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2004
Merry
Christmas and a Happy New Year!
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Life
goes on, and here we are in 2004. Our first problem of the year was Angel,
our Rottweiler. She was over nine years old, which is old for that breed. She
tore the ligament out of her back leg, and the outlook wasn’t good for recovery,
even with surgery. By March she was on a wide variety of pain medications, and
not doing well.
We kept working with Langley Township on Zero Avenue, going to a number of
Transportation committee meetings during January. We also went to a Pantomime
at Saint Martin’s Church in North Vancouver. Sean and Doug were both involved
in the Pantomime, and it was very good.
Then
in March, we had to have Angel put down. She hadn’t been well, and we
discovered she had cancer of the spleen .
Two days later we lost Tanya, our cat
– she was 14. They are buried together by our back pond.
 Shannon wanted to go to a Bead conference in Seattle, so we picked up and went
down there for two days. She has been doing glass bead and
jewellery for some time now - her website is at
http://www.fireice.ca We arrived home on my birthday, and Carly had made
dinner and a cake. Brant’s dad is still doing consulting work so he went to
China for part of March.
 Carly
had been working on BCIT’s 40th Anniversary Open
House. She had been putting together donations for the event for about six
months, on top of doing a very intensive 2nd year Marketing diploma program. She raised $160,000
in goods and services for the event – twice the amount ever before raised for
Open House. Open House was on April 2, 3 & 4 and was a huge success.
This is Carly with the President of BCIT, Tony Knowles and President of the
Faculty and Staff Association, Kevin Wainwright. You'll notice that Courage, our
llama is there also. Long story, but Carly and Kevin had a "bet" - if she
brought the llama to Open House, Kevin's organization would give Carly a larger
donation. She won.
 Shannon and Carly turned 22 on April 8, 2004. Carly wanted to have a big “theme”
party, so she had about forty friends that showed up in cowboy gear.
They had a
big bonfire back by the pond, and everything went on till midnight. I got to be
Security for the event.
Darryl
Wethersett and Richard Radford both attended. Click
HERE to see more photos.
 In May
Brant and his family went up to Kye Bay to spread Myrna’s ashes. She had passed
away on December 1, 2003. They went out
to the reef, one of her favorite places, and spread her ashes near a large boulder.
The same month, Todd, Brant’s brother turned 40 and his sister Debbie turned
50. As I told Debbie, 50 isn’t old – if you’re a tree.
 Right after their birthday, Shannon and I spent several days at Fiberfest with
Marilyn (MEG) Ross. She had a good turnout, and there were some really
interesting classes and demonstrations of knitting, weaving, etc.
 Here we are celebrating Mothers Day.
 In May,
Jean and Norm Lawrence came to visit for a few days.
 On May
26, Mom celebrated her 87th birthday. We went out for dinner at our favourite
restaurant, Del Rios. When we arrived home, Mom fell getting out of the
car. Luckily nothing got broken, but she was very stiff and sore for a few
days afterwards.
 Shannon helped out a
friend by being a "hair model" Here she is with her hair done up and full
makeup.
Shannon, mom and I decided we needed a change of pace, so we went up to Whistler
for a day. Here we are in front of the ski hill.
June
was a busy month – the people at BCIT had been very impressed with Carly, so
they recommended her for the
CCAE Meloche Monnex
Fellowship
– each Fellowship is worth $25,000, and they only give out three for all of
Canada. Carly was awarded a Fellowship – the first winner in western Canada.
BCIT “topped up” the award, so that Carly could work for BCIT for an entire
year. She went to Halifax in June to the CCAE conference to be presented with her
award. She had barely arrived home before Brant and several family members went
away on a fishing trip to Vancouver Island. They had a great time and caught
lots of fish.
Carly
graduated from BCIT in June – she won the President’s Award.
 As the President
was talking about her and she was approaching the podium, Rick Hanson, the guest
speaker, was listening. When he heard that she’d raised $160,000 in six months
he really began to pay attention. Before graduation was over, he asked her if
she would be interested in working for the Rick Hanson Foundation.
As she was
already committed to BCIT, she is now working part time for Rick Hanson, raising
funding for his annual June fishing derby.
 In
July we attended Sean and Julia’s wedding – Sean is the first Handel grandchild
to get married. Click on the photo at left to see more wedding pictures.
 We
spent lots of time in June and July shearing the llamas and alpacas. Darryl was
a great help, and when we were worming the alpacas, we found out he hates
syringes – even if they don’t have a needle on them!
 We
also got Velcro in July – a little orange tabby kitten from my friend Marilyn –
he is also known as “Mr. Insanity”. Marilyn thinks he may be inbred, but he is
without a doubt the most athletic ninja cat I’ve ever seen. He
constantly goes where no cat has gone before. We're pretty sure that he thinks
his name is "Bad Cat Velcro".
Then
on August 1st, Shannon’s 14 year old cat, Cry Baby disappeared. We
looked everywhere, called for hours – Cry always came in at night so after a few
days we decided he’d been killed by coyotes. Finally we gave up and reluctantly
concluded that Cry wasn’t coming home.
Our
neighbour from further down the street, a greenhouse operator, bought the
property beside us and began an unbelievable transformation of the old broken
down horse
arena, turning it into a packing shed.
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Before he started |
Partily Finished |
As part of the plan, he pulled out huge
amount of brush and piled it up near our house to burn. He also asked the nasty
tenants to move out of the house on the property, where our friend Karen used to
live before she died.
 Well, they moved alright – and they left their cats
behind. One of them had been sort of a “joint ownership” cat so it was no
problem having him back. However, the other one was a totally wild, totally
starved black and white cat. It started slinking up to our porch for food, and
it would run away as soon as you saw it. Finally I realized why it was so
hungry. It was a female, and it had given birth to kittens – in the pile of
junk that our neighbour was about to burn. We made a hasty call to him to stop
the pile being burned, then spent days to no avail, trying to get the female to
bring out the kittens. The female cat was so hungry that she eventually became
friendly, and she was incredibly thin. After a couple of weeks, she brought all
five of her kittens to Mom’s house – all black and white. We found homes for all
but two of the kittens, who live here with us now – Draven and Ichabod.
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Draven
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Ichabod. |
 Shannon and I spent
several days at the Chilliwack Fair in August where Shannon had a booth for her
line of jewellery, "Fire & Ice".
Carly
went to London Ontario in August for another conference, then when she got back,
 Mom and I went to the Lynden Fair for a day, before Shannon and I left for Comox
to attend Charity’s wedding – my cousin Judy’s daughter. It took place on
August 21, 2004.
 Along the way we
stopped to see Richard’s parents not once but twice – Ken and Gail Radford in
Nanaimo. They have done a great job with their house and garden.
Judy,
Charity and Christine had worked really hard on the wedding. It was a “theme’
wedding, something I’ve never seen before.
It was a medieval theme, and the
costumes were incredible. Judy and family are a really creative and they
had outdone themselves. We had a great time.
 Here
is Evelyn Marcel, one of Mom's old friends from Creston, with her son in law and
daughter. The came to visit one day during the summer.
The
last week of August, Carly bought a nice barely-used white Honda Civic. She had had it for
three days when she parked it in the BCIT staff parking lot. It was gone when
she got back that afternoon. It was found a week later at Metrotown in
Burnaby, minus some parts She got everything fixed over a period of
weeks, and then in November it was parked right in front of her office, when two
black guys broke into it and tried to steal it again. Luckily she had an
immobilizer by that time and they couldn't start the car.
In
September we did even more lobbying for changes to
Zero Avenue – we thought we
were getting closer. Then on September 11, six weeks after he had disappeared,
Cry the cat just as mysteriously reappeared – almost dead. He was emaciated beyond
recognition. It was dark out, and I saw a black cat come up to me, and let out
a weak “meow”. I couldn’t believe it. We suspect that he got locked in a
building on a neighbouring farm , because he was not only thin, he was incredibly
dehydrated. Somehow he made it home. We took him to the vet, who was very
dubious about his survival, as he'd lost over half his body weight. After weeks of re-hydrating fluids and force
feeding he finally started to turn the corner, and he’s now back to his usual
miserable self (actually, he’s become a lap cat – he wants to stay with you
constantly and doesn’t particularly want to go outside!)
After
weeks of drought, we were just beside ourselves because we had no grass
whatsoever and we had to start feeding hay in July. Then on September 18th we had the “great rainfall” – the
record rainfall for any one day EVER in Vancouver. And it just went on from
there. Definitely a correction in climate.
 In
October, Mom and I went to Saltspring Island for a day - Mom had first heard
about Saltspring Island in 1942, when she lived in Chilliwack during the war.
Another woman living there was from Saltspring Island, and spent many
hours telling Mom about the island. So finally, 62 years later, she got to
take a look. We took the "milk run" and went to four islands on each leg of the
trip. Even though the weather wasn't great, it was a lot of fun watching
the islands go by. An artist from Saltspring Island was on the ferry with
us, and she drew this portrait for us.
 On the way back we saw a pod of killer whales.
 Several days later we had our one single baby alpaca born for the whole year – not sure
why but that was it for our whole herd! He’s a cute little red and white guy.
Then the next day, October 11, Brant broke his left leg. He was just getting up
off the carpet, and in typical Brant fashion didn’t mention anything was wrong
till the next morning, when he said it “kind of hurt”. He broke the same bone
in his right leg three years ago. So he’s been walking around in an air cast
for several weeks now.
Langley Township finally decided to put speed tables on
Zero Avenue – it only
took four years?? So it looked fairly straightforward, the Council passed the
motion, then one of the Councilors who was opposed to it decided to make it his
cause celebre. He has done his best to derail it, and of course that stirred
the public pot, and all the crazies came out. We kept trying to maintain a low
profile but finally I’d had enough and sent out some material about it – Brant
got into an argument with the editor of one of the newspapers, etc. etc. – what
fun! Then, in an interesting coincidence, there was a major accident in the
Surrey stretch of Zero Avenue the day after they started installing the speed
tables in the Langley side. Jaws of life, helicopter evacuation, etc. – because the guy was
speeding, and passing when he shouldn’t have been. It was like a script. In the
middle of it all, the speed tables got installed and the cars are slowing down –
a bit. Not enough. At least it’s a start. Now the people on
Surrey are lobbying their government for speed tables in their section of Zero
Avenue.
Brant
and some of his family went to the Saskatchewan-B.C. football game a few weeks
ago, and they were rooting for B.C. during the Grey Cup, even though B.C. finally
lost.
 Pat
& Paula Cox came to visit in November - Pat is an artist - his website is
http://www.patrickdcox.com
My cousins Judy and Chris
from Royston came down overnight in November also - they are still recovering
from all their work on the medieval wedding which took place in August.
Brant
is involved in a Directors Guild committee to set up a separate section for
Location Scouts. With the dollar headed up, there may not be much scouting to
do anyway.
Carly and Darryl headed off to Hamilton, Ontario for the first week of December
- Darryl works as a therapist, and his company's Christmas party/conference was
being held there. Carly got to shop in Toronto.
We bought an old pickup as a "farm" truck- we've needed something for ages so we
could go pick up hay, grain, etc. It's not pretty, but it's reliable.
 So
that’s where we’ve gotten to so far this year – hopefully the rest of the year
will see everyone remain safe and healthy – that’s the most important thing. Click
on the flower at left to see a few random photos of our 2004 year.
So to
everyone out there, hope you’ve had a happy year, and here’s to one more coming
up in 2005.
Merry
Christmas and Happy New Year.
Click
HERE to see the year 2003
Click HERE to see the year 2002
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