I received a book for my birthday on submarines built in BC and Pacific NW before and during WW1, in fact they were built near Port Moody, haven't had time to sit down and read it yet.

How about this one:

The NDP: They Party that Can't Win Elections....

And Does not want to Learn How.

At the Union of BC Municipalities we've just completed a book on our history called UBCM: The First Century. It's not just about UBCM as an organization - as Norman Ruff, professor emeritus at UVIC said "This is an extremely well crafted history not only of the Union of British Columbia Municipalities but of the province itself. It creatively sets the institutional evolution of the UBCM in the context of the dramatic changes in British Columbia's social and political environment and explores the wide-ranging policy challenges they brought to local governments and their relationship with provincial governments in Victoria."

For more information see our website at civicnet.bc.ca and click on the book cover.

I totally, totally agree. But one of the big problems is that media/academic language has revised itself to use the generic "European" to include all the different kinds of Britons, other kinds of Canadians, Aussies, and all the flavours of Yank (a term here which in Canada, ironically, includes Southerners). Plus the many Norwegians, Germans, Italians, Poles, French, French-Canadians, Finns, Greeks, Hungarians and others - all culturally distinct originally, but all "became British Columbians";, as also with the early pioneer Americans and the draft dodger element, and lately the transplanted film/entertainment community. BC was much more a "melting pot" than the official doctrine of "mosaic" in my estimation; especially because nearly everybody intermarried, with each other, and with the First Nations and other non-white groups; but we all lived right next door to each other; we didn't "ghetto-ize" and generally identified more with "here" than "there". Well, given last Sunday I'm not sure that can be said about the Italians....;-)

We're all just "Europeans" in the new supposedly multicultural landscape, or at least as written in the ethnically-biased language of currently published histories (Barman, Bowering, Koppel, and too many others).; sometimes the archaic "Caucasian" is still used; it's a euphemism for the colour term "white", and all are entirely misleading and cause readings/editings of pioneer history to be completely skewed. Such words are a "levelling" ethnic identity by lumping "us" all together by skin colour, as if that were relevant. IT'S NOT. It does nobody a service to simplify "white" history in BC so handily, except to make it sound even more dominant than it sorta was. First Nations political language - which is reflected in the draft curriculums kicking around - often use the term "Euro-American", and make no distinction between the deeds of Irish and French and Scots and Kentuckians and Eastern Canadians (long a separate "ethnicity" in BC, until about WWI and if you ask me, in some ways even now).

BC history wouldn't be the same without the contributions and personalities of the Americans; Ned McGowan perhaps the most notorious (and unfairly so, given Don Hauka's reintreptation of that fiasco) and Ma Murray maybe the most celebrated, if no longer one of the best-known (given the short attention span of modern times most people new to BC have no idea who she was). Even Amor de Cosmos was more American (well, Californian) by culture than he was Nova Scotian, and the same is true of other colonial-period "Canadians" and other "Europeans" (Germans and others, such as Dr. Fifer - a Dane - of the McGowan's War debacle). And then there's the Oppenheimer Bros....But read an ethnic-context history and all such men (and few women) are lumped together as "Europeans". Hell, when I was a kid here a European was someone fresh off the boat, not someone simply with European bloodlines. And it NEVER included a Briton or American.....

As other posters here know by now, my pet bailiwick is the Bridge River-Lillooet Country's history. The roster of notable Americans in the history up there is lengthy: Curly Evans, pioneer transportation magnate, Frank and Delina Noel of the beginnings of the Bralorne-Pioneer mine, Joe Russelll of the Golden Cache, Jonathan Scott, tobacco entrepreneur, Robert Carson of Pavilion Mountain (and Donner Pass) fame, Frank Barnard of the B.X. Express (known more from Yale but actually started out at Port Douglas in the "old Lillooet" country), and a huge list more, including of course the aforementioned Ma Murray. Yet in the St'at'imc curriculum all their actions and lives and impacts are relegated to impersonal designations as "the Euro-Americans" and they are never mentioned by name, i.e. they are thereby dehumanized and their personal stories are never told; they are treated instead as ethno-political objectifications and nothing more.

Then there's the Cornishmen, the Welsh and others; all just "Europeans" now in po-mo speak. Funny how intellectually-doctrinaire politcial correctness is the most fervent creator of "newspeak" isn't it? Well, maybe not so much funny as kinda sick....

BTW remember "Cat Ballou" and her dad Billy? That's a BC story (or name anyway), appropriated by the American Old West movie-making culture. But the reality is that the Interior of BC was part of the American Old West, and between the personalities and the culture of the place they're so completely intertwined that one should be understood as being part of the other. Even the Interior accents have, or at least had (before media-generated homogenization), a decidedly south-of-the-border flavour; not "fake cowboy" a la line-dancing bartalk, but the real thingt; you still hear it in Lytton and Lillooet and other smaller towns. Yet in discussions of Canadian English at Wikipedia, someone pronounced accents that didn't fit the Canadian norm out here as "not really Canadian anyway". Well, what the hell does that mean, huh? That they haven't been Ontarianized yet, IMO.

Deleted for possible libel. Tyee editor.

Interesting about the "south-of-the-border accent, Skookum1. But the Interior might only be the most obvious example of this. When I lived in Quebec, on a number of occasions people would comment on how much they liked my "American drawl". Trouble is I grew up on Vancouver Island and spent my first 42 years in BC. So it maybe that pre-Ontarianized BCers do have a more Western American accent, than Easterners

Yeah; when I went to McGill 1974-75 I kept on getting upbraided - upbraided no less - for "sounding American". At the time I thought it was just because my Mom had been raised in California (she was born in TO, from a Quebec family, but moved there at the age of 4) and we always talked with our aunts and uncles down there....there weren't that many ex-Americans in town (Mission, where I went to high school) but there were lots of Scots, Irish and others, and it wasn't until after I was at McGill that I lived in Lillooet as an adult (1979 for the first time, although I had journeyed through there in 1976 when the Main St was still paved with dust and lined with hitching-posts) and I know I picked up some hickish traits there (including my propensity for swearing like a longshoreman. My landlady (an old family friend who took me in) had a decided twang, as did many old-timers there; her late husband was "Tex" so you get the idea where he came from.

It wasn't until large numbers of Easterners started showing up in BC in the early 1980s, and the "hoser" accent was inflicted upon us by its popularity among young people who'd gotten into Bob & Doug that I really became aware of the profound difference. But it still doesn't explain why I "sounded American" in 1974-75; only a few of my profs and a handful of other students at UBC were American, and had lived in Canada long enough that their accents had been "submerged". People in Washington sounded markedly different from the Lower Mainland. And, to me, the Ontarians who were attending McGill sounded very different, although I can't say they sounded much like people from Ohio and other neighbouring states. In fact, people from upstate New York and also Chicago sounded more familiar....mind you, my Dad had lived in Chicago and Milwaukee, but that was long before I was born (he was around there in the '20s and '30s and I wasn't born until 1955).

Turns out that some linguists have defined some actual dialect differences, as you'll find if you look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West/Central_Canadian_English#British_Columbia although I think that's more relevant to the Lower Mainland than anywhere else. The British influence is notable in contrast to any apparent Americanisms, as TG has commented about Vancouver Island and New Westminster. And to this day I keep on running into certain people with a sort of snarl out of the side of the mouth which I associate with a personality type, until I find out they're ALL from Vernon.....

When I came back from Europe in 1976, after a year on the road with Yanks and Aussies and others, I swear I could hear the difference between Abbotsford and Aldergrove....

But the Canadian myth is that we're all the same, other than Newfies and Cape Bretoners, and media homogenization hasn't helped one bit (the endless stream of transplanted broadcasters...); in the CBC's mandate, however, is some kind of phrase about "preventing the growth of regional cultures" so as to further national unification/patriotism. Hmmmm. Cultural engineering at its most un-subtle, huh?

And as said on that Wikipedia page, the "eh" thing isn't as common in BC, unless as an affectation; and you'll note in my posts (as in previous) I tend to use "huh?" myself.....

(postscript)...though not in quite the same way as Americans use it, however....

New Star Books has published a novel about Indo Canadian gangs in Surrey.
Called Daaku.
About the author:
Ranj Dhaliwal was raised in Surrey, British Columbia, where he still lives. While growing up he was exposed to the Indo-Canadian underworld and learned much about "the Game", as it is called. "When I see Ruby," says the first-time author, "I see a bit of myself."

re flyingfish's post: as someone in the film biz (sorta) I'm still waiting to see the movie that's been made or being made about Bindy Johal. Cynical about CanFilm as I am, I dread that it's going to be one of those preachy, moralistic docudramas that film makers here are so "good" at. Anti-glamour, and politically correct. Or will it be a thriller with sex/beef/t&a and sharp style in clothes and cars and witty repartee and make an impact outside of the CanCurious? i.e. in the States and beyond. Whatever the ethnic profile of the underworld here, boring it's not and heavy on the style and flash it is; but can a Canadian filmmaker break out of the tweed-and-drab look that even Da Vinci's had? I don't know....we'll see I guess. But I expect the moralizing; or if there isn't any moralizing in the film, moralizing by the critics, and complaints that any flashiness is "too American". I recall some film noir piece made in Wpg a couple of years ago that apparently was very entertaining and looked great; K Monk and other CanCritics bemoaned that it was all style and substance and "it looks like he's aiming for Hollywood rather than Canadian markets". What the hell is a Canadian market anyway, given that most Canadians prefer a Hollywood-style film to, say, Atom Egoyan.

Crime stories in BC abound: Simon Gunanoot, the Russians, Francis Rattenbury, Gustafsen Lake. There's a movie in the make about the Wild McLean Boys but it's been a while since I heard anything about it; and given the buffalo-dollop that [[Kootenay Brown]] dished up (with Raymond Burr playing a stiff, and rather boring, Judge Begbie) I'm not expecting something remarkable. But y'never know.

But tis is about novels and other writing, not about screenwriting and directing. Which is a bit off, since as Crawford notes most of BC's four million people don't read at all, and those that do probably prefer to read either in their own languages, or stuff from other countries (US, UK, Commonwealth wherever); unless they're diehard "I only read CanCon types", which is just sad IMO. But poeple do watch movies and TV, which can be very intelligent/arty if done right and written well.

That we only have four million people shouldn't be an issue. Iceland, with only about half a million, produces novelists (and film makers) as do Norway, Denmark, Holland and the Czech Republic. And then there's Ireland.....So size is no excuse. The dumbing-down of the education system during Socred years didn't help much in terms of creating a literary-interested public, but first you have to have something worth reading.

Thing is anyth9ing written (or filmed) here shouldn't be thought of in terms of what British Columbians want to read. Quality writing/stories are quality writing/stories. Which is why Halldor Laxness and Knut Hamsun and Ole Rolvaag are known far beyond their national boundaries (seacoasts in Laxness' case). It's when a book is written that is "universal" despite its location-specificness that it transcends the whole idea of the captive market; and we all know that BC/Canadian readers, like audiences, will pay attention to someone who's "become a success somewhere else". Playing to the peanut gallery won't get you anywhere; it's real stories that count, and real writing. Which is why Faulkner could write about a fictional Yoknapatawpha County and still be readable outside of Mississippi, or Joyce could take the geospecifics of Dublin and create for us the marvel that is Ulysses.

Prescription: fire all the ideologues and camp followers in the university lit departments; unbone deconstructionism at its source. But to be a writer, you can't study for it by taking courses anyway; it's about reading, and about having a life, exploring experience, and learning to speak honestly. Instead of self-consciously, which is what academia insists upon; much like "modern classical music" in all its horrific stultification of the true genesis of music in the soul. Ditto with all that crap poetry on the BC Transit transoms, which to me are examples of Bill Hoffer's warnings about CanCon come to very ugly fruition. People actually get grants to bore the rest of us with, and get to pronounce themselves "poets" without even being able to rhyme decently, never mind create a real sense of wonder or intelligence in thier lines; only contrived style, as approved by six other editors who think/write the same way. Hoffer warned about the incestuousness of the grant-funding system and how dangerous it was to actual creativity; a literary ghetto of boredom and posturing. This didn't stop him from having the largest CanCon collection of all Vancouver's antiquarian booksellers, however (irony was always one of Bill's specialties).

So that's the deal, re what Crawford was talking about: Yeah, there's tons of great untold stories here, and settings for fiction and film; but aiming at the local market is not the name of the game. It'sabout transcending that, and not worrying about pleasing people "in town" but writing-as-writing; taking a story set in, say, Lytton and Spences Bridge and Chilliwack, and making it so interesting that it excites people in London and New York. That's the bar, and nobody here since Lowry has raised it farther (further?).

"Small film", in the form of craftily-written scripts, is the modern equivalent of the great heyday of the novel, IMO. Not politically or ideologicall pretentious on the one hand, or trashy re-hashes of thriller/cop/lawyer/personal drama formats established somewhere else. A lot can be done with a small cast and an isolated setting; that Icelandic film "The Sea" comes to mind right away, plus any number of Quebecois films. But it's making them without self-consciousness, without a Telefilm-catered script/content/style. For its own sake. Student film here is particularly bad; but what can you do about 21-year old kids with scholarships or Mommy and Daddy's credit card in film school, who are there because they want to be filmmakers; not because they have any particular films they NEED to make. It's the same as novelist. Going to school, or hanging out on the Drive, because you "want to be a writer" is just SO BOGUS. Either you're a writer or you're not; but that doesn't stop SFU and UBC from selling potentially shining lights on four years of being fed literary criticsm and ideologically-driven styleguides to squash any originality they might otherwise have.

And about crime novels/films: they take courage because of the content matter, especially when addressing recent crimes/issues. Having guts is not something that can be taught.....

Somebody wrote a book about all the local beauty spots in the East Kootenay. Now you cannot go to any of them without encountering millions of Albertans and all the garbage that they leave behind.

Please no more books about B.C. keep the secrets safe.

To Umslopagaas: travelogues and guidebooks we've got plenty of anyway; too many, and a lot that are really bad, despite slick covers and layouts. A "secret guide" to Vancouver, "what locals know that others don't", is all about such deep, dark local secrets as Brockton Point, the Cap Suspension Bridge, and Yaletown. Wow, huh? And Whistler's many guidebooks and photobooks make it seem like once you've gone to that rainy little hellhole there's no need to see the rest of BC, since Whistler is the most beautiful part. Truth in advertising we've never been known for, as evidenced by nearly any BC Govt commercial in living memory...

The subject matter Crawford's on about would be, in the East Kootenay's case, maybe a first-person rendering of the Wild Horse Creek War, or some interpersonal dynamic set in the midst of one of the Kimberley or Elk River mine strikes; or the life of the late, great Bob Fontana of Fernie guide-outfitting fame. Or something completely unexpected, a thriller or a potboiler or a dynastic novel or some really out-there take on life in the bush or the retirement communities or ''whatever". Guidebooks are not the issue.....

>Cynical about CanFilm as I am, I dread that it's going to be one of those preachy, moralistic docudramas that film makers here are so "good" at. Anti-glamour, and politically correct. Or will it be a thriller with sex/beef/t&a and sharp style in clothes and cars and witty repartee and make an impact outside of the CanCurious?<

Telefilm has actually been pursuing this more commercial direction for a number of years now, with little success. What we've ended up with is an increasing number of shallow, self consciously quirky, underdeveloped and ultimately safe and utterly forgettable films. Or crap like Whistler. The worst of both worlds, I'm afraid.

For a number of reasons that are unfortunately even more fundamental, (and go beyond ideology, film school trends and fashion) there is a culture of mediocrity in both Canadian film and fiction that seems almost impossible to alter.

Did you see The Love Crimes of Gillian Guess?

> Or crap like Whistler. <

It would have helped if they'd actually asked old-time Whistlerites to write the script, or at least consult; instead of having someone fresh out of Yorkville living in a condo in the new village; not that I've watched it (I don't have cable). But I do know the cast, as with Robson Arms, has only BCers in it that are already "celebs" in other parts of Canada; no real local cast, no real local content.

But that's what I mean. Telefilm's NOT FROM HERE. And the BC Film Commission is more concerned with the political priorites of the government of the day and the corporate element behind them to ever do anything exciting. The further problem is that these funding organizations exist because private Canadian capital doesn't have the razzmatazz risk-taking bent that built Hollywood and Broadway, or for that matter the British and French and other film industries. Here it was about making a "Canadian" version of something other people had already done; bad copies (Canadian Idol only the most recent...King of Kensington was a bad p.c. copy-farce of All In The Family).

It's really too bad; Da Vinci hints at what's possible, but even then it too self-consciously tries to be a NYC/LA cop drama; which is why the occasional cop on there, supposedly raised in the East End, affects a Brooklyn or Chicago accent. "Because that's what a cop should sound like". Then there's that "Wonderland" nonsense; as if Toronto were that un-straightlaced....

But yeah, Crawford's right and Terry G and I have talked about this before, too; there's so many good stories and unusual atmospheres/personalities here that you'd think it would have generated a stand-alone literature/film culture. Why it hasn't, well, is one of those mysteries of the place. One of the most atmospheric things I've seen, somehow evocative of the tweedy side of old Kits, was Robert Altman's "That Cold Day In the Park"; and he's not even Canadian; same with "Carnal Knowledge" with Art Garfunkel (another bad flick, but very evocative of the local atmospere). didn't see that one about the architect set up on Howe Sound or Bowen; or am I thinking of "The Russia House"? But how come our own film-makers just aren't any good at all at capturing the landscape, never mind the range of characters? Blinkers on, or just no imagination?

Who am I to talk? I've got ten scripts unifinished in My Documents, all for lack of an ending..including a disaster thriller, set in the Canyon, in the aftermath of a 9.0 on the Strait of Georgia Fault....lotsa fun. But to sell it, I'd have to relocate it to Puget Sound, since T.O. wouldn't even see it as interesting. Unless I had the quake hit Toronto and put the smalltown action in the Muskokas or something...

>But that's what I mean. Telefilm's NOT FROM HERE<

But good films aren't being made about or in any other region of Canada either (except Quebec), including Toronto. The problem is bigger than regionalism.

They secret to the ending is buried in the beginning.

Of course, it's not fair to blame the funding agencies and publishers entirely, either. As WP Kinsella said in this month's BC Book World (and he's famously critical of the CanLit establishment & the Canada Council "trough", though much easier on university creative writing departments ), "nothing even remotely good ever goes unpublished." There really is not a glut of great unrecognized writing (regional or otherwise) that is failing to get published or produced. If your work is good and you send it out, someone pays attention, trust me. So the question really is, why aren't people writing it?

Skookum
Re: Whistler, how about some stories about the area before the new village was built on the garbage dump, about the 2 trailers that made up the post office and liquour store. Or when someone cut a hole in the trailer to steal the booze. Not to mention when they punched the road in and the railway. There is a book I have on the early Pemberton residents also.

YOu must have Francis Decker's Pemberton: History of a Settlement. Fascinating stuff and chock full of detail, huh? Among my projects is a comprehensive history of the transportation routes including the Lillooet Cattle Trail-cum-Pemberton Trail; a litany of fiasco and misadventure and a lotta dead, beat-up cattle, and its role in what became the right-of-way of the PGE.

Joke for me has always been Whistler getting that swank new museum, and preservation funding for Rainbow Lodge, and largely came up with a history that doesn't tell the story of the larger country (the Squamish-Lillooet) that Whistler/Alta Lake was just a rainy stopover in before the lifts got built. Meanwhile, Lillooet's and Pemberton's museums - two of the oldest communities in the province - can't get funding/interest. Looks like Squamish has some new heritage/history establishment/building but I don't know much about it yet; and for the tourist trade they've built a Squamish-Lil'wat "cultural centre" to put on native culture for the gorbies (old Whistler talk for tourists).

Also "done in" at Whistler were a string of old pioneer cabins deemed a risk to the RMOW's property values; a funky old cabin between Mons and White Gold, decorated on the inside with native-carving posts, and the Jordan Lodge and "The Trap" by Nita Lake (now flattened to make a new boutique hotel); never mind classic latter-day squats like the much-beloved Brio Cabin or the newer ones over the Cheakamus down by the new dump. I imagine they may have tried to preserve Soo Valley by now (where the nude-skiers photo was taken).

Always wondered who that cabin between Mons and White Gold was built by, after reading the Decker book; possibly Twenty-Five Mile Jim ("Skook Jim"), or more likely one of his Lil'wat friends or relations. The building of that trail, from Lillooet all the way down, is notable for (among other reasons) using nearly all-Indian labour, as also with John Currie's later attempts to rebuild it a few decades later. It was also the biggest capital infrastrcture scandal/fiasco between the building of the Cariboo Road and the rebuilds-cum-abandonment of the Douglas Road, right up until much-later "highways" scandals; the rail-speculation period of the 18890s and 1900s was tame by comparison; the Lillooet Cattle Trail debates took up a lot of space in Hansard...but no one hears about it nowadays, as the focus is on the CPR and all the coastal stuff, or the development of the Okanagan or the north etc.

''never mind classic latter-day squats like the much-beloved Brio Cabin or the newer ones over the Cheakamus down by the new dump.

and were destroyed by the muni, instead of being relocated or otherwise preserved, that is.

For that matter, there are very few books on Chinook Jargon, a subject which is really lacking in discussion and historical knowledge. I'd like to see a book on that language and its contribution to British Columbia.

Sorta working on that; part of the problem is access to resources; and also lack of resources. Access in the case of the First Nations archives, as the Jargon has been "shelved" in the priorities of native linguistics, as the older languages are more important; so there's huge tape and documentary archives squirreled away, with gatekeepers with sharp, nasty pointed teeth (a la Monty Python) who are paranoid about cultural approrpiation yadayada; then there's the Oblates, whose files on their missions and the old in-Chinook Passion Play at Mission and their liturgical and bible translations; I've written them and gotten no response.

But native Chinook, as such, is one thing, and the low road has been taken by Chinookology purists centred on the Columbia River Jargon and its modern-day creole in Grand Ronde, Oregon. That crowd has been trying to lay the idea that, if it weren't for white people, thet Jargon would have been spoken "properly" by native peoples up here. Yeah, and if the Russians had gotten to the moon first....

Anyway, the flip side of the coin is there's a lot of context to how the Jargon was used overall; not as an ethnic specific or in a cultural ghetto, as did become the case within the native community (it became a lingua franca in the residential schools, for exampe) but also in the way that everybody used it with everybody else. I'm finding bits of this all the time, and suggestive comments about how it was used, or actual examples as you'll find in Paul St. Pierre, Garnet Basque, Mel Rotheburger, or bits of the Okanagan Historical Society publications, and more. Official Chinookology is dismissive towards this aspect of Chinook usage; at the same time it's the context of the up to 250,000 people who "spoke" it at some point; but in a hybrid form, smattered in any area with English and thet local native languages. Chilco Choate observes that in the Chilcotin there were traces of Russian and Gaelic in it, but provides no examples of same.

So what happened was the ethnographers and linguists focussed only on how natives spoke it. How others used it often turns up only in individual phrases of dialogues, or in mentions of how and who used it and how much, as with Terry G's account of a cannery up-coast where the Japanese foreman used it to manage a crew of Japanese, Chinese, Scandinavians, Portuguese, Filipinos, and about three or four kinds of natives, or with another mention on the Yinka Dene linguistics webpage about how elders in that area didn't like it because it was primarily a language of the rough-and-rowdy raft/steamer crews on the river transportation sytem, because it was so full of vulgarities. Vulgarities which were unknown in the Columbia River Jargon.

More's the pity that the current academic research on the Jargon in BC is being done by a doctoral student from the States whose sympathies are entirely with furthering the cause of the Grand Ronde creole, and who doesn't know or really care about non-native history and culture. He's not native himself, of course, but there's nothing more ardent in many things than a convert....

I'm writing instead on what and how the Jargon words "sound" and how they can be used in English; hard to explain; maybe I'll post a sample of what I mean here later....

Vulgarities which were unknown in the Columbia River Jargon.

...which is so different from BC Jargon that the main word for "to do, to make" (mamook) is considered a dire vulgarity, meaning f**k in a really obscene sense; for "to do, to make" they use munk - and in the coruse of the revival of the Jargon as the Tshinuk-wawa, want everyone else to adapt to their sense of propriety concerning tis word. And others, in fact....

For example, don't even ask why a "hyas skookum scotchman wootlat" is, but I think you can guess...

Here's a "must-read" for every British Columbian; "Nanaimo between Past and Future : Critical perspectives on Growth, Planning and the New Nanaimo Centre", co-edited by Eric Ricker and Frances Christopherson.

A fascinating collection of essays, describing a P3 gone wrong, a Mayor and Council who started their "due diligence" more than a year after signing their infamous contract with an American developer and who yet have to learn about risk assessment or the difference between economic impact and economic benefits.........

A sad and sordid story where taxpayes are considered the private bankers of the P3'ers ( private profit with public money ) and certailny a story which could happen in any municipality in B.C.!

What's weird about P3s is that they were cooked up and are exploited by the same people who want less taxes, and want less government, but as we see from P3s they still want public money; just not theirs, I guess. Overall a very weird thing. Wasn't this supposedly the point of WAC's original Bank of BC idea? i.e. that publicly-owned capital be used, but at competitive rates, not as part of sweetheart deals. And what else is a P3 but a sweetheart deal? Or another way to tool the age-old system of graft and pork-barrel, which is built-into the Canadian political system and partisan allegiances?

Here is another must read: "Nanaimo between Past and Future and Bingo Gate. How the left illegally stole the saving of hundreds of their supporters and got away with it."

Not to mention how a good Premier, Harcourt, was screwed over by a bad one, Clark, in the whole mess.

Still whining about Bingogate, righty-boy? I guess you got no problem with the Bennett Bros and their buy-up of the Nicola Valley in advance of the graft-ridden Coquihalla construction, huh? Or Gordo's handover of the BCR to CNR, which has proven to be a disaster and seems to have something to do with a certain bunch of boxes taken from the Ledge by the RCMP. Not too concerned about THAT, huh? But still wanted to carp about Stupich's misdeeds - as if it were Clark's fault? What's your problem, righty-boy? Got some blinkers on?