Salmon survey volunteer Tyler Smart profiles a dead coho salmon for the camera. This one has been decomposing for a week or so already, probably after having spawned successfully.

Things are heating up in the battle to protect BC’s wild salmon. The Cohen Commission has revealed scientists being silenced, lawyers are exchanging barbs in Vancouver courtrooms, and deep divisions at the core of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ mandate are being brought into the limelight.

Through it all, BC’s irreplaceable wild salmon continue to perform the miracles they have carried through the generations for millennia, connecting the oceans with the rivers by cycling nutrients from the one to the other. Today, as we all know, they face a gauntlet of threats to their existence – from the run-off from our roadways, to the foreign-owned fish farms that have proliferated on BC’s fragile coastline.

Everyday, we reap the benefits of Fraser River wild salmon, from the fertility of the Fraser’s alluvial soils to the height and girth of BC’s famous Douglas Fir and Cedar trees that sustain a forestry industry that is the bedrock of so many of BC’s communities and still a cornerstone of our economy.

In celebration of all that wild salmon bring to the people of this province – not to mention to the eagles, bears, wolves, wild medicines, and other life-forms that depend on the health of our forests and our rivers – YOU are invited to a night of music and dance in central Mission. Abbotsford’s own Harma White – big supporters of wild salmon conservation in their own right – together with East Vancouver’s Mathieu Lavigne and Mission’s Nitya St. Laurent will play their tunes for the benefit of all. Mission’s Grab-a-Java coffeehouse – owned by the co-founder of Abbotsford’s Ravine Park Salmon Hatchery Dave Perritt – will provide refreshments, including Cafe Femenino fair trade coffee.

Join members of the Ravine Park Crew, some of Abbotsford’s own Stoney Creek Salmon Stalkers, the McLennan Watershed Alliance, and the Fraser RiverKeepers as we fundraise for groups fighting for the survival of our wild salmon against the pressures of industry, commerce, and no-holds barred trade. Monies raised will go to Alexandra Morton and the hardy warriors at Salmon are Sacred who have been pulling out all the stops in keeping the heat on the DFO, and the Fraser RiverKeepers who are inspiring a generation of RiverWatchers across the Fraser River Watershed.

Admission is only $10. We’ll see you there! – Let’s see if we can’t raise $3 000! Event details are below.

First, more information on the saga of the Cohen Commission’s inquiry into the disappearance of millions of sockeye salmon in 2010 can be found at Alexandra’s weblog: www.alexandradramorton.typepad.com. We also encourage you to visit www.salmonaresacred.com, as well as www.fraserriverkeeper.ca for more information on those organizations and their respective campaigns and efforts toward the sustainability of this watershed.

Please pass this notice far and wide to your friends and family.

Location: The Playhouse – 33100 10th Avenue, Mission (corner of 10th & Taulbut)

Venue: ~ 1600 square foot dance hall in central Mission. Plenty of parking available. Transit will get you to the event (www.valleymax.com) but unfortunately the last runs for the evening are around 9:30 p.m. so you would need a carpool away.

Time: 7:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m.

Contact: e-mail danv@inbox.com – a flat $10, but there are no guarantees there’ll be any left at the door – get them now!

Today, around a year from completing my time at UFV, I’ve been involved to varying degrees with planning the design of the city by attending Transportation Open houses, participating as a citizen in Community Planning sessions, advocating by demonstrating public support for a transit link between Abbotsford and Chilliwack, and helping to orchestrate the U-PASS campaign (which implemented a Student Union backed mandatory public transit pass for all UFV students).

Of late, I’ve had doubt about the justice of such a pass. The amount of money the pass costs each semester is trivial – $40, especially when you consider that not only does the pass cover transit access in Chilliwack and Mission as well as Abbotsford, but also covers major public recreational facilities in each of those cities, as well as numerous discounts generally in the 10-20% range at business throughout the region. I’d wager that as a result of the program, young people of university age in the eastern Fraser Valley are healthier, fitter, and financially better-off, and I’d also wager that our air-shed is cleaner than it would have been.

My doubts over the wisdom of the policy stem from a couple of areas. One is that I suspect that most students at UFV aren’t even aware of the many realized and potential benefits that the program provides to them, and for programs such as this to be truly effective, I believe it’s critical that participants are aware and cognizant of the program’s benefits, or they will be lulled into complacency instead of becoming the alert, aware, and informed guardians of a just and wise society that they should be.

Secondly, the mandatory nature of the pass is a critical flaw in the policy. Were the pass not mandatory and universal it wouldn’t work, but this mandatory nature represents a top-down dictate of what is best for people, depriving them of choice, discussion, and the need to think critically about issues which are directly related to issues of personal liberty at higher levels. A society where people are told how to function, what is best, how they will use their money, and where their biggest personal choices revolve around which products they will consume rather than how they are governed, is a society that strikes me as very vulnerable in many respects to abuse of power by those in power.

I anticipate a response to this argument to be that the students themselves approved this policy by a strong 60% plus majority. This is potentially a very good thing – if their votes were given on the basis of critical thinking rather than on social pressures – as I am afraid may have played out to a larger degree than many are acknowledging in the referendum of 2009. Further, today’s students who are subject to the levy are not the same students who voted to approve it – and by what principle do the students of the Fall 2010 semester deprive the students of today their say? One solid counter-argument is that it would not take much for some particularly concerned student to gather a group to mount a campaign for a referendum to remove the U-PASS to occur. Yet, such a campaign would likely be time-consuming and effort-intensive, and I’ve yet to meet the student who might be forward-thinking and altruistic enough to mount a campaign which would consume significant portions of their time and energy, while possibly only benefiting future classes of students.

I’d not intended to write on this subject today. Rather, I’d intended to work towards a discussion of my frustration with the City of Abbotsford’s foot-dragging in relation to upgrading its transit exchange system. That, I suppose, is a discussion for another day. For now, I’d appreciate your thoughts and input on the U-PASS issue. I’ll remind you that you’re able to post a comment personally or anonymously, and I also welcome personal e-mails to have a discussion that way.

I’ll just close by saying that yes, I was part of the team that campaigned in favour of the pass – and I continue to be of the opinion that the program is excellent policy with potential to be even better with continued advocacy towards the operation and structure of the transit system, but that I do admit that there my be bigger-picture issues here which I and the others who campaigned for this policy may have over-looked in our zeal to create a city that is less vehicle-dependent and less damaging to the environment…

At this point, I’m nearly 100% positive that Thoreau had something wonderfully expressive to say about the subject of tailoring one’s material to one’s audience and the distastefulness of such. I’m not able to recall it off the top of my head. If you are able, and I’ll rely on you to police yourself on this one, well, when I hike the Appalachian Trail, YOU are invited to come and to frequent Thoreau’s old haunts with me at the terminus of the hike (should a northward direction be chosen).

Exhiliration….

But I want you to know that I’m making it. I want everyone to know I’m making it. I’m not embarrassed to be, but I am ashamed to have to make it.

This is starting to sound a little like my mum’s favorite adage about the flea: If you’ve got it, you don’t have it. If you don’t, you do. I wish I did have him, because then I wouldn’t, but now that I don’t, I do.

Ok, not quite that complicated. But made comparable, my dilemma might go something like, If we had, I wouldn’t have to. Or if we hadn’t, I would. But now that we haven’t, I must, for if we had, I mustn’t. Or something like that. I’m confused…

The point of this is to say, as I hope you’ve figured out by now, is that I’m not investing in gold, silver, stocks, bonds, mortgages, derivatives, exchange-traded funds, real-estate income trusts, options, IPO’s, futures, mortgage-backed derivatives, or much of anything of that ilk. It’s all poppycock and tommmyrot, fiddlesticks and balderdash, chicanery and larceny, the whole works, I’ll be having none of it at this time.

Since the 2008 financial “crisis”, we’ve taken numerous measures to stimulate the economy, most of which have been inflationary, debt-burdening, and outright deceptive. Knowing the inflationary effect of the measures taken, many have piled into gold and silver stocks. I was advised approximately 3 years ago that getting into gold would be a smart move, and I considered it (not that had I had a lot of surplus cash sitting around for that sort of thing). Still, my advisor was right – in gold, and perhaps even more-so, in silver, I’d have done well.

Historically, this society, going back who knows how far into medieval Europe, has considered gold and silver to be an ultimate repository of value, one that tends to hold value when the fiat currency loses it. Seems that, though I don’t see a reason for it being inevitable, managers of fiat currencies ALWAYS abuse them and end up destroying their value, and economic activity temporarily along with it, making possible a massive wealth transfer away from those with no buying power, and towards those with it.

So in this inflationary period, with metals and tangible assets increasing in value, you’d think those are the things I’d be buying instead of letting the value of my currency depreciate along with everybody else’s under higher taxation, increased food costs, and debilitating interest charges. But it’s not what I’ve done.

No, I’ve felt for some time now that the valuation of metals above their market value in manufacturing to be not only foolish, but dangerously destructive to our planet and moral fabric. When currencies devalue, the resultant and corresponding increase in the value of metals make it economically viable to go and get more of it, resulting in further destruction of wilderness (read, Fish Lake etc). At the same time, a system so rooted in cleverness systematically deprives the honest, hard-working common man of the value he builds with his labor.

Likewise the stock market. As Teddy Roosevelt remarked, it bears no inherent moral difference to gambling at the casino. Money is gained, but not earned. Disproportionate value is given over to those who specialize in manipulation and speculation, compared to those who labor honestly with their hands. Some get rich quick and easy, while many scrape out a living under high stress. (Then the rich claim to be generous and philanthropic too by giving away relative pittances. Absolute fortunes, relative pittances).

In this society, the working class has secured many things for itself. Decent wages, decent health-care access, better infrastructure, and enough leisure time to be able to enjoy moderately healthy family and social lives. Yet, I can’t help but strongly suspect, without being able to cite immediately reams of empirical evidence, that the standard of living has been regressing for decades now, as the average man works harder for less – and what is more, if we have managed to hang on to a large portion of that living standard, it has only been through the use of credit, which only delays our collective genius at allowing the rights our forefathers built to be frittered away.

For these reasons and more, I’ve been extremely reluctant to buy into this system that is bereft not only of a healthy amount of sanity and measures of restraint, but also of watchful, observant leaders to guard the hen-house, if you will.

I’d feel horrible knowing that my hard earned dollars were increasing demand for a habitat exploiting gold or silver mine either in the Skeena Watershed or in Brazil. My sense of satisfaction from being able to provide for my family and loved ones would be strongly chastened by the knowledge that the system I had used to profit was exploiting not only so many of our brethren who cannot speak for themselves, but so many members of our human family several times removed from us.

What accursed mixture of stupidity and apathy overcomes us that we cannot create a system that honestly assigns purchasing power to those who have worked for it, without constantly depreciating its value and thereby efficiently transferring a portion of it to an invisible minority?

It’s very disappointing that the topics I study as I complete my B.A. rarely address my foremost concerns in life head-on. To date, they haven’t answered the question of whether Lomborg’s statistical claims in “The Skeptical Environmntalist” are valid. They haven’t answered the question of why people continue to consume significantly more resources than is sustainable on a global scale. They haven’t answered definitively the question of how valid the theory of anthropogenic climate change is, nor whether the urgency expressed by scientists over species and habitat loss is totally justified, nor whether militarily speaking, petro-abstinence is at all feasible, nor why in tar-nation we cling to an asinine, mathematically doomed monetary system which can have no other results than persistent inflation or high unemployment and ever-increasing taxation. And I can offer opinions based on some combination of common-sense and my own reading on each of these questions, and in fact, that is why I cycle and transit wherever and whenever I can, and why I don’t live in rural isolation and why I rarely consume and even more rarely purchase meat, and so on.

So now that my typically lengthy preamble is out of the way, I wanted to discuss how even though my studies haven’t dealt directly with many of those topics (with the exception of ecological footprint analysis in Geo 140), my readings on the side often do so. I picked up a copy of “Eco-City: Healthy Communities, Healthy Planet” edited by Mark Roseland from a hall-way stack of free books in my Geography department, and here at last is a book that address one of my foremost quandaries in life; that of how the place and style of residence we choose affects how much of the Earth’s surface we are directly responsible for consuming. I’ve long felt that the detached, relatively isolated style of living that seems to characterize the western life-style – the man, his chariot, and his castle mentality – is socially and environmentally untenable. The essay I’m reading from Dr. Bill Rees and Lyle Walker from the UBC School of Regional and Community Planning addresses at least the environmental part of that question, even if it does leave the social one up to personal conjecture.

What Rees and Walker show is that residents of high-rise and Walk-up apartments have an eco-footprint only 60-64% as big as that of those people living in single-detached homes, at only 0.9 hectares per person. This is due to the lower demands for transportation, energy, and land occupations that are a direct result of that life-style choice. That one sentence there is where the principle of smart-growth through density comes from.

See, a lot of this stuff is fairly obvious, almost the level of being intuitive. Yet I would bet that most of the people in my cities (Abby & Mission) live in single-detached homes with poor transit service, high heating costs, and inefficient land usage, and given that the tool of ecological footprint analysis that I just described shows that as of 1997 when this book was published, the average Canadian used 4.3 hectares, or equivalent to a consumption-demand of three planets if all the world’s population lived the same way, how can I go on living my life and not raise the occasional voice of dissent over this state of affairs?

A side-note here is that I presume that when and if I decide to go to Master’s school, and when and if I’m accepted, I would have the chance to examine those questions with which I am personally pre-occupied and which presumably my under-graduate studies ladder into, yet which even the under-graduate level of study doesn’t adequately address. This situation, in my view, underscores in marked fashion the absolutely critical importance of robust funding for our educational system – because if these crucial questions about the long-term sustainability of the land that we grow our food on aren’t answered until and if we choose to to study them at grad-school, what hope is there that we will transition to sustainable, steady-state economy as quickly as our society needs, to?

In trying to select a place to study, it was so clear how much ground I was covering just in checking a few different places. Abbotsford sprawls out over the landscape, going on and on from Mt. Lehmann Road to the slopes of Sumas Mountain – some 12-14 km just to cover its urban area, let alone its expansive farmland. Now, council is even entertaining an application to deviate from its Official Community Plan and permit an estate-style high-income development all the way across Sumas Praire on Vedder Mountain that would be closer to Yarrow and Sardis than urban Abbotsford.

Of course, it’s gotten this way because what were once the districts of Matsqui (Clearbrook) and Abbotsford (Sumas) expanded outwards until they were virtually indistinguishable geographically, so a decision was made to make them one politically. I believe the process was by referendum, at the same time as which the people chose the name “Abbotsford” over “Matsqui” (that, by the way, is Strike One against this jurisdiction within which study in my books).

So those 268 words are the foundation for what I really want to talk about. (When I write long preambles like this before getting to the point I often get mental images of various writing instructors and coaches over the years grimacing and pursing their lips. The same applies to when my bracketed content is wordier than my actual content).

My point is that when Abbotsford and Matsqui united politically, what were two councils (of probably 7 people ‘aldermen’) suddenly became one of 9 people. It was probably done in the name of “efficient government” or some other euphemism for the elimination of oversight. I don’t know about you, but I distrust this notion that 9 people can govern an area just as well as 14 can. Let me go on first by saying that I realize I’m opening myself to all kinds of criticism about sanctioning government largesse and stifling bureaucracy, and I do think there’s a lot of validity to those kind of claims. You don’t want to have an over-size government body that eats up all kinds of resources while taking nice pay-cheques. At the same time, Abbotsford is a great example of a city that grew up and out with no regard for rhyme nor reason, and the outcome, for better or for worse, is a city where everybody drives everywhere, valuable farmland is consumed for urban amenities, and our waterways are not places that salmon like to call home.

The other big concern than I have is the erosion of democracy that occurs when less people represent a larger area. In this case, I refer to the cost of getting elected to that council or school board position. To accomplish that, you need to let the citizenry know that you are running, which means you need to market yourself with mailings and oodles of signage. Those things are expensive, and the more people you represent in your jurisdiction, the more expensive it is going to be. Now, by all appearances, you have a situation where it has become prohibitively expensive to run for political office to all but moderately to exorbitantly wealthy businessmen, or to those would-be candidates without the backing of a patron sponsor.

It all plays into the theme that “money talks, so let me pose to you a question: Are you comfortable living inside a democratic structure in which all the shots are called by those who have demonstrated proficiency at earning money, or are other skills and abilities important to you?

First, when is the last time that while crossing town you shut down your car while en-route and spent five minutes kicking rocks, playing hacky-sack, or chatting with passersby? Never? I thought not. Might I suggest that when the buses stop at the Bourquin exchange and sit there idly for sometimes as much 7-10 minutes, that this might be an annoyance that deters people from using the system? It’s time to deal with this massive inefficiency by having buses sit down for a “rest” at the end of their route – not in the middle.

Secondly, to permit a car-free lifestyle, inter-regional connections are paramount, but right now you can’t even get to Chilliwack, and can’t get to Aldergrove after 5:30. I know our council has passed motions to focus on local improvements, but when there is no service at all to an area at a given time, I think that takes priority.

Third, transit exchanges are busy places where people spend a great deal of time waiting – yet the exchange has no amenities to at least make these annoying and frustrating waits tolerable. Let’s use policy measures to encourage commercial zoning along the transit exchanges so that people can sit down, read the paper, and enjoy a drink or snack while they wait.

Fourth, though Abbotsford is a quiet, laid-back community, life doesn’t end here after 10 o’clock like the buses do. In Vancouver, Surrey, or Kelowna I could be secure in the knowledge that if I was out until mid-night, there would still be options for me to get home. In Abbotsford, I would be calling a cab.. It’s time that we implemented some late evening service until at least midnight – at least on Fridays on Saturdays.

Lastly, there should have been service to YXX fifteen years ago – there is hardly a more logical place to send public transit to since it would save people the trouble and cost of leaving their cars at the airport. Why is it that as a community we sometimes insist on defying logic even when it stares us in the face?

Abbotsford citizens are recognizing that they no longer live in a small farm community, but a city fast expanding its footprint into its farmland and its remaining forests. Municipal candidates who recognize that mass transportation will be an integral strategy if we want to both protect our wild spaces and cope with the growth that we are experiencing will have my support come November.

Not long ago, the Bank of Montreal vacated its building in Downtown Abbotsford, which I suppose was quite understandable considering that it had just built a large multi-story building at the corner of Bourquin & South Fraser Way. Now I come across this story about BMO also vacating its location in Downtown Chilliwack, just as it did in Abbotsford.

Only a few years ago, a ScotiaBank branch still occupied a building at the corner of Montrose and Essendene, but the building now sits empty. Because I use a local credit union, not a big bank, I’ve been able to use the Downtown Prospera Branch many times to get cash to go to the Farmer’s Market, for instance – but now, to add insult to injury, I found out that the Prospera branch is uprooting itself and moving to Sumas Way – leaving the only financial institution still located Downtown as the RBC branch.

I see all of this as evidence of the hollowing out of local Downtowns, as banks and credit unions choose to locate where the money is – and apparently, that’s along the big modern shopping centres with parking lots surounding four lanes of traffic – not in the historic centres of our communities.

In the place of the old BMO in Abbotsford is now a Roasted Grape cafe/fine diner, which is certainly more aesthetically appealing than a bank, so if the financial institutions can be replaced by attractive restaurants or other retail outlets, then I suppose that’s not a bad thing. Still, banking is a necessary functions for many people, and like Chilliwack’s Mayor Gaetz, I’m concerned about the absence of any banking centres in our cultural and historical centres – which still have their finger on the pulse of our communities.

The other interesting story going on here is Mayor Gaetz being quoted as saying that, “That’s the nature of development – we can’t control where it goes.” This is a concept that still confounds a lot of people; the concept of community structure being completely market-driven. Many people like to think that councils exert more control over development than they actually do. In reality, other than set zoning policy, and approving or denying piece-by-piece amendments to the Official Community Plan, councils can’t actually do very much to control business location – business will choose to locate where it feels it can make the most money, and there’s generally not very much that council can do about it.

So as our banks and credit unions keep lifting off and re-locating like arco’s in SimCity trying to find new world’s, my question to you is, how do you think this will affect our Downtowns? For me personally, it’s a bummer because I now have no way of getting cash without paying fees Downtown, but do YOU think this will be a net benefit, or a loss to our communities?

Right in front of the store is a bus stop serviced by the #1 & 2 Go-Lines, as well as the 17 Townline and the 21 Aldergrove. With some 17 or so stories of housing units above it which are now withing walking distance of the library, City Hall, Starbucks, Safeway, Shopper’s Drug Mart, Kin’s (a produce market), a cafe, a pizza store, and an up-scale restaurant (Original Joe’s), this cafe defines smart growth – even more-so than the new Wired Monk does over on McCallum.

I mention my intent of sitting down and writing a blog while I’m here, and a conversation with the barista ensues. He’s real friendly, and we joke about the enormity of his tip jar. He’s a travelling artist type, not one to let the grass grow under his feet, who laughs and jokes with all the customers. I expect the friendly atmosphere here, not to mention the high quality of coffee, will make this establishment a popular feature in Abbotsford. I, for one, will visit often as I ride transit from my parent’s place up on Blueridge to Downtown Abby, UFV, & Mission. In fact, I’m finishing this blog while riding the #31 route to Abbotsford to attend the Saturday morning Farmer’s Market – which, in my opinion, is the best thing to happen to Abbotsford since I’ve lived in the area, which is 22 years!