Author Archives: brunhub

Death and Coffee

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Despite the persistent rain I walked by the Granthams Wharf today and marvelled at how efficiently and quickly our small community was able to rally and get it fixed and even improved.  Donations of money, time, materials, music and art made the swift reconstruction possible. A true testament to our community spirit.  The pier was practically destroyed in a perfect combination of high tides and gale force winds, which washed tons of driftwood off the beaches and drove the watery logs into our wooden jetty. Disasters unite people, goes the saying. Just look at Paris and France and how the nation and its people, indeed the world, came together as one community, mourning the fiery devastation of Notre Dame Cathedral. Within one day enough donations were pledged to rebuild it. I vowed to raise a glass with Campbell in honour of community spirit. Also I had an interesting topic for tonight’s discussion, sure to raise an eyebrow or two.

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Dictators

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When I arrived at ‘the pub for our weekly peeve session over a couple of pints, Campbell or Camp for as long as I know him, was scribbling away in his Moleskin note book while checking back to his phone, obviously doing some Google-research.

‘What’s up Camp, checking your investments?’ I asked, knowing full well that all his eggs were in one basket, his ‘non-profit’ bookstore.

‘Yeah, I wish. I’ve read a book ‘How Democracies Die’ by two Harvard professors and it’s got me worried.’

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Local Issues

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            ‘Never mind world politics,’ Camp said to me, holding up a hand to stop me from even thinking about anything outside of our small peninsula community. ‘I don’t want to hear about the Brexit fiasco or Trump closing the Mexican border after he cut foreign aid to Central America and we can’t do anything about the whole of China acting like one big company or the rise of fascism throughout the world.  But we have plenty of local issues which divide and engage people, we have our own politicians whose motives and allegiances are questionable and once in power toss former convictions out the window and we also have misinformation and differing opinions on every conceivable subject, public and personal, right here at home.’

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Charity and local Politics

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            ‘What do think about the ferry ploughing into the dock last Tuesday,’ I asked my friend Camp who was no friend of the ferry system. He has over the years bitched about many unpleasant incidents with the ferry as most of us coasters have. Like constant delays, the ongoing game of chicken trying to wiggle and slalom into the left lane from the parking lot across three lanes of oncoming traffic or being cut off at the ticket booth while the boat was still loading.

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For a better Future

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            Unseasonal warm, August like temperatures, have banished old man winter for another year it seems. The skies are blue, the coastal mountains frosted with snow and Vancouver’s beaches are crowed with sun seekers.

‘Hey Camp, know what day it is today?’ I asked as soon as took my seat at our table with the view of the harbour.

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Myth and Culture

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At least it’s light now when I walk along the shore to our weekly chin-wag, I stopped by our storm damaged wharf which is getting fixed, thanks to a strong local community which came forward with cash, art and music. In fact there is a ‘Raise the Wharf’ fundraiser on Saturday, 16th March at the Gibsons Public Market.

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Headlines and Leaders

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“We live in a fantastic and immediate world,” I said to Campbell, Camp as we all know him, when I saw him fold the newspaper he was reading.

“Yes, it is so instant that today’s headline has a half-life of 24 hours before it decays into opinions and then further into non-sequiturs,” Camp said.

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Carnival Queens

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I saw her the first time at Cuddy’s rum shop on the corner of Mainstreet. She wore a red and yellow plaid dress, a Redsox ball cap and large, golden hoop earrings. Her shoulder length hair was frizzy and stiff and twisted into dreadlocks. On her feet she wore plastic sandals that had seen better days. Her hands were like roots and her face was like Sonny Liston after his fight against Cassius Clay, with amber teeth and a flat nose. Her charcoal eyes looked into the distance and her head nodded to the incessant beat of the jab-jab trucks rolling slowly up and down Mainstreet, followed by gyrating partiers dressed in colourful carnival costumes.

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Animal World

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It’s been another wintry week but today the sun broke through, the air is cold and crisp and the blue sky looks freshly washed and clear. The days are getting longer and I can feel spring just around the corner. Camp, my cohort and weekly sparring partner over a couple of pints, was already in place at our usual table. Obviously business was slow at the bookstore.

“Did you know that Insects are dying at a catastrophically and unprecedented  rate,” he said as soon as I sat down.

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The Kingdom of Redondo

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We often can be found liming – that’s lounging in Caribbean speak – at Mama Joy’s beachside restaurant and bar on Paradise beach. Her establishment is a simple, open-air, planked platform with brightly coloured railings, covered by a corrugated tin roof. It features a wooden bar at one end, shuttered for the night, and a simple kitchen off to the side. It seats about 20 people on an odd collection of chairs and tables. The turquoise water laps the white beach just steps away where a couple of brightly coloured local boats are always bobbing on the gentle swell. It’s called Paradise Beach because that is what it is. We meet there to play cards, drink beer or rum punches and just hang out.

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Fairy Tales for the People

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“How was your holiday? Bring any sunshine back?  Any good stories?” Camp asked when I sat down.

“Here is some sunshine in a bottle,” I said,  handing over a bottle of Rum. “Cheaper than wine. And yes there were a few interesting stories. Looks like old man Winter came by for a visit here.”

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Island Treasures

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We spent some time on an island paradise where the most precious commodity is water and during the dry season – half the year – the most common fear is running out. The island has a desalination plant but when the government sponsored piping project failed within six months — because somebody tried to save some money by downsizing the pipe – the plant now sells and delivers water only by truck. The big houses have big cisterns, the small houses have small cisterns, mostly just black plastic tanks and they are the first to run dry. Of course the poorest people live in the smallest shacks and they don’t have money to buy water. Also the desalinated water still tastes salty and is no good to drink. And sometimes the water delivery guy is not available or off island or just doesn’t pick up the phone. People every year have to borrow and beg water from their neighbours or public places.

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Faith and Fools

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It was a wintry walk along the shore, cold and monochromatic. I spotted a couple of seals cavorting and despite the sub-zero temperature I thought once again how lucky we are to live on the Pacific west-coast , on the edge of the rain forest. The winter so far had been mild, except for the Nordic blast the past few days, which pales in comparison to the deep freeze back east and the mid-west. Minus 40 degrees is just no temperature for any living thing and neither is +40 degrees on the other side of the world where roads are melting and animals and people are dying in the furnace of Australia.

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Black Swans

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“In an interview, Karin Kneissl, Austria’s Foreign Minister, said that the horizon is full of black swans, portents of trouble and the nascent west-east split in the EU is much more troubling then Brexit,” I quoted, as I sat down with Camp who arrived at our watering hole at exactly the same time as I.

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Race to Hell

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Campbell or Camp to everybody, was already seated at our usual table, reading something on his smart phone which he quickly pocketed as soon he spotted me. We have long ago agreed that phone or screen devices do not drink or talk of their own accord and are therefore not invited to our Thirsty Thursday chin wag over a couple of pints.

I’ve just read an article in my Swiss paper that I was eager to discuss with my cohort and lost no time while the subject was still fresh in my mind.

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Cuba Revisited

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Havana is a ruinous city, like an old prostitute covered in too much makeup to hide the pain and suffering, but yet resilient and full of life. The crumbling facades of the  wedding cake villas and opulent palaces of the former sugar barons and casino moguls, of the corrupt regimes before the revolution, bear witness to the ravages of time, decay and lack of money. Sixty years of neglect, coupled with numerous hurricanes and the salty fecundity of the climate is not a recipe for a well functioning infrastructure.

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Cuban Holiday

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It’s been a mild winter so far here in Gibsons; no snow, no freeze ups, no icy roads. Mind you, winter isn’t over yet but so far so good, as the saying goes. The days are getting longer, about two minutes per day which translates into an hour per month.  Our small town is pretty well shuttered and most of the xmas decorations are coming down to be stashed for another year. I leave our gable lights up for the whole year and just unplug them.

Clare and I have been on an unusual holiday to Cuba

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War and Peace

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The holidays are over, the Christmas trees are tossed aside; some still with a forlorn strand of tinsel tangled up their spent and brown branches. The relatives have left; the empty bottles have been recycled, the Visa bill has arrived. It’s called the January blues but I feel relived and content to get on with the day without the pressure of presents that nobody needs, the overabundance of food and drink, the cards unrequited and the lugubrious outpourings by the politicians and pundits. I’m glad it’s back to normal and was looking forward to my weekly chat with my friend Campbell, or Camp as I’ve always known him.

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All or Nothing

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As I walked by our storm ravaged wharf in Granthams.  I could not avoid the fact that in over a hundred years this was the first time this dock, jutting out into the waters of Howe Sound, had taken such a beating. There were storms before, high tides and driftwood logs jamming up against the dock but never had it been battered and damaged in such a fashion. Was this part of the rising sea levels, or just a combinations of a high winter tides, fierce winds and a lot of driftwood swept loose? Yes, our dock is a disaster but it can be fixed and it’s damage pales against the Anak Krakatau eruption in the Sunda Straight, that caused a  tsunami to crash into the  coast on the islands of Sumatra and Java killing scores of unsuspecting people, including members of a rock band and their audience at a beach concert. I felt suddenly grateful for the rain and wind here and I had other things on my mind that I wanted to talk  to about with my friend Campbell – Camp  as we all call him. Continue reading →

Mariposa Intersections

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Mariposa Intersections

Bruno Huber

Mariposa Intersections is the love story of Rafael and Gabriela, two young idealists from different social strata who find themselves at opposite ends of a defining cause, which is the Mexican Utilities proposal of a nuclear power plant on Lago Patzcuaro in Michoacan, Mexico. It is also the story of a group of international individuals who, like the Monarch butterflies, are drawn together to form an organism that is bigger then the sum of its parts. Their common cause unites them for a short but intense time. Together they fight the proposed nuke plant in this historic region in the center of Mexico. It’s a universal story about the fight for the preservation of a way of life and the environment against the insatiable appetite for money, jobs and the need for electricity.

Reviews and Testimonials:

If  you’ve ever wanted to get “beyond the beach” in Mexico, then Mariposa Intersections is for you. This political action story is highstakes, provocative and absolutely current. Thought-provoking, heartfelt – a great vacation read. It weaves together the lives of people from all over the world who meet by accident and become friends and more, as they fight to protect the fragile beauty of a place they love.
—Maureen McKeon
screenwriter for award-winning TV series Street Legal, Traders, Bliss, and The Associates

Bruno Huber’s timely tale about a struggle against the development of a nuclear power plant brings together a cast of disparate international characters, but the standout is the country of Mexico itself. A deep sense of the history, the culture, the geography and present day politics underpins a story that unfolds principally in Michoacan, at beautiful Lake Patzcuaro, which the author clearly knows and loves. An enjoyable and informative read.”
—Mary Burns
Author of The Reason for Time

Paperback and eBook:

ISBN: 9781926991924 (paperback). $19.95 CDN, $17.95 USD. Available via your local bookstore, Chapters/Indigo, and Amazon.
ISBN: 9781926991931 (ebook). $9.99 CDN, $7.99 USD. Available on Amazon Kindle.

Media Related:

Reader’s Favorite article can be viewed here.

This book is now available on Amazon, on Kindle, as well as your bookstore.