To the rockies

To the rockies
Osoyoos,
Thursday, May 15, 2014
by Timothy W. Shire

Each day I spend much of my time trying to keep up with things, trying not only to understand what is real and fiction in the news but to make some sense of it, but there is a serious limit as to what can be achieved from an armchair in the living room, even with the internet as a window and information gathering tool. I think I reached that limit in late January and have been chomping at the bit to get the motor home on the road and see for myself changes, that I have been reading about..

We began our journey with a leisurely drive down to Regina in sub zero temperatures. Our motor home was not designed for such low temperatures, but we made it through the freezing prairie nights staying in Regina, Swift Current, Medicine Hat, then Lethbridge. Though travel aways opens ones eyes, there is especially a lot to see in 2014.

The economy in Saskatchewan is real and not just so much hype. Regina and Saskatoon are booming, but things are moving along just as nicely in the rest of the province. Our concerns about Temporary Foreign Workers are reasonable not so much that they displace citizens, but that they are being exploited and their presence is depressing the income of citizens.

I have always felt that as a nation of immigrants, we should welcome others to this land, but as landed immigrants, not temporary workers. That is why I dislike the Ottawa tendency to restrict ordinary people and their families from becoming Canadians.

Southern Alberta was a revelation to me. The intense agriculture and specialty crops that are obvious high income commodities and the extensive infrastructure Alberta has built to move water to the fields, to produce those crops.
; this is good.
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We drove west up through the foothills past Pincher Creek in light rain and squalls contemplating the remarkable increase in fuel. Gas in Tisdale and Lethbridge was the same, but from there west, it rises toward and above $1.40, which just does not square with reality. The price of crude, the fact that Canadian crude is discounted by about 40% and should cost a fraction of what it does south of the border, yet gas prices in Montana, when you take the exchange in the dollar into consideration, is around 80¢ a litre. It is $1.39 in Osoyoos.
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Working our way through the Crow's Nest Pass brings one to the awareness that British Columbia is so much an extractive economy. The province depends so much on digging stuff out of the ground and selling it, cutting down the trees and selling them, it just seems about time this province got its act together.

It had been years since we last made a trip through the Crows Nest Pass and up and down, round and round the contortion of the southern Canadian Rocky Mountains. It is so easy to see why at the time of confederation, B.C. demanded a rail link to the country, when you see that there are only three tenuous passages between the prairies and the lower mainland. I suspect that Mulroney, or who ever was responsible for selling the CN, broke the terms of confederation, because it would be much easier to make a case for separation for B.C. than for Quebec. Those trails over the mountain passes are still much as they were fifty years ago and that says something about the failure of long term strategic planning by the governments of Canada and its provinces.

Getting to Osoyoos meant climbing up to above 5,000 feet on three mountain ranges then descending down 6% and 7% grades. Fine in a sports car but in a nine ton motorhome with a tow behind there is a decided edge to the experience. Here is what I learned.

With that type of slope the weight of the motorhome is transferred mostly to they front wheels and the tow behind, even with its brakes on, exerts pressure on the unit, reducing the weight on the duals. Even as slow as thirty km. can see that weight transfer with braking producing a terrifying shimmy that requires almost a complete stop. Maybe motorhomes were meant for nice smooth prairie.
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What is British Columbia? I have flown all over the province and I know that most of it is complete and total wilderness. Uninhabited, perhaps even uninhabitable, but it is empty. When I think of the province, I think of the magnificent city of Vancouver and its surrounding cities and the beauty of the island, but I have ignored the interior. Oh I knew it was there, but thought it inconsequential. Okay, I was wrong.

Valley by valley north and south the interior is not only an amazing plac,ebut it has untold potential. Extraordinary weather, magnificent scenery and a place where people can live in peace. But, the interior is close to empty and even doubling its population would unlike even be noticed. The other factor that really excite me is the agriculture. Not farming as we in Saskatchewan know it, but intensive plot size highly productive, highly labour intensive agriculture. Though the production now is really impressive, you can see that the potential for even more development is everywhere.

This is a short stay. We have spent four days in Osoyoos and we start back for home tomorrow. But, we'll be back, even if it is just for the weather. Our stay here with the furnace not kicking in, has been pure joy.

Ensign

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