Round and round, to the edge of town

Bus terminals are fixtures of Downtowns across Canada’s cities. Without fail, you can travel from coast-to-coast and manage to see what every city has to offer the moment you step off the coach. Wherever you are, arriving and departing from Downtown you’re guaranteed a first impression and last look to remember.

There’s Victoria’s, steps from the Inner Harbour, across the street from the Royal BC Museum, and kitty-corner from the Legislature

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Vancouver’s is co-located with the train station – fantastic ambience, and easy access to the Skytrain

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Edmonton’s is just at the edge of Downtown

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and so is Calgary’s

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Saskatoon’s is within a block of the city transit interchange

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and Regina’s across from the Casino – chance to cash in on a quick stopover

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Winnipeg’s brings you within spitting distance of Portage and Main

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while Toronto’s gets you right into the thick of the action at Dundas Square

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Ottawa’s is a bit of a hike from Downtown, but at least Bank St is entertaining as you head uptown

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Montreal’s drops you off in the middle of the Village

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and Halifax’s train/bus station, like Vancouver’s, makes for classic arrivals and farewells like you see in the movies

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It’s not just about giving travellers an attractive welcome to the community; nor is it just about making life convenient for rural commuters from the area to work Downtown; or promoting environmentally-friendly public transport by making it more attractive or useful; or supporting financially-conscious passengers like students who can’t afford hidden costs like taxi transfers to inconvenient stations.

Downtown terminals are part of what distinguishes destinations and places to be, from mere waystations you can’t wait to move on from. Even if it’s not your destination, city planners know that if you get a good impression of the place as you pass through and stop over, you’ll probably at least get off, look around – and spend – and maybe even want to come back. More importantly, you won’t think of the place as just another crappy highway backwater stop between real cities.

Since bus travellers truly are a “captive audience” as they cross the country, bus terminals are a fantastic opportunity for vibrant, desirable cities to establish and maintain their positive vibe. Comparison and competition between communities is inevitable when you’re on the bus – you see them all. Even moreso than airports – aircraft on hub-and-spoke routes cast all the attention to the big three (Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal); but bus terminals are where every Canadian city has a chance to make an impression.

Fredericton, however, is looking to lose its textbook-perfect Downtown bus terminal – with all the convenience, aesthetic appeal and tourist/traveller services like restaurants and cafés (ie, opportunities to spend money in the local economy) that comes with a Downtown location

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in favour of a middle-of-nowhere rental space at 150 Woodside Ln – with all the convenience, aesthetic appeal and services that come with a highway pullout (ie, none of the above)

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According to CBC Radio, taxi fare to the proposed site could run around 20$ or so depending on where you’re coming from. Seeing as how the bus fare to, say, Halifax is only 67$ (57$ for students and over 60s), that’s not just a minor inconvenience – you’re making travel 25-30% more expensive, just like that.

It’s not the bus company’s fault – after twenty years at Regent and King, they “would love to be downtown, but we just can’t find accommodations” since their landlord ended their lease this April. There is the abandoned train station site that would be perfect – walkable to Downtown, lots of open area, maybe an opportunity to get that same ambience as Vancouver and Halifax – and even the Planning Advisory Committee says it “might be expensive to redevelop, but it would be a choice location”.

I don’t know what’s stopping the City of Fredericton from coming up with a solution, intervening and making it happen. It could offer a loan, mediate with the current landlord, buy the land itself and operate a city-owned terminal (just like an airport), or even pull off a land-swap trade deal as it has before to secure the space – maybe another business that doesn’t really need to be Downtown would sell or exchange for a more appropriate plot the City might happen to own already.

Hopefully there’ll be some public outcry about this – too bad it’s come up just when a big chunk of the terminal’s primary users (ie university students) are all away for the holidays. (Hmm, coincidence?) It’s not just about making life convenient for us residents – but promoting a positive image and leaving a good impression with our visitors, and providing facilities you’d expect from a Capital City.

Seriously, a middle-of-nowhere highway pullout – “Welcome to Fredericton”? Definitely not what a city should be.

Baseball on Valium

I’ve never thought of cricket as a particularly “spontaneous” sport. Unlike something like hockey, where more often than not all of your buddies own a stick and ball/puck and you can just meet up at any random driveway or side-street and pick up a game. But not so much cricket.

The first time I saw people playing cricket – live, amateur, just for fun – was in Singapore on the greens near the Esplanade. Everyone in white shirts and shorts, the lawn perfectly manicured – much too well-organised to be a pick-up kind of game

The first time I saw it in Canada was pretty much the same – on the tended grass of Stanley Park in Vancouver, looking all professional-like

But passing the Wolseley warehouse near Fredericton’s Crosstown trail last week – I guess you can play pick-up cricket after all

Not quite a regulation 22 yards, but does the trick

And dropping the white “uniform” makes it a lot less pretentious too

I’ve never seen pick-up cricket anywhere else in Canada yet. Maybe it’s a Fredericton thing.

Blues and twos

The police is running a contest to design Fredericton’s Next Police Car. Right now it looks like

PoliceCanada.ca

The public image of a police department isn’t usually part of urban planning discourse, but I think it’s actually one of the most visible contributions cities make to the community fabric. Quick – name the first municipal service that comes to mind. For most people, it’s the city’s police department.

Out on the street, police cars are probably the most-often seen tangible product of municipal taxation, other than traffic lights or street signs. As such, they’re also the service that lends best to branding with the City’s identity. (Of course the streets themselves are City products – but you can’t really put logos or colours right on them.)

Unfortunately, there’s only one city I’ve seen that actually does this well: Ottawa manages to coordinate its police, fire, ambulance and even parking authority with the signature O-swoosh logo and consistent fonts on street signs and such

But I digress – back to police cars… On film and on TV, producers go to great lengths to match prop police cars and such with the look of the real thing. Though Toronto’s CN Tower or Montréal’s Place-Ville-Marie might show up in a scene trying to pass for New York or Los Angeles, a passing white-and-blue NYPD or black-and-white LAPD cruiser is enough to suspend reality and keep the plot on track.

Of course there’s no pretense of Fredericton’s police vehicles making it on the big screen anytime soon, but every time a car runs a patrol or attends a scene, it’s not just ferrying constables across town – it’s establishing a presence, asserting authority, making society’s values and laws tangible. And when bad things happen, it’s extending the community’s concern, keeping a promise To Serve and Protect.

I remember biking by a crime scene in Vancouver. Some store got robbed, and it looked like the bad guys beat a few people on the way out. The police must’ve just arrived, because constables were rushing in, escorting injured people to ambulances, blocking off traffic with their cars and sealing off the area.

The Vancouver Police recently re-did their cars, and I guess some of those freshly-done cruisers were on the scene: a thick blue waving ribbon – I think it was a Aboriginal stylised animal head – ran down the side like racing stripes; a jaunty half-maple leaf peeked towards the tail; and the door was open, announcing the “Vancouver LICE” were on the scene – they made the word “POLICE” too big to fit.

You could tell the officers were definitely doing their jobs professionally and taking the time to help everyone that was hurt; but with the sirens wailing and people still yelling and crying in shock, the gaudy, happy ribbons and racing stripes really looked odd. Almost trivialising, insensitive in such a terrible situation.

I don’t know what goes into police car marking design, but some of them don’t look like police cars at all! All the fancy racing stripes and swoopy swooshes look like any other commercial truck or car trying to catch attention and sell itself. Even the word “Police” is dolled-up with bubble letters, multicolours and drop-shadows. There’s a new pattern up the highway in Miramichi

PoliceCanada.ca

I guess it looks festive and happy and friendly, but if there was an emergency and you needed to wave a passing cop over, you wouldn’t recognise that as a police car. It just doesn’t scream “Police” when you look at it – a big white Impala or Crown Vic with multicolour stripes is mostly likely a taxi, trying to catch your attention and make fares. You’d have to actually read “Police” on the door, see the constable in the driver’s seat or the flashing lights and sirens to tell what it really is.

And most of all – when you need the police to come over, you don’t go looking for festive or happy or friendly. You need something authoritative, solid and trustworthy – something that says professionals are on the scene, things are under control, and everything is going to be ok. Nike swooshes and Photoshopped gradients when people are in distress – at best, it’s just a little awkward, no?

Anyway, threw together something mock-ups: nothing fancy, but I think they’re cleanly and instantly “Police”, there’s no mistaking them for a taxi or a courier service; the blue-and-red are already recognised police colours, and the black-and-white is pretty obvious; there’s the City logo; with the doors open it won’t say “ICE” or “LICE”; and if it shows up in a newspaper photo of a crime scene or carrying Fredericton’s Most Wanted, it’s not looking trivialising or insensitive

I also re-drew the badge – current on the left, edits in the middle and right. The middle one switches the leaves for a standard radiating shield, police tradition since the first modern force, London’s Metropolitan Police Service; on the right, trying to match the official Canadian Heraldic Authority style

Also re-did the City’s coat of arms – the existing triple-shield-within-a-shield coat of arms seems a bit wonky

According to Terrence C Manuel KStJ CD FHSC (don’t know who that is, but lots of letters after the name, so he must be an expert), “the arms for the city were designed by Dr James Robb, a professor at King’s College (now University of New Brunswick), who was also a member of Fredericton’s City Council. The arms were drawn without regard to the laws of heraldry and were not recorded nor approved by the College of Arms in Britain”. Instead I wonder if simply dividing a shield in four would work, like

Anyway, we’ll find out soon how that contest turns out.

The “real” Bylaw Z-2.645

I stand corrected. Bylaw Z-2.645 was about neither the Costco nor the gas station to go along with it on the UNB forest preservation lands – both were already quietly approved years ago by the City’s internal planning committee, before all this drama came to light – but a carpark extension to cover up part of the wetland. (And, in the end, Fredericton votes unanimous “yay” to more parking lot.)

As has been pointed out, it would’ve been kind of nice, and less frustrating and time-wasting – and, of course, professional – for the City to’ve been clear from the start what we were actually debating. Since Council’s now voting on a different issue, it would make sense to re-open submissions of public objections and support – if Council didn’t know the subject at hand, obviously the rest of us don’t either, and all the hearings to date can’t count for anything.

I remember back when I was on Council – high school Student Council – something like this happening after we switched our vending machine supplier from Pepsi to Coke. There was a mix-up and the details were wrong. Fair enough – we were all caught up planning the Hallowe’en Dance at the same time. But this is when you would shelve the issue, and come back to it once everyone had a chance to review the topic, get class feedback, and actually debate the merits of the case with at least some sense of due democratic process.

If Fredericton could’ve done the same, they might’ve done some research (ie, Googled “big box store parking”), and could’ve quickly found that “developers routinely build more parking spaces than required by zoning… Research now shows that typical zoning regulations require more parking spaces than are actually utilized” (University of Connecticut). In 2001 – well before the word “Costco” were spoken in Fredericton – the US Department of Transportation already completed studies to retrofit 1990s big-box retailers.

Closer to home, Toronto City Council established design guidelines for parking lots – part of Toronto Green Standard – which, unlike Green Matters Fredericton, establishes concrete zoning and design mandates to achieve actual performance measures. And this is in 2007 – right about the time the City planning commission would’ve (should’ve?) been doing their research on urban design standard practices.

If Council couldn’t let the public have a chance to review once they figured out what was really going to the vote, surely they could’ve delayed the vote for 10 minutes just to check online if there’s better ideas than rubber-stamping more parking; they’ve got free wi-fi in the city, after all. Seriously, if you just Google around for 10 minutes before you decide something – I do this all the time before seeing patients, just to make sure they don’t whip out “something they read from the Internet” they didn’t teach in med school – you make more informed, better, safer choices.

This is not an ideological, political, anti-development issue at all – it’s just common sense. There’s actually a lot of good things they could’ve gotten for us if they pondered it a little. Like one of my Trauma Surgery preceptors said, “Don’t just do something – stand there and think!”

Bylaw Z-2.645

Bylaw Z-2.645 – alias “Municipal Plan Amendment, Rezoning, and Subdivision – 1600 and 1650 Regent Street (Terrain Group Inc – Costco)”, or the plan to build a Costco and gas station on the UNB forest in the south end – goes to City Council for final yay/nay tonight. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt; most everywhere else in the country has long caught on that big box stores and suburban sprawl make for crappy neighbourhoods – moreover, unsustainable and more expensive ones at that.

Now one could excuse blank-slate Regina for sprawling no-holds-barred over wide open Prairie; but Fredericton, “Noble Daughter of the Forest”, you’d think razing mature forest and wetlands for such blandness would be a non-starter. Especially with people nowadays tripping over themselves to be so green and enviro-keen – Council debating over chopping down a woodlot for a Costco is like the College of Physicians and Surgeons deliberating on, say, shaking babies for colic.

So the fact that this actually led to local controversy and is even being considered for a vote is kind of depressing.

Unfortunately, it looks like it’s not just the city planners who dropped the ball on nipping this plan in the bud, but Frederictoners at large too. Concepts like good urban design, sustainable planning, what makes neighbourhoods and communities work, comparing ourselves to other cities, or adopting best practices from the rest of Canada – other than this one blog post there’s no sense of self-reflection or vision at all in reading the paper, eavesdropping on conversations around town, or at the last Council hearing two weeks ago.

Most everyone’s been using a straight-up environmental argument – either because of the UNB Woodlot’s important ecology, or that the project encroaches on an 80m buffer that’s required in the plan, or the dangers of having a gas station over wetlands that lead to our water supply, climate change and “death by a thousand small cuts” like this, etc. Some tried to remind Council of its own “Green Matters” commitment, to protect irreplaceable resources like wetlands and woodlots. You can always put a Costco somewhere else, but you can’t rebuild a forest.

Some tried out political stances, like big box stores just pacify us with cheap imported goods we don’t need, and some raised the doomsday spectre of peak oil, but otherwise not much ideology or anything far out. I actually tried to play the medical perspective – hey, it’s in the Principles of Family Medicine after all, to be “community-based”, and “a resource to a defined practice population” – and wrote out a letter to point out the obvious:

For reasons of public health, and based on personal experience with urban planning best practices in varied places from Kingston to Toronto to Victoria to Vancouver to Singapore, I suggest Council reject such placement in favour of a more central location.

Let me make clear I don’t oppose the establishment of a Costco in Fredericton – on the contrary, I believe it will be a useful addition to the city’s retail scene, and in particular know many of my patients desperately need any opportunity to find cheaper options for their shopping needs. However, because a Costco would be such an important commercial “magnet”, its location in the city must be carefully considered.

The proposed placement in the city’s extreme south end will exacerbate Fredericton’s urban sprawl. Its pronounced disconnection from the city’s centre of mass undermines an efficient, compact urban form. As a retail anchor, it will have a snowball effect and encourage further commercial encroachment in the area, forcing residents to travel even greater distances. The site is accessible only by car; it is beyond walking distance from any established residential community, and any potential bicycle routes force users through heavy, high-speed traffic.

Urban sprawl is associated with several public health risks. The Ontario College of Family Physicians recently completed a review of research illustrating the hazards cities impose on residents when they fail to restrain such development, and the benefits individuals and communities can enjoy when alternate plans are made. The “Report on Public Health and Urban Sprawl in Ontario: A review of the pertinent literature” indicates:

- Urban sprawl leads to increased motor vehicle use not only because of greater distances, but also because it makes adequate public transit services less financially feasible;

- Greater dependence on personal vehicle use leads to an increase in air pollution. The effects of air pollution include increased respiratory diseases (such as asthma) and cardiovascular disease;

- Air pollution has also been linked to reproductive health problems and rare cancers (such as childhood leukaemia);

- Compared with people in more efficient and higher density communities, people in car-dependent communities walk less, weigh more and are more likely to suffer from obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes and cardiovascular problems;

- Longer commuting distances lead to increases in traffic fatalities (one of our population’s leading causes of death), injuries and disabilities to motorists, pedestrians and cyclists; and,

- People in sprawling communities are more likely to suffer from mental health problems due to long commutes, isolation and loss of social capital than people in better planned communities.

Four brief summaries emphasise the health impact Council should consider in its decision:

1) Air Pollution
2) Road Injuries and Fatalities
3) Obesity
4) Social and Mental Health

Because of the importance a Costco will have on the city’s commercial scene and overall development, choosing its location provides an opportunity to implement good planning practice. Alternative sites should be considered, such as the Two Nations Crossing complex, or the abandoned train station Downtown – sites within close, convenient proximity to established neighbourhoods and readily accessible to the greater area.

They would make use of already-open areas, reinforce existing focuses of development, and are more consistent with a compact, environmentally-sensitive urban form. They are already reached by transit, would not require expensive extensions of city services such as sewage or refuse collection, or strain emergency response times due to distance. Moreover, they would not entail the ecological damage of the current proposal at the Woodlot.

Other cities, such as the ones I have lived in above, are actively curbing sprawl and directing projects away from suburban/decentralised development, with direct health benefits to the community, and I believe Fredericton can and should do the same. For example, Vancouver’s EcoDensity and Kingston’s Urban Growth strategies have measures that would relocate projects like our Costco proposal.

In medicine, we often talk about “evidence-based” decisions: research and known outcomes must inform our treatment choices. And of course, to “first do no harm” to those for whom we are responsible. As a physician and city resident, I believe the same mindset should guide Council in its decision – and leads to the conclusion that this development, as currently located, is not good practice.

No doubt – Fredericton is sprawling. And urban sprawl is a health issue too; I definitely see people here less healthy than where I’ve worked before. The local stats speak for themselves: 64% of men and 45% of women in Fredericton area are obese or overweight (vs 40% nationally); only 50% of residents themselves feel they’re in good health. This is part of the cost that Council is imposing on citizens by allowing sprawl to continue.

I guess this is so frustrating, because otherwise, Fredericton’s actually been a pretty great place the past year.

What was that about books and their covers?

I saw this book in the Fredericton library and couldn’t help but laugh (and take a picture):

Mein Kampf, by “Hitler, A”. You can tell this is a locally-made re-binding of the book; maybe it was a paperback and the original cover got messed up. Maybe it had a portrait of the Führer and someone defaced it. Maybe someone had it in their bathroom and it got all curled up.

Whatever the reason, it’s not that the librarian decided to re-bind it in a bright happy gaudy totally-incongruous orange hardcover; maybe it was the only material they had available. Maybe it’s the cheapest colour to order. Maybe it’s a deliberate attempt to undermine the content within.

But it’s that that they had to clarify: “Hitler, A” – like, in case you mixed it up with the other Mein Kampf by “Hitler, B“. Maybe if instead of such a common title as Mein Kampf he picked a long, wordy, McSweeney-esque one, such confusion would not have been a problem.

Spring – when a young man’s fancy turns to…

Growing up in Regina – the only major city in the country that’s not on a coastline or riverbank – you miss out on the Canadian springtime ritual: flooding. All that winter snow has to go somewhere, right? (Vancouver and Victoria don’t count – you just get the once-a-century tsunami instead. It balances out, I guess.) In Fredericton, it’s business as usual.

Of course since the city’s been around for over 250 years they’ve managed to come up with a reasonable solution: don’t build anything important within 6,5m of the bank. But when the sky is clear and the temperature’s a balmy 20-degrees and your fancy turns to a long-awaited run or ride along the river valley, you do kind of wish they could come up with a way to keep the trails open.

It’s not just the water that puts the trails out of commission, at least for a little while – you also get a flotsam (or is it jetsam?) (Edit: I guess it’s neither) bunch of junk that washes up and gets in the way. Driftwood and such – at least, nothing in the news of anything more “exciting” ever washing up on the banks of the Saint John. That is a good thing.

These two obviously have their springtime in Fredericton down pat:

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Washed out trails didn’t stop the first Critical Mass of the year starting up though.

I always wanted to check one of these out. Basically, you get a bunch of people on bikes together, and you go around on the street. You don’t really go anywhere in particular – that’s part of how it’s supposed to work, no organisation, no set route – it’s just to be on the road, safety in numbers together, alongside cars and trucks and such, asserting the common privilege (not a right, of course) of operating a vehicle, motorised or otherwise.

The clichéd confrontation – angry driver: “You’re blocking traffic!” Angry cyclist: “I am traffic!” I don’t know if that actually happens. When I was in Victoria and Vancouver I never saw any Critical Mass events; I guess since biking is already a part of everyday life and traffic there there’s no need to state the obvious. The same way how the rest of the world wouldn’t need them either – you’d never hear of cyclists needing to assert their existence in, say, Amsterdam, or Beijing.

According to Wikipedia, sometimes there are conflicts involving Critical Mass – apparently enough to warrant an entire article, “Conflicts involving Critical Mass”. Like all conflicts generally, this happens when people become immature and decide to flout the law – drivers fail to yield or drive unsafely around the bikes, or cyclists ignore the rules of the road and actively obstruct traffic.

I wasn’t sure how Fredericton Critical Mass usually behaves, so I wanted to hang back and see what everyone else does before actually joining in. If it was just going to be some kind of perverse “revenge” against drivers and an excuse to piss them off, count me out. Everyone looked pretty nice though; and, the majority of people had helmets too, so they seemed like a reasonable bunch.

It was supposed to start up at around 5.30 or so, but when 5.45 came around and I was getting restless and hungry, I went for dinner instead and just lazed around the park. Enjoy it while it lasts – who knows, by this time tomorrow it’ll be flooded over.

Neither functional nor fashionable

Crazy weather the past few days, but I guess it’s the new “normal” living out East. Recipe for crappy icy dangerous streets and sidewalks: take 30cm of snow one day at 10-below, bring to 12-above the next day, then glaze with freezing rain at 0-degrees the day after that. Mix well with gusts of 40km/h winds. Serves 10 855 New Brunswickers without power, and springs transport and police to battle stations. Also brings together two drunk drivers – literally, head-on. (Darwinism at its best – I guess they cancel each other out.)

Keeping off the roads and leaving the car safe at home is a good, insurance-saving thought… but catching the bus isn’t much fun either. The wet slushy weather highlights how unsuitable Fredericton Transit bus “shelters” are for actually providing shelter – completely open to the elements, just a 1m roof that’s not much help if the rain/snow is anything but coming straight down, and only two little flat planks for seats

Weak show, Fredericton – even sorrier than the mess of markings on the buses themselves. Extending the roof just a bit, and even just making just one side of the shelter solid would be so much more useful. Then at least you could hide behind it as oblivious cars unleash torrential waves in their wakes driving past and wash out the sidewalk and anyone unlucky to be standing on it.

Even in ever-rainy Vancouver a one-sided shelter like that works fine – plus they’ve got some style to it, adds to the streetscape and makes public transit less “ghetto”

Patterned glass, location marker, maps, a “City of Vancouver” brand, and a neat “floating” ergonomic hardwood bench that curves to fit your butt – very nice. And just in time for the season

Christmas bows! And who said TransLink was no fun? They’re hip, they’re cool, they’ve even got their own blog! They could even put mistletoe along the shelters too – that could make for some fun bus stop encounters.

Of course the ideal would be fully-enclosed – these new ones in Toronto were the cat’s meow in the breezy urban canyons last week

Like the good old 70s-futuristic streetcars, I love how the shelters are designed to be part of the City’s “signature” on the streetscape

People always say glass shelters become targets for vandalism, but other cities (eg Toronto) have these all over in ghetto neighbourhoods and they survive fine – I was waiting for buses in Scarborough uh… “East Toronto” in places I was basically fresh meat for the grinder, but sure enough, intact glass bus shelters. I would’ve taken a photo if I wasn’t so scared of getting jumped as a tourist.

Toronto actually seems like it’s getting its act together with transit identity since I was last there – still more ghetto than grace, more egregious than elegant, but at least the iconic subway font previously confined to the station walls

and endangered with station “renovations” and “improvements” is now breaching out to the surface signage too: where the signs used to just have the TTC logo and “Toronto Transit Commission” – what did that mean? This is the TTC HQ? Or some other office? – now it tells you what and where this actually is

Nice. Fredericton: see and do.

’tis the season

’tis the season – first big snowfall of the year. Fredericton’s really lucky to have a gem like Odell Park, it’s gorgeous year-round

For some reason the park map has totally different trails in winter vs summer. I don’t mean ones that close down for the season (most you can snowshoe or ski them unobstructed wintertime), but the ones that stay open get numbered differently on the two maps – the 3 Summer becomes the 5 Winter. Why? If they just gave them names (I’m sure there’s enough famous people to name trails after) it would be easier to follow.

Back at work… the Officers’ Mess hosted the Senior NCOs the other day – it’s a yearly tradition apparently, you buy them all drinks, or walk around with a pitcher yourself and if you see anyone with crowns or chevrons on their chest with an empty glass, top them up! The Mess also cooks up a mean chowder for everyone too – good stuff.

Also a fundraiser for the United Way: beer cup pyramid building, Officers vs NCOs – find someone with the broadest, flattest, most stable back, and pile on! Tallest tower without stacking cups wins; loser has to scrounge up 200$ from fellow ranks to donate, winner only has to get 100$.

You can tell which one was the Officers’ pile: copying the NCOs at first, then realising we have no engineering skills, taking the easy way out…

Back at the clinic, the biggest potluck I’ve ever seen – a mix of the home-cooked… and KFC. It’s all comfort food, after all. Dessert spread before the entree table, I guess that’s tradition too. Priorities, you know?

(Hypothetical) honey, I’m home

Well, I’m home! I’ve only had two places so far I can call “my own”, but over that limited n of 3, this is my best place yet. It’s sort of a hybrid between the other two: the character and Downtown location of my old place in Montréal, with the size and fixtures of my place in Victoria. Still don’t have everything quite yet set up, the walls are still pretty bare, but it’s getting there

I moved that “Torch” poster from my office to here; seems more appropriate to keep somewhere removed from the military setting, where it’ll better have that remembrance effect

I had nightmares about the kitchen: when I was visiting on the house-hunting trip, there was years of crud between the stovetop edge and the counter that I was dreading to have to clean. Lucky when the landlord repainted the whole apartment (well worth the wait!) they took care of those nasties too

The microwave stand is actually a bathroom cabinet – there’s another one in the bathroom too – slightly smaller than what was being advertised as a proper “microwave stand”, but half the price. I can live with a little overhang off the edge

The bedroom is huge! It’s like having a ballroom, you could hold swing nights here (“swing”, not “swinger” – this is my bedroom, after all)

It still has the original push-button light switches! Hope these won’t be a fire hazard

I’m really happy how the bathroom turned out – the English-style double spigot sink takes some getting used to, but it’s a neat historic touch; what matters most is the shower faucet and head delivers a nice proper exfoliating torrent, and the drains drain properly. Older places are always a bit of a gamble for those two, but in this place I lucked out

There’s that bathroom/microwave stand, since there isn’t an undersink vanity. I also got a neat toilet brush, with a clamshell stand – you pull on the brush to take it out, and the stand splits in two to let it out. When you’re done, you just put it back in the middle, and the clamshell closes around it. Neat! It’s also made in Israel, which is noteworthy because you don’t see many consumer products made in Israel and imported here. I can’t think of anything else I have that’s made in Israel.

Everything seems to have made it fairly intact from Victoria. The one major loss is the Haida carving one of patients gave me from Masset – no idea where it could’ve gone. Irreplaceable. An excuse to go back sometime, I guess. I can’t find my remote controls either, but that at least is easy to switch. And my old alarm clock (going back to undergrad) doesn’t have an antenna for the radio, so the reception’s kind of crappy behind these old thick brick walls, so I got a new one too

Great location, right in the middle of Downtown

but with all the noise that comes with it. Not so much the fallout of the Changings of the Guard and random concerts pretty much every weekend from the park across the street, or the late-night pubcrawlers frolicking to the wee hours, or even the revving engines and squealing tires of people that make me wish gas prices just keeps going up and up – no, it’s the beep-beep-beep dong-dong-dong of the automated crosswalk. How many blind people really cross the street between 12-6am?!

Again – I need décor ideas. Wall hangings, frame suggestions, new furniture – esp something to fill that bedroom space. Exercise stuff maybe? An easel and canvas – I’m no painter, but I guess I could start. (That would also solve my bare walls problem at the same time, perhaps.) Help!