A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

A century of caring for B.C. parks - until now The B.C. parks system marked its 100 th birthday this spring. So how are things going? As an enthusiastic camper, I can attest that the campsites are still lovely, the scenery amazing, and the pit toilets tolerable. By the numbers, though, I think British Columbians have cause to be a little concerned. It’s been a hard 10 years for BC Parks. Park operations were among the first to be targeted for cuts by former premier Gordon Campbell, whose government closed campgrounds, scrapped forest-reserve sites, dumped interpretative programs and jacked up user fees soon after taking office. Visits fell by almost four million the year after the 2002 cuts. They’ve never fully recovered, and took another turn for the worse this past year. Some 19.2 million people visited a B.C. park in 2010-11. That’s down a million from the previous year, and not even close to the 25 million visitors of the mid-1990s. Satisfaction ratings are slipping as well, f...

If families are first, who's second? My TC colleague Dave Obee usually writes about history when he's not writing editorials for the paper, but I think I like him best when he gets a little edgy and sarcastic, as he does in today's amusing (and dead-on) riff on Premier Christy Clark's "Families First" slogan. 

Add  R&B singer Amy Winehouse to the infamous 27 Club  - she was found dead today in London . What a loss - love that woman's voice and musical style. But some people just have too big a monkey on their back, and I always got the impression that Winehouse's was gorilla-size. 

Yes, kids, Grandma does drugs There’s no planning for an event like Grandma’s Big Talk On Drugs, but I’ve been waiting for the opportunity for a while now as my oldest grandchildren close in on the teen years. The chance came on Monday, while I was driving four of my five grandsons home to the Comox Valley after a couple weeks of Island travel and camping. The oldest two are 11 and 12, and well familiar with kids not much older than them using alcohol and illegal drugs.  I knew there’d be a moment one day soon when I could jump in with a word or two on the subject. I don’t know how it came up - not at my behest, that’s for sure, because the only hope you’ve got of getting a fledgling adolescent to hear you is if you wait for them to bring something up. At any rate, one of the boys said something about drug use, and all of a sudden the door opened. As was the case when I was their age, my two oldest grandsons are surrounded by people who drink and use illegal drugs....

How are we doing in B.C. now that government is fixated on getting rock-bottom prices from the private sector for contract work? Not so good, apparently, as these immigrants hung out to dry have found out after being exploited and then stiffed by a silviculture company hired by the province. This one won't turn out to be such a "deal" for taxpayers by the time lost wages and seriously substandard work standards are accounted for. Have to wonder how it's worked out for the new forest these guys were supposed to be planting, too. 

Two weeks of camping are now behind me, and the hordes of grandsons that I seem to have accumulated (OK, five, but they've got big energy) have made their way back to their respective homes. And isn't it just like the sun to start shining on the very day that I return to my work. But I've promised myself to quit griping about the bad weather - it's tedious, I'm sure. I've got a new project, to write a daily haiku as a way of detailing some aspect of each day, and am determined to find the "poetry" in life's simple moments for at least as long as I manage to stick to this new discipline of haiku journalling. Here's the link to the site , should you want to take a look. I wouldn't call it art, but hey, it's authentic.

Keep the wrinkles I watched part of “Burlesque” the other night on TV. The movie was quite awful, but never mind - the really terrible part was seeing what beautiful wild-child Cher has done to herself. With my aging face looking back at me every morning from the mirror, I completely get the pull of cosmetic surgery. A tuck here, a lift there - would that be so wrong? Fortunately, Cher and a long line of other celebrity beauties who have tried to stave off aging are out there to remind me of the enormous price to be paid for giving up your real face. I’m as susceptible to wildly overpriced potions as the next person when it comes to promises of firmer skin, fewer wrinkles, more lustre or less droop. I don’t pass judgment on any woman for the crazy things she may try in an attempt to stop a completely unstoppable process. But cosmetic surgery - that’s just not going to be my thing. And I’m thankful to the celebrities for helping me see that. As much as I hate the aging process, I know ...

High government salaries create divide  Working ourselves up over the salaries of senior government employees and politicians is something of a tradition in B.C. What surprises me is how little the lather ever leads to. The Vancouver Sun recently updated its excellent database listing B.C.’s highest paid civil servants, and the statistics highlight a worrying situation we’ve created in this province by paying corporate-level salaries to government employees. Hundreds of people working for taxpayer-funded government bodies in B.C. now earn salaries of $200,000 or more. The last decade has seen nothing but big, big growth in pay, pensons, benefits and severance packages for government managers. While average British Columbians have seen their weekly wages inch up a total of 26 per cent since 2001, to $830 a week, senior government managers - in provincial offices, Crown corporations, health services, school districts, universities - have in many cases seen their salaries double in t...

I'm on vacation for a couple of weeks, and will return   to regular blogging in the week of July 18. In the meantime, I write a column every Friday in the Times Colonist and have left some behind in my absence to run on July 8 and 15 - you'll find them here. 

That something weird is going on with our weather ought to be clear by now, on this July 1 morning that feels more like, what, March? Not exactly what comes to mind when you hear "global warming," but a definite signal that things just aren't like they used to be. The 2010 State of the Climate report underlines that in a very worrying way. Here's a link to a Nunavut newspaper  article that highlights the report's findings, with a link to the report itself at the bottom of the story.