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Signs of the future

Columnist Diana French touches on government legislation, effects following Japan's tsunami, and industrial development.

The B.C. and federal governments are on a lag-is-to-sag (latest buzz word) process of pushing legislation through their respective houses without much (any?) time for study or debate.

The Harper government has its omnibus “Trojan Horse” bill, and the Clark government is cramming bills through the last few days of the legislative session. Both have majority governments so they can do  whatever they want to.

Let’s hope they get it right, because we’ll all have to live with the consequences if they don’t.

A couple of thoughts  come to mind. Like haste makes waste; act in haste, repent at leisure.

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GD#5 recently returned from a school trip to China. GDs # 6&7 from a trip to Germany to visit their maternal grandparents. The world travellers had several things in common, eg even familiar food tasted different, and language difficulties. However, in terms of language, GD#5  and her teenage friends have their own lingo and sometimes I have no idea what they’re talking about.

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When I was growing up on an island in B.C.’s “inside passage” we spent a lot of time on the beaches and we often found (and treasured) glass floats and nets that had escaped from Japanese fishermen.

Today’s beachcombers may find treasures in the humungous amount of stuff that’s arriving from last year’s tsunami in Japan, but there is so much of it already communities all along the Pacific coast are wondering how they will cope with it. What’s worse, no one knows yet if any of it is radioactive.

Mother Nature not only has last bats, she doesn’t play fair.

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In Richmond, there are plans to turn some excellent agricultural land into an industrial development for the Deltaport container port expansion.

In East Vancouver, volunteers have turned a paved parking lot into a raised bed garden.

Is this the future?

Diana French is a freelance columnist for the Tribune. She is a former Tribune editor, retired teacher, historian, and book author.