Summer's End

Tuesday 8th

Time for a nap - just look at those claws!

The first weekend in September is the long Labour Day weekend which signals the end of summer holidays. Kids go back to school over the coming week. Yippee!😀

It also means the end of the BC Ferries unreliable hourly summer schedule, dropping to an even less reliable two hourly fall and winter schedule. It assumes the ferries are working.

Saturday August 29th both ferries 'went tech' resulting in cancelled sailings and passengers enjoying a 4-hour+ wait to get to where they were going. Fortunately we weren't travelling that weekend.

Wildfires & Weather

A number of friends in the UK have got in touch to ask if we have been affected by BC wildfires this summer. The short answer is no, thank goodness! At the start of our road trip at the beginning of July, the Icefield Parkway (in Alberta) was socked in smoke, but that has been it.

Catastrophic though it has been for those affected, the season was not as bad as 2023. To date, BC has seen 1365 wildfires (135 still active) in 2026. Of BC's total land mass of 95mil hectares, 426,000 hectares have been destroyed, around 0.4%. An area slightly smaller than Norfolk. Just over half of BC's landmass is forested at 55-60mil hectares.

As we neared the end of our road trip, we both remarked how green Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast still were. In past years, lawns and roadside verges have been parched by mid July. Not this year. Moderate rainfall throughout the summer in the coastal temperate rainforest belt (Sunshine Coast and Vancouver Island) have kept things green. Unusually the Coast has not progressed beyond stage 2 water restrictions, which means fixed days and times for watering the garden, though no watering of lawns. This has not been the case in past years when restrictions went up.

The one unusual feature of the weather across southern coastal BC this summer, has been the two thunderstorms that have occured since we got back. The first was the weekend after the return from our trip. I sat on the deck and watched it with a glass of wine!

The second on the weekend of August 22nd. What was meant to be intermittent thunder, turned into a five hour light-show with sound effects, that extended from the southern end of our Vancouver Island horizon, to the North. Over 7,000 lightning strikes were recorded during the storm, which bumped up the number of wildfires from 125 to 180. Lightning accounts for around 60% of all BC wildfires. Jack was deeply unimpressed.

The thunderstorms were unusual because coastal BC rarely has thunderstorms.

The forecasted super El Niño doesn't sound great news either for the coming ski season or the potential snowpack, a key ingredient to next year's water availability. Watch this space.

Other News

Back from our travels we had a lovely weekend with the North Vancouver branch and some of their friends who had booked 'Grandview' (our place) before we decided to have a shorter road trip.

Little Laurie is a bundle of energy and chasing round on all fours standing with the aid of the furniture and getting stuck into Jack, who probably thought he was past toddlers crawling all over him. He is extremely tolerant, up to a point... usually when handfuls of hair are about to be extracted, that's when he wants to be left alone!

I've been busy in the workshop, finally finishing the dining room table. The Cotswold Furniture solid oak
dining room table we bought from their shop in Stow-in-the-Wold some years ago wasn't solid oak, all the leaves were framed in solid oak but with MDF veneered centre panels that had started to split/lift.

I've now replaced all the panels with solid oak, a fiddly but satisfying project. All the breadboard ends had to be cut off and the solid oak sides removed, before being reassembled, sanded and re-lacquered.

I am now into ecclesiastical cabinet making, repurposing a lectern/pulpit into a font for one of the local churches.

It's my third church project after repairing a font cover in All Saint's Burbage damaged by vandals and making it into a moveable altar using repurposed pews for St James's Avebury.

I once joked with the vicar of Burbage, after making her a pine table, that I was the other carpenter in her life! I don't recall her rolling in the aisle.

Choirs have restarted, though I am dropping one of the choirs this fall. It was too much. The Requiem choir has started rehearsals of Dan Forrest's Requiem for the Living, which we will be doing on Remembrance Day - Nov 11th. It is a beautiful piece of music and I particularly like the Sanctus.

The Suncoast Phoenix rehearsals for Christmas concerts start this week and the Chamber Choir is doing part of Eleanor Daley's Requiem alongside the Dan Forrest music on Remembrance Day. If you have not heard Dan Forrest's Requiem it's worth a listen. It's quite upbeat and has a feel of a movie soundtrack in places.

As well as choir, Fred is back into the swing of her monthly meetings of the SCFCS - the French group which meets at a local cafe for conversation in French - they're mostly Quebecois exiles who like to keep their French in good order.

Too close for comfort!

Wildlife has been in abundance. Orca, Humpbacks and our local Black bear have all put in an appearance. If it is the same Black Bear as past years, he has grown into one very big, very healthy, fella with a lovely shiny coat.

I was returning from Jack's early morning walk and "Jumbo" was mooching around in a neighbour's garden/yard.

I managed to snap a picture but didn't hang around, not that he showed much interest in Jack or me. He then wandered down the track below us before reappearing in the cul-de-sac opposite our house, where he breakfasted on laurel berries before having a rest.

I was able to take a number of pictures from the safety of our deck with my long lens. Just look at those claws! He knows where the good stuff to eat is clearly!

Morning walks have offered up Orca, though a bit of a distance out, a humpback and a seal which has been sitting on one of the rocks along the Bonniebrook foreshore. In fact Orca or Humpbacks have been almost a daily occurrence over the last couple of weeks. The orca were too far out to photograph,

Speaking of Bonniebrook, Fred stumbled on a video of a travel blogger who explored the Sunshine Coast. Not a bad little travelog which you can watch here. You might want to scroll through his photographic advice towards the end. Our own Bonniebrook Beach gets a mention and we can certainly agree with his observations about our sunsets and views.

Zen garden

The moist weather has meant the garden has been quite vibrant with Fred's planting. Blueberries, raspberries and apples have been in abundance. The apple crop is especially satisfying as after years of canker blighted apples, we were on the verge of having the tree taken out. Some expert pruning by a local arborist seems to have cured the canker problem. The tree has four apple varieties grafted on which have all done well and those we have not given away will head to the kitchen. Aside from freezing apples, making apple cake and French apple tarts Fred has made enough marmalade to last a year or two and several jars of pesto from our prolific basil planting.

We are rather glad we ditched the lawn at the bottom of the front garden, which refused to grow properly. It's now Fred's Zen garden, except when local deer, or Jack or grandsons have trampled all over it and it needs to be re-Zened. The large driftwood was beachcombed and carted up from our local Bonniebrook beach by us and one smaller piece from Sointula on Malcolm Island, off Vancouver Island gathered up during our summer trip.

Jack spent Tuesday as a guest of the vet having his left ear checked out. He suddenly went deaf in the
week or so, only hearing higher pitched sounds.

As well as a blocked ear canal turns out he has a small hole in his eardrum. Explains why he has been a bit cranky lately. Fred would say just like me!

He's now sleeping/snoring off the post sedation recovery.

Needless to say the trade war with Canada's southerly neighbours is dominating the news. Reports suggest that pro-Canadian sentiment has been galvanised north of the border. Numerous memes around lake, ocean and state name changes have appeared along with some not very flattering cartoons of President Trump. A washroom in Victoria had the 'Donald J Trump Memorial Washroom' sign quickly removed by city officials.

Methinks it's going to get worse before it gets better and the people suffering most will be the ordinary Canadian and US citizens, who are already paying more for goods and fuel.

Our battle with BC's driver licencing authority is drawing to an unsatisfactory conclusion. Our appeal process has found in favour of ICBC, which means we will be stuck on interim driving licences until our all important Visitor Records arrive from the IRCC (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada). Processing time means they should arrive next March. In the meantime we can't travel and hire cars outside of BC/Canada. It means our planned trip to NZ later this year is currently on hold.

In one bit of good news, we now have a fine dining restaurant on the Coast, in Gibsons. Foragers opened earlier in the year is part of the Bruinwood distillery business. The head chef Adam MacIsaac (and some of the kitchen staff) previously worked at the Wickaninnish Inn in Tofino, Vancouver Island which we have stayed at.... very nice too. Adam also did a stint at The Fat Duck in Bray ... even more excellent! We made our first visit last Friday for dinner and it was excellent. They even gave us each a tasty cake as a take-away.

Tuesday night I am off to the Tapworks brewery for a sailing team meeting, a burger and a pint!