On the topic...

This is a response to a three day run in the Globe and Mail (popular in Canada)... In Bryce's words;

 "It started last week with an editorial on Saturday Nov 14 - The Way Forward With Canada's Maple Crown, suggesting changes in the constitutional arrangements surrounding the Monarchy in Canada (new ways of electing, rather than having the Prime Minister appoint, the Governor General).  John Fraser, Master of Massey College, U of Toronto, was horrified that anything might change (Letter, Nov 16).  The Globe assumed that Canadians were either indifferent to the Monarchy (the majority) or, like Fraser, strongly supportive of it (a minority).  I wanted to point out that there is a third group, of which I am part.   I believe that the Monarchy in Canada will eventually wither away and become irrelevant, but I'd like to see it gone."

November 19, 2009

Pouring with rain and blowing hard. We found a very large mushroom growing near our compost pile.
I identified it as Chlorophyllum brunneum, a nice edible that used to be called Lepiota rachodes.
However, there is a rather nasty poisonous species called Chlorophyllum molybdites that looks almost exactly the same.So I had to do a spore print. The poisonous one has greenish spores, the edible one has white spores;
Fortunately, the spore print turned out to be white, so we enjoyed the mushroom with dinner (How's that for living on the edge?) Then I had to go to Trey's first swimming lesson at our new local pool (we couldn't get him out of the water afterward). This entailed some sacrifice for me, because I had been scheduled to attend a lecture about the salmon crisis on the west coast. Now I'll have to scrounge around among acquaintances to find out what was said.  Our resident killer whales eat mostly salmon (not seals as the transients do) so poor salmon returns are really bad for them, and for the bears.

On the bright side, the local Orca pods have just had two new babies.  Let's hope they don't starve to death.
I am not sure whether the steep decline in salmon returns is due to overfishing or to unknown events out in the ocean, and would like an informed opinion.  Will pass on what I learn.

November 20, 2009

Almost a week since I returned from Virginia, and the three grandkids were due for dinner around six.
So while there was still no-one around in the afternoon, I went out for a row. The sea was quite calm, and I saw our local seal. But while I was out in the middle of the bay, I noticed that the crab boats were all headed for harbour as fast as they could go. And a great black cloud (and I mean black) was moving in from the south. I could see the curtain of rain over the peninsula, so I headed for shore. I had just got the boat onto the cable and started to wind it up, when the storm hit with tropical force. Lightning, thunder, the works. I was surprised, because this hardly ever happens where we live.

But I abandoned the boat half way up the ramp and took refuge in the house until it was over (around 6 pm, I mean 18h00) This reminded us of the spectacular thunderstorms we used to get in Ontario, and our friend across the peninsula told me they had a hailstorm as well. So perhaps climate change really is coming...Further up the Island, wherever rivers flow into the sea, they had major flooding, Lots of houses in Duncan and Comox were inundated, and roads closed. Tofino, on the west coast of the Island had 300 mm of rain - that's a foot - in two days,so the 25 mm of water we had in our garage seemed hardly worth mentioning.

Cheers!