Heather Conn Blogs

                                                                                                                       — Heather Conn photos

Why do these two subversives look so happy? They just heard wonderful news at Roberts Creek’s Earth Day event: farm-gate sales of produce and livestock are no longer illegal in British Columbia. Hurray! That means that B.C. farmers, livestock owners and gardeners can sell meat, produce or eggs from their land directly to customers. Previously, these were illegal acts in this province. Isn’t that outrageous? These women are two of our local Farm Food Freedom Fighters. Yes, they are wearing “Be subversive, Buy local” buttons, complete with logos of a masked chicken and cow.

Now, we can tear off those nasty masks. No more outlaw status for people selling organic wares on their farms. Nicholas Simons, our local MLA, and Donna Shugar, chair of the Sunshine Coast Regional District, made the announcement April 25 at the start of Earth Day festivities in Roberts Creek. Nicholas worked particularly hard to enact this status change in farm-gate sales. Thank you to both Nicholas and Donna for striving to reverse this ridiculous law. Nicholas is still working out the details, but the change wil be official soon.

In keeping with this upbeat news, the sun shone for the Creek’s annual funky event, which provided hours of local entertainment, eco-displays, and information tables on sustainable organizations and earth-minded products. Great Sunshine Coast food, as always, was available, from Rashmi’s popular Curry in the Creek to the fish taco stand. This year, the kids were treated to a mini petting zoo with dwarf rabbits, an adorable baby goat, pony rides, and a shaggy llama.

Dave Ryan, fondly known as “Farmer Dave” in the Creek, offered a free tour through the gardens and greenhouse he operates to supply the Gumboot Restaurant next-door with fresh organic produce year-round. Wearing a green hat with a four-leaf-clover insignia, he spent more than an hour answering questions from about 50 local home gardeners.

Dave offered many helpful tips from using shade cover over plants in hot sun to using seaweed in compost (not directly on plants). He praised mushroom compost and recommended “Dr. John” (John Paul, president of Transform Compost Systems Ltd. in Abbotsford, BC) as the top resource in the province for compost information.

Roberts Creek Earth Day offered its usual mix of practical tips and whimsy, from stilt-walkers and The Green Man storyteller to demonstrations of making cob as a sustainable method of house construction.

The Sunshine Coast Regional District created a giant tree of large green garbage bags to make local residents aware of waste management practices and how our trash impacts the earth.  Their display included a large sheet of paper on an easel where people could write down the ways in which they reduce their garbage. (Each household on the Sunshine Coast is allowed to dispose of one regular-sized can’s worth of garbage each week.)

Thank  you to everyone who helped make this year’s Earth Day a fun, viable, and educational event.

Inexplicably, I recently woke up thinking about two animated TVcharacters from my childhood cartoon-watching days: the superhero Underdog, and Mr. Peabody from Rocky and Bullwinkle. I loved both of these characters since they were quirky and endearing rather than macho and all-powerful. I was even delighted to find an Underdog key chain decades later  at a Value Village in Bellingham, WA. I had forgotten all about that humble hero. (I’m talking about the original Underdog from the 1960s, not the more recent Walt Disney version.)

Maybe the child writer in me enjoyed Underdog’s language, which was always in rhyme like “There’s no need to fear — Underdog is here.” Wally Cox, who later spent years providing quizzical humor on Hollywood Squares, did the voice for Underdog and his alter ego, Shoeshine Boy (I don’t remember anything about that character.)

A quick check on Wikipedia just gave me some Underdog info. Apparently,  he used to crash into walls and so on, which I don’t recall at all. At such times, he would say: “I am a hero who never fails/I cannot be bothered with such details.” The young rebel in me must have relished this attitude. His superpowers, which changed per episode, varied from x-ray vision and atomizing eyes (?) to super breath. Anyone who’s smelled a real dog’s breath would realize what a stretch that last one is.

I had no idea that Underdog was created by ad agency reps to sell cereal for television advertiser General Mills. Gee, my wee eyes were unknowing pawns to their product shilling. Having always been a dog lover, I naturally gravitated to this canine character. However, I did also enjoy Felix the Cat and his bag of tricks. (There’s no surprise where his name came from: Felis catus is  the Latin term for house cat.)

That brings me to some TV trivia: did you know that RCA began experimental television transmissions from New York in 1928, using a 13-inch, paper mache Felix the Cat figure? Rather than pay an actor to stand under hot studio lights while engineers sharpened and tweaked the image, they used Felix, who worked for a one-time fee. (I’m surprised the paper didn’t burn.) They put the black-and-white figure on a turntable and tried broadasting using a mechanical scanning disk and electronic kinescope receiver. These early “broadcasts” usually involved objects, test patterns or photographs; the image received was only two inches tall. Felix stayed on his turntable post for almost a decade while engineers tried to create a high-definition picture. (I got this info from www.felixthecat.com.)

As for Underdog, his last run was with NBC in the mid-1970s. By then, the network censored all references to him swallowing the energy pill that gave him his superpowers. They probably feared lawsuits if kids saw real medication that looked like the Underdog pills (red with a white “U”) and swallowed them. I’m too cynical to think that they genuinely cared about children’s health and well-being.

I have felt so overwhelmed by the short- and long-term ramifications of the recent oil spill in the Gulf Coast that I can barely hear about it. As anyone who watches the news knows, more than 200,000 gallons (757,000 litres) of crude oil are leaking every day into the Gulf since the rig sank April 22.

My husband thinks that British Petroleum (BP) will go bankrupt over this mess, but I’m not so sure. BP certainly hasn’t been pouring substantial money and effort into the clean-up. Countless lawsuits will definitely result from this spill, which resulted after a BP oil rig exploded on April 20, killing 11.

Relatives of the dead have sued rig operator BP-PLC, while Louisiana shrimpers have filed a class-action lawsuit against both BP and Halliburton, which they state was working to cement the rig’s well and well-cap. The shrimper suit claims that both companies and others were negligent in allowing the explosion that led to the spill. The shrimpers are asking for damages of at least $5 million, charging that the spill threatens their livelihoods.

When I think of the lost lives of the 11 men, the death and suffering of thousands of fish and fowl and millions of shell fish, the destruction of habitat, and ruining of wetlands and surrounding ecosystems for multi-years, not to mention the end of livelihoods for many, I feel too distressed to let these impacts fully sink in. As only one example, this spill threatens the future of an eco-tour boat company in Florida, of which my husband is a partner.

Here in B.C., some indirect good might come from this devastating event. It will make it much harder for the provincial government to push for oil exploration off the north-central coast, for one. It will also strengthen the case for those trying to prevent construction of the oil pipeline from Alberta’s Tar Sands to Kitimat, which would result in hundreds of oil tankers navigating the interior of north-central B.C., through prime ecosystems and challenging waterways.

Yet, I certainly don’t want to sound as if I’m looking for benefits as a result of others’ suffering. My heart goes out to the relatives of the men who died in this tragedy. These deaths seem forgotten amidst the media focus on the clean-up, lawsuits, and economic impact of the oil spill. If we ever wanted more proof that humans need to move beyond oil dependence and exploration and seek eco-friendly alternatives, to save both themselves and the planet, this event is a startling reminder. Let’s not forget the Exxon Valdez disaster either.

Meanwhile, on Canada’s Atlantic coast, Chevron plans to start drilling its second deepwater oil well May 9 in Newfoundland, 430 kilometres northeast of St. John’s. That rig is twice as deep (2.6 kilometres down) as BP’s Deepwater Horizon one that ruptured its well in the Gulf of Mexico. Considering Chevron’s horrendous environmental record in Ecuador and the Amazon, I hope that the corporation realizes that the whole world is watching this latest drilling venture.