Thoughts on BC Politics and More

Maple Ridge, BC ... 1948 I thank God for the efforts of local museums where archival photographic postings of old barns, small town scenes and community halls help preserve memories of these things and other fast disappearing rural countryside features. The poignant thing about many of these photos and documents is how deeply they emphasize the demise of Maple Ridge's as a rural, pastoral paradise. The destructive nature of urban sprawl began decades ago, and is now fully evident as small family farms give way to single family small lot residential subdivisions, and the town core closely resembles any other town where city councils have lusted after growth. The open fields, big old farmhouses, cow barns and small garden plots that once dominated Maple Ridge's rural landscape, have been supplanted by scattered, poorly planned and even more poorly serviced subdivisions. The official community plan of the 1980s, which was supposed to safeguard against the loss of qua...

Sandy Macdougall (aka the Sidewinder), who hails from Maple Ridge, has penned his last piece for me to run, prior to the election.   Think your vote doesn't count, or isn't important?   Read on to see why even a fraction of the people who don't vote, because it won't make any difference ... read on:   Edmund Burke; Irish statesman born in Dublin, was an author, orator, political theorist, and philosopher. Edmund Burke, the eighteenth century Irish philosopher, once said, “ The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing .” I disagree. May 9 , is provincial election day in British Columbia and, if past records are any indication, the big winner will probably be voter apathy where so-called 'good men' will sit idly by, letting others cast their ballots and make important decisions for them. Probably forty per cent of the eligible voters in either of our local provincial ridings will not p...

Like many other old guys, nowadays I find my mind more frequently drifting down nosta lgic paths to those good old days when things were simpler and life for most of us was more fulfilling. It leads me to wonder if we, as an urban civilization, are evolving or devolving. Maple Ridge -- photo from years gone by Not that many decades ago, life out here in the suburbs meant that families with three kids probably lived in an affordable 1,200 square-foot, three-bedroom home with an unfinished basement on a large lot. I think it's an important distinction that we called it home, not just a place where we lived.   Some families called the same house their home for several generations without any need to build a bigger house. As property values increased insanely, and more families were forced through economics and other circumstances to live in townhouses or apartments, fewer and fewer people thought of them as homes. It became just a place where they all lived bu...