For a nation that is still quite young in many respects it certainly has had a large number of flags flown over it’s soil. Although I don’t know one that suits it more then our Maple Leaf, Happy 50th Birthday.
50 Year Anniversary of “The Maple Leaf”
Category Archives: General
I call Seattle my adopted American home town because I visit it so much. My sense of direction get better each time I visit, but I still use a fuzzy logic called:
I don’t necessarily know where I am going but I certainly know when I am lost.
One of our long-standing family traditions from our Scottish side. Is the coal at New Year’s Eve. Commonly known as the First-foot.
In our family home we run outside on to the porch with a bunch of noise makers and the enter the house via the other porch door in the new year.
Over the years we have all done it. One year we made the family dog Toby do it tying the coal to a bag to his collar and the calling him from the other door.
We haven’t done the tradition in years but my nephews were up this year and my youngest nephew Oxford wanted to do it with me.
It was kinda a fun to rekindle an old tradition I haven’t done in over a decade.
Giving the Gift of Kiva
I was introduced to Kiva by Christine Rondeau. She tweeted out a link to Kiva micro loans some years ago and peaked my interest.
Since I visited Colombia some years back and I really like Colombian Coffee I decided to help Elkin a Colombia Coffee.
It was all payed back months before it was due. I was happy to help and went on to re-invest in a phone accessories store and a smaller grocery store.
Other friends Flynn O’Connor and Jeremy Felt got into the game and donated to Ibrahim and his beer and stout business. Two craft beer affectionados helping out another worlds away.
On Mothers Day I though of giving the gift of Kiva but getting my parents involved was a little harder then I originally though.
They are generous people who regularly donate to charities and such. But the concept of micro-finance, crowd funding and field parters was all quite new and they didn’t understand if it was a donation or a loan.
So we put it off for a couple months and while we were out for dinner one night I explain what micro finance was and how this was empowering people who couldn’t even the smallest of loans for there business. How they weren’t taking on the entire loan but a portion and how they were payed back and then they could loan it out again.
Lastly I tried to explain field partners to them. This was actually quite difficult because my folks though we were actually donating to Kiva.
They were still somewhat unclear how the whole processed worked mainly the loan part and they repayment terms… But one thing my stubborn mother taught me well was be determined and don’t give up… Well I didn’t…
On Christmas Eve of 2013 I saw my dad on a charity website asking him to donate. I asked why he didn’t try a kiva loan.
We sat down and I showed him my profile and then I showed him how you could pick someone, anyone. He suggested we find someone in the Philippines. We decided on Antonieta and her little store.
My father also made a second loan to Victor a chicken farmer from Peru.
I was so happy that they finally understood the process and decided to give it a try.
My mother who was the most skeptical of the enter process said.
“I wish them the best of luck in there business venture, but if we don’t get the money back will consider it a donation” I was glad to see such a turn around from her as well.
I also decided to give my brothers wife Michelle a Kiva Gift Card and she though it that was one of the most thoughtful gifts and can’t wait to pick who she can help out.
Post Script: I have asked Kiva about the interest rate that there field parents apply to the loans as I hear they can be quite high. Will keep you posted on my correspondence.
Contributing to open source along with client work at the same time is harder then I though…
But once the contribution has been made it’s so rewarding…
I love mockups… Even if they don’t get used it’s a great way to think about things.
~ Tammie Lister on Mockups in conversation regarding Featured Content UI for WordPress.
Fail Safe Fruit Fly Trap
This post couldn’t be more off topic for this type of blog. But with a number of friends tweeting and talking about fruit flies I figure it was worth a post.
Here is a sure fire way to get ride of the fruit flies. Nothing works better. I have done this three summers in a row and it works every time. Also it can last days or weeks without fail or need of changing.
- Get a Wide bottom Tupperware type of container.
- Purchase Raw Unfiltered Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV) with the ‘Mother’
- Cover in Plastic Wrap and use Elastic to keep the wrap tight.
- Poke at least a dozen holes in the wrap and make sure the wrap is tight.
- Put it near the fruit if you can’t smell the Apple Cider Vinegar neither can the fly.
I have tried a few different versions of this using different liquids and nothing worked as well as the ACV apparently they want the ‘Mother’ and will do anything to get it. You can find Unfiltered Apple Cider Vinegar at most health food stores. I went to Safeway looking for ACV with the ‘Mother’ and the floor clerk looked at me strangely and didn’t know what I was talking about…
Leave it overnight you will have half a dozen. I also I slosh the liquid any time I saw a fly to make sure they died a timely death.
Expo 86, Lies and Wikipedia
It all started with a conversation in the pub… But many things do I suppose…
I heard the Lighthouse Pub in Sechelt was formerly the China Pavilion from Expo 86. But after talking with the pub manager Dale Schweighardt he told me it was a restaurant near the China Pavilion. And so 15 minutes later the mystery was solved…
I had also remembered Tim Bray speak about Wikipedia at Northern Voice a Vancouver blogging conference in 2011. I can’t remember his exact words but I remember the sentiment quite clearly.
If you see an error on Wikipedia you should try to correct it as a small part of your responsibility as a human being is to share your expertise. ~ A paraphrased quote from Tim Bray.
Serendipity
The serendipity and a generous amount of curiosity lead me to read all about Expo 86. I didn’t see any mention of the Lighthouse Pub and its history. A subsequent google search only lead to me a very old and outdated website and mentioned that the Lighthouse Pub was formerly the Munich Festhaus!?!?
Sacrebleu!
Photo Credit Brad Wood ~ obLiterated
Being a former journalist my spidey senses were tingling… So I went on an investigation… I first found out the source of the wrong information was a book called VANCOUVER’S EXPO ’86 by Bill Cotter. But after looking at photos of Munich Festhaus on Flickr there is no way the lighthouse pub could be the Munich Festhaus. The Lighthouse Pub just wasn’t big enough… See this interior view of The Festhaus. You could fit three Lighthouse Pubs inside of that place.
So after a quick visit to the Sechelt Archives I was directed to check the newspaper archives of The Coast News via the historical newspaper database of community newspapers. To see if I could find news of the grand opening or an advertisement of the pub in the newspaper. I was foiled again because the two words Lighthouse and Pub were all too common in the long deceased community newspaper The Coast News and the fact that not all issues and editions of the paper have been digitized yet.
Not being able to find previously published evidence of how the Lighthouse Pub came from the Expo Lands to Sechelt. I finally gave Nadina Van Egmond a phone call. She is still living on the Sunshine Coast and her husband Len Van Egmond was the original developer of the property.
She reported that Len purchased the buildings on a Rainy November Afternoon in 1986. The buildings that comprised the lighthouse were then deconstructed and moved piece by piece via BC Ferries to Sechelt and reconstructed on site.
(Update: Upon further reflection It’s unclear to me how the original China Gate building frame came to Sechelt, The frame itself seems much to large to fit inside a BC Ferry. I honestly don’t know. It’s possible it could have arrived by barge from False Creek through Skookumchuck Narrows and down to Sechelt and the rest arrived via truck via Ferry. But I think we have lost how the main building arrived to history)
A Gateway
She spoke about how Len saw the spaceship from the McDonalds and saw how to could be a Lighthouse if the wings were removed.
It was a two year process with the pub finally opening in 1988. Len Van Egmond passed away in 1993. But looking back Nadina suggest Len had a vision for what the Pub has now become:
“A gateway to Sechelt” ~ Nadina Van Egmond
I can’t disagree with her…
If you sit at the pub on any weekday afternoon and watch the traffic out on the water. It is a constant stream of boat traffic from up the inlet and float plane traffic from Vancouver, Richmond and Nanaimo. It’s one of the most unique combination of services I have found anywhere in the lower mainland.
Epilogue
I told Dale about my investigation and how there was some Erroneous Information about the history of the pub. He found the some photos in an old box of files from the day the China Gate Cafe. He scanned and sent them to me for upload to Wikipedia. These photos clearly show the pub was originally the China Gate Cafe.
Why did you do this? What was so important about the history of a pub?
I would have never written a blog post if it was just the construction of a pub… But I felt this was more then just a search about a place where people get a little tipsy… It was a fun treasure hunt of trivia, something to do on my days off from my former job of web design. But also this has more to do with Expo 86 then the pub… See my parents had seasons passes to the fair and we saw every pavilion, road every ride and memorized the location of every washroom of that fair… I think fondly of those days and wanted to re-visted memories of my childhood.