Pavilion Lake Fire

The cross hatching is the area of the fire, the lake is Pavilion Lake
the upper right north side of the lake is where I lived

There is a fire burning not far from where I lived on Pavilion Lake, less than 4 kilometres down the road.

Living in the Lillooet area I got used to forest fires somewhere in the area every year.  It was part of life in the dry and hot climate of the region.   

My friends at Ts'kw'aylaxw are all under evacuation alert, though the fire is apparently now 85% contained. I think the risk is over for them.   I am 99% certain there was no chance of a risk to people living at Pavilion IR #1, it is the Marble Canyon Reserve that is less than 1.4 kilometres from the fire, though fires do not tend to burn downhill.

I know the forest that has been burned.   It is largely in the Marble Canyon Park and was/is old growth forest.   I often drove the road behind the park to get up on the cliffs above Pavilion Lake, this road goes through the location of the fire.   It is a beautiful view and a peaceful place.    That fact that a bunch of it has burned is very personal to me.

It looks like the area right above the well know ice climb Icy BC has been burned.  I have no idea if this will have any impact on the climb next winter.

Parts of some early maps for the area near Lillooet

Map from 1859 - Lillooet still called Kayoosch and HBC Fort Berens is on the map

Map drawn by Matthew Begbie in 1860

1860 Map of Lytton

1861 showing the area from Lillooet to Lytton

1862 sketch map of roads in the Lillooet and Lytton areas

Some more pictures from Estonia between the early 1930s and 1943

I posted this before, but this is better resolution.  The picture is of the 17th century clock on the Holy Spirit Chuch
in Tallinn - picture by Ernst von Stackelberg from 1938

This is where my mother lived as a girl, the address is Narva Maante 100
von  Dellingshausens lived upstairs, von Dehns donwstairs and von Fersens on the right

My grandparents often sailed on this boat in the 1930s

This is the manor Orgena/Orina, picture taken June 2nd 1943 - my great grandmother was born here in 1870

I should figure where in Tallinn this is

A Possible Future NHL

It would seem to me that the NHL should look to focusing more on Canada and should look to moving more teams to Canada.   The problem back in the 1990s was that the Canadian dollar was worth so much less than the US dollar that the relative costs of the teams in Canada became a problem.   With the new stability of Canadian dollar in the range of par with the US dollar and in general the Canadian standard of living significanly higher than 15 to 20 years ago, there is no end of money to support teams in Canada.

In the US there are 113 major league teams in the US, one team per 2.8 million people.   Currently in Canada there are 9 major league teams or 3.9 million people per team.   If Canada had the same population per team as the US there would be 12 and a half teams in Canada.

Clearly Quebec City and Hamilton should be able to have teams, if we add them to the mix, this means there are nine NHL teams in Canada and 11 major league teams.   It would seem to me that it is realistic to see two more NHL teams in Canada.   I would add a second one in Metro Vancouver, specifically in Surrey.

Winnipeg has a population of about 684,000.   Surrey  has a population of 475,000.   There are another 125,000 in the Langleys, 55,000 in North Delta and 19,000 in White Rock to bring the "Greater Surrey" population to 674,000, or only slightly lower than Winnipeg.   The Hamilton team would be the Toronto equivalent of the Surrey team.

With ten teams in Canada, there could be two completely Canadian divisions.

Canada West       Canada East
Vancouver         Hamilton
Surrey            Toronto
Calgary           Ottawa
Edmonton          Montreal
Winnipeg          Quebec

In the US we then have the following

Pacific    Central     Northeast    Atlantic
San Jose   Minnesota   Boston       Washington
LA         St Louis    Rangers      Philadelphia
Anaheim    Nashville   Islanders    Carolina
Dallas     Chicago     New Jersey   Tampa Bay
Colorado   Detriot     Buffalo      Florida
           Columbus    Pittsburgh
You will notice Phoenix is gone, it will move to Canada.

The conferences would be East and West.

You keep the playoff format as it is now.

Patrick Baron von Dellingshausen 1902-1980

This is the notice for my grandfather's death, my mother's father.   

Patrick von Dellingshausen was born December 7th 1902 on the family manor of  Loop in the Russian province of Estonia.   He died August 25th 1980 in Hamburg.

He had two daughters from his first marriage (1926-1940) to Maria von Stackelberg, my mother Lita (1929-2009) and her sister Nata (1927-2009).   

He had two sons from his second marriage (1941-1980) to Ingeborg Sauermann , Patrick(1942) and Niki (1944).   Niki happened to drop by for a visit on Tuesday out of the blue.

Patrick also had two step children that came from his second wife Ingeborg's first marriage.

From his four children he had 10 grandchildren, though two of them were born after his death.  His first grandchild was born in 1946 when my aunt Nata had a son at age 19.

Nata - Charley 1946, Andreas 1968

Lita - Beatrice 1955, Bernard 1965, Nik 1969

Niki - Christoph 1973, Nils 1976, Olaf 1980

Patrick - Patrick 1982, Elizabeth 1984

He has 18 great-grandchildren, 16 born after his death. 

In August his first great-great-grandchild will be born, though there might be a couple out there because the connection to the kids of my aunt Nata's son Charley are very tenuous at best.  

Skopje Express September 1991

I was in Munich in September 1991 on one of my regular business trips from England to Germany.  I had decided to come back on the train instead of flying, I am not a typical business traveller, I prefer to stay with people I know and travel in interesting ways.   I also would leave towards the end of the week and come back on a Sunday.   This meant the company saved a bunch on money on the flight and I got some spare time in Germany.

The train I was taking was not leaving till sometime in the evening, I had a bunch of time to kill after the sun was down.   I bought myself a novel and some magazines for the trip but I did not want to start on them till the train was under way.   I wandered through the Hauptbahnhof and watched as the trains arrived and left.   I was watching the people passing through the station.   With 32 platforms, there was a constant flow of people through the station.   It also had that distinct grand railway station feeling - a bit drafty and cold as well as dirtier than it needed to be.  Still I have a fascination for trains and where people might be headed on the train.

One train I noticed was the Skojpe Express.   The train was leaving at quarter to ten in the evening, about 45 minutes before mine.

The route of the train was from Munich to Salzburg to Villach and then into the former Yugoslavia.   The end city, Skopje, is now the capital of Macedonia, which had recently declared independence.   The train route, as per the board, was right through the biggest battle going on in the former Yugoslavia at the time - the battle of Vukovar.   There was a hand written note saying the train would only go as far as Vinkovci, which is less than 20 kilometer from Vukovar.

In London I bought the Guardian most mornings on my way to work and each day they had a page on the war in the former Yugoslavia.   Their coverage was exemplary which meant that I was very up to date with what was happening.    It was at the start of the summer of 1991 that Yugoslavia starting falling apart with Croatia declaring independence on June 25th and Slovenia on June 26th.   The Slovenian break had gone quickly and easily, the image that stands in my mind is of some youth around age 20 coming across an JNA troop mover and turning it in to the JNA.   It was all so civilized, but then Slovenian was almost all Slovenes/  I remember thinking in August of that year that the Yugoslavian wars had taken fewer lives than the troubles in Northern Ireland but were getting a lot of ink.    By the time I was in Munich in September that was clearly no longer the case.

The train bound for Croatia was filling with people carrying a lot of bags of clothes, bags of food and other things they were bringing from Germany.   There was a grim look on the faces of the people entering the train.   These were ethnic Croatians returning to Croatia in support of their new country.  

Germany had allowed in guest workers from Yugoslavia in the late 1960s and they had done well.  Many had remained for over 20 years but sent money back to Yugoslavia and often funded the building of a modern house in the town or village them came from.  Since I have spent enough time in Germany, I have a good idea what a modern house in a small Bavarian village looks like - the villages in Croatia have the same houses.  The images of the war in Croatia of the burned or bombed houses felt closer to me because it was a landscape I knew.

Many of the people boarding the train were men in their 20s and 30s.  These men carried less stuff than the others but had the grimmest faces.    All I could think of was a scene from the Spanish Civil War written by George Orwell, I think it I read in "An Age Like This"  The collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 1.   He wrote of the train that he was on from Paris to the Spanish frontier and how as the train went further south more and more of the men on the train were clearly headed to the war and the train felt like a troop train.

The train was full, 21:43 came and the train left Munich to head towards the front in the war.   It is the first and only time I have seen men  going off to war.  The image of the men stayed with me as the war continued on for four more years and well over 100,000 people died.   I do not doubt that some of those men died.

The end of the penny

My favourite design of the penny

Finally sanity is prevailing on the penny, though ideally I would like to see us get rid of a whole digit in our currency.  I think we would be best off if we had the dime as the smallest coin and then a 50 cent piece, only four coins in circulation, but I digress.

The penny has been a coin that almost no one spends any longer, all we do is collect them and keep them.   Only yesterday I was in the Real Canadian Warehouse Store in Esquimalt and one of the cashiers was complaining that several people were spending their pennies.   She was complaining about the time it was taking for the people to count out 20 or 30 pennies.  People long ago quit wanting to have the penny, the action by the government is just catching up with reality.

Canadian penny from 1920 to 1936

The penny costs more to make than it is worth, though I have heard the Royal Canadian Mint claim this was not the case.   I think the cost issue is a red herring.   In the last few years the mint has made about 767,000,000 a year.   The total cost for that is only $13.8 million but the value of the coins is $7.67 million which means the net cost is $6.13 million.

The current coin has been the same size since 1920 and had the maple leaf design since 1937.   In my change over the years I have recieced pennies as far back as 1937, but none from before then.

Canadian penny from 1937 to 1952

From 1920 to 1996 the coins were primarily copper. According to the mind, in 1997 to 1999 it was mainly zinc and since 2000 it has been a steel coin.   Though coins were made of zinc in 2000-2007 and the steel ones in 2000 and 2001 were rare.

Penny from 1953 to 1964

The pennies from 1942 to 1977 contain 3.1752 grams of copper.   The current price for copper is $3.84 per pound.  It takes 142.855 pennies to weight a pound.   This means the copper in each of these pennies is worth $0.02688 cents.   In the last year copper has ranged from $3.10 to $4.50 per pound.   This means the copper value of these pennies has ranged from $0.022 to $0.032.

Penny from 1965 to 1989

Pennies from 1980 and 1981 contain 2.744 grams of copper which means it takes 165.3 pennies to make a pound which means these pennies are currently worth about $0.02323 each.   From 1982 to 1996 the penny contained 2.45 grams of copper which means 185.14 per pound and a copper value of $0.02074 each.

Penny from 1990 to 2003

The current penny is 2.2 grams of steel and with the price of steel at $800 per tonne, the steel value of each penny is $0.0018, so about a fifth of a cent.  The value of zinc in the zinc core pennies is $0.0044.

Penny from 2003 to 2012

From in the ten years from 2001 to 2010 the mint made 7,954,316,000 - about 240 per Canadian.  

Ideawave 2012

Ideawave 2012 is happening on February 25th and 26th at the Ambrosia Conference and Event Centre.  Ideawave is a TED like ideas conference held here in Victoria BC.   There will be 50 talks in two days and this year I will be one of the speakers.

I will be speaking about being the last gasp of a culture that is terminal and why this matters.   If I speak on the 25th, I will be speaking on my father's 90th birthday.  I will flesh out the full details of the talk over the next few weeks and then post it here, but here are some initial thoughts:

• I was born in Canada but I did not arrive in Canadian culture until I started kindergarten
• I look like a Canadian and sound like a Canadian, but underlying all that is my Baltic German culture
• Being part of a culture that I can see is on its way out has allowed me some interesting insights and commonalities with First Nation cultures here in BC.
• I do view the world differently, and think differently, because of my underlying culture
• If there is strength in diversity of ideas and thoughts, the loss of cultures is not a good thing, but at the same time keeping a culture artificially alive makes no sense.

As I said, when I write it, I will post here.

Canadians in Space

To date 9 Canadians have gone flown in space a total of 16 times in 28 years.  Canadians have spent a total of 364 days, 13 hours and 12 minutes in space, when Chris Hadfield returns to space in March 2013, Canada will be the sixth nation to have logged more than a year in space.

Canada has chosen 12 people to become astronauts of which 8 have been in space to date - people in bold are still active

• 1983 Roberta Bondar, Marc Garneau, Steve MacLean, Robert Thirsk  and Bjarni Tryggvason who flew in space and Kenneth Money who did not.
• 1992 Chris Hadfield, Julie Payette and Dafydd Williams who few in space and Micheal McKay who did not fly due to medical reasons.
• 2009 Jeremy Hansen and David Saint-Jacques, neither whom has flown yet.

Guy Laliberte paid Space Adventures to go into space in 2009.

By Time in Space

• Robert Thirsk - 204d 18h 29m - June 1996, May 2009
• Marc Garneau - 29d 2h 11m - Oct 1984, May 1996, Nov 2000
• Dafydd Williams - 28d 15h 47m - Apr 1998, Aug 2007
• Julie Payette - 25d 11h 58m - May 1999, July 2009
• Steve MacLean - 21d 16h 2m - Oct 1992, Sept 2006
• Chris Hadfield - 20d 2h 2m - Nov 1995, Apr 2001
• Barni Tryggvason - 11d 20h 28m - Aug 1997
• Guy Laliberte - 10d 21h 7m - Sept 2009
• Roberta Bondar - 8d 1h 46m - Jan 1992

By Age at First Flight

• Julie Payette - 35
• Marc Garneau - 35
• Chris Hadfield - 36 
• Steve MacLean - 37
• Robert Thirsk - 42
• Dafydd Williams - 43
• Roberta Bondar - 46
• Guy Laliberte - 50
• Bjarni Tryggvason - 51

By Date of Birth

• Bjarni Tryggvason - Sept 1945
• Roberta Bondar - Dec 4 1945
• Marc Garneau - Feb 23 1949
• Robert Thrisk - Aug 17 1953
• Dafydd Williams - May 16 1954
• Steve MacLean - Dec 14 1954
• Chris Hadfield - Aug 29 1959
• Guy Laliberte - Sept 2 1959
• Julie Payette - Oct 30 1963

By EVA

• Dafydd Williams - 17h 47m
• Chris Hadfield - 14h 50m 
• Steve Maclean - 7h 11m

A number of CSA astronauts have been on NEEMO.  NEEMO is and underwater habitat located near Key Largo in Florida.   NASA has crews there for a weeks at a time.   The program gives astronauts experience living in a space like environment.   It also gives astronauts some command experience before becoming an ISS commander in space.   

• Daffyd Williams - Oct 2001 and then again in  Apr 2006 as commander
• Robert Thirsk - Oct 2004 as commander
• Chris Hadfield - May 2010 as commander - he will be the ISS commander for expedition 35 starting in March 2013
• David Saint-Jacques - Oct 2011

They are not Reindeer, they are Caribou

Image from Calgary Coin

It is every year at Christmas that I get annoyed that we talk about Santa's reindeer, the latin name is Rangifer taradus.   This is the same animal that is on the Canadian quarter and called a caribou.

To be clear here, a reindeer is a caribou.

Do I look like a Lapp to you?  Last time I checked Santa was not a Lapp either.   We have Clement Moore to blame for this error in naming with respect to Santa's caibou

Caribou image from USF&W

Santa's sleigh is pulled by caribou people, not by reindeer!   This is Canada, we as Canadians we should be taking ownership of the animal and giving the poor beasts their proper name, the caribou.    You would think after 74 years of having a caribou on the quarter, we would know a caribou when look at one.

We also need to change the lyrics to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

Rudolph, the red-nosed caribou

had a very shiny nose.

And if you ever saw him,

you would even say it glows.

All of the other caribou

used to laugh and call him names.

They never let poor Rudolph

join in any caribou games.

Then one foggy Christmas Eve

Santa came to say:

"Rudolph with your nose so bright,

won't you guide my sleigh tonight?"

Then all the caribou loved him

as they shouted out with glee,

Rudolph the red-nosed caribou,

you'll go down in history!

Picture of a reindeer

Last time I checked, if you want to mail a letter to Santa, you have to do it through Canada, this is the only country on earth that has a functioning address and postal code for the North Pole.

Santa Claus

North Pole 

Canada

H0H 0H0

As Canadians we lay claim to the territory that is Santa's home, we should also demand that people refer to his draft animals by their proper name, caribou.  Canada is also home to the northernmost permanent habitation on earth - Alert Nunavut at 82 degrees and 28 minutes north.   It is only 817 kilometers from the North Pole.

As a country that is covered in all this snow and ice, we need to take ownership of Christmas.  We need to start by calling the caribou what it really is and making the world know the truth.  

17 years ago today I was at BC Women's Hospital

It was exactly 17 years ago right now that Daniel was born.  He was born at BC Women's Hospital after a VERY long labour, Catherine spent more than 24 hours in the hospital in labour.

The first apartment was small, a one bedroom on Dunbar Street in Vancouver.   But we made it work. Daniel shared our futon, which was on the floor.

As the oldest child, he has always been first to get to every age.   Now that he is 17 he is at an age where I thought I was basically capable of being an adult.   I see what sort of person Daniel is and I see that he a well on his way to being an adult.  

In June Daniel will be finished with high school and then he wants to travel.   There is a world out there for him to see and as a dual citizen (Canada and Estonia) he will be able to live and work in all of the EU.

One of several times Daniel was on the cover of the Lillooet News

Daniel on December 13th 1994

NHL Realignment

I am not sure what to make of the re-alignment of the NHL.   The divisions within the conferences have been rather irrelevant for some time so getting rid of them makes some sense.

The move of the franchise from Atlanta to Winnipeg meant that some changes were going to have to happen.  

Conference "A" (8 teams - 3 Canadian)

• Anaheim (Pacific)
• Calgary (Northwest)
• Colorado (Northwest)
• Edmonton (Northwest)
• Los Angeles (Pacific)
• Phoenix (Pacific)
• San Jose (Pacific)
• Vancouver (Northwest)

As a Vancouver fan, I like this change as it keeps all the teams I like to see the Canucks play and will reduce their travel.   What I do not like is that only four of the eight teams makes the playoffs.

Conference "B" (8 teams - 1 Canadian)

• Chicago (Central)
• Columbus (Central)
• Dallas (Pacific)
• Detroit (Central)
• Minnesota (Northwest)
• Nashville (Central)
• St. Louis (Central)
• Winnipeg (Southeast)

I think conference "B" makes a lot more sense, this is a dramatic improvement.

Conference "C" (7 teams - 3 Canadian)

• Boston (Northeast)
• Buffalo (Northeast)
• Florida (Southeast)
• Montreal (Northeast)
• Ottawa (Northeast)
• Tampa Bay (Southeast)
• Toronto (Northeast)

The addition of Florida and Tampa to this conference says to me the NHL does not expect the teams to survive in those markets and that we are more than likely to see a team in Hamilton and Quebec within a couple of years.  The ongoing strength of the Canadian dollar, and the likelihood that it will continue to be strong for at least a decade or two more, means a return to Canada makes a lot of sense.

Frankly a smart NHL would push for a second team in Toronto ASAP.

Also, with four of seven teams making the playoffs, it will be a very rare year not to see a Canadian team in the playoffs.

Conference "D" (7 teams)

• Carolina (Southeast)
• New Jersey (Atlantic)
• New York Islanders (Atlantic)
• New York Rangers (Atlantic)
• Philadelphia (Atlantic)
• Pittsburgh (Atlantic)
• Washington (Southeast)

This is the conference with the shortest travel schedule

Life a hundred years ago

Recently I have been watching Schwartzwaldhaus 1902 and Abenteuer 1900: Leben im Gutshaus.

Both are about life at the turn of the 19th century in Germany.   The first is about a farm in a mountain valley of the Black Forest.   A Berlin family moves to this farm to try and live as it was in 1902.  What struck about this is how life on this farm was in so many ways closer to 1602 than 2002.   No electrical power, no running water, no home entertainment, really nothing much more than work to keep the family sustained.    On going daily back breaking work is the one central focus of life.  

This is only 109 years ago.  

My one grandfather was born in 1902 and the other in 1881.   This is what the world was like for most people in the 'first world'.   In 1902 most people in Germany, France, Canada and even the UK still lived on farms.   The fundamental change in technology and how people lived in 109 years is astonishing.   The Black Forest farm was not among the global poor in 1902, but today if one lived like that, one would be on the bottom 10% the global incomes.

The second one is about life on an estate in Germany in 1900.   In this one it is not so much about changes in lifestyle and technology, they are big, but about what life was like in a house like this.   My family were the "Herrschaften" in estates like this in 1900.  My father's family owned Limmat.   My mother's family had Kattentack.   Limmat was a small estate, it is Kattentack that is like the one in the program, the scale of house that is beyond what anyone could use for a family.

The program has 20 people live in the estate of Belitz for eight weeks as if it was 1900, though it should be noted that the actual building used in the show was built in 1906.    There is a family of eight that are the Herrschaften and the rest of the people are the servants.   In 1900 my family would have been the Herrschaften.  

A quick detour about the word "Herrschaften" - it is a word that I grew up with that if you ask me to define I would still have trouble.   What came across to me all my life is that it means the gathered people.   This comes from my family being part of the nobility and it astonishes me because how long that has held through within my family.  It has been 94 years since we really had the status of nobility and 66 years since we had any standard of living better than the average .   In reality the word means gentry, sort of, it is also an old fashioned polite term a group of people, sort of like "gentemen".

The standard of living of the family in program is decent, but it is not luxury in the sense I would think of it now.  The house is huge and the family wants for nothing, but because of technology their standard of living is missing so much of what is possible for people today.   The only way they can make up for it is by having a house full of servants to make it possible.

The program focuses primarily on the servants, which is not really that surprising because that sort of work is really no longer at all done.   Having a house full of servants like this would cost someone something on the order of $500,000 to $800,000 a year.   There are very few people who could afford this today, not that they need them any longer in any case.

What strikes me is how much energy and effort that was required to maintain the estate and these servants are not the people that were actually producing the wealth of the estate.  I wonder if the success of Canada, the US and Australia between the 1880s and 1930s was in part due to the countries being much more egalitarian and not wasting so many resources on so few people?

For the servants there is no life.   They are servants from when they wake to when they go to bed, there is no time for themselves.   The life of these people was one of survival, working all the time so they had a place to live and food to eat with almost no income.   They could not live in their own space, they could not marry.  

Life with ADHD

I was first diagnosed with ADHD when I was 40 years old.    It has been nice being able to understand why I am like I am, thought that does not always help.   For the last couple of weeks my ADHD has been causing more problems that normal for my life.    I have a household and life full of half finished projects and it is all chaotic than usual.

One of the ongoing lifelong frustrations I have is the inability to finish tasks easily.   I have a bunch of house renovations that should be done, stupid little final bits of things like getting some boards that were refinished up around the windows in the house.    I have a desk covered in paper but I can not get it filed.   Even if I file it, my filing system is not consistent.  

What is it like for me?  I regularly take dishes into the kitchen but do not manage to get them into the dishwasher - I have no idea why that last step gets missed out but it often does.   It is one small thing that happens and is more likely to happen when I am stressed.

I have put myself in situation where I am supposed to be the organized one in my personal life and in my work life.    This causes me stress and that stress "enhances" the ADHD.

ADHD people can have trouble sleeping, stress increases this.  I have been going through weeks and weeks of very mixed sleep patterns.    Not enough sleep makes me hungry, low energy and unable to disconnect my ego from criticism.   My ADHD is also worse when I am low on sleep.

I am stuck in a feedback loop and I need to pull myself out of it.   I need more and better sleep, I also need to reduce the stress in my life.  

One solution to less stress in the short term is drinking.  I am very aware that this is not a good solution and one I have to be aware of in my life when I am stressed.   I need to make sure they this does not become a way I handle stress.   I would also never make use of sleeping pills or such.  

I need to deal with the stress is a good way.

I meanwhile have this endless list of good ideas, it gets longer everyday as ideas join the list faster than I can deal with them.   I need to be able to execute more of them, there are ideas on the list that unique and cutting edge but I need to do something more than just have the ideas.

Ben is going to Scotland next summer

My second son Ben is part of a group of 18 youth from the Greater Victoria area going to the Blair Atholl international Jamboree.   The trip is a chance of a lifetime for these teens to not only go to the Jamboree, but see a lot of the UK and Paris.   There is a very high expectation of maturity and responsibility of the youth and they are stepping up.


The cost is not small and youth are working on raising as much money as they can.   The youth will be helping at the Greater Victoria Marathon in return for support from Dairyland.  They will be holding bottle drives and other events.    There is one fundraiser you can help with.


If you have scrap metal of any sort, you can drop it off at an Pacific Steel location on the island and help these hard working youth.  I can also pick up for you with my pickup if you call me at 250-744-0866.

Pacific Explorers want your Scrap Metal Island wide!!!

The Pacific Explorer 2012 Venture Company of 5th Tsartlip was formed specifically for scouting youth that want to participate in the Blair Atholl International Scout Jamborette in Scotland held every 2 years. There are 18 Greater Victoria Ventures whom are all Chief scouts, registered to attend this event, plus 4 leaders. The group will be traveling from Victoria, BC to Heathrow London on June 29th, 2012 and returning on August 3, 2011.

They will be visiting the Original 1907 Scout Campsite of Lord Baden Powell on Brownsea Island before attending the Blair Atholl International Jamborette hosted by the Scouts of Scotland.

Our key project objective is to raise the funds to attend the Blair Atholl International Jamborette Scouting event hosted by Scouts of Scotland. We have a total of 9 months to raise these funds. We are looking for corporate donations, but also do many fundraisers as well.

We have a fantastic way to raise money for our Trip and help our planet but we need your help! Steel Pacific has set up a donation program that will pay our group higher-than-market rates for every load of old nails and screws, broken stoves, rusted lawnmowers, dented kitchen sinks, little bits of copper plumbing, brass light fixtures, and other kinds of metal that you bring in to one of their six depots on Vancouver Island from now until November, 2011.

These metal scraps also add up to a big win for the environment. By keeping even the smallest piece of metal ‘in play’ and out of the landfill, together we reduce pollution from mining and processing virgin minerals, reduce the need to extract resources from the earth, save huge amounts of energy used to process raw minerals, reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions, and conserve resources for our children’s future.

When dropping off your scrap metal, please be sure to mention that you’re making your donation to the Pacific Explorer 2012 at the time you are being weighed in. Also, please let other family members, co-workers and friends know about this scrap drive! Maybe you can post this in your lunch room or office… Your donation is greatly appreciated and we thank you in advance for your scouting support!

Steel Pacific recycling depots accepting your donations of Scrap Metal for Pacific Explorers 2012 Scrap Drive:

VICTORIA DEPOT
307 David St
Victoria BC V8T 5C1
tel: 250-381-5865
Mon.- Sat. 8:00am to 4:30pm

DUNCAN DEPOT AND STORE
3015 Boys Rd (PO Box 188)
Duncan BC V9L 3X3
tel: 250-746-4573
Mon.- Sat. 8:00am to 4:30pm

NANAIMO DEPOT AND STORE
2079 Main Rd
Nanaimo BC V9X 1T6
tel: 250-716-0047
Mon.- Sat. 8:00am to 4:30pm

COURTENAY DEPOT AND STORE
(Walker's Scrap Metal)
3489 Royston Rd
Courtenay, BC V9N 9P9
tel: 250-336-8866
Mon.- Sat. 8:00am to 5:00pm

CAMPBELL RIVER DEPOT AND STORE
1942 Coulter Rd
Campbell River BC V9W 7M1
tel: 250-286-4572 | fax: 250-286-4571
Mon.- Sat. 8:00am to 4:30pm

CAMPBELL RIVER YARD
5551 Duncan Bay Rd
Campbell River BC V9H 1N6
tel: 250-287-8748
Mon.- Fri. 8:00am to 4:30pm

Note: No Fridges or Freezer donations unless Freon has been removed, thank you. Also if you have a car to be removed, please contact the local depot and they can pick it up, still crediting our group.

Call Scouter Curtis Becker from the 14th JDF Scouting Group, for more information. 250-385-7714 or 250-589-7715.

My earliest memories

The earliest memory I can date is my second birthday - I still have the images in my head of the small table with my presents on it and my cake along with the little chewed up rubber VW pickup toy I owned and wanted to have on the table for the picture my mother was taking. 

I have various memories that are from around the same time, but because I had no names for days, months or years I can not be certain when they happened.  I can only tell by the place, the event or the weather.

I think my memory goes back so far because it is a very visual memory.  I see the scene from when I was two in the same clarity as how I seen the people I was having beer with a few hours ago.  I see these clear pictures in my head and they do not seem to fade over time.

Ask me to remember a conversation, that is much, much harder. 

I know my second birthday is not my earliest memory, I know this because I can remember that at my 2nd birthday I had memories from before.  Memories of previous days but I can not connect images with when they happened.

What I do not remember is my first birthday or many images from the first trip my Tante Sabine made to Canada in 1967.   I have a memory of what has to be on the Hope Princeton Highway, somewhere near one of the Day Creeks.   I see my sister bent over outside of the car and I assume throwing up.

From the summer of 1968 to today I have a more or less unbroken memory, basically from when I was 2 years and 10 months old.

People say "All you are remembering is from old pictures you have seen".   That is not the case.  In my memories I am never in them, they are all from my view point.  

As an example, in the summer of 1968 I stayed with the Hahns and my Tante Nata came to visit with her newly born son Andreas.   There is a picture in a photo album of me seeing him for the first time, but the picture is black and white and taken with a flash.  My memory is of the room being in colour but dark because the curtains are closed.   The picture would give the observer no clues which room in the house it was, but I know it was the living room and that Tante Nata was sitting in a chair with her back to the window that faced out towards Number 5 road.  I highlight this one incident because my memory and the picture are so different.   I also can remember coming into the house from the backyard because Tante Dagmar called us all in to see the baby.

The earliest memory I seem to have is from late April 1966 in Penticton.   I am watching my mother washing dishes in a sink with a small black and white TV next to her with a hockey game on.   It is sunny outside and after dinner time based on where the sun is in the sky.  I can see my mother was wearing a light top though not white but her legs are not in my image.  I can tell she is not wearing a dress.

This would have been when I was about seven and half months old.

So how do I know when it was?  Because I told my mother about the scene when I was about eight years old.   My mother said there is no way I could know this because it was in late April early'/May of 1966 in Penticton at the Schellings Motel.   I told her about this scene when we were in Penticton in 1973 because I remembered the motel from the outside.

The image is skewed and this is because my head is not upright.   I have to have been in a baby seat of some sort.  Based on my height, I think the seat must have been on the kitchen table.

How would I know it was hockey at that age?  I did not, but when I was older I could recognize what was on the small screen.   I can even tell the hockey players had no helmets.  I can see the white coloured TV had an aerial.  I can see that the TV was to the right of mother and on an angle.   

Why do I remember this scene?   Why am I able to place this scene?  I am not sure.  What I am more sure of is that when I was younger there were connected sequences to this.   Memories of arriving, of going to see people and other such stuff.   I can no longer be certain what images in my head are from when at such a young age.   I also can be certain for the image in my head that I had memories from before that day.   I had memories of my mother that existed before that moment.   

Olson is dying

I am not sure that I am happy that Clifford Olson is dying.  What he did makes me almost blind with anger when I think about it.   It still pisses me off that he got reward money.  It pisses me off that he has had a prison experience that is not hell on earth.   I wish that he could have been put into solidarity confinement and served plain cold oatmeal as his only food every freaking day in prison.  That he never heard another human voice, never saw anything but an empty plain cell.

In the spring and summer of 1981 the Lower Mainland became the most dangerous place to be a teenager in Canadian history.  11 youth were killed by Clifford Olson.   11 kids that were about the same age I was at the time.  One that always resonated the most with me was Raymond King, he was almost exactly the same ageI  was, he was riding a ten speed to the Manpower office to find some summer work when Olson took him. He was doing something that I could have been doing.

It hit home with me at the time because the kids that were killed were just like me - most in secondary school and living in normal middle class neighbourhoods.  It was also only a couple of years after the horror of what happened to Abby Drover.

Thinking back on it now, there was media coverage of all the kids that went missing and presumed murdered, but there was never once any discussion of the situation in my school by the teachers or counselors.

I will be glad when he dies.

Reading Old Newspapers

I have been reading the British Colonist from Victoria for the given day 150 years ago.    What I like about reading old newspapers is that I can get a real sense of what the public was worried about while at the same time knowing what has coming.

As an example, in the September 12th 1861 edition of the British Colonist there is news about the US Civil War.   Most interesting are the rumours of foreign intervention in the war.  It was clearly in question if the South would be recognized by Spain, England and France.   The paper has numerous dispatches from the war and the one thing that is clear is the degree of suspense and uncertainty there is about the outcome.

With hindsight, it is clear the South had little or no chance to win militarily against the the North.  It is also clear there never was any realistic expectation of British or French support of the South.   But in 1861 no one knew this.

Most interesting in the paper from 150 years ago today was the speculation of what might happen in the 1861 California election.   There is an active fear that California may vote for a successionist governor in the form of John McConnell.   The speculation is that California would become a separate Pacific republic.  

The article clearly shows a great degree of concern about the possible outcome but this is something I have never heard about in California history.   I had no idea there was such a strong movement in southern California in favour of the South and in favour of the creation of a new state or territory for southern California.

Ich Lehrne Deutsch

I grew up speaking German even though I was born in Vancouver.   I did not speak a word of English when I started kindergarten.   So how ever you slice it, German is my first language, my language of birth, the langauage of home and family.   With the death of my parents, the amount of German I speak or listen to has dropped off to almost nothing.  My German is now the weakest it has ever been in my life and I need to do something to fix this.

Growing up the language in the house was always German.   English was only spoken in the house when there was a Canadian over and did not know any German.   As a kid I went to German school on Saturday mornings till I was about 13 or 14.   I was left being able to speak German fluently like a kid, but not as an adult.

20 years ago I lived in the UK but was responsible for the German market for an English computer consulting company.  For two years till age 27 I spent most of my working hours speaking German - an odd situation in an open plan office of 50 English speakers.   It did mean that by the end of my time in the UK I could speak a much more fluent adult German especially when it came to do with anything to do with the IT business.

At the end of my time in England my parents visited us in London and my mother made one of the most embarssing comments to me that I had even been told - I spoke German like a person from Germany "Ach Berndti, du sprichts Deutsch wie ein Reichsdeutscher!".    Given that I am a Baltic German, this was hardly a positive remark and had a certain sense of I was being assimilated into being a German.   The best analogy I can think of for a Canadian would be to told that they sound like they are an American.

Back in Canada, for the next 16 years I would speak on the phone with my mother a couple of times a week and visit my parents in Tsawwassen a couple of times a month.   I probably spoke German for more than ten hours a month not counting times when I had guests from Germany staying with me or I when I was in Europe in 1995, 2001 or 2006.

My father died suddenly in June 2003 and my mother passed in early January 2009.   Since then the most common reason I have spoken German is when I have had guest staying with me from Germany.  I have been going months not speaking any German at all.     When Laurel and Thomas were staying with us last fall, I realized how weak my German had become.   I would try to hold a conversation and specific words or phrases simply would not come into my mind fast enough.   I needed to do something to improve my German.

It has taken me a time to figure out what I can do, but about a month ago I finally grasped upon the fact I can watch streaming TV from Germany.   I have been watching the majority of my TV in German for the last month either on ARD or ZDF.   I have been watching a lot of documentaries and a lot of 'Krimis' - police procedurals.

So is it improving my German?  I am certain that it is, I am being reintroduced to words that I really do not use myself, my German vocabulary that I can quickly call on is rather small.    It is really to expand my vocabulary  that I watch German TV.   I am not sure how to estimate it, but I am guessing that 5-10 words a day are moving from a passive vocabulary to an active state.   I have not had a of chance to speak German with anyone lately so I am not sure how easily the words will flow when called on.

In theory I could go to somewhere like the Edelweiss Club, but my problem is that at these social clubs the immigrant Germans are more German than the Germans.   Baltic Germans tend towards being completely unnationalistic.   I personally feel more kinship with the Swedes, Estonians, Finns and Russians than I do with people from Germany.

Germans abroad very easily suffer from a bunker mentality.   A sense that no one gets them and everyone sort of hates them.   They also tend to assume that no one can speak German other than Germans and all German speakers are on the same side.    This has lead to me being told more than a few times that Hitler was not that bad a man.   The most extreme example was in early 2005 when a man that was the selected Green candidate on the island was at an event with me.  Afterwards among about 40 Greens in the UVic University Club he bought me a drink and them proceeded to tell me in German that the holocaust was a Jewish hoax.

Growing up, other than German school, as a Baltic German in BC, we had nothing to do with the larger German community in Vancouver.

So I am in this odd situation, my first language is getting weaker all the time but the country connected to that language does not feel like home.   I have a desire to speak German, really to speak the Baltic German dialect, but there is not much of a chance to do that.

• Mon Français est bien mieux qu'il était, mais toujours non couramment
• Jag vill lära mig svenska
• Nagu ma olen Eesti kodanik, ma peaks eesti keelt

Assisted Suicide

I have trouble with this issue because of my faith and the implications of what is being asked of the courts.

My faith is one that says there is that of God within everyone, to kill a person is to kill that of God within them.   Could there be a case where killing someone is the right thing to do?   I am not sure, I have not thought of all the options possible and it gets into a lot of 'what if' thoughts.   What I am clear on is that I really do not like the idea of the state sanctioning death for any reason.

My current concern is about the specific arguments being suggested in the courts.   The argument in court is that people are sovereign over their own bodies and should be allowed to let someone kill them.   The person moving the case forward is suffering from ALS and makes a compelling case for why she should be allowed to seek help to kill herself.   It is the implications of the argument that concern me.

For the case to successful, the petitioner in the court is asking the judge to say there is no place for the state in a situation in which a person seeks help to kill themselves.    The argument is not one of if you are sick enough you have this right and if you are healthy you do not, it is a right that people should always have.

The end result of this is that a depressed person can seek out help to kill themselves and the person that does it is not responsible.   A perfectly healthy adult could decide one day to kill themselves and seek help to do so.   The argument leads to this.

Wanting to kill yourself is in my mind in the vast majority of cases an indication that there is something fundamentally wrong with a person's mental health.   I can understand the urge to end it when you life is full of pain and in hospital bed but how do you deal with people that are not in their dying days?   Can a mentally ill person reasonably go to someone and ask them to kill them?

I worries me that the sacredness of life is in the courts.   This is not an issue for the courts.   The state should be there to protect life and not make it easier to end it.   It feels like the whole process is making death into a convenient commodity product you could buy when you decide you are done with living.   It just feels so wrong to me on so many levels.

Trying to work when Max is in the hospital

Max has been in VGH since yesterday afternoon.

Last Wednesday he took a tumble down some stairs and has not been willing to put weight on one of his legs.   Sheila took him to the Doctor on Friday and there was nothing obviously wrong with him other than he would not walk on his leg.   Monday morning we got an Xray because he still was not willing to walk on that leg.   At the same time a red warm area had appeared on his ankle.   We saw the Doctor again yesterday afternoon and he called in a colleague to consult with him - they were not sure what was going on and referred Max to the Pediatrician on call at VGH.

What is seems to be is either a skin infection or he may have a bone infection - osteomyelitis.  The bone infection is a fairly serious thing.

He was supposed to have an MRI this morning, but after 45 minutes of trying they could not find a vein to put the sedative into him.   He had several attempts over that time in each arm.   Pin cushion is all I could think.

At this point it looks like another attempt at an MRI tomorrow at 11 am.

He ideally needs an IV to get the antibiotics he needs, in the absence of that he will have to get them injected intramuscularly.

If it is a bone infection, it likely means four weeks of IV antibiotics every six to eight hours.  

This is the busiest work week for me in years, I have a major deal to try and complete ASAP and need to be on the computer and phone (and maybe in Terrace) for many hours a day.   I am back now after being in VGH since 8 am, but I am not managing to focus well.

Blair Atholl International Jamborette

Every two years there is a small Jamboree held by the Scottish Scouts on the grounds of Blair Atholl castle.   In 2012 it looks like four youth from 3rd Douglas will be part of the Pacific Explorers that will be going to the event.   One of the youth will be my son Ben.

Last night was the first meeting of the Pacific Explorers for the 2012 jamboree.   Brian Carr-Harris has been organizing a group going over from the Victoria area for close on 20 years now.   The trip is not only the 14 days related to the jamboree, but several weeks beforehand seeing England, Scotland and Paris.   In total a trip of 35 days in Europe.

The big thing for the coming 9 months will be raising the money to go - it will cost Ben $4400 for the trip.   If I go as a leader, that is another $4400.   Through the Pacific Explorers it seems like we will be able to raise half the money, but that still leaves us a lot of money to find.   Unless I come up with a way for me to raise the extra $2200 needed for me by the end of September, I am going to have to say no to the idea of going.  

The Last Shuttle Flight

I am a guy that was born in the mid 1960s and grew up with the "Wow!" of space exploration.   I remember the last Apollo mission and Skylab.   I remember paying attention to the first tests of the Enterprise in 1977.   I also remember the first flight of Columbia in April 1981 - my high school had a TV set up in the library so we could watch the re-run of the launch and then watch the landing live.

I was excited by the manned space program.  It seemed like it was all progressing forward as it should, but that was not the case and here we are 30 years later finally retiring the shuttle.

The shuttle was a classic government operation - there was no concern about the bottom line.   There was no incentive to become as cost efficient as possible.   We have spent a generation effectively treading water because the development of space was hamstrung by government intervention.

From 1951 to 1981 the world went from the first basic rockets to having the ability to consistently bring people into space and have small space stations in orbit.   In the next 30 years very little has changed.   All that we have is the International Space Station and finally reached a point where there are at least six humans in space all the time.

I am very happy to see the end of the shuttle because I can be excited by space again.   There are now several companies competing to develop cost effective ways to deliver people and goods into low earth orbit.   NASA is now going to use what is called the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS).

Two companies are competing for COTS work - Space X and Orbital Sciences.  Both will fly supplies to the ISS this year and should then shortly demonstrate their craft to get people to the ISS.  Interestingly, the United Launch Alliance ( a partnership of Boeing and Lockheed Martin), which produces the Delta and Atlas series of rockets, did not succeed in the COTS program.

The way COTS is set up, there is an incentive for the companies to explore ways to make the flights cheaper.

If the ISS were the only place up there, which it is at the moment, there would not really be much of a market for either of the companies.   Here is where I get excited, we will see a second space station in orbit in less than three years and it will be a fully private venture.

Bigelow Aerospace has started the construction of a space station that they will begin to assemble in space in 2014.   ISS construction started in 1998 and is not slated to be done till next year.   The Space Complex Alpha will start in space construction in early 2014 and is slated to be complete in 2015.    They are talking about building the second one, Space Complex Bravo in 2016 with it complete in 2017.

In 2015 it will be possible to lease space on Space Complex Alpha.

Space Complex Alpha will have 690 m3 space inside - the ISS has 837 m3 space inside.   Bravo will have an internal space of 1320 m3.   In only a few short years there will be three space stations in operation.

Bigelow can do this because they are using a completely new and dramatically cheaper technology to build the station.   It is much lighter while at the same time much, much bigger.

Bigelow will make space much more affordable - $28,750,000 for 30 days.   Book longer times and the costs go down - $390,000,000 for one year of space for two astronauts.   For $440,000,000 a year you can get a BA 330 unit which has enough space for up to 6 people long term.   Given what Canada has been spending on our space program, leasing space from Bigelow would be a much cheaper way to be up there.   There are seven nations that have indicated they are interested in space.

It will be cheap enough that some major universities will be able to consider having their own research facilities in space.

With this sudden expansion in space stations, there will be a much higher demand for flights to supply them and for flights to get people to and from the space stations.   By 2016 about 12 people will be living in space full time with a temporary total of up to 25 people.  By 2018 this will increase to 30 people full time and up to 50 at peak times with temporary people.  In only 7 years it is realistic to expect 40 to 50 flights from earth to the space stations.  In the last few years it has been about seven or eight.

With so many more flights there will be a lot of efficiencies in the rockets and the price to fly to space will drop dramatically.

We are on the cusp of the biggest boom into space ever seen.

This expansion excites me.  I will not go into space, but the odds that one of my four boys will go into space is more and more realistic.  

Pictures from PJ 2011

Entrance to the Lothlorien sub camp

Three of our youth

Waiting in Nanaimo

Evening in Lothlorien

18th Calgary and 175th Whitehorn camp across from us

More that 3200 youth and adults were at PJ 2011

Top of the climbing wall

Some memories of travelling with my parents when I was a kid

Axel and Lite von Schulmann @ Long Beach 1977

 My parents liked to travel and as a kid we drove more less every road in the southern half of BC.  We also drove to northern California, all over Washington State, the Peace country and other places.   I also traveled with them to Europe twice and the Bahamas once.

Nk, Bernard and Axel von Schulmann Long Beach 1977

After I moved out at age 17 in 1983, my parents continued to travel.   They went to Australia, Guatemala, Chile, Europe another four more times, drove to the remaining roads in BC they had not traversed, they went to many more American states over the years.
 My parents knowledge of the geography of BC was surprising.    In 1989 I drove part of the unbuilt Okanagan Connector and ended up turning down a very rough 4x4 track that lead to small very rustic resort on a small fishing lake.   When I got back the coast, my mother knew exactly which lake I had been to.

I have no idea why this came to my today, but a memory of travelling with my parents and brother, and often Tante Sabine, in the 1970s.   I thought I would quickly write about it so that I have it 'down on paper'.

Bernard and Nik von Schulmann Salzburger Hochturm 1979

My mother had polio when she was three which left her with a leg that was lame.   She could not walk long distances.   This meant that when we were travelling my father we would go into whatever site we came to and my mother would sit outside and wait for us.   Invariably we would wander around some fort, castle, palace, or amazing viewpoint and come back to my mother who would precede to tell us all about what we saw in the guidebook she had finished reading.

It was interesting how much more she knew about what we had just seen.  It certainly made the trip much more interesting.

Lorilei 1979

I last traveled on family holidays with my parents in 1981 to the Bahamas when I was 15.   Nik had a few years of trips with them and Tante Sabine.   After both Nik and I were out of the home the pattern continued, but now it was my father and Tante Sabine going in and my mother enlightening them to what they saw

Site of the famous 1979  "Hast du Kaesekuchen?" incident

I have included this last picture for benefit of my brother Nik von Schulmann.   This is the site of the infamous family "Hast du Kasekuchen?" incident.

This restaurant is on the Rhine and we stopped there for Kaffee und Kuchen one afternoon during our 1979 trip to Europe.

Nik and I grew up speaking in German as our first language even though we were both born at Grace Hospital in Vancouver in the 1960s. Our German was different than the language in Germany because we only used German in the family context, our German was a very intimate, personal and informal language.

Normally in German there is the formal "Sie" and the informal "Du" and when you use one or the other really does matter a lot.   "Du" is only for family and friends.

Nik was 9 at the time and really only had interacted with family on the trip so he had never talked to other people.   Nik wanted cheescake and was told by my parents to ask the waiter if they had any.   Instead of saying "Haben Sie Kaesekuchen?", what you would say to anyone serving you, he said "Hast du Kaesekuchen?".   The waiter stopped dead in his tracks and looked stunned, so did my parents.   I doubt anyone had ever used 'du' in the restaurant with the waiter.

Nik was young and had no reason to ever had used "Sie", but still the incident reverberated for years as one of our family stories.

I also had my own moment of "ignorant youth from the wilds" on the 1979 Europe trip.   I was in the centre of Frankfurt with my parents and my grandmother's sister Helene von Behr.   We were close to a statue and I asked who it was, I was told it was Goethe.   I said I could read the name, but I had no idea who this Goethe person was.    My great aunt was visibily shocked that at 13 I had no idea at all who Goethe was.   It quickly came out I also had no idea who Schiller was.

Fan is a shortening of Fanatic

I am not surprised that there were riots in Vancouver last night.    The pent up emotion from the Cup run and the loss in game seven, along with booze and early end of the game, made a riot very likely.  Canadian hockey team fans are unlike anything you find in the US.

Sports are the home of tribal identity in many cities around the world.   They are one of the only acceptable manifestations of "Us versus Them" in democratic societies.   There is no rational reason to support one team over another one.   I am a Canucks fan, not a hockey fan.   Many people are like this.   When our team is out of the playoffs, our interest in the NHL season is over.

Fan is short for fanatic.   Fanatics are not driven by rational thinking processes.   When you get enough young males together that are fanatics, there is an energy that takes over the whole crowd.

I was there in 1994 for the riots, not in them but only a block away.   Shortly before the riots started I had walked through the areas where the riot would take place.   I remember what the crowd at the corner of Robson and Thurlow was like after the end of game seven against the New York Rangers.   This was a crowd looking for an outlet for their pent up tribal anger.   It was only a short time later that something happened.

In my life I have been in one full scale riot.  In a riot there is an energy in the crowd takes over, men do things they would normally never do but are driven by the dynamic around them.

It was in 1985 when I was living in London.   I decided to go to an anti-apartheid march.   In 1985 there were several riots in London in poorer black dominated housing estates in London.   This march was only a few weeks afterwards.

I met up with a part of the march starting at Hyde Park.  I ended up joining with the Broadwater Farm Defense League for the march.  Broadwater Farm is a housing estate in Totenham which had had a riot shortly beforehand in which a policeman was killed by the rioters.

The crowd was angry against the police, against Margaret Thatcher, against capitalism, against the rich.

The whole route was barricaded with police in riot gear all along the route.  All the demonstrations I had been to before that in Canada had police directing traffic and there was no negative energy.

The first time I got scared in the crowd was when our section of the march stopped on Whitehall where it meets Downing Street.    There were a lot more police at Downing Street and behind their front ranks police on horses.  The crowd was screaming and yelling and directing all their anger at the police.   The crowd felt like it wanted to rush the police.

I was yelling along with the rest, I was getting caught up in the energy.   I was scared that something would start.

I could not leave the march because the route was completely barricaded, but I also felt to have left would have been disloyal to my comrades that I had been marching with.

We moved along and reached the end location, Trafalgar Square - the South African Embassy is located there.   Our march met with two others and something like 100,000 to 150,000 people converged on Trafalgar Square.

I have no memory of the speeches, there were some.   I was caught up with the crowd that was screaming and yelling at the several hundred police men in front of the embassy.   We were all being worked up.   There was testosterone and adrenalin at work.   There was the righteous anger of the oppressed    There was a desire to start a fight with the police.

The police obliged.

For the next hour or so there was battle between the demonstrators and the police.   The demonstrators threw anything they could at the police, the police used their clubs and shields on anyone close enough to them to reach them.

Once the riot was under way the "us and them" tribal mentality took hold completely.   This was a battle between a mob and the police.   The police would charge to try and clear the square, the mob would surge back.

I saw people that were not doing anything being hit hard enough by a police club to knock them to the ground bleeding.   Seeing these sort of things fed people to be more defiant.

Eventually the square was cleared.   About 200 policemen were injured, no numbers were ever stated on the mob.   Because of the 1985 Brixton and Broadwater Farm riots, this event is forgotten.

Being in the crowd at age 20, I can tell you that the energy of being there is an amazing high for a young man.   I did nothing more than yell, shout and use my shoulder at times to push back on the riot shields - yes I was at the front of the mob for awhile.  The only thing I could have done to reduce the energy of the crowd was to not have been there.   Simply being their contributed to the energy, but I was only one out of tens of thousands.

Mob rule, mob mentality - these really happen, the mob is much more than the sum of its parts.

Back to Vancouver last night.

The energy many men feel about their sports team is deeply rooted in primal tribal emotions.   There is an energy in the fans that amps up when you get a lot of people in one place at one time.   When you get huge crowds, which make people feel like a part of the crowd and not an individual, it takes very little for that crowd to become a riot if there is a spark that sets the emotion alight.

Vancouver really has only one major league sports team.  US cities of the same size have at least two and many of them have four.  Hockey is a bigger sport in Canada than any sport is in the US.   Canadian hockey team fans are much more like European soccer team fans than any sort of fans of any teams in the US.   A city of more than two million in a province of four and half million people that follow a single team creates the focused fanaticism.

You only have to think about all the jerseys, face painting, and flags to get sense of how much this province is wrapped up in the Canucks.  That energy supporting the team is the same energy that is needed for a riot to start.

You can see the difference in the energy between the 2011 Cup finals and the 2010 Gold Medal game.   The nation wanted the Canadian Mens' team to win, but it is not a team people had been following for years and years knowing every nuance of the team.   No one is a fan of the Canadian Olympic team.

As long as Canadians are wildly passionate about hockey, there will be a constant tension and danger of riots happening.   We have seen hockey related riots in Canada in 1955 in Montreal, 1986 in Montreal, 1993 in Montreal, 1994 in Vancouver, 2006 in Edmonton, 2008 in Montreal, 2010 in Montreal and now 2011 in Vancouver.   Riots will remain a threat in Canadian cities with NHL teams as long as there passionate young men supporting their team.