Hi. My name is Hope. I am a puppy Westie as in West Highland White Terrier. I have a favorite uncle called Barry who takes me for very long walks. Hikes really. Also, he gives me many treats. It turns out he has had a soft spot for Westies ever since unannounced, he was joined on-stage by one while he was singing at a garden party gig. The Westie stole the show – without singing. Thespians will tell you never to work with kids or animals. I get a kick out of the way Barry reacts to the way I…

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With the reality setting in that I really was swimming and in brutal conditions about a thousand nautical miles (x 1.15 for statute miles) from shore east or west in mid north atlantic, I mused that this unlikely scenario  was not something I would have willingly ever considered putting on my bucket list. The water to no surprise felt extremely cold and tasted very salty. Each enormous heaving deep ocean swell quickly translated into fast moving surface waves that were impossible to swim against and dangerous to body surf with. Raised on the north western British mainland coast within sight…

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A sailor for many years I used to race my then twenty-five foot boat ‘Quiet Fire’ in a winter ‘snowflake’ series in Howe Sound and associated waters close to Vancouver, Canada. The sound or fjord if you will, is just north west of Vancouver and penetrates northward about forty five kilometers from Vancouver’s north shore into the British Columbia interior. It is the most southerly fjord on Canada’s west coast. One race stands out in my mind in particular albeit for the display of poor judgement and seamanship on my part.  The start/finish line was set at the entrance to…

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Some years ago having booked an overnight stay at a horse ranch/bed and breakfast in Salmon Arm a small town located in the British Columbia interior’s Okanagan valley, we were a bit surprised on arrival to find the owner, whom we knew from previous visits rushing to leave. She said that she had a ticket for a 7:30 pm concert. She thrust the door keys into our hands and headed for her car. Aware for some time of the existence of the Okanagan symphony orchestra and accustomed to attending the Vancouver symphony’s concerts; even performing with them numerous times as…

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After a spine jarring, four man bobsleigh run one dark and wintery night at Calgary’s Canada Olympic Park (*) yielded the most exciting and perhaps ‘longest’ sixty seconds of my life, I doubted if anything could top the experience. I was wrong. I discovered Vancouver based Performance Drivers Club via their print literature detailing the racetrack based advanced driver training they offer. (www.perfomancedriversclub.org) After having now attended five all day PDC events, sixty motorcycle helmeted seconds at 90+ kph through all fifteen corners of an Olympic bobsleigh course seem tame compared to four twenty-five minute helmeted and expertly instructed sessions…

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As arguably a relatively normal if southpaw male, a haircut is not in the grand scheme of things and unlike my handedness, something I can generally get excited about. However that changed recently. Having had the same barber, amazingly for over forty years, I was chagrined to learn that she would be retiring. The ramifications of this went beyond the potential impact or short term lack thereof upon my long since grey remaining locks. It interfered also with my habit of going downtown, parking miles away from her salon and thus getting a free so to speak (except for the…

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As a tenor chorister with the Vancouver Bach Choir for twenty-seven years, one of the strangest concerts I encountered in in all that time involved The Three Tenors – of course as in Placido Domingo, Jose Carerras and Luciano Pavarotti. They were contracted to perform on New Year’s Eve 1996 at BC Place Stadium in Vancouver, Canada. The venue has a capacity of 54,500 and to perform with them they had engaged the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and our roughly eighty person mixed voice (SATB) choir. The show was billed and heavily promoted as a ‘Bring in the New Year with…

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A friend of mine was planing on attending an Edmonton Oilers hockey game. On discovering that three of his friends were also going, on a whim he offered to take them for a pre-game night flight in his twin engined Piper Aztec airplane. A ‘light twin’ in aviation parlance. It was a full moon, snow was thick on the ground and the forecast called for clear skies with a low of minus 25 degrees Celsius. Not untypical Edmonton deep winter conditions. He and his buddies got more than they bargained for and never did make it to the game. The…

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The brainchild of James Ramsden the first mayor (1867) of Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, England who had visited Venice and seen large gondola-like passenger barges called Burchiello, the opulent steam yacht Gondolais a rebuilt eighty-six passenger Victorian era steam powered vessel. She operates on Coniston Water in the English Lake District. Built in Liverpool and launched in 1859, her lines clearly influenced by those of Venice’s Burchielli, she was built for the steamer service carrying passengers from both the Furness Railway and the Coniston Railway. She was in service until 1936 when she was retired, being converted to a houseboat in 1946. In 1979, by then derelict, she was…

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Learning to row boats with sliding seat mechanisms, specifically single sculls, had long been on my list of water sports to try when I discovered one early spring some time ago, that the opportunity existed with a club based at the Jericho Sailing Centre on Vancouver’s English Bay. I signed up and was soon in a single scull, under instruction and trying to stay upright and dry! Experienced with river and sea kayaks as well as sailboats, sailing dinghies and keel sailboats, along with non-sliding seat engineless boats of various genres, I nonetheless found single sculls quite challenging due to…

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