Having your cake and eating it too?
Some B.C. landholders are refusing to obey wildfire evacuation orders, believing they can save their properties themselves. Two problems with that: they can get in the way of the firefighters and, if things go wrong as they did in a recent event, firefighters have to leave their jobs and risk their lives saving them.
No one is saying don’t rescue the holdouts, but maybe people would think twice if they knew they faced healthy fines for not evacuating. Same with the anti vaxxers. Certainly, you have the ‘right’ not to be vaccinated, but business owners and government agencies have an equal right to deny you access to their premises if you aren’t.
READ MORE: Summertime living not so easy these days
Question: are wildfires worse than they used to be? Now they get “contained” instead of extinguished. Is it because they are more vicious today or, is it, as some believe, our firefighting methods haven’t kept up with the times?
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The Vancouver Sun and Province have been missing from local newsstands lately. The reason, I’m told, is that the people who delivered the papers from the Coast to the hinterlands are no longer doing it. No one has replaced them yet. Wonder when someone will?
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Sunflowers are among my favourites. But, dozens of wee birds enjoy the birdfeeder, but not the sunflower seeds. They chuck them all over the place. Early in the morning, when the coast is clear, six or seven pigeons arrive and clean them up. Occasionally some deer beat them to it. This year a lot of seeds landed in my flower planters, safe from the pigeons and deer. By the time I discovered the plants they were too big to pull out without wrecking the flowers. They make the planters look really weird but, whatever.
Diana French is a freelance columnist for the Tribune. She is a former Tribune editor, retired teacher, historian and book author.
editor@wltribune.com
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