Regional District schism
February 15th came and went and we all took our oaths of office to the new entity called the Strathcona Regional District (SRD). And we were off and running! We elected Craig Anderson, Mayor of Gold River, as our Chair and Tom Pater, Electoral Area G representative, as our Vice Chair.
The dominant topic of discussion for the first two meetings was "what time should we meet?" Scintillating debate! Campbell River (CR) directors insisted on meetings late in the day and the rest of the Board wanted to meet during the day to keep costs of staff overtime and director's overnight travel to a minimum. After two days of unbelievable debate, rational thought prevailed and the CR motion to have late meetings was defeated. But not without a great deal of animosity being generated. So now I am sure relations will be just "ducky" for the next while. Oh well, another day at the office! We will be in budget discussions for two days this week and proceed to final budget adoption at the end of this month. With CR holding the majority of the votes on this new SRD anything could happen. I'll keep you posted. The documents will all be posted on the web site.

Granite Bay wharf upgrade update
While we are on the topic of the Regional District I may as well give you a quick update on the upgrades proposed. I have managed to get all of the floats donated to us, free of charge, the trucking to Menzies Bay donated, the cross terminal fees donated and the towing by boat donated. So what is the hold up? Good question. The RD wanted an engineer to provide assurance that the floats are up to standard. Completely reasonable, in my opinion, since they will be libel for the facility. However, it is not reasonable to take months to even take the first step, which was to ask an engineer to do the work. That just happened last week. I have been requesting staff to get on with this on a regular basis and we are still waiting. My hope is that we do not jeopardize the donations. Once again, I will keep you posted. I have had a number of generous offers of assistance from island volunteers, should we ever actually get the floats to Granite Bay!

If you think I sound a bit caustic in my previous two paragraphs, you are right. I am used to getting things done. I don't like hold-ups, especially avoidable ones. We, as a community, have done a lot of work in the past couple of years with donated money and time, hard work of volunteers and some funding from the RD. This needs to continue if we want to have the amenities that we need on this and other islands. I will continue to plead, pressure, push or do whatever necessary to keep making progress on the islands. I appreciate your support and your unselfish volunteer time.

Was that a protest, or what?
My congratulations to all of the organizers and all of the participants for one of the best local ferry protests that we have had in years! Well done, everyone! The weather was awful, but spirits were high and the media was in attendance and we had a province - wide audience! The signs, songs and the band were great. The minister was so shaken that he didn't tell the whole truth when interviewed on TV. He stated that the Province gives the ferry users $130 million dollars in subsidies. What he should have said is that the Federal government gives the province $25 million (approx) in subsidies and the Province gives $105 million dollars for a total of $130 million. I believe that the $105 million is about the same amount they gave last year which means that the Province refused to acknowledge the need for a higher subsidy this year and chose, I repeat, chose, to pass all of the increases on to the users through fare increases. A dastardly deed, indeed! There have been numerous follow-ups in the Legislature by our MLA and other MLA's and there is a forum being held in Nanaimo on March 11 with the Leader of the Opposition (after my deadline for this report). I sincerely hope that we can turn things around with the ferry issue. It is getting to be too difficult for islanders to keep up with the rate of increases to our fares. It certainly is making me put even more effort into providing for our needs right here on the island, wherever possible.

A short history of Telus ADSL on Quadra (for those of you who are new to the island)
It all started with one of the dozens of referrals that I get every month from the Province through the RD. This particular referral caught my attention because it was for a linear lease of the ocean floor between Open Bay and Cortes Island. I inquired as to what this was for. "Phone lines", I was told. Hmmmm. "What type of phone lines?", I asked. "Fibre optic lines", I was told. Another "Hmmmmm".... "So how will the fibre optic lines get to Open Bay?", I asked. "Well, they will come across to Gowlland Harbour and then down Gowlland Harbour Rd. to West Rd., etc", I was told.

And so began the saga of "Why can't the line then go to our central office on Heriot Bay Rd, to be distributed from there?". I met by phone and conference calls with nine different planners and senior managers of Telus over a period of many months to then get them to agree to also bring the line to the office on Heriot Bay Rd. and then distribute by normal copper wire to homes within four kilometres of wire from the office. It wasn't as easy as all of that. First I had to write a detailed business case for how many customers might subscribe to the service and I did it not just for the Cove but for all areas right up to and including Open Bay, in increments of 4 km's. Telus would have done all areas at once if the capability would have been there. But it wasn't, and still isn't. I'll explain. There are five switch boxes located about 3 to 4 km's from the central office. Inside these boxes there resides a switching mechanism that would need to be upgraded to allow another 3 to 4km's of line distance to service more customers. Sounds easy, just replace the switches! The hard part was paying for them. They were estimated to be around $30,000.00 each and they would need to be paid for by the customers. So, cancel that idea. Back to the drawing board. I started to correspond with Telus a number of months ago to see if we could get on with the upgrades through some sort of federal or provincial grants to "connect communities" (both levels gov't keep talking about it as if it were a top priority!). To date the discussions have been nothing more than that. I will persevere. I was very heartened to see that Jerry Benner was also lobbying Telus to get on with it and hope he will continue. The more help on this one, the better. I realize that there are other providers of high speed internet on the island and I mean to take nothing away from them in any way. They do a great job and if they provided service to my area, I would sign up in a minute (I am still on dial up, folks). Telus is the only provider that has the infrastructure in place in almost all areas of the island and that is why I have pursued this option.

A comment on wildlife
Firstly, my sympathy to any pet owner or livestock owner who may have lost an animal to wolves or other predators. I am very sorry for your loss. Our German Shepherd was almost one of those statistics on three occasions - once with a wolf and twice with cougars.
Secondly, I hope that we as islanders will understand that we live in an incredibly beautiful and lush environment. Part of what makes it so is the abundance of wildlife. We have, at the south end, cougars, bears, wolves, deer, eagles, herons, ravens and a long list of other critters that have been here long before we were. We live on their island, so to speak. It is so important that we keep our place on the island in perspective. As long as we cherish rural values and maintaining greenway corridors, we will have the benefit of having these wild creatures in our lives. We are fortunate to have such an array of wild creatures around us and some of us are fortunate to have the occasional sighting of one of them. I sincerely hope that we will not over-react to what is a perfectly natural phenomenon. Too many examples exist of man trying to control wild populations. We don't do a very good job. Caution must be exercised, both in being around wild animals and in trying to control them. But in general we must co-exist. Enough said.

I'm an hour past the deadline so I had better end here. Feel free to call me between the hours of 8:30 am and 7:00 pm, Monday through Friday (not on weekends, folks!) at 285-3355, or you can fax me at 285-3533 or you can email me anytime at abramfamoberon.ark.com , or by mail at Box 278 in the Cove, V0P 1N0... Lots of choices!

Respectfully submitted,

Jim Abram
Director, Discovery Islands - Mainland Inlets (Area J), SRD