Penguins, Stanley Park Zoo 1964

I read a lot of interesting non-fiction books this year:
     E.J. HUGHES - CANADIAN WAR ARTIST, 2022, Amos. The first significant publication on Hughes' work as a WWII Canadian war artist. Highly recommended.
     CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR, 2003, Crile. Fascinating story of US Senator funding Afghan rebels who were resisting the ruscist invasion. Recommended.
     A MAN CALLED INTREPID, 1976, Stevenson. Amazing story of Canadian soldier, ace fighter pilot, and high level spy. Highly recommended.
     THE LOST CONTINENT - Travels in Small Town America, 1989, Bill Bryson. Funny and interesting stories of a 40-state road trip.
     A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING, 2003, Bill Bryson. A light-hearted look at the universe seen through a scientific lens.
     SEVEN YEARS IN TIBET, 1982, Heinrich Harrer. Very interesting story and historical look at Tibet prior to and including the Chinese invasion and occupation.
     VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED, 1974, Thomas & Witts. Tragic story of a passenger liner full of Jews fleeing Europe in 1939.
     THE LOST CITY OF Z - A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, 2008, Grann. Past and present travels in the jungle looking for a legendary lost civilization.
     SEVEN DAYS IN THE ART WORLD, 2008, Thornton. A very interesting look at all facets of the art world from creation to collection to crime.
     THE BUREAU AND THE MOLE - The Unmasking of Robert Philip Hanssen, 2002, Vise. Finding the "most dangerous double agent in FBI history."
     THE ENEMY WITHIN - A History of Espionage, 2006, Crowdy. A lengthy look at espionage through history.
     OUT OF THE NOOSPHERE - Adventure, Sports, Travel and the Environment, 1992, Editors of Outside Magazine. A collection of short stories by numerous writers.
     BUSTING VEGAS - The MIT Whiz Kid who Brought the Casinos to their Knees, 2005, Mezrich. The title says it all.
     ACROSS THE TOP OF THE WORLD - The Quest for the Northwest Passage, 1999, Delgado. Extensively illustrated including numerous images of ships stuck in the ice.
     WHITE SLAVES OF THE NOOTKA, 1987, Jewitt. Republished first person account of Jewitt's life as a slave in native captivity. Highly recommended.
     UPCOAST SUMMERS, 1985, Hill. Tales of sailing and exploring the west coast of BC in a small boat from 1933 to 1941.
     SAPPERS - The Royal Engineers in British Columbia, 1987, Hill. A good history of this important group.
     A PERFECT EDEN - Encounters by Early Explorers of Vancouver Island, 2016, Layland. Well written and extensively illustrated.
     IRON ROAD WEST - An Illustrated History of British Columbia's Railways, 2018, Hayes. Includes railways that you never knew existed.

1907 CPR postcard, train runaway lane on the right

Coastal Defense Gun and Crew, Stanley Park (1941), courtesy Touchwood Editions & Robert Amos

From Vancouver to Ontario, from England to the Aleutian Islands in Alaska, Hughes' keen eye and pencil captured people, weapons of war, and scenery. The book includes a full range of these artworks, from cartoons and sensitive portraits to incredibly detailed armored vehicles and guns. Amos has also presented work from Hughes' early years as an artist, showing his youthful interest in the military. A selection of finished paintings is also included. Highly recommended.

206 pages, hardcover, extensively illustrated in colour and black & white. ISBN 978-1-77151-385-2. $35.00. Published 2022 by Touchwood Editions (www.touchwoodeditions.com).

Motorcycle (right side) [Norton 650], (1942), courtesy Touchwood Editions & Robert Amos

It is very moving to see all the videos posted online of residents of Kherson and all the other liberated towns and villages coming out to greet their heroic warriors with hugs, happiness, and flowers. Putting up Ukrainian flags, and celebrating their freedom from nazi ruscist brutality. Singing and dancing in the streets. There was a video of a large column of Ukr soldiers marching into Kherson. Big, mean, fit, well armed, well equipped, full of confidence. I would not want to fight any one of them.

I can only remember one video of a Ukrainian civilian giving anything to a rus soldier, it was right at the start of the war. An old woman gave one a handful of sunflower seeds, saying "Take these and put them in your pocket. Then, when you die here, sunflowers will grow." I wonder if that soldier has been planted with his seeds yet.

The invasion of Ukraine has been a huge disaster for the ruscist orcs. In the nine years of their invasion of Afghanistan they had an estimated 28,000 soldiers killed. In less than nine months in Ukraine they have had an estimated 78,000 soldiers killed (that was 2 days ago, could be 80,000 now). That is a monthly kill rate 35 times greater than they suffered in Afghanistan.

The ruscists seem to be confused about what they are trying to accomplish with this invasion. They started by claiming they were going to "de-nazify" the country. Then it became a war against the spread of LBGTQ permissiveness. Then it was announced as a fight against satan. Now their demented TV announcers are claiming it is a fight against NATO. Well, it isn't. If the ruscist bastards want to fight against NATO they should attack Poland and see what happens. Apparently the Ukrainian military budget is less than 2% of the combined NATO budget. I'd like to see the ruscists get hit by 50 times more military might than the Ukrainians have been whipping their asses with. It wouldn't take long to send the filthy rus back where they came from.

Wouldn't it be fun to hear about stealth bombers wiping out rus targets, or A-10 Warthogs erasing columns of rus tanks? Have a submarine or the SEALS sink the entire Black Sea fleet? And let's see how the Abrams M1A2 tank does against the poor little T-72 tanks, or the old ones the rus are hauling out of post-WWII storage and buffing the rust off? How about a hundred stealth helicopters erasing every rus warplane off the runways?

Of course, as has been noted, the rus leader isn't counting the losses. Most of the rus soldiers dying in Ukraine are from ethnic minorities all over Asia, including Wherethefuckistan. It is both an internal and external purge of ethnic minorities, and pustine will let it go on for as long as there are bodies to throw into the meat grinder. Except children of oligarchs, kleptogarchs, members of the Dumbass government, and close friends of the white orcs. I curse them all to rot in hell. Slava Ukraine!

 



In honor of the NORTH ATLANTIC FELLOWS ORGANIZATION work against the filthy rus invasion of Ukraine.
( never hesitate to shitpost a vatnik! )

     
Young Heron; Giraffe; Bald Eagle, Massett (click on images for more information)

Partial screen capture from GarySimStudio

Partial screen capture

  
Heron, Lost Lagoon and Fragment

Sample publications

Conde Landale 2003, reading at the kitchen table, Savary cottage

Lounging on the cottage deck

I first met Conde in 2002, after he phoned me out of the blue to ask "are you the Gary Sim who wrote Looking For Maud ... ?" That was a surprise, as that book has yet to be published. It turned out that he had received a large collection of information on Savary Island from Gladys Bloomfield, who had been working on a book about the island. She was unable to complete the work, and her research material was passed on to the Savary Island Heritage Society with the agreement that they would complete the book and publish it. They did so, and published MAGNETIC ISLE - Gladys Bloomfield's Savary in 2005; ISBN 0-9739209-0-4; 146 pages, illustrated in black and white. I had contacted Gladys some time earlier, and by way of thanks for her help gave her a working draft of Looking For Maud, which is what Conde was asking about.

Conde's 2-wheeled tote carrier, and a very late arrival at Savary by chartered water taxi

Posing with glacial erratic, south shore

Although Conde was a fairly private person, I eventually found out that he received a PhD in 1987 from the University of Miami, his Dissertation was titled Purification And Characterization Of An Alpha-1,6 Glucan-Binding Protein From Streptococcus Sobrinus, which is a mouthful. He had also been a fisherman and a tugboat captain, the Whonnock wharfinger, a landlord, and President of the Savary Island Heritage Society for many years. He was an ardent historian and researcher, with a keen eye for details and family histories. He drove like a madman when he was heading for the next ferry or water taxi, and wouldn't stop until he was in the lineup. We continued to share research information for twenty years, and got together occasionally for beer and burgers, exchanging emails and phone calls in between (Whonnock and the West End of Vancouver are separated by a lot of inter-urban driving).

My favorite hamburger story is from having lunch with Conde at Bierecraft on Cambie. We both ordered a burger, and the menu listed lots of optional additions like extra pattie, fried egg, bacon, tomato slice, pickle, avocado, cheese, hot peppers, weiner, lettuce, onion rings, and so on. When the server asked if Conde wanted any extras, he reviewed the list and said that he'd like to add all of them! (he was already having a deluxe bacon cheeseburger). The server was impressed, especially when he realized that Conde wasn't kidding. At first I thought he was kidding. Some time later I saw the door to the kitchen open, and our server came out carefully carrying Conde's burger ... it was at least 10 inches high, barely held together with long wood skewers. The cooks stuck their head out the pass to see how it was received. It looked awesome, and Conde slowly and methodically (and happily) ate the entire burger. It was like breakfast, lunch and dinner all at once. I will miss you a lot, old friend. Farewell and safe journey.

Scrambling around Mace Point

Near First Point

Original pen & ink drawing by Gary Sim

Original pen & ink drawing by Gary Sim

The Varyag visiting Vancouver harbour, photo Gary Sim

Colours of the Ukrainian national flag expressed in flowers and blue sky

The Ukrainian national flag

The intersection at Haro and Jervis, completely screwed. See any bicyclists?
Questions: is the little bicyling slot on the left one way or two way?
What route should a bicyclist take through this idiotic maze? Do we need even more signage???

They've also enlarged the curbs, deleting as many parking locations as possible. The city workers who clean leaves off the streets are supposedly at war with the jerks putting in all these curbs. The uncleaned leaves from last fall are still evident in the tiny little passageway on the left allotted for the thousands of bicycles swarming through here continuously. Or at least 1 or 2 a day. You can see the same thing in the photo below, taken one block away. The leaf cleaning trucks are too wide to go down the bike slot. The drivers won't get out and shovel. Duh. Guess we need to spend a few million needless dollars on tinier leaf cleaning trucks. Maybe we can make the hordes of bicyclists do it, if only for their own safety. Or encourage them to sue the city if they slip and fall on gooey wet leaves.
UPDATE: yes, the city has pissed away money on narrower street cleaners, one went down Barclay Street last week, probably because they couldn't get through anywhere else. It is still not narrow enough to solve the problem noted above.

The intersection at Haro and Bute, completely screwed. See any bicyclists?

Maple Tree Square, completely screwed

Alexander Street on the right used to be 2-way, now it's just one way accessed only from the square, which simply increases the traffic in this location. I'm sure delivery drivers forced to navigate the hairpin corner (with obstacles) aren't happy, especially since they previously would have simply accessed that block directly from Main Street. Nor are they happy being stuck in bumper to bumper traffic on a road they don't want to be on. The road in and out of the intersection used to be 2 lanes, now it's just one. Definitely no more parking! Abbott Street on the left was 2-way, you could turn left here for the past 140 years if you wanted. Now it's completely closed off, you now have no choice but to keep going. On a quiet Friday afternoon, all of the drivers and passengers in view have been constrained from 8 lanes of traffic into 3. It's now needlessly bumper to bumper, just because 62.5% of the driving lanes are gone. Nice work, de-engineers. I think these dimwits are incapable of thinking about more than one lane at a time.

Bald eagles, Stanley Park, February 2022

Blue Heron, Lost Lagoon, February 2022

Bob at Ferry Building Gallery booklaunch for Harry & Jessie Webb, June 2014

           
Samples of Reid's work from the 1950s.
Click images for info.

This was also the first time that I saw how the City has butchered Pacific in half, with an oversized bike road taking up 2 of 4 lanes, the other two lanes (here, but only one west of Denman) still available for drivers and passengers to use. One lane each way, no parking anywhere. So much for taking the old folks down to watch the sunset. There's a continuous concrete divider between the drivers and riders, visible lower left in the barge photo. How ecologically sensitive! Concrete, asphalt, all the work crews with their jimmies, dump trucks, backhoes, what could be greener?

The parking lot below the road is now useless for parking, it can't be accessed, so they've put some picnic tables on it to make it look like they thought it through (visible in the distance in the middle photo below, empty of course). And they cut the heads off the parking meters that used to earn money for the City. Cool hand luke! I lost track of how many potholes in the road I had to dodge on my walk, or broken sidewalks to navigate, or how many painted white lines at stop signs just aren't there any more ... the City has better things to do ... the war on automobiles!!!

     
Some of today's pictures: sculptures by Charles Marega, Lionel Thomas, Gerhard Class.
Click images for info.

Images added to BC Artists so far in 2022

Lost Lagoon in Winter