are only two questions that need to be answered when you contemplate retirement: have you had enough, and do you have enough.

In thinking it over, the answer for me will probably always be ‘no’ to both but, as that great philosopher, Vince the SlapChop guy, has said, “You know we can’t do this all day.”

One more thing I’ve noticed is that I still love my job and admire the people I work with, and like most of the people I meet. Which beats the hell out of hating what I do and loathing those I work with. Seems like a pretty good time to call it a career.

 

‘You know we can’t do this all day.’

I’ve been thinking about it awhile, but when I hit 68 this spring I started thinking about it more. So, on Friday afternoon, Sept. 14, in the 42^nd year since I began working here, I will stop beating up on keyboards at The Daily News, and move out of the way for someone who will treat them better.

Until then, I’ve got a lot of writing to do. I’d better get busy.

 

Bill Mercer, other school trustees unheralded heros of community

An obituary in Saturday’s paper brought the news of the passing of Bill Mercer in Victoria. A lot of people here won’t remember Bill, but he was once very much a force in local politics.

He was on the school board for 10 years, and was involved with the Liberal party. He ran provincially, I believe, and I still have a picture of a group of community leaders walking along the river dike after it burst at Oak Hills in 1972.

Bill is seen in the picture walking beside David Anderson, who had recently become leader of the B.C. Liberal party.

Bill was a couple of years older than me. I remember him — he and I were on the board together for a time — as a going concern. Intensely political, ambitious, energetic. Helen Barnett, who also served with him on the board, recalls that he had a “nervous energy” about him.

His background was in social work but, a few years after he left the board, he moved to Victoria and worked for government there. His obituary notes that he worked with Expo 86 in Vancouver, B.C. House in London, and Expo 92 in Spain, also serving on several local, provincial and national boards. He was an assistant deputy minister of health when he retired.

The Kamloops school boards of the 1970s had many excellent trustees who are no longer with us. One of our most famous citizens, Meryl Matthews, was on our board back at the same time as Mercer.

Another great trustee was Henry Grube, a man I greatly admired as a mentor. He was just plain smart. I roomed with him once at a school-board retreat, and by the end of the weekend my head was spinning with the wisdom of the man.

His philosophy — and he was a true philosopher — was summed up in one of his favourite lines: “One man with the truth beats the majority every time.”

Dave Kendall was another one. He had an energy that was something akin to Mercer’s, and he, too, had politics in his blood. He enjoyed talking about ideas on how to change things; he never feared taking a political risk.

Dave died many years ago of AIDS. I treasure the last letter he sent us from back east; his courage in the face of a terminal illness was inspiring.

And, there was my very good friend Neil Morrison, who died a few days before civic election night in 1999. Neil saw the world differently than most, and there are few people I learned more from than I did from him. He, too, was a politician at heart. And a sociologist. And a philosopher.

I didn’t know Bill Mercer as well as some of the others, but I do know he was part of a select group who have what it takes to be community leaders. They all go down in history as people who served their community, especially the school system, well.

School trustees don’t get the attention that MPs and MLAs, and even members of City council, receive. Theirs is low-profile politics, and when there’s an election few people turn out to their forums or even get to know who’s running for the board.

But their job is important, and those who have served down through the years have made Kamloops a better place for our kids.

Lack of rules in the country is damn hard on the dogs

I really do hate it when people start talking about shooting dogs.

We humans have mixed feelings about dogs. We’ve made it illegal to be mean to them, but if they bother us it’s OK to shoot them.

On the one hand, they’re our best friends. We write stories about their courage and perseverance — Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, White Fang, Greyfriar’s Bobby.

On the other, we disparage them. “You dog!” we’ll say, and not in a complimentary way. Or “Doggone it!” We call the hottest time of year, when everything goes stagnant, the “dog days of summer.”

“He was shot down in the street like a dog,” is an old saying.

There was even a movie a few years ago called Shooting Dogs.

In the country, it’s easy to have dogs. They can be any size, any colour, any shape.

Country people like to let their dogs run free, to enjoy the wide-open spaces. Which leads, inevitably, to them trespassing on somebody else’s wide-open spaces.

Just as we humans love our own children but aren’t necessarily fussy about anyone else’s, we figure our own dogs are OK but other people’s — not so much.

So, “just shoot ‘em” if they become a problem. And so the Thompson-Nicola Regional District is currently wrestling with putting a dog control bylaw in place. I say currently, which is correct if you extend the definition of currently to go back 30 years or so.

Always, dogs in rural areas have been an issue. And, always, the answer has been, just shoot ‘em. Some communities in northern Canada have annual “dog shoot days” for population control on stray dogs. Things haven’t gotten nearly that bad here, but dogs have their detractors.

Only half the regional districts in B.C. have animal control bylaws. Usually, cost and effectiveness are the reasons for not having them.

Instead, as a TNRD director once put it, rural areas are governed by a “three ‘S’” vigilante system for dogs: “Shoot, shovel and shut up.”

Land owners aren’t allowed to shoot other people’s dogs any time they please, but sometimes the lines get fuzzy. Technically, a dog must be on your property harassing your livestock before you can shoot it.

A few years ago, for example, a Barnhartvale dog was shot by a man who claimed it was chasing his horses. The dog’s 12-year-old owner was devastated — she said the dog often romped with horses in the area and meant them no harm.

“I do hope that some day there will be better laws for farmers to protect their livestock,” she wrote in a letter to the editor.

This week, a TNRD director reiterated that the remedy espoused by many rural dwellers is to “call their friends — Remington and Winchester” when dog control is needed.

“The standard method of dealing with dangerous dogs in rural areas — not downtown Clearwater, Merritt or Barriere — is, if your neighbour’s dog is that bad, you shoot it.”

The trouble — and that’s what the TNRD is struggling with now — comes in the interpretation of what’s bad and what’s overkill, if you’ll excuse the expression. As the experience in Barnhartvale showed, rough justice may be quick but not always right.

It’s nice not to have too many rules out there, but it’s damn hard on the dogs.

What the KGHM Ajax Perception Audit says

Here is the bulk of the  “KGHM Ajax Perception Audit” released by KGHM Ajax this week:

Survey Methodology

NRG Research Group conducted telephone interviews for the KGHM Ajax Perception Audit between August 22 and September 6, 2011 and again between April 27 and April 30, 2012. For both waves, interviews were conducted among 385 residents from the City of Kamloops. As this study was designed for the purposes of tracking residents’ perceptions of the proposed mine project over time, the survey instrument remained very similar to 2011. Each wave of results carries an overall maximum margin of error of +-5.0% at the 95% level of confidence.

The survey was conducted among residents who are aged 18 years or older using a random digital (RDD) sample source. Quotas were set to ensure that respondents represented the overall population base of each community. To account for over-sampling of certain demographic groups, the results are weighted to reflect the population by age and gender according to the Census. The tables below detail the weighting for wave 2

Census Population Distribution

Men, 18-34 (14%), Men, 35-54 (19%), Men, 55+ (16%), Women, 18-34 (14%), Women, 35-54 (20%), Women, 55+ (17%)

Wave 2 Raw Survey Competes Distribution

Men, 18-34 (11%), Men, 35-54 (20%), Men, 55+ (17%), Women, 18-34 (6%), Women, 35-54 (24%), Women, 55+ (21%)

Wave 2 Weights

Men, 18-34 (1.18), Men, 35-54 (.94), Men, 55+ (0.94) Women, 18-34 (2.25), Women, 35-54 (0.83), Women, 55+ (0.83)

Awareness of proposed Ajax mine project

- Overall awareness of the proposed Ajax mine project has significantly increased between September 20122 and April 2012, (up from 82% to 96%).

- Consistent with wave 1, residents aged 55 plus are more likely to have heard of the project than their younger counterparts. In fact, 99% of those 55+ have heard about it compared to only 96% of 35-54 year olds and 92% of 18-34 year olds.

Support for the proposed Ajax mine project

- Just over half (52%) of area residents have positive feelings toward the proposed Ajax mine project in April 2012. This is consistent with total approval levels seen in September 201l. However, the proportion of residents strongly in favour has increased from 13% in wave 1 to 19% in wave 2. Similar levels of disapproval can be observed in both wave 2 and wave 1.

- In wave 1 males were significantly more likely to approve of the project than females (60% vs. 40%). In contrast to this, wave 2 has very similar approval levels among both and males and females (53% vs. 49%).

- Other groups more likely to approve of the proposed project in wave 2 include those with a high school/trade education (59% vs. 48% among university-educated residents) and those with mining connections (59% vs. 43% of those not connected to the industry).

ARMCHAIR MAYOR’S NOTE: The question “Overall, on a scale of 1 to 7 with 1 being ‘Completely disapprove,’ and 7 being ‘Completely Approve’, how would you feel about the Ajax mine project based on the information you have? Yielded these results, according to the NRG summary:

Wave 2: 19 per cent completely approve (7), 15% 6, 18% 5, 18% 4, 11% 3, 11% 2, 6% 2, 11% 1 completely disapprove.

Wave 2: 13% completely approve (7), 15% 6, 22% 5, 19% 4, 11% 3, 7% 2, 11% 1 completely disapprove.

Back to the summary:

Importance of types of information to provide

- As seen in wave 1, it is essential that a wide range of information on the proposed Ajax mine site be made available to area residents.

- The “Environmental impact’, ‘Community health and safety impact’, ‘Potential mine location’, and ‘Potential employment’ are the key types of information area residents believe should be made available. Information on ‘First-nation participation’, ‘Community transportation impact’ and ‘Proposed hours of operation’ are seen as relatively less important types of information to have available.

ARMCHAIR MAYOR’S NOTE: The question, “When thinking about the Ajax mine, how important is it that information be available on each of the following? Please use a scale of 1 to 7 where 1 is “Not important’ and 7 is ‘Very Important’,” resulted in a ranking in the following order:

Environmental impact

Health and safety of employees

Community health and safety impact

Potential mine location

Potential employment

Potential tax revenue for the city

Potential for local businesses

Proposed hours of operation

Community transportation impact

First Nation participation

Back to the NRG report:

Summary

Overall awareness of the proposed Ajax mine project has significantly increased between September 2011 and April 2012. The vast majority of Kamloops residents (96%) are now aware of the project.

Just over half (52%) have positive feelings toward the proposed Ajax mine project, while 46% somewhat or strongly disapprove. However, the proportion of residents strongly in favour (rating 7 out of 7) has increased from 13% in wave 1 to 19% in wave 2.

Regardless of mine approval, the provision of information on ‘Health and safety of employees’, the Environmental Impact’ and ‘Community health and safety impact’ are considered the most important to area residents. This is consistent with wave 1 results.