Right about now is the beginning of the Chinese “Year of the Horse.”
If your birth year is 2014, 2002, 1990, 1978, 1966, 1954 or even 1942, your nature is to be full of energy, vitality and perseverance. You are also seen as responsible, agreeable and confident. So confident sometimes you don’t like being held back.
No matter! Enjoy your year!
Some days, our favourite American president gets carried away. His latest is telling Canada he is going to close the brand new Gordie Howe bridge between Windsor and Detroit.
Oh, well! It’s bad enough we have to listen to the late night talking heads blabbing about Trump. Now we have to listen to old, old jokes. Here are a couple:
Three sharks meet in the middle of the ocean. They are old friends and talk turns to the strangest people they had eaten.
“Well,” says the first, “a long time ago I ate Osama Bin Laden. He had so much garlic in him no one would come near me for almost two weeks.”
The second says “That’s not bad. I ate Vlad Putin. He had so much vodka in him, I was drunk for almost a full month.”
“That’s nothing” says the third. “Two months ago, I ate Donald Trump. He had so much hot air in him I think I won’t be able to dive for at least another two months. In fact, no matter how much I burp and pass gas, I still think I might even explode any minute right now!”
Or:
Donald Trump has his eye on the Nobel Peace Prize. You know how that all started? Well, he was taking a walk on the beach near Mar a Lago. He saw a bottle on the ground, opened it up and sure enough, out popped a genie. As genies do, Trump was granted one wish.
Not being an ungracious fellow, Trump said, “I wish for peace in the Middle East.”
“Sorry Mr. President. But there are some things even a genie with my powers cannot do. Can you please think of something else?”
“Hmmm,” mused Trump. After a moment of deep thought he says, “How about I wish that Democrats, Liberals, NDP and lefties wouldn’t think I was so stupid?”
“Tell you what, sir,” said the genie. “Let’s take a look at a map of the Middle East and see what I might be able to manage.”
This is all in fun, sir. All in fun. As we are sure your needling Canada really is also.
So, don’t poke the beaver. He might chew a leg off that nice chair in your Oval Office.
Last week, our sister newspaper the Lakeside Leader in Slave Lake carried an opinion column written by Doug Firby of Troy Media.
Firby commented on what he says is “Alberta government policy actively driving renewable energy investment out of the province.”
His column lists a number of disincentives. “A seven-month moratorium on renewable energy projects, banning projects from certain classes of agricultural lands and withing 35 kilometres of protected areas such as provincial parks, an upfront recycling fee for wind and solar equipment, and new reclamation security requirements for developers.”
While that doesn’t sound bad at all, it indeed has a chilling effect on projects like the one in the Smoky River region. And not just in the Peace country.
A report in the Globe and Mail newspaper in Ontario quotes Jordan Dye, director of the Business Renew- ables Center-Canada.
“We went from an average of 1,000 megawatts of deals per year down to only about five megawatts last year. That’s hundreds of millions of dollars every year and thousands of construction jobs.”
And we might add, millions of dollars in taxes paid to municipalities struggling to pay for services.
The Page has to say, the perception out there is that Alberta is hard-core oil and gas. We have no interest in wind or solar. Reality may not be that way, but the look is still there.
On that problem with getting rid of solar and wind equipment that has ended its useful life – Sure, our government is right in wanting to not make the same mistakes as we see over and over again in abandoned oil and gas gear. There is indeed a cost in millions to clean up the gear, and of course, the millions of dollars in unpaid taxes.
We’re also always curious what happens to all those sites shown in TV shows and movies with wind turbine farms, and solar panels, all over the world. What is happening with those? There are sure lots of them!
It’s always interesting when any community wants to talk about development. More business. More amenities. More places to shop. More services and better services. It seems like always keeping up with the Joneses. Or the case of northern Alberta, keeping up with Edmonton and Calgary, and too often even with Grande Prairie.
Grande Prairie? The bad news is that Grande Prairie is only two hours or even much less for much of us. But the good news is, Grande Prairie is only two hours or even much less for much of us. Sort of a glass half-empty or half-full story.
At the same time, all the advantages of being in northern Alberta are too often under-rated, not understood, ignored or brushed off as wishful thinking. Along the same lines as people thinking “going to the lake” means laying around on a sandy beach. When in fact, it can mean laying on grass. Fishing off a pier. Renting a boat. Making friends with a boat owner. Getting a kayak or paddle boat. Buying gas and bait. Or heading down to the river.
In our books, any of that seriously beats heading to the ocean, mingling with flies and washed up dead things, and swimming with things that can actually eat you.
We don’t know if snowmobile – cross-country ski trails fall under that umbrella, but a recent news item caught our eye. The Ontario provincial government is kicking in a couple million dollars to help a provincial snowmobile group look after trails in that province. The group actually spent about $60 million per year over the last three years looking after trails. There are over 30,000 kilometres of trails in Ontario. That works out to about $700 per kilometre per year.
The news item didn’t say how much of that money, if any, was attributed to “in kind” work. But all the time spent on the trails is volunteer. But still not free labour.
We’re interested if anybody knows how many kilometres of trails are in Alberta. And costs of upkeep. Woodlands Country around Whitecourt has lots. Your columnist here isn’t aware of any other really big setups.