Everybody and their dog heard by now about the BC governments report on money laundering. I asked my friend Camp about it but he seemed to be a tad distracted because he looked out at the harbour for a moment before he sat down at our usual table on the still sunny veranda, just steps away from the pebble beach.
It has been a stellar week as far as the weather goes. Not a drop of rain and balmy warm days. It stays light until 9 o’clock and all the flowers and birds are in full spring mode. I rejoice and luxuriate in my good fortune. I’m doing all right but is the rest of the world doing fine? My friend Camp, who is much more cynical than I, doesn’t think so. He believes we’re doomed to failure because we’re too successful as a species and instead of living in harmony with nature we are abusing nature’s finite resources through over consumption and thereby putting us all in peril.
Camp is back and looking relaxed and he had some extra zip in his step. ‘How was the road trip?’ I asked, as he sat down.
‘Fantastic country,’ Camp said, ‘this province is such an awesome place. We went from an urban environment into rugged park land, then across the Okanagan desert up into pine forests, along the pristine Kootenay lakes and rivers, rimmed by snow capped mountains. Most importantly we had time to talk.’
‘Sounds wonderful,’ I said. ‘Better then yoga and beer. Well I’m for one am glad you’re back. As you know the world kept turning in your absence.’
Camp is away with Muriel this week on a road trip to the interior. I’ve volunteered to shop-sit the bookstore for him, since after Easter it’s a pretty slow time of year. I actually enjoy it and get to chat to all kinds of interesting customers. And I get to sit and read for hours while at the same time feeling useful and engaged. Not such a bad life. The bills and ads I just file away for Camp to deal with.
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.
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.’
‘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.’
‘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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
Bruno's point of view 