TO CHILKO AND BACK Getting to Know Beautiful British Columbia

Chilko Lake beckoned seductively via Ts’yl-os Provincial Park as we sat in front of the television set. Boy, did it cast its spell over us. We both knew we had to go there and it wasn’t long before we packed ourselves up and set out.

Our first stop en route to our destination was Hell’s Gate in the Fraser Canyon. In 1808 Simon Fraser, the explorer who discovered the Fraser River, described this narrow passage as ‘an awesome gorge – the mouth of hell’ and indeed that’s what it looks like. The rock walls of the Fraser River on either side plunging down towards each other forcing the waters through a passage way only 110 feet wide. Apparently, at certain times of the year, a greater volume of water goes through the narrow gorge that is Hell’s Gate, than goes over the Niagara Falls! After looking down at the seething, boiling water, I can believe that fact to be so. Leaving Hell’s gate we continued to travel north and finally reached Williams Lake at about 7:30 p.m. and decided to find a bed there for the night.

The distances and scenery of this province are mind boggling. We had already travelled 338 miles from Vancouver to Williams Lake through lush valleys, wild mountainous scenery and through rocky, barren and desert-like vistas. It just seemed to go on and on. As the crow flies, Chilko is only 150 miles from our home, but we had travel all this way just to get to the Chilko Lake area!

From Williams Lake, the road was good, much better than I expected - a hardtop highway with gravel shoulders. With a short coffee break and lunch thrown in, it took about three hours to reach the final turn off for Chilko River Lodge. It was then I discovered to my horror that we were going to travel the remaining 50 kilometers on an gravel road. Thank goodness for the jeep. The journey was devoid of any signs of habitation or people which created for us the sense of being the only people on the planet! When we did eventually arrive at Chilko River Lodge, a warm greeting by the owners of the lodge immediately nullified our sense of desolation

As it was early June and a tad on the cool side, our hosts soon had the Yukon stove in our cabin rocking on its feet, and a barbecue on the go outside for our meal of steak which we proposed to cook. When we read the lodge brochure and noted that there was a barbecue outside each cabin, my mind ran to a sort of modified Canadian Tire barbecue, metal black with drop down working space on either side. Not a bit of it, this barbecue was much simpler!

A ring of stones marked the spot out of which arose a teepee-like creation of metal rods, held in place by a triangular metal bracket at the top. Attached to this bracket was what looked like a painted, old fashioned lavatory chain (it was, of course, your everyday chain you buy at the hardware store). The other end of this chain was secured to a metal ring surrounding one of the metal rods, thus allowing for height adjustment of the grill suspended by three wires above the stone ring. Never having seen one of these barbecues before, I was somewhat dubious as to its capabilities. I needn’t have worried; the steak was ‘par excellence’ and tasted absolutely delicious.

After dark, we retired to a cabin bathed in gaslight and we could almost believe we were back in Victorian times. There were books, cards and crosswords provided to amuse us if we so wished and it was a blessing to be without deadlines to meet and especially no telephone! We settled down to read in front of the Yukon stove with two gaslights providing illumination. Here, it was bliss.

To be continued………….

Strangers at the Ferry Terminal

I only intended to take two weeks holiday but sadly, the often talked about Rufus dog went to sleep permanently, so my break turned out to be much longer than planned! Now I must really play catch-up.

To open on a happier note – something nice that happens when you least expect it. I was coming home last week on the ferry from Vancouver to Vancouver Island and completely forgetting that Friday was not the day to travel on the ferry (line-ups galore), I raced for the 3:00 p.m. sailing from Horseshoe Bay (Vancouver). It was full.

Grumbling about the frustration of it all, I drove slowly into a holding area to await repositioning for the next sailing. Two hours to kill, sitting in the car at the ferry terminal – definitely not my choice. As I was sitting there, I began to have a coughing fit – and I mean a real coughing fit, to the point where I felt I was going to be sick. I had no lozenges, no water, no candies – nothing that would assuage that miserable needle-like jab at the back of the throat which demanded I cough to get rid of it.

Suddenly, the door of the van in front of me opened; I tried to catch the eye of the driver as he got out. No luck. Fortunately, it was not long before he re-appeared and I waved to him. Just as I was getting out of the car to meet him he was there, and I explained my plight.

“Sorry to bother you,” I said, trying to suppress yet another cough, “but do you have any candies or anything to help my cough?”

“Nothing,” he replied sympathetically, ‘but wait a minute, we do have some chocolate coated almonds – I don’t know if those would be any good to you?”

I could have hugged him.

“That will be just fine,” I replied with grateful thanks. He returned to the car and came back with the candy bag out of which I helped myself to three almonds. As he was returning to his car, he was beckoned yet a second time by the driver parked on my right, just ahead of me. Returning to speak to me, he suggested that the driver of that car may be able to help me further.

It turned out that driver number two had some orange juice and he went diving into the trunk of the car to retrieve it, while I admired the two dogs who occupied the back seat.

“You really have saved my day,” I said to the driver as he returned with the juice, “thank you so very much.”

He was all smiles, I was all smiles and the driver of car number one was all smiles.

How nice strangers are in your hour of need. I certainly won’t forget that incident.

Vacation Time

Just a short note to let you know that I am on holiday. Back in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, browse through past posts and enjoy. When I start posting again, there will be more of Travels with Verna and Jean, plus a variety of other subjects.

Thanks for you support and take care.

The Old Biddy

Book Review: The Shack by Wm. Paul Young

Having noted one Saturday, reading the Globe and Mail best seller list, that The Shack had been a best seller for 60 weeks, I was persuaded to go to the Net to see what all the fuss was about.

There appeared to be hundreds of reviews of this book, but I just stuck with the story outline and decided it was definitely worth a read; went to Coles, purchased said book and started to read. What a book. I just couldn’t put it down.

The author gives us a story that is not shrouded in biblical allegory, but a simple and easy to understand presentation of love. Basically, the story line is about a man called Mack, who has an encounter with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit; but what an encounter. It challenged my long held views and opinions. It is funny, tragic, moving, amusing, spellbinding, sad and whatever other adjective might come to mind. It is the Holy Trinity as I had never imagined it to be. It is written for the people of today. It is family, it is power, it is understanding and above all, it is about love for everyone on this earth. It is about the kind of love that binds us all together and, if allowed to surface in people, would make the world a much better place.

It gives us an idea of how and why God makes all his decisions. The most revealing fact is that he does not make decisions for us and for the rest of humanity; that is up to us. Events happen in our lives not because God wants them to happen, or because it is going to serve a purpose for Him or because it is His will. They happen because there is evil which affects everyone. It is human beings seeking their own kind of power and independence. God is left to pick up the pieces and in His Grace he does pick up those pieces.

This is a powerful story which really makes you think, and I love stories that make me think. As I was reading, I could put myself in Mack’s shoes with all his pent up anger, negativity, loss, waffling beliefs and pain, ready to blame God for the tragedy he has suffered and the anger and pain it produced.

The book, of course, is a fictional story, but it could quite easily be very real for every one of us battling with the uncertainty of this life. The attraction of this story is that everyone can equate with the central character. We all have problems in our lives, and in this book, Mack is able to share his with God directly.

There were, in fact, many negative reviews of this book like, ‘manipulative tripe’ ‘boring’, ‘not my kind of book’, ‘same old, same old’, ‘poorly written’. After reading some of these it is revealed that the reviewers didn’t even finish the book. Why write a review when you don’t read the book? One of the many positive reviews noted that if anyone had grappled with the concept of God, they should read this book. Amen.

I am ready to start reading this story again, so that I can fully understand all the wisdom imparted and the vision of eternity we can expect.

I can only say, buy the book or borrow the book, read it and form your own opinion. Your life will feel richer for having read it.

The Old Biddy

Forget Me Not!

“Come on, teatimes,” I called to Rufus, after giving his food a final stir. I sailed into the dining room and put his bowl on the table. I called again.

“Come-on, tea times”.

Why was Rufus sitting in the kitchen with a puzzled look on his face.

“Ouch,” I said to myself, picked up the bowl, and backtracked to the kitchen, putting the bowl down on ‘his’ table. No wonder the poor dog looked confused.

On another occasion, I was wrapping up the leftovers to go into the frig. Where did they end up, in the bathroom. How, oh how, could I be so stupid.

Really, these senior moments are becoming all too frequent.

It was changing sheets day and I was going to put the set of pink sheets on the bed. Trouble is, I didn’t know where the pink sheets could be found. They were not in the linen closet and I checked out the linen closet downstairs which revealed nothing. Perhaps I had put them in one of the drawers in the spare bedroom downstairs – remote, but possible - no, they were not there. In desperation I looked into the semi storage room, just in case. There was no sign of any pink sheets.

I was getting myself really worked up about these bed linens. After all, a pair of sheets and pillow cases didn’t just walk out of the house. The more I fussed, the worse the situation became. Finally, I asked my husband, somewhat tersely, if he had seen the pink sheets.

“Yes”, he said, “they’re on the bed.”

Apart from these bizarre trivialities that arrive more frequently as we grow older, there are the more delinquent problems that affect our sense of comfort. For example, going out without our teeth (partial plate) because we completely forgot about it; thus causing some whistling sounds through the teeth that are not there as we speak. There is also the most embarrassing gap in our teeth when we let our guard down and actually smile broadly

The car keys and our inability to remember where we put them can cause some screaming, and swearing; especially when we are in a hurry to go out and they are nowhere to be found and we have an appointment or deadline to meet.

Finally, there are spectacles. For most of my life I have been short-sighted and was never able to see much beyond the end of my nose without glasses, which I wore all the time. On becoming bi-focal, I took the glasses off when I wanted to read, or look at something close, but they were never far from me.

This last year I had cataracts in both eyes removed. It was such a glorious feeling to see clearly into the far distance again; I felt liberated. I knew before the operation that I would have to wear glasses for reading, but had temporarily forgotten about this on a shopping spree shortly after my last operation.

I went to buy some clothes and no matter how hard I tried to decipher the price and size tag, nothing less than putting the garment on the floor, and then zooming in on it until I could see would suffice.

This incident precipitated a furious round of activity to equip myself with reading glasses to be placed strategically around the house. Not for me glasses on a chain around my neck. If anything dates you it was specs on a chain around your neck. I did try, but the glasses either slipped out of the chain holders or I caught the chain on something and it broke.

I now have glasses in the den, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, lounge, dining room and handbag. Yet still, I walk from room to room carrying or wearing the specs and then leaving them in the destination room. When I return to the original room and can’t find them all hell breaks loose and my blood pressure shoots way up high.

So life goes on, and does ‘forget me not’ get any better – no, I don’t think so. It goes with the territory and we have to devise a plan. I’ll let you know when I have one.

The Old Biddy

Greyhound

“What are these people going to do when the Olympics arrive?” asked the bewildered American gentleman (from New York) with a hint of humour.

The American was behind me in a line-up waiting to buy a ticket for a bus trip. We were two of the twenty or so people lined up at the Greyhound desk at the Vancouver Bus Terminus. There were two agents selling tickets and each ticket sale took anywhere from a couple of minutes to sometimes ten minutes, depending upon the customer’s command of the English language and the complexity of the journey being undertaken, re: connections, etc. Seeing my frustration, my daughter-in-law offered to take my place at the end of the line up, while I enjoyed time with my granddaughter.

Just before she and I changed places, one of the two agents put the ‘ closed’ announcement in front of his wicket and disappeared. After watching this scenario from a distance I couldn’t stand it any longer and went to speak to the remaining ticket agent after one passenger had finished at the wicket. I asked why there was only one person to serve 20 + people who it appeared may, or may not, catch their respective buses given the snail’s pace processing of the passengers. The agent was obviously a junior and had little experience in dealing with this old battleaxe who bore down on him to question Greyhound’s agent efficacy.

I won’t go into the details of my conversation with him especially after I was told that agents were entitled to their breaks!
“What breaks?” I demanded, “when 20+ people are waiting to buy tickets, hoping to catch their bus?”

Returning to my American friend just behind me, he asked what I recognized as a realistic question. He assured me that the attitude in the bus station was indicative of the attitude throughout British Columbia. Customer care and satisfaction by most businesses, especially Greyhound, was laid back and casual.

He noted that there were no express ticket machines where people could insert a credit card, select their destination and buy a ticket. This is unbelievable when you can go to a hugely busy international airport like Vancouver and purchase a ticket from a machine to practically anywhere in the world. You can even shop by machine in a grocery store, but certainly not with Greyhound – no way!

The one group of people I exclude from any criticism of Greyhound, is their drivers. They are excellent. However, there are many things Greyhound can do to improve their customer service in the terminus. Leaving the unions and their coffee breaks out of it would be a good start.

What, I ask, are the paying customers going to do when they want to go to Whistler by bus in 2010? I think Greyhound and the B.C. Olympic Games Organizers, need to take this kind of ‘outstanding lack of service’ by a national carrier, into account.

If this happens in Vancouver, how are customers going to cope with other bus services in British Columbia who plan to serve the Olympics?

P.S. Quite a part from alternative methods of staffing which would solve customer problems, there is a small matter of common sense. Of course people deserve their breaks, but can’t common sense prevail with these individuals? Can’t they plan their breaks after the line-ups diminish? Or does Greyhound not have a Common Sense 101 course?


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A Different Kind of Holiday - to Newfie Land

A recent vacation to Newfoundland saw us arriving very early a.m. into Port Aux Basques on the overnight car ferry from Cape Breton.

What a contrast to the UK – we actually saw vast amounts of space around us (once we had cleared the ferry terminal that is). In the UK there’s hardly any space left!

There were signposts on the highway talking of places many hundreds of kilometres away; we rarely get beyond double figures in England, otherwise we would end up driving into the sea.

To cap it all, somewhere en route to Gander we came to a sign saying “Mooseburgers, 63 Km”! Either they were a long way off, or they were mighty big burgers, we mused to ourselves.

Unfortunately, there are so few primary places to visit. Each day in our respective B&Bs, everyone we talked with was either going to, or had been to, the same place(s). We were arriving at places hundreds of Kms away knowing what was on the menu.

A competition began over one breakfast as to whom had seen the most moose in NFL so far. Some people from central Canada won the game, but we suspected they weren’t the kind of guys to be beaten and that they were counting sightings from earlier visits too in order to score maximum points. We lost because we’d only encountered two by that stage, and the “winner” had amoosed 27! No contest.

Then there were the highway re-construction zones, or road works as we call them in England; armies of people and machinery blitzing the landscape, a scene from Thunderbirds. If they did projects that size on UK roads, the country would seize up and everyone would cry off work (even more than usual). We don’t even have machinery that big at home. For example, we still de-ice aircraft with a thumb over the end of a hose to make it squirt a bit faster!

The guide books said there was no fruit available in NFL – but we found the world’s most expensive banana at Deer Lake and had to cash in an extra Amex cheque to purchase same. We tried to make the banana last three days, but it wasn’t too good after twelve hours, even after using full aircon in the car and lodging the banana by one of the air vents. Anything more than stage two on the fan started to break up the fruit.

Fantastic accent the natives of NFL have; and such warm people too, but we couldn’t understand what the true locals were saying so heaven alone knows what we’ve said yes or no to during the conversations! I keep looking at my credit card statements just in case we inadvertently bought a house or something. We did manage to extract the word “partridgeberry” from the experience. This, to a UK national, conjures up imaginative pictures of preserves adorned with feathers plus a wary eye looking forlornly out at you from a jam jar. Weird! Reminded me of a sign on the back of a car I once saw – “Preserve wildlife, pickle a squirrel”.

One could go on for ever – NFL was perhaps the most “different” place we have ever visited and a return trip would definitely be considered. Twillingate, in particular, was charming providing icebergs and wildlife in abundance; the only place we’ve been to where the term “moving house” means loading your large chalet onto a raft and taking it to the other side of the bay.

Now that says it all!

David F,
England.