Watercolour Landscapes of the Yukon
Surgery’s done and I have eaten. All is now well with the world. It went well although I don’t get the surgeon’s report until two weeks and we won’t know if there will be any benefit for about three months. There is often no improvement with additional scopes and this is sort of a “hit or miss” thing. However, the last one did give me more than a year of no pain at all in my knee during most activities.
Now, I get to spend a week condemned to the first floor of the house…
What sort of person schedules you for fasting after midnight and surgery for 1 PM?
Worse yet, where do they get the weird definitions? The strangest thing that gets me today is that I can’t eat solid foods and I am allowed “clear liquids” until 10 AM. Here’s the rub? What’s a “clear liquid?” Here’s where the English language goes slightly off course. I’m allowed to have water, apple juice and the time honoured tea without milk. What you might want to consider is that the sugar in your tea isn’t considered solid food. I suppose that, in solution, you could consider the sugar as a liquid. However, the item I’m having as we type this is another clear liquid, namely, black coffee. What’s that clear about black coffee?
I’m not sure what’s more confusing: medical terminology or plain English? This is probably why your doctor went to university for almost as long as an anthropologist…
Well, after much phone/e-mail tag, I did get a chance to talk and correspond with the director of environmental protection at the Yukon Territorial Government. I put forward my question as to why he had a permit in a residential neighbourhood. He seemed to think that this was a good question and he wanted an answer to it as well. He did think that the issue of the permit was probably done in error, although he did wonder if the area had previously been zoned commercially.
Actually, the zoning did change when the City decided to rename some of the zones… although what could actually be there has not with the new name. Inspectors are on their way to deal appropriately with the situation.
Our conversation, though, has raised another question. He no longer has the contract to salvage from seven of the Yukon Government community dumps because of failure to meet its tems. Why does he still have his permit and where is the crap coming from? This is a question for the city potentially and I’ll send a request to the Manager of Bylaw Services to see if he has a permit to salvage from the city landfill and whether or not that can be pulled. And, so it goes…
He left a while ago with the truck with the batteries in it. Of course, he came back with another load of batteries… in fact more than the earlier load.
I think I’m giving Environment until noon on Monday…
I’ve been asked how bad the neighbour is. So, here’s a few more pictures.
Here’s an example of what he’s storing on the property that we can see. Large numbers of car batteries and numerous empty, I assume, propane tanks and oil jugs can be easily seen. They’re easy to see, by the way, since these are pictures of his front lawn.
I guess it’s time to ask City Council an important question. If they have no legal way to enforce the Maintenance and Zoning Bylaws, does the same apply to the Property Tax Bylaw?
I asked for clarification in the ongoing question about “special” waste storage and asked if our neighbour actually had a permit to store it here, as well as why the department would issue one in the middle of a residential neighbourhood. The answer I received was to contact the director of environmental protection.
However, I discovered that trying to get hold of a government department director on a Friday is not an area where one counts on success. I left a lengthy voice mail with his phone, but have not yet received a response.
Now, the neighbour has gone a bit weirder on us. He’s run a rope across the front of his driveway with bizarre things across the front. There’s some chairs, a vacuum, an exercise bike and a toilet seat tied to the rope. I’m not sure why the rope is there. I’m really not sure why the toilet seat is there. I am sure, though, that I don’t want to know why there’s a package of tampons on each of the chairs….
Well, in continuation of our last post, I did get an answer from the office of the Minister of the Environment Department. We were looking for reassurance that the guy across the street wasn’t storing hazardous wastes in the neighbourhood.
I say “hazardous” for the purpose of clarity. Here, the government refers to these as “special waste,” since the old term sounds dangerous and you wouldn’t want to needlessly worry if some were to spill. The newer one, “special,” just makes them sound… well, special.
The only problem is that their answer really isn’t reassuring at all. When the response about potentially storing hazardous waste is that “he has a permit.” Ahhh?
My hope, and we have asked for clarification, is that the answer is not as well worded as it could have been, or maybe a little more generic than it was intended. I am, of course, working on the assumption that the Environment Department would not issue a waste storage permit for the middle of a residential neighbourhood. Of course, making assumptions is never a good practice, is it?
Looking across the street is a lot like watching Deliverance. We have been trying for three years to get the current tenant across the street to clean up his property. Sadly, this is a losing battle on several levels. The neighbour is running a recycling/dump service/used car business in a residential neighbourhood.
We have made several attempts to have something done through the Maintenance Bylaw and the Zoning Bylaw, but there has been no success. Keep in mind that he previously lived about a mile away and his previous neighbours complained for almost ten years to get that place cleaned up. By the way, the owner sold the property so he had to move before the City was capable of making him clean the property.
What is he like? Well, he’s had about 50 tickets issued against him in the last two years. Yet, here’s what you face when you give him a ticket. He’s from Texas and, as has been mentioned in previous court appearances, believes that he just living his lifestyle. The fact that 7 or more of his immediate neighbours might complain about his property at least weekly is their problem, not his.
The interesting thing is, it doesn’t matter how many fines he gets since he doesn’t own the property. If he doesn’t pay, it just gets added to the property tax bill and the property owner is impossible to find, in Alberta, and his daughter. In short, going to the landlord is not an option.
We have a new ploy. We’ve asked the environment department to guarantee that he is not housing hazardous waste on the street. This was put to the Environmental Protection department and the minister four days ago. Unfortunately, there has been no response. Another request was sent this evening. If there is no answer by Monday, we’re going to ask the new premier and the press why the Minister and the department aren’t answering us.
How bad is it? He moved in after the previous tenants were evicted by the territorial government. If we’d known what we were getting, most of us would have fought the eviction. After all, a crack house was highly preferable to the current neighbour and the particularly telling point is that doesn’t bother him at all….
Could we stop talking about the Senate? The embers of disbelief from the Prime Minister appointing three losing candidates to the Senate are still cooling. Now, with the Ontario provincial elections on, we have the Liberal Party screaming to have it abolished.
Let’s just take a quick reality break here. First, the Senate exists by legislation of the Constitution Act (1982) and its previous versions. You want to abolish it? Go for it. All you need is pass it through the House of Commons and then get the approval of 7 out of 10 provincial legislatures, where those provinces comprise more than 50% of the population. Because that is the only amending formula for a major revision of the constitution.
By the way, you’ll notice that passing it through the Senate is not a requirement. If the Senate does not approve a constitutional amendment, the House can wait 180 days and re-approve the amendment and Senate approval is no longer required.
And, bluntly, don’t think that this sort of thing is just going to happen. Most of the provinces would like to do a bit of constitutional wrangling, rather than one single piece. Therefore, a First Ministers’ meeting on the constitution, or probably several, will be needed to get any amendments going. As we remember from the election earlier this month, the NDP stated that, as part of their platform, they were willing to reopen the constitution in the aim to get Quebec as a full signatory to it. This was criticized by both the Conservatives and Liberal Party. Mr. Harper, in Asbestos, QC, said:
“We are in the middle of an economic recovery and the real priority for families are jobs, growth, affordable services and keep their taxes down and those will be the priorities of the Conservative government, not resurrecting old constitutional debates.”
When we consider that this looks very much like “I’m not interested,” we do have to remember that a politician’s opinion in April isn’t necessary a politician’s choice in May. That being said, we can probably safely assume that a Conservative Prime Minister is not going to do anything that vaguely looks like he’s meeting the demands of a Liberal premier during an election. We all know that certainly isn’t happening…
For those of you who missed it, there is a neat story running around about George Lepp, a Conservative candidate in the upcoming Ontario provincial election. It seems that pictures of his private bits spent 20 minutes posted on Yfrog, an online social media site, with a link on Twitter. Yes, this is one of those news stories that make you scratch your head. But, as the details come out, more than normal head scratching appears to be needed.
I know, all of you are asking about where the pictures came from or, maybe, why he posted them. Remember that posting the picture to Yfrog and then linking it to Twitter isn’t something one would normally do by accident. You see, according to his campaign spokesman, the picture was unintentionally taken when his Blackberry in was “in camera mode in his front pocket.” Apparently, the next step in this sad tale is that his Blackberry was stolen when he was jostled by protesters and apparently posted by whoever stole it. Notice that there is no dispute on the ownership of the picture’s contents.
OK. The Toronto Sun reported “The pictures — too graphic to reproduce in the newspaper — are of a man naked from the waist down, showing a close up of his penis and his crossed legs.”
So, explain to me the following. First, seeing your crossed legs, not counting anything else, in a picture taken from as close as the contents of your pocket makes me wonder what sort of lens is in a Blackberry camera. I haven’t seen the picture (nor do I want to…) so I can’t really determine if the picture is taken from as close a source as is suggested. Secondly, how much of your skin can you see from inside your pocket? A friend on Twitter said he tried to take pictures of his junk from his pocket with his iPhone but had no success. Obviously, Blackberries are way better than iPhones. I mean, picture the ad: Need to take pictures of your penis from your pocket? There’s an app for that!
So if you think I believe the explanation, you’re a bit off target. I’m a bit unsure how it got posted to Twitter, but I really wonder why someone runs around with pictures of his own bits on his cell phone camera… and, who believes you should vote for him….
Additional Note:
It seems someone has decided that the story was a bit weak so the new version seems, according to CBC, that the ownership of the bits in question is now a mystery. Mr. Lepp’s spokesman is saying that no one knows the source of the picture or how they were posted. The best part of this… same spokesman, different story. Don’t you love politics?
Doug Rutherford 