Tag: Life

BC Ferries- Part 2

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

I wrote this earlier piece about the announced “rationalization” of BC Ferries, but didn’t really address the direct measures that the Minister from Kamloops proposed to solve BC Ferries’ current funding woes. So what of the solutions offered? Aside from the service cuts, what of the rest of the initiatives announced?

I used to joke that Ferries could be free if there was a bar in the back with a half dozen blackjack tables. I cannot believe they took me seriously (or maybe my cynicism once again fell short?). Frankly, I couldn’t care less about the slot machine idea, And although I agree with this opinion 100%, I have come to expect and accept moral bankruptcy and from this government, so no surprises there. The government-run exploitation of the poor through gambling genie is out of the bottle, and I hope eventiually a rational government will come along and invest a meaningful chunk of the revenue into helping those affected by the addiction, but I won’t hold me breath.

In this case, though, I have my doubts that it will generate significant revenue (or if it does, what portion of that revenue BC Ferries will actually get to keep), and only hope they are located in such a way that I don’t have to sit near them or – dear god – hear them. Although this does open up some exciting possibilities for other transportation funding projects: Golden Ears Bridge revenues a little short? Throw a few slots on the deck! Casino cars on SkyTrain? Free spin with every tap of your Compass Card?

The ending of off-peak Senior’s free rides, replacing them with a half-price fare, seems petty and ill conceived. The current “free ride” offered Senior BC residents is limited to off-peak times (i.e. Monday- to -Thursdays, no holidays) and the discount only applies for their passenger fare: seniors still have to pay full pop for their cars. So a senior driving to Victoria pays $51.25 plus tax instead of $66.75 if they travel when demand is low. That fare will now go to $59.00. Not a big change, but if you have ever seen the line-up for the early bird special at the Pantry, you know pensioners love to get the discount.

Good thing Seniors aren’t riding these off-peak seats for cheap!

Cutting this “free-ride” does little for revenue, but disincentives travel in off-peak times for those with more adaptable schedules, which further exacerbates the sometimes-empty / sometimes-stuffed Ferry problem. Further, it perpetuates the undermining of the Ferries being a vital transportation link for BC residents – especially many of the seniors who live on Gulf Islands where there are very few services. There is no hospital on Saturna, no doctor, no pharmacy. Walking on a ferry and taking the bus to Sidney is the only affordable way for seniors to get access to these services. Charging seniors $12 return (if they don’t take a car) to walk to their nearest Pharmacy seems like a shitty policy to me, and not one offset by an appreciable increase in revenue.

Just poor planning. 

The lightly- floated idea of enhanced passenger-only service sounds great to me. I rarely take a car on the Ferry, but am commonly lamenting how passengers are not treated as valued customers, but as the more inconvenient part of the car-moving business. However, before blowing the budget on special passenger-only boats, they could think about just providing some basic level of reasonable service to the pedestrians they already have.

For example, you cannot reserve a passenger ticket for the Gulf Islands. On busy long weekends, you can (and pretty much must) reserve a spot for your car, but if you want to walk on, you need to show up, line up, and take your chances. Yes, those boats do regularly sell out. Taking a stuffed-to-the-rafters 620 bus from Richmond, lining up for 40 minutes to buy a ticket (as they cannot sell them until they know how many reserved drivers show up to take their spots, nor how many passengers are in those reserved cars), then being told they sold out and you have to come back tomorrow, then being told you cannot reserve for tomorrow, but will have to roll the dice again, then waiting 30 minutes for the next 620 to show up… well, it is enough to make you want to just get it over with and lease a Hyundai.

Actual lineup for the 620. How would you like to wait in this line,
then be told at your destination you can’t have a ticket? 

But if I already lease the aforementioned Hyundai (because I am tired of rolling the dice with the the bus), I can still walk on (if there is room) and might park at the terminal, but long-term parking at Tsawwassen is now $16 per day. Paying $50 to park on a long weekend, combined with the (car-only) reservation being the only certain way on the boat, the incentives for driving right onto the boat add up pretty quick.

They don’t need special Ferries to attract more walk-on customers; they need to adjust the systems they have in place that make walking on unreliable and inconvenient. Don’t even get me started about the lack of coordination between the TransLink schedule and the Ferries Schedule at Tsawwassen.

And while I am harping on about customer service, in what other business is it OK for staff to start vacuuming around the feet of paying customers who are trying to relax? Do hotels or restaurants do this? Airlines? Movie theatres? Anyone?

Has anyone seen this anywhere BUT on a BC Ferry?

However, there are more fundamental questions that these proposals raise: where did they come from? The person whose job it is to run the Ferries “like a business” (as business groups lament it should be done) clearly did not make any of these decisions, from which routes to cut to bringing on the slots. Instead, these decisions were foisted upon him by a Minister of Transportation who makes unilateral changes to the way the corporation runs, yet refuses to take responsibility for the efficiency (or lack of) of the corporation.

It is clear from this interview of the CEO of BC Ferries that these decisions were not made by him or his Board. Much like with BC Hydro, ICBC, and TransLink, this government is making management decisions for these quasi-independent agencies, then blaming the agencies when these seemingly random, poorly thought-out, and unaccountable decisions don’t work out.

The BC Liberals are like the schoolyard bully who grabs your wrist and repeatedly smacks you with your own hand, all the time asking “why are you hitting yourself?”

Build a Playground with a click!

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Short note, as I am getting really busy planning my December off (more on that later) and working on stuff that will fill our Januaries (yikes!), but I there is something important enough going on THIS WEEK that I wanted to add my voice to those getting the word out

It is a sad sign of our priorities as a society that the Ministry of Education will not pay for playground equipment at an elementary school. I like to think it is more reflection of the kind of Government that raises rates for the electricity needed to run schools, refuses to give the schools extra money to pay those rates, then tells the School Boards to just close some schools if they can’t afford to keep the lights on, as opposed to being the sign that our community doesn’t value our kids or recognize how important exercise and unstructured play is to learning outcomes… /end rant.

Clearly our community cares, as there is a group of aroused rabble who have been moving on a campaign to get funding from an Insurance Company to buy the playground equipment that an Elementary School should have at the new Elementary School called Qayqayt Community School which is being built currently on the old St. Mary’s Hospital site.

As the Aviva Community Fund is a national program, there are several programs competing for a few funds, but the good news is that this project has already jumped several steps in voting and promotion, and is a semi-finalist. They have 8 Days to get as many votes as they can. So go there and vote. Right now. You can even vote multiple times (once a day) and every person with a different e-mail address in your house, at your work, or in your universe can vote. Every day. So you, (yes you) can probably get 100 votes here.

The local group organizing this campaign has even made it easier for you by creating a webpage link to get you straight to where you can vote:

www.vote4robson.com

Here are the instructions sent to me by Tim Mercier from the École John Robson Community, and it was easier than the 7 steps below make it look, especially if you already have a Facebook account:

To Register;

1- Go to www.vote4robson.com
2- In the top right corner of the site (inside the yellow and above the search box) find “Sign in – Register – Francais” and click on “register” to get to the registration page;
3- Connect using your Facebook account or enter your email address and create a simple password for your account. Then scroll down the page to find the yellow “Register” button and press it;
4- Aviva will send you an email (to the address you used to register) and you will then need to open the email and click on the link;
5- This will bring you back to the Aviva page. The Sign in tab is located on the top right of the page in the yellow, click on it to go to the sign in page where you will need to enter your email address and password.
6- This will take you to your account page and Dashboard, if you want to find our entry either search for ACF17525 or just go back to www.vote4robson without logging off the Aviva site and it should get you there.
7- Once you have voted once, we will be in your supported idea tab and you can find us there.

Here you go, New Westminster – time for us to do what a great community like ours does best when a few people start a good idea – support them by showing up and give a few clicks to give the kids of the Downtown neighbourhood and all of the Qayqayt catchment a place to blow off steam so they can get some fresh air, learn better, and be healthier and happier #NewNewWest Citizens.

BC Ferries review – Part 1

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

I know it isn’t really a New Westminster story, but there has been some local twitter buzz about the recently-announced changes in Ferry service, and I ride ferries a fair amount, so I have opinions… and that’s what you come here for, no?

First off, I do regularly ride the Southern Gulf Islands routes, as the NWimby-in-Law lives on the Jewel in the Strait that is Saturna Island. Saturna is the south-eastern most Gulf Island, and has a permanent population of about 350 people, although the population can swell to over 1,000 on a sunny summer long weekend. I note there is virtually no camping or hotels on Saturna; that summer swell is people fortunate enough to have “vacation property” or to have relatives or close friends on the island. The fixed population is just big enough to support a store and a pub, as long as the owners of both are more interested in serving the community than in making significant profits. It is a friendly, small community, and Beautiful.

It is also a community that will probably ostracize the hell out of me after reading the rest of this post.

Saturna is, based on all accounts from BC Ferries, one of those “Problem Runs”. To get there from Tsawwassen you take the SGI milk run to Mayne Island (“Route 9”), then switch to a Ferry bound to Swartz Bay that needs to do a little 20-km-return side trip to Saturna (“Route 9a”). The trip to Swartz Bay (“Route 5”) is a little more convenient, but still relies on the 20-km-out-and-back side route from Mayne or Pender (“Route 5a”). Saturna, even in the winter, sees no less than 25 sailings a week: 4 ferries depart from Saturna every weekday, three every weekend day. The boat is usually the Mayne Queen (70 cars and 400 passenger capacity), sometimes the slightly larger Queen of Cumberland (127 cars, 462 passengers).

It should be no surprise that these ferries are rarely full, or even close to full, in off-peak times (although they do get to overcapacity on those aforementioned sunny long weekends). During the recent route evaluations, the “Utilization Rate”* of the SGI runs are pretty low – 36% for the connection to Swartz Bay, and 43% for the link to Tsawwassen. A closer look at how the ferries are used show what that some rides are virtually empty – the first run to the Gulf Islands in the morning, and the last one back to the real world the evening, which average around 10% utilization. A simple solution, of course, would be to eliminate these two sparsely-used runs. Operational costs cut by 20% overnight! Right?

“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, clear, and wrong”-H.L.Mencken

Click to zoom in. Or go to the original source.

See, the problem is the boat needs to return to Tsawwassen or Swartz Bay at the end of the day. They cannot be over-nighted at Saturna because the ferry crews don’t live on Saturna. Also, there are no re-fuelling facilities on Saturna, or all those little mechanical, restocking, overnight maintenance things that keep the ferries running.Economies of scale keep all of those things at Tsawwassen and Swartz Bay. This creates an interesting phenomenon. If you look (for example) at the Wednesday morning Route 5 sailing to the Gulf Islands, the utilization is an abhorrent 9.2% (yes, that is 6-9 cars, on average!), but the return trip on Wednesday Morning is 91.5% utilized. That second almost-full-on-average trip cannot happen unless that first virtually-empty trip happens. The same thing happens with the last run back to Swartz at the end of the day. It is virtually empty, but facilitates an almost-full last run to the Islands.

So complexities exist, and maybe that is why it appears the Southern Gulf Islands have escaped this round of cuts to service, and not because of the Premier’s property on Galiano Island.

The local twitter-chat I got involved in last week was about another aspect of this report. Whenever anyone starts talking about BC Ferries and funding, a few futurist-engineers-in-waiting start talking about just building a bridge and getting the whole damn thing taken care of. Once and for all, build a bridge, charge a $20 toll, and problem solved. There are only two problems with this idea: a $20 toll won’t nearly cover it, and the technology required for such a bridge does not exist on planet Earth.

The BC Ministry of Transportation has a good summary of previous studies into the crossing, but if I can summarize the problems, it would fill a paragraph. The distance is too long. The shortest practical bridge would be something like 25 km long. This would not be the longest bridge in the world, but it would be more than twice the length of the Confederation bridge, and it would definitively be the longest bridge over very deep water. How deep? That is problem 2: the Strait of Georgia is more than 350 m deep, which is higher than the highest bridge piers ever constructed (and they are over land, with the deck only 2/3 of the way up!). The seabed at that depth isn’t even something you can build piers on, as there is another 400m or more of loose muddy sediments, in an earthquake zone. The depth of loose sediments (combined with the length) also makes a tunnel impossible. The best that could be hoped for is some sort of floating-foundation suspension bridge – one that would allow large ships to pass, could manage 5 meter waves, a 3 knot tidal current and 100km/h winds. No such technology exists, but it was estimated (in 1980s dollars, mind you) that such a technology could be developed and built for $8 Billion to $12 Billion, over something like 15 years. Financing it would require $200-$800 tolls, one way.

Oh, and this proposed bridge would essentially replace the two BC Ferries coastal routes that are making money, leaving most of the money-losing ones still running. So the Fixed Link is definitively not our short-term solution to Ferries costs.

That said, it might be a more rational approach to take a close look at some of the smaller islands and explore the business case for connecting them by smaller bridges to reduce the need for inter-island ferry services. I could get drummed off Saturna and banned from Mayne for suggesting this, but the aforementioned 20-km return side run by ferry could be alleviated by building about 5 km of connecting roads on relatively flat (and pristine) land and two small bridges to connect Saturna to Mayne Island. This would disrupt several people’s property (not the least the private owner of Samuel Island), and I need to emphasise that this would require a solid business case, not some random blogger’s speculation, but there may be opportunities like this to be found across the system.

I will go on in a later post about some of the actual proposals put on the table this week by the Minister of Kamloops, but for now, I have to call the NWimby-in-law and warn her about the torches and pitchforks headed her way.

*As an aside, I question whether “Utilization Rate” a good measure for the effectiveness of a transportation system. I wonder what the “Utilization Rate” of the Pattullo Bridge is, or the Massey Tunnel. What % of the time are they 100% full? An hour or two a day? But I digress.

Thanks

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 3 Comments.

I guess it would be inappropriate for me to not blog about this…

As the story says, I was honoured to be nominated, but seriously did not think I would win. I was actually offering 10:1 odds against me winning before the event, and no-one took me up on it. I did not go with a speech in hand, so I am happy that speeches were not expected. Although I am always running off at the mouth, I am not always very good at thanking people, so let’s call this the “acceptance speech” I would have delivered, getting progressively more frantic and louder as the band tries to play me off the stage so everyone can get home to their loved ones…

I have a lot of people to thank for empowering (enabling?) me to rouse so much rabble.

I need to thank the person who nominated me, both for thinking of me and for saying such kind things about me on the nomination. I don’t want to call them out personally here, as that is their thing, and they may be regretting it all now (!) but I have thanked them personally and will for some time to come. I’ll just say, they are serious community builders, and every bit as deserving of this type of honour as I am.

I also would like to thank the Chamber and the nominating/selection committee(s). I actually don’t know how the process works past the “nomination” phase, how short lists or rankings are done. I chatted with a couple of Chamber folks after the event yesterday, and they clearly wanted to preserve the anonymity of the people who make the final choice. So whomever you are, I thank you.

Of course, Ms.NWimby is always shockingly supportive (if you think reading my frequent Tweets gets annoying, imagine living in a house with them!). She is the inspiration for many of my ideas, a sounding board for my constant jabbering, and constitutes the majority of my better judgement. She also keeps the rest of my life in order so I can spend an unhealthy amount of time at meetings, researching, writing, and dreaming. All this while she maintains her own kick-ass career, volunteers for several groups, athletes the socks of people half her age, and bakes the best muffins in the world. She’s damn charming too, if you get the chance to meet her! Thanks Tig, I never forget how lucky I am.

I joked to Grant from the Newsleader that I might be the first “Digital Citizen of the Year”, because so much of my connection in the community comes from the social media and on-line world. Much of the thanks for that go to Brianna Tomkinson and Jen Arbo at Hyack Interactive. When I first started reading Tenth to the Fraser, it broadened my horizons in my adopted town, and inspired me to start doing my own blog – even if it took a couple of years to actually start blogging. Then one day Jen asked me why I wasn’t’t on Twitter, and I said – yeah! Why aren’t I on Twitter? The rest (much to James Crosty’s lament) is history.

But it’s not just about the blog and Twitter chatter, I have made numerous connections and friends through these connections. Networks were created, ideas shared, and community built. People who think that relationships built through the social media are less genuine, or do not result in a strong community, are doing it wrong. I find it amazing that I can have a backyard barbeque and new friends from up the street can come over and meet my Mom, yet feel they already know her because she comments on my blog from 600 km away. Facebook still hasn’t replaced standing in the NWEP booth at River Fest or Sapperton Day when it comes to generating interest in sustainability issues in the City, but the web presence is now as important as the interpersonal face-to-face team building. So… uh, thanks Al Gore? He invented it, right?

My first reaction on Twitter last night was to thank #NewWest, and this meant two things.

First, this City is a great place to be a rabble-rouser, because people in New West are genuinely engaged and interested, and it doesn’t take much to get them a small crowd off the couch around an issue. When TransLink holds an open house in Surrey and 10 people show up, then they get hit by 150 people in New Westminster, you know there is something special about this town. People love to talk issues and love to seek solutions. We also love to disagree, but that is all part of the conversations. I have been to more open houses and consultations in the last few years than anyone (with the likely exception of Bill Zander) and am constantly encouraged to see that the citizens of this City care about their community, and are willing to burn so much of their “spare time” helping to build it. I looked around that room last night, and there were so many people who have been putting in decades of great selfless service to the community (Bill and Lynn Radbourne, Rick Carswell, so many others!), it feels strange to get singled out…but that is the fate of the squeaky wheel. So for everyone who came to a Coal Rally or a Master Transportation Plan open house or Community Plan consultation (even those who wrote down opinions opposite of mine), thank you for being involved.

Second, this City is a great place to be a rabble-rouser because people in decision-making roles are equally willing to engage. For the most part, elected types and staff are willing to listen to new ideas, and are not afraid to take risks. Unlike some senior governments these days, it is not a struggle to get sustainability on the agenda locally. I don’t always agree with the decisions they make, but even in those times they are willing to hear an opposing viewpoint that is offered respectfully. The positive change we have seen over the last decade in this City is not an accident, it is a legacy of good decisions and good leadership. Thanks New West.

Finally, the long list of my enablers in this City include many of the NWEP folks from the early days (Andrew x 2, Matt x 2, Reena, Luc, Peter, etc.) and newer members (Karla, Ginny, Jaycee), my teammates and friends at the Royal City Curling Club, people I have served on boards with and learned so much from (Bruce, Mary, Marion, etc.), constant community organizers like Kendra, James, and (of course) Tej, and so many people that have gone from neighbour to friend to co-conspirator, I know I’m forgetting some of you, but I will thank you next time I see you!

Finally, thanks Dad for making me so opinionated, and thanks Mom for making me so loud about it. 

Now, everyone get back to work.

Back from Tripping on Roads

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

This is just another of those bookmarker posts to say I have been busy, and will be busy for a little longer, so I may not put anything up here for a few more days.

I just got back from a once-in-a-fandom trip, which involved this:

 …followed by this:

…and then some of this:

…strung together by altogether too much of this:

There are stories to tell (mostly about how everything in California is known to California to cause cancer) but right now I have to get some sleep, get back to work, and spend my next couple of evenings working on this:

Chat to you later!

Take Back our Port this Sunday

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Long time readers (Hi Mom!) know I have been occasionally critical of Port Metro Vancouver. It is funny, because I work with people from the Port on occasion, and have healthy, respectful relationship with many Port staff. The first property upon which I ever led an environmental investigation during my consulting days was a Port property. They were great to work for because of their professionalism, straight-forward communications, and high competence of their technical staff.

So why the current hate on? Why am I taking part in, and encouraging you to participate in, a Rally on Sunday in New Westminster, with the Theme “Take Back Our Port”?



You can read about it in the Newspaper, or show up to get details, but this is about accountability.

Port Metro Vancouver is, to quote their website,

“a non-shareholder, financially self-sufficient corporation, established by the Government of Canada in January 2008, pursuant to the Canada Marine Act, and accountable to the federal Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities”.

They are crown corporation who answer only to Lisa Raitt (who, like any other Conservative MP, answers only to the Prime Minister’s Office). There is no local representation of the Port, except a Board of Important Business People. They do a significant amount of public outreach, but there is no accountability to local residents in how they fulfill their mission, which is, again to quote the Website:

To lead the growth of Canada’s Pacific Gateway in a manner that enhances the well-being of Canadians

What is “Canada’s Pacific Gateway” exactly? Something to do with the Province, apparently, if you follow that link. But make no mistake, the Port doesn’t answer to the Premier, even if she leases her office space from them.

Regardless of catch phrases, the depth of the influence this unaccountable organization has on your community should concern you. A few of the hot-button issues that we talk a lot about in New Westminster point right back at the port: :

Coal: People in New West are very aware of the current proposal to introduce bulk coal exports to Surrey Fraser Docks, right across the Fraser from the Quayside. Most of you probably don’t know about the other two coal terminals in Vancouver are seeing expansion (Westshore Terminals expanded by 40% in 2012, Neptune Terminals in 2015 by 50%). With each expansion increases the number of open coal-carrying rail cars running through our neighbourhoods, increased air pollution, and increased climate impacts as we move the dirtiest fuel ever known to man. Although this expansion improves the financial bottom line of the Port, they are the agency charged with providing an “Independent” Environmental Assessment for the projects. They also make it clear that greenhouse gas impacts of their operations are not part of the assessment. GHGs are not their problem. That is the problem of the Federal Government, they say.

Trains: Train operations are dictated by Port needs. Trains are good, they are the most efficient way to move goods across land by far. If we are going to migrate our economy to a more sustainable path, trains will be a fundamental part of that economy. However, inflexibility in their operations, often dictated by Port needs, means that mitigating community impacts is difficult, and will always come in second place to logistical needs to keep things moving, as quickly as possible.

Further, impacts on the community are exacerbated by a failure to invest on rail infrastructure. The New Westminster Rail Bridge is more than 100 years old, and represents the largest goods-movement bottleneck in the region. This bridge, much like the Port, belongs to the Federal government, but there is simply no interest in replacing it. Therefore, more goods have to be moved by truck to bypass this bottleneck. Until this bottleneck is addressed, the re-alignment of the rails that run through New West cannot take place, and so we are all in a waiting pattern, hoping the rail/road conflicts will get better. Old rail infrastructure is also, like anything else, less safe infrastructure.

Trucks: Everyone in New Westminster knows we are being buried in truck traffic. The Port knows, but it frankly does not care. With the rail bottleneck, and complete disinterest from the Port in investing in short-sea shipping, containers are coming off ships at Burrard Inlet or Delta, then going on trucks, through our neighbourhoods and past our schools, to get to places like Port Kells or Port Coquitlam, to be put on trains, it’s clear moving stuff by truck is not an unfortunate consequence in our communities, it is the business plan.

This is further evidence when one looks at more recently-developed port lands, like Port-owned lands lining the north side of Queensborough and currently being filled with truck-only warehouses. Or look at the south side of Richmond, where the Port owns more than 750 Acres of waterfront land full of truck-only warehouses? These properties have something in common: no goods move on or off ships at these prime waterfront locations. Which brings us to:

Land Use: There has been an ongoing issue about the port encroaching on agricultural land, the threatening the ALR. We don’t have farmland in New Westminster, but regional food security should still concern everyone who hopes to eat for the next few decades. However, the Port is in a unique situation, where they can buy up large pieces of ALR land, which is relatively inexpensive at between $50,000 and $200,000 per acre (See Pages 28 and 29 of this report, I don’t make numbers up ) because of ALC restrictions on its use. Then, as a Federal Agency, they can, with a wave of the hand, remove the land from the ALR, and develop it for Industrial purposes. With undeveloped industrial land in the lower mainland selling for between $1,000,000 and $2,000,000 per acre, this seems like a pretty good business plan. Port puts up truck warehouses, asks the City to provide roads to service the trucks, and their financial self-sufficiency is all but assured. Good work if you can get it.

There is a strange meme being created by the current Port CEO– that an “Industrial Land Reserve” is needed to protect Port-related development. This is idiotic when viewed in the light of the equation above. Any land can be made industrial- you just need to pay the rates for that land that the market for industrial land requires. Further, once land become industrial, it can be re-purposed for other uses (see False Creek). The ALR land exists, because that is the one use that cannot be compatible with other uses- once a farm is lost to industrial development ,that land will never again be productive for traditional farming.

The current Port activity in Queensborough is a perfect model of this. High-value industrial lands were bought by the Port on the north side of Queensborough, east of the QB Bridge. Warehouses are being built to move things on and off of trucks. There is no plan whatsoever to use the waterfront location to move things on and off of boats; pier infrastructure is not even being built. The Port now owns the waterfront, and have paved it for the storage of trucks and trailers (with complete disregard to Riparian Areas protection standards or laws, which do not apply to them, because they are a Federal Agency, and with the closure of FREMP, the protection of the Fraser River riparian areas and waterfront habitat is now overseen by – you guessed it – the Port). The City’s and neighbourhood’s dreams of waterfront trails on Queensborough cannot be fulfilled because the Port will not allow a right-of-way through this same waterfront. Meanwhile, the trucks servicing these warehouses are backing up on Duncan Street and Derwent Way, creating havoc at the Howes Street intersection, and the Port is not responsible for any of the cost of improving this infrastructure. Meanwhile, the City has no say in any of this. Which brings us to…

Transportation. “Canada’s Pacific Gateway”, as mentioned above, is code for building roads and bridges. Under the guise of “goods movement”, the Port has been the main champion for spending taxpayer’s money on freeways and bridges that are out of scale for the region’s declining car use, unsustainable in their financing, and in complete contradiction to every regional transportation and land use plan created in Metro Vancouver over the last two decades. While everyone sat around for 20 years wondering where the money for Evergreen was going to come from, and while the Province floats a referendum to avoid having to make a decision about supplying enough funding the TransLink to keep the buses running, the Province has rushed ahead with $5 Billion on road expansion – from the Golden Ears Bridge (which is further crippling TransLink with debt) with the Pitt River Bridge (which is accelerating the removal of land from the ALR because of the traffic problems it has created), with the SFPR (which is a Port subsidy that destroys farm land and neighbourhoods), with the Widest Bridge in the World(tm) (which is also failing to meet its traffic targets and is looking like a long-term taxpayer pain), and now with the Tunnel Replacement to Nowhere. The Port has its fingers in every one of these decisions. They switch from consulting with the community to lobbying the Province in a flash, and then they are the agency that helps provide the Environmental Assessments for the projects. And greenhouse gasses? Someone else’s problem.

All of these issues are central to the livability of our City – of New Westminster, yet at every point, the Port’s only responsibility is to keep the money moving.

So come out to the family-friendly rally Sunday, and see how numerous people and groups feel about being kept out of the decision on how our community will develop, and how the livability of our region will be protected.

New West Doc Fest Year 3!

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

So you all know there is DocFest happening this week, right?

This is the 3rd Annual New West Doc Fest, and the big news is a move to the Landmark Cinemas at New Westminster Station. This was a fun event the last two years at Douglas College, but the move to a new, sleek, comfy, modern theatre will definitely raise the game a bit for the Fest.

There is a great variety of films this year – some probably not what you expect from a DocFest that is organized by the Green Ideas Network and the New Westminster Environmental Partners. Yeah, there are a couple that hit the topic of “sustainability” pretty hard, but there is also a 3D animated movie re-telling an Inuit legend, and a movie about what its like to stare at the back of famous people for a living!

However, what makes this event different from a night (or three) at the movies is the rest of the schedule. There will be live music and other performances each night. Most films will be preceded by a short film – like they used to do for every movie when we were kinds. And each night will have special hosts who can talk about the films that you are seeing, or the topics that were discussed in the film.

And unlike in previous years at the Doc Fest, this year there will be popcorn.

Films are $5 – $7 each, but the best deal is to buy a $20 Full Festival pass – you can see all 5 features, 4 shorts, live music, talks, and you can hang out at the Friday Night Post-Fest social at Spud Shack next door. Three nights entertainment and education for $20 is cheaper than sitting at home!

I haven’t seen any of the movies showing this year, and I ain’t much of a Movie Critic, but I want to mention three of the Docs I am most looking forward to:

The first is Blackfish. This is a film about a captured orca that lived/worked at SeaWorld, and was involved in the death of a trainer. However, that incident just sets the backdrop for a deeper analysis of the entertainment-aquarium industry, and the ethics of keeping large cetaceans in captivity strictly for entertainment purposes. This film opened at Sundance, and has been winning awards at festivals across Europe and North America (there is even some Oscar hype building), but perhaps the real impact is the media exposure that this film has generated, forcing Sea World to fight back and attempt to re-claim the message.

The second is 20 Feet from Stardom. This movie looks at the lives of singers whose work you have all heard, thought you didn’t know it. The film profiles several “back up singers” who worked with everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Stevie Wonder to the Rolling Stones, but were always 20 feet behind them. Clearly massive talents, these singers spent their careers under the lights, but in the “shadow of superstardom”. With remarkably good reviews from critics and fans (the words “universal acclaim” appear commonly in discussions of the film), this is a movie you want to see on the big screen with modern theatre sound.

Third is Bidder 70, a film about an American who went to extraordinary lengths to protect 22,000 acres of pristine wilderness in Utah. When oil and gas development rights were put up to auction on the lands adjacent to Canyonlands National Park, Tim DeChristopher first sought to prevent the auction from happening, then when the controversial auction began, he bid more than $1.8Million for the rights and won them. Not having $1.8 Million, the Federal Government had him charged with fraud and thrown in jail. The movie is about this action, but it is also about what persons in a free society do when the laws are wrong, when an accountable government threatens its own land and citizens, or when an injustice is being done by those sworn to preserve justice. It is also a personal tale about what makes a single person decide to risk their personal freedom for an idea. As we in Canada see hydrocarbon development rushing ahead at a pace that makes so many people uncomfortable, this might be the most important film of the fest to see.

Like I said, there is a great variety of films being shown, and the conversations before and after should make for a great event. The tickets are cheap because the event is run on shoestring – this is not a fundraiser for the NWEP or anyone else – but the movies are the best on the documentary circuit right now, and we are lucky to have them here in New West! It’s a great opportunity to see some interesting films with a distinct paucity explosions, Michael Bay edits, or comic book characters. Each will make you laugh and think. And besides, it starts the day after the Hyack meeting, so we will all be tired of fireworks by then…

See you there!

In which I declare my Luongo bias

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.
I have been a Canucks fan for almost as long as I remember. Actually, I remember liking the Habs as a young kid because my Dad liked the Habs and Guy Lafleur was a fast-skating hair-flying chain-smoking badass of a hockey player, even with the paisley shirts and floppy collars. 

By the time I started really watching and loving hockey, at some point between the ’82 Cup run (with King Richard and Tiger) and the ’87 Canada Cup (or the “Gretzky-Lemieux Show” as I remember it) I became a fan of the Canucks. In good times, and (much more often) in bad. The 1994 Cup run and the hiring of Mike Keenan. The West Coast Express flying, then choking by losing 6 of 8 games in April 2006 to miss the playoffs. The “sisters” winning back-to-back Art Ross Trophies to silence the critics, the same pair leading the team to 1-7 in April 2008 to miss the playoffs, again. I remember in the late 80’s once going to a pub in Vancouver where the price of a pint of beer was equal to Kirk McLean’s GAA. I have my personal list of favourite Canucks – Tiger Williams, Cliff Ronning, Esa Tikkanen (just kidding!). I love this team.


I remember when Luongo arrived with all the hype afforded one of the best goaltenders in the League. He demanded a lot of salary, but he would fill the gap the Canucks had somewhere between Dan Cloutier’s pads and over Alex Auld’s left shoulder. However, I was wary. The Canucks had a history of bringing in an overpaid superstar to finally solve all of their problems once and for all. I present for your consideration: Mark Messier. Matts Sundin. Felix Potvin. Vladimir Krutov. OMFG, we signed Vladimir Krutov.

The difference here is the Luongo performed. He was an ironman in goal. All the talk about him having “bad games” needs to be put into the light of whom he replaced: Dan Cloutier. Lou has the best record of any Canucks starting goaltender ever. More wins (233 wins in 406 games, that beats #2 Kirk McLean by 22 wins, but McLean took 516 games to do it), best Goals Against Average (2.35 vs. Cloutier’s 2.42 and McLean’s 3.28), best save Percentage (.920 vs. Cloutier’s .906), and 2 more shutouts in 406 games as McLean and Cloutier managed combined in 724 games. There is no doubt he is the best goaltender to ever wear the Orca (or the hockey rink, or the skate going down in flames).

In 2011, he led the Canucks to the Presidents Cup, won the team’s first-ever Jennings Trophy, and was the only Canucks player to show up in the Stanley Cup finals.

Yes, I said that. He was the best player on the ice in the 2011 Final series. And I stand behind it (with a hat tip to Ashley, my staff statistician).

The Canucks scored 8 goals in that 7-game series. Luongo backstopped two shutouts. Thomas got two shutouts as well, and he got the MVP for it. Unlike Boston, however, every one of the three games Vancouver won, they did so by a single goal (meaning every single save made by Luongo in those games was “game-saving”). People point out the 4-0 shellacking in game 7, but the Canucks didn’t lose game 7 by allowing the meaningless 3rd and 4th goals, they lost by not scoring a single goal in the most important game in the franchise history.

Let us not forget the other thing Luongo did in Vancouver? He won us a freaking Olympic Gold Medal. Right here in Vancouver. When Brodeur coughed up a furball, Lou stepped in, made four saves in overtime (one of them spectacular) and gave Sid the Kid a chance to be hero. I remember a couple hundred thousand of us celebrating on the streets. For that alone, Lou should never again have to pay for another beer in this town. Ever. 

20 months later, I shook my head as Vancouver “fans” booed Luongo for a lackluster performance in a meaningless mid-season game. They got on sports radio calling him a goat, they made fun of his wife. They did all this to the guy who took the Vancouver Canucks farther than any other player has, who brought a Gold Medal to this City less than a year before. Thanks for nuthin’.


Winning seasons or losing seasons, this was the first time I was embarrassed to be a Canucks Fan. (albeit, I was too young to remember this City booing Team Canada in the ’72 Summit Series).

Even during the last bizarre year- when Lou was pushed to #2, told to get ready to pack, strung along past trade deadlines and other milestones, then finally told he was not going anywhere, Lou has handled it with class, grace, and humour. When everyone was speculating about what was happening in the back  room, he remained silent and let the teams do their negotiating. When told by his team to expect a trade, he started to pack his boxes and publicly supported Schneider. When Canucks management bungled the trades, he offered to re-negotiate his contract behind closed doors, while remaining stoic and professional to the press. When everyone in Vancouver was criticizing the Schneider trade.Lou stayed out of the limelight, and let the dust settle a bit – for the good of the team and management. When the dust settled, Lou gave an extended interview, talked about the events of the summer (without laying criticism or blame on anyone), expressed his range of emotions though it all, and how he was looking forward to getting back on the ice and doing his job.

I cannot imagine an athlete acting more professional over such a difficult year than Luongo has, especially in a sport market where idiots like Tony Gallagher write tripe like this.

So for all those who were hoping for a trade; those foisting Schneider onto a pedestal from which you would have eventually shoved him? Get over it. Schneider is an excellent goaltender, may become a great one, and I am happy he was able to develop his skills here in Vancouver. However Lou is here, and I hope for a long time. I also hope when he skates onto home ice on October 5 against the team that swept them out of the Playoffs last year, the fans in Vancouver give him a standing ovation. For winning a Gold Medal in that building, for taking the Canucks to Game 7, and for being the best goaltender the Canucks have ever had. And for giving us fans this moment:

Rest assured, in a few more years, we will be lifting #1 to the rafters. 

Too Busy to Blog

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

Sorry, long time fans and first time listeners. I’m just too busy these days to write much here. I have many things on my mind, and several half-written blog posts, but I just don’t have the time these days to get the words down.

What am I doing?

Some NWEP stuff – there are some events coming up, and we are a little short on volunteer help right now.
[p.s. if you have some time and energy and need some environmental karma points to earn, drop by that site and contact us to sign up for helping out!]

Quite a bit of RCCC stuff – lots of off-season projects to get completed before the ice returns in September. [p.s. if you own a business in New West and might want to advertise at the RCCC, get in touch with me soon!]

A fair amount of time is being spent here:

Some time managing these:

Some quality time doing things like this:

And a fair amount of time doing this:

and still setting a little time aside to spend on the more important stuff:

So light blogging anticipated for August. Please, talk amongst yourselves, and keep in touch!  

BLOC – Calling a spade a spade

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

So I’m on my regular commute home yesterday, and find my bike lane blocked by a parked Tow Truck. It is not all that unusual to have cars parked in bike lanes; there were actually three on my route home yesterday alone.

Most of the time, I just occupy the driving lane (when safe) and mutter under my breath. If the vehicle is a little dusty, I might stop and write “don’t park in bike lanes” with my finger on the back window. Very occasionally, I stop and snap a picture, thinking it might end up on my blog at some point. The Tow Truck was near a “no stopping” sign, and right on top of the bike route decal, and was blocking the entire lane, and I thought – what the hell, I have my camera right here.

As I stop in front of the truck and frame the picture, a guy sitting on the porch of the adjacent house asks me what I’m doing.

“Some asshole parked in the Bike Lane,” I said. “I’m taking a picture”.

He replies, “That’s my truck.”

I turn slowly towards him, shrug my shoulders in a way that I hope imparted the “you called it, not me” impression. Snapped my photo, got on my bike and rode away.

He shouted something after me, I’m not sure what.

It was a good day.