cougar

Come on, once the KM pipeline is built and after a couple of major spills around Stanley Park, who do you think will want to live there?

Sounds really nice. I hear close to nothing in my backyard. Sometimes there is the odd pigeon, raven, squirrel, the neighbor's dogs. And the hummingbirds can be heard in the front yard. No coyotes. We have wolves, but I do not hear them howling and although I find plenty of their tracks in the winter they have never made an appearance. I am grateful for that because of my little dog; wouldn't want to lose him to them. He caught a rabbit once ; a small one. I saw him in funny situations chasing bigger rabbits that came towards me but he couldn't find them. My standards are probably low. I am happy I am away from the place where I first settled back in 2001 - the intersection of Bloor and Dixie in Missisauga, so much traffic, so much noise at night. Now I hear nothing at night and I have a sound sleep.

I have no real garden - just a front yard, back yard kind of thing. We have planted a couple of cedar trees and a couple of roses and the roses want to go higher than the cedars! Just put new metal racks to support them at 10' off the ground. We get some bees and some hummingbirds in spring. But I have a huge wasp colony in my backyard which seems to be dependent on one large tree I have there. Wasps feed in the tree canopy and come back to their nest under my balcony. I would have destroyed them, but my wife doesn't want to harm them, so despite being stung on my head for nothing, I let them be. If I had a big yard, then the tasks of grass cutting, snow shoveling, vegetable planting would cut into my fishing and dog walking time. The trade off is fine.

I will not dispute that. I had my own special places in Ontario while I was there. But it was not for me. I need more space, more wilderness to explore, higher elevations, more wildlife, less people. This is my kind of freedom.

Wrong again my friend. They are all different. Only the Costco and the Liquor stores and their contents are the same across Canada.

All is very relative. Depends on what you are trying to find and what makes up your own "quality of life". I go through 2 traffic lights between my job and my home (mind you my job is on the other side of town ) Distance traveled ; 3km; time one way 7 minutes. After work I can go mushroom picking (king boletus, pines, chantrelles) or I go salmon fishing, or trout fishing, or hiking, or picking blue berries. In spring I can always find bears and take pictures. Wintertime I do great fishing in the snow. My mortgage is about 20% of my income, so not too stressed over that (although I know I have been screwed like just about everyone else). What I do not have is social entertainment ; topless bottomless kind of stuff; opportunities for exotic travels, opportunities to feel someone, but overall I am convinced my life is better than the average life in Ontario. So you guys there can have it all ; I am not going to take your space. Two pictures from my backyard to show you my terrible quality of life. (the actual "quality" is in having the physical abilities to go up there, when many Ontarians in their teens and 20s will remain on the bottom)

Maybe this is not what they selected but what was imposed on them by the central command. You cannot apply for a job in most chain stores in BC unless you submit an application that goes to headquarters in Ontario and then they decide. In some cases you have headquarters regulate the heating and nearly all other aspects of the sales environment in a retail store. And again , as I said, leave those great thinkers / masterminds on their own without the resources and they will all collapse. We can definitely produce thinkers of our own in BC; no reason why we cannot manage a country.

I do not believe any economy can carry any mortgage. Those mortgages will be based on the future exploitation of resources and food production and at one point it will be impossible to produce what one needs to offset the debt. Think about those pyramid schemes where you pay $10 to one person on a list, make 100 copies and send them out with the idea of collecting millions after a few cycles. By "information" you mean the information to extract more resources, or to extract them faster and more efficiently, this type of information; not the soap opera information in your newspapers, radio and entertainment industry. What I told you is still valid. Your information ain't worth nothing without the actual physical resource. And this is why the almighty USA needs to show off its military in the Middle East, Asia and wherever it can get economic benefits from.

As far as I know they are also in the hole. But maybe your info is different and better than mine? Information is virtually useless without resources. Try to live on information not eating any food and not taking any air or water and see how this works out for you.

The way I see it, if you can cut off ties with those huge population centers that just demand resources but produce close to nothing and you have less population on more space with a lot of potential and resources, you should be doing good. But of course those that were left outside will want to get in and take part of what is there. And then being able to protect your riches from invaders becomes important. I still have the gut feeling that much of America's greatness is based on fire power and intimidation tactics.

In a "democracy" we should be able to have a referendum and if successful, simply separate. Simple as that. If we do not live in a democracy but in a dictatorship, things work differently.

Nothing to get excited about. Our system is one scam built upon another. Ultimately all moneys comes from exploiting our environment and the wildlife and plants (trees and anything else) pay the ultimate price.

I am totally for the separation of BC, no matter who wins, too.

Imposed on Canadians? Keep in mind there are Canadians and then there are Canadians. There are business owners who profit from immigration, there are property owners who also profit from immigration - inflated prices dues to out of control demand and depressed wages due to out of control supply of labor. It continues not because our Government is dumb, but because someone profits from it and has enough influence over the government to make them continue the practice.

This brings us to the IOUs. Too many out there and their value is grossly inflated. But the system keeps going and the civilization keeps expanding despite all of that. Only when food supplies cease would we see the actual value of those IOU's; then a civil war; then most of us would not survive and we go back to square one less most of the biodiversity. But I am getting way out of the original topic. So here is why I think Ontario (mostly the GTA) where most Ontarian live is not worth the high score. 1) overpopulation - take a look at Google Earth and look no further. If you are in Toronto, Missisauga Ajax etc, it would take you hours to get out of the city. The rest is farmland and private property. When I was there I could not get to the banks of creeks and rivers because the owners thought it was only them who were supposed to enjoy that. 2) climate - high humidity that is almost unbearable in hot or cold conditions ; extreme cold weather in the winter (occasionally) with high wind chill factors 3) scenery - there is the Niagara escarpment and the valleys of a few creeks with a few parks around the place, nothing impressive. Niagara Falls is congested during the season that the positives of seeing the place are outweighed by the negatives of getting there, finding a parking spot, fighting the crowds and paying high prices. Fishing the Niagara river even in the coldest winter days can be busy. 4) jobs - too many people, too much competition. I had a year where I was going from one end of the GTA to the other on different interviews, none of which panned out (my fault I guess), but out of 15 such interviews there was only one company that was decent enough to cover my travel costs. Then there are all those Temp labor agencies thriving on new comers; exploiting them to the max, to the benefit of the company owners and the government. There are probably more factors, but the above were enough for me to kiss the place good bye for good.

So what would they be then? Wildlife? I know many have tried to reduce them to that, so they can lay hands on their land, but it hasn't worked. Unlike wildlife they can talk and go to court. Don't get me wrong. I am not their supporter, but I support no Victorians or the Queen either.

This was the term coined by Harper but it did not bring him too many votes. Surprise - surprise, the out of control immigration left all Victorians in the minority. Anyways, if anyone can be considered old stock here , those are the First Nations.

Such a funny statement to make considering we are a multicultural country and America is multicultural too. You have Chinese here and there, Indians and East indians here and there; Latinos , Filipinos and of course you have some from British descent who feel American, and some of British descent who feel Canadian. Anyways, on Ontario and Toronto, all I can say is been there done that. Not any more; not looking forward to even visit again.

I know. I work for rich people who do things differently and , if in their shoes, I would have made different choices. But it is their way of life. And sometimes our fate is to be where we are and not have all we want, but manage to smile and be happy while still making every effort to do better.

"It is not having what you want, its wanting what you got." This was the line - Sheryl Crow.

I agree; no job is RICH! I am not there yet, except on those occasions in the distant past when I availed of the EI program. Good times that are not likely to come back again. Cars shouldn't be a problem. I am still on my first car which is now 20 years old and an embarrassment of sorts, but I can rent the latest models and drive them for a week, which I do on my short summer vacations. I just cannot see myself putting tons of plastic in a landfill, only to create work for the Asians to make me a new car. My vehicle has a lot of sentimental value too. And it still goes up to 120km/h and burns 7 litters / 100km , so I am good. How was that song...."Soak up the sun" There was something useful in it....."I want what I have" or something of that sort.

OK, it is probably still bigger than my house, but we are not after size; we are after happiness. You may be happier than he is.

I did not write that up there to put you down. I flew some gold for someone and again, I felt nothing. Gold or steel , all the same to me; except one carries more risk and responsibility.

You see...they must be thinking along my lines. They want to have something that everyone needs - property (space), art (what people value once they have met their basic needs). But gold? Give me a break. Unless it is in the form of an ancient coin or artifact, it is worth nothing to me and it will be worth nothing in the long run. Does gold hold the value of tiger hunting with elephants? No. Because there are close to no tigers left on the Planet. It actually does not hold the value of even salmon fishing. A story comes to mind of someone of incredible means who kind of evaded the regulations last year to catch a few fish, but was unable to do it this year. The river was shut down again. His money / gold could not buy him a fish.

I held those in my hand and felt nothing. It is a bit of a problem flying with them as you will be asked to open your bags and it creates a pretty uncomfortable situation. Then I do not feel safe any more. What we should think about is that at some point those billions of dollars cannot be used by the person who has them. It is a number, but one person has only one mouth and can be at only one place at a time. So the money remains in the account and is guess what "useless". Banks , I am sure, know how to take advantage of that. There are dormant accounts too, where money is sitting and is never used. As I said, I believe we live in a rigged system and things are not going well, but I cannot see how I can change anything. Nature has to take its course.