by George Le Masurier | Jan 27, 2015
Dave Hardy, in Cumberland
I bought a house and moved my family from Comox to Cumberland in the late 1970s. The village had become an enclave for a new wave of artists emerging from the newly formed Comox Valley Arts Alliance, and others in search of affordable housing.
One of the first people I met there was a commercial fisher named Dave Hardy. He had a trawler moored at the Government Wharf in Comox (I can’t remember the name of his boat) and worked local waters. He was a kind person. When my father visited from Minnesota, Dave offered to take him on as deckhand for a day. It was an experience my dad talked about for years.
I walked by Dave’s house one late-summer day and found him working on an enormous pile of logs in his yard. He heated his house with wood, as did many in Cumberland. The way he trimmed his beard always made me think of Abe Lincoln, but better looking and living the west coast lifestyle.
Decafnation | Jan. 27, 2017
by George Le Masurier | Jan 21, 2015
And you thought Trump’s inaugural speech was weird?
Incoming vice-president Andrew Johnson — ill with typhoid and probably still drunk from consuming the medicine of the day, whiskey — game a rambling speech in 1865 that bragged about crushing the Confederate rebels while President Abraham Lincoln sat horrified and speechless.
Ulysses S. Grant brought festive-looking canaries to his inauguration, oblivious of the -26C temperatures. About 100 of the birds froze to death. Richard Nixon didn’t do well with birds either. He had a toxic bird repellant misted over the parade route to avoid untimely droppings. Instead, the route was littered with dead pigeons.
And finally, William Henry Harrison gave the longest inaugural speech on record, more than 8,000 words, on a cold, rainy day. He caught pneumonia and died a month later.
What’s going on up in Cumberland?
Courtenay and Comox water system users issued another boil water advisory this week due to high turbidity in Comox Lake, its single source of water. The advisory warns that silt flowing into Comox Lake may negate the system’s disinfection process.
The primarily root cause, however, is the Village of Cumberland’s outdated dam water system, which allows excess flows into Perseverance Creek and causes the turbidity in the lake. Because Cumberland hasn’t fixed its antiquated dams, users of the water system are going to have to pay more than $100 million to install a new water filtration plant.
Meanwhile, Cumberland’s sewage treatment system continues to pollute waterways that flow into the Trent River and into Baynes Sound through the Trent River estuary. The village opted out of sewerage system planning with the Comox Valley Regional District, insisting beyond hope that it can secure funding to build it’s own treatment plant and discharge system.
Feels like Cumberland only wants to be part of the Comox Valley when they benefit exclusively.
Christy Clark Liberals wasted $2.6 million on lawyers
The B.C. Liberals spent $2.6 million on legal fees to defend Christy Clark’s unlawful legislation that attempted to prevent teachers from bargaining class size and support staff rules. But after 15 years in the courts, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in favor of the teachers. That money could have funded the hiring of 57 new teachers, or almost one extra teacher for eache of the province’s 60 school districts.
