Thank you for viewing my videos , and reading my novel .
Not working on my videos, actually not working, has left me a lot of time, when I am not visiting doctors, to work on my website.
Over the past few weeks I have had: 2 ultra sounds, bladder and throat; two CT scans, kidney & brain; three 360 degree x-rays; upper and lower jaw, two of which were used to make a 3D view of my teeth; plus a complete blood work up. 
Now I am just waiting for results and a date for an MRI of my knee.
I added some more pictures to my Alberta highway 3 page .
And I added some more pictures to my Saskatchewan highway 16 page .
I also added another page to my Alberta section, - Hwy. 4 .
And I added another page to my USA section, - Montana .
Enjoy

MIKE LAKE

This morning I went to Mike Lake to go fishing.

They had stocked it two weeks ago and I thought there might be some left.

Mike Lake is just a few miles North of Maple Ridge on the road to Alouette Lake.

It is a well maintained road but only open to the public during daylight hours.

It has a decent size parking lot close to a small wharf at the Southwest corner of the lake.

However, the wharf is in three sections.  The fist section closest to dry land is mounted on concrete supports, with a metal ramp  on the end to allow for rise and fall of the water level.

The second, and first floating, section of the wharf is, for some reason, not floating very high above the water on the shore end.

When you step on the metal plate it forces the end of the float below the surface.

OK, I’m overweight, but not by that much.

Ankle high boots are sufficient to keep your feet dry and the wharf will hold your weight and is fairly stable once you get to the middle.

However, the second, and second section of floating, section of the wharf system, has the same problem. If you step on the North end of the section it tends to drop below the surface of the water.

Though the water looks clear and placid I don’t think one wants to end up in the water.

Because the water is clear one can see that the bottom of the lake is covered with bodies. Bodies of fish.

Some fresh kill, some partially decomposed and some merely skeletons.

I had no desire to eat any fish that would be caught in such waters so I packed up and went home, without baiting a hook.

Why the fish are dead I have no idea.

bearlee2's photostream

bearlee2's photostream on Flickr.

MORE PICTURES ADDED

`12/6/18

Thank you for viewing my videos, http://www.youtube.com/user/Bear39224

Not working on my videos, actually not working, has left me a lot of time to work on my website.

I added some more pictures to my Alberta highway 3 page. http://www.leespage.ca/h/tra/ca/a/H3.html

I also added another page to my Alberta section, - Hwy. 4 http://www.leespage.ca/h/tra/ca/a/H4.html

And I added another page to my USA section,  – Montana. http://www.leespage.ca/h/tra/us/m.html

Enjoy

Yours

Bear

POLLS

People love to fill out polls feeling that they are contributing something to society.

The problem is that most polls are geared to get the answer that the instigator of the poll whishes to hear.

Take for instance a recent poll regarding B. C. Hydro and their Power Smart programs.

It is obvious by the questions that the poll was at the request of B. C. Hydro and the questions are geared so that no matter how you answer them the poll will result in answers that are favourable to B. C. Hydro instead of reflecting the truth.

For instance the very last question is a multiple guess of which you can only choose one answer and nowhere in the answers is there an answer such as,` NONE OF THE ABOVE’.

There are no answers there that reflect your true feelings or would shed a negative view on the Power Smart programs and your questionnaire program won't let you continue without marking one of the choices though you don't want to mark any of them.

The correct answer is, to reduce the number of employees, and to increase the amount of profits to B. C. Hydro under the disguise of conserving energy.

It made me very angry to have to give an answer that would be favourable to something I am not in favour of.

 All of the promotions by B. C. Hydro are used to disguise the fact that they want homeowners to cut back on power consumption so they have more to sell to the states, yet they do nothing to make industry cut back. and all the incentive programs are posted to the government costing the taxpayers higher taxes.

Currently they have an insulation incentive in which the government will give homeowners a rebate if they reinsulated their home.

Why should I as a taxpayer, pay to help insulate someone else’s home if it isn’t going to result in a lowering of my hydro bill, but will cause an increase in my taxes and an increase in profits to B. C. Hydro?

Or why would I be in favour of  new power smart meters that are very expensive?

The cost of these, and the cost of installation, will be passed on to me in higher hydro rates.

The installation, and use, of them will result in: increased garbage (the old ones) going to the landfill, unemployment, the meter readers that normally go to your house once a month will be laid off; B. C. Hydro will not need to replace the cars the meter readers use which means less sales for an already dying auto industry which will result in more layoffs; all these people being laid off will result in a burden on the unemployment insurance benefit program which will, again, result in higher income tax for me.

Monthly E

Thank you for viewing my video.

I now have my own Channel. http://www.youtube.com/user/Bear39224 (With over 6 videos)

Or you can just do a search on YouTube for `Bear’s Views’.

Last year at this time I did an article on Art in the City. You will find it in my articles section http://www.leespage.ca/h/ar/ac.html

`ART IN THE CITY' is a visual `art show and sale’ held, yearly, in Vancouver’s `West End Community Centre’ on Denman St.

I will be there again this year, May 11 – 13, this time with a display of my photography.

If you are in the neighbourhood stop by. There will be photographers, artists, sculptors, writers. Artisans, displaying their crafts.

Speaking of writing, have none of you ever read my novel?

http://www.bearspage.info/h/no/in.html

I would appreciate a critique. Even if you only made it part way through the first chapter, a comment as to what you didn’t like would be appreciated.

Yours

Bear

Smoke and Mirrors

Currently uploading video # 7 - EP 6 for my You Tube Channel -http://www.youtube.com/user/Bear39224

Wow, I put up a video on YouTube and now I have my own channel, http://www.youtube.com/user/Bear39224?ob=0&feature=results_main

OAP

Currently there is a lot of fear over what is to become of Canada’s OAP (Old Age Pension).

Certainly, with his involvement in the bail out of Greece, I can understand Harper’s fears of Canada falling into a similar situation.

However, unlike Greece, Canada has many ways to prevent such a disaster.

One of the fears is, where will we get the money for all the forthcoming pensioners?  Well, for one we shouldn’t reduce the number of years required to become eligible. I am talking about the mandate that requires a new citizen to be a resident for 10 years. Now they want to reduce that to 3 years. That alone will triple the number of new pensioners.  This should be reversed. To reduce the number of pensioners increase the requirement to 20 years or better yet, to be eligible a person must have been born in Canada.

Finding sufficient funds is not a problem, just reduce, or do away with, the extravagant pension that was recently awarded to members of Parliament.

They certainly haven’t done anything, or been on the job long enough, to deserve a pension.  In any other business an employee has to be with the company for 20 years.  Why should they, or a new comer to Canada, be in line for a pension after only 3 years?

SECURITY & VEILS

Lately there has been a lot of controversy about Muslim women removing their face cover at customs check ins.

How did these women get passports or other photo ID if they didn’t remove their niqab for the photographer?

And how is any Gov’t official supposed to compare the passport, or photo ID, if they don’t have a face to compare it to.

It could be a man beneath all those robes.

Obviously, (no pun intended) unless technology has advanced retina scanning to the point of perfection, a person, any person, regardless of race, or religion, must bare their  face, to any officer of the law, to confirm identification.

DON'T GO ELECTRIC

The biggest problem facing the planet today is overpopulation. From this stems all our other problems; pollution, shortage of food and water, and unemployment.

Shortage of oil is a cry that is expounded by the oil companies. Since the early `70s they have used it to advocate their demands for higher prices. The gouging by the oil barrons has led the populace to seek other forms of transportation.

One such alternate form is the all-electric car. Once the battery companies release the batteries that will allow a full size passenger van to run many; miles, and hours, between short charge-ups the oil companies will wake up. When oil plummets on the stock market and the shareholders vote the CEOs out of office they will realize that they carried their hoax too far.

Many believe that this is a good thing.  Payback.

However, the laying off of million-dollar-salaried executives is only the tip of an ice berg. The thousands of people around the world who are employed in the oil industry;  exploration companies, drill rig crews, refinery employees, tank truck drivers, service station employees, to name but a few, will also find themselves out of work

Yet this too, is but the tip of an ice berg. The larger ice berg is the automotive industry.

One normally thinks of the auto industry as the big plants of: Ford, or GMC, in N. America; Daimler, or Volvo, in Europe; Nissan, or Mitsubishi, in the Orient.  Again the tip of an ice berg.

Look below the surface and you will find the millions of workers in the small plants all over the world.  The people who; design, build, ship, and warehouse all the little pieces required to make a non electric car operate efficiently; fans, fan belts, heaters, heater hoses, hose clamps, antifreeze, radiators, radiator caps. The list goes on and so does the unemployment.

When electric cars become efficient, and affordable, the world will flock to their sales lot. It won’t take years to happen, it will happen over night.  The cars, as we know them today, will have no trade in value and will be abandoned on the side of the street.

Everywhere, in every country, little plants will close down and people will become unemployed, with no pension plan, and no nest egg set aside. All governments will become burdened with welfare cases and most of them will collapse for lack of funds to support their citizens.

ARNIE HAD THE ANSWER

During his pre-election campaign Arnold Schwarzenegger said that he would arrange for hydrogen to be readily available for cars, throughout California, to switch from gasoline.

Of course this never happened, but it should have.

Not only is hydrogen a nonpolluting fuel, if manufactured, and supplied, by the big oil companies it would mean their continued existence, services stations would still be required, as would fuel tankers, and refineries.  But more importantly so would all the other thousands of employees who are directly, and indirectly, involved in the manufacture and maintenance of the internal combustion engine.

As much as I would run out and buy a new van if it was of sufficient size to actually do some work and was capable of running for hours, and miles, on a battery charge, I would, for the sake of the world economy, much rather see the oil companies offer us an inexpensive, non-polluting alternative. 

HST - WHEN WILL IT GO?

The Liberal Party says that it will take 19 months to get rid of the HST.

Last month I had reason to phone HST.

I got into a shouting match and I told the lady that she shouldn’t even be working, we had voted HST out.

She told me that she didn’t work for HST, she works for GST.

That was a short 19 months.

Yet Chrusty Clark is still saying it will be another ?? months.

And she is still failing to accept that HST includes PST and GST. 

If we voted against HST, we voted to remove both, GST and PST.

OAP IS FOR CANADIANS NOT IMMIGRANTS

In all my years living in this country, and watching politicians commit political suicide I have never witnessed political parties try to shoot themselves in the foot as bad as the liberals in B. C. and the Conservatives in Ottawa are presently doing.

It’s like neither party wants to win the next election.

British Columbians wanted to get rid of the Liberal party and their policies re HST. So the party made their leader their scapegoat and then had the audacity to give him an award.

The conservative party then gave the voters of B. C. a second slap in the face by appointing him to an exulted position within the Canadian hierarchy.

The Liberal party continues to ignore the wishes of its electors by  keeping the unwanted taxes.

The Conservative party continues to insult Canadians by offering a pittance of an increase in the OAP but no increase in the GIS, and instead of decreasing the budget by making the OAP available to Canadian born residents only they want to stretch the already over burdened budget by making it available to people who haven’t lived in Canada long enough to learn their postal code.

Its like both parties are trying to commit political suicide.

 Despite the fact that B. C. kicked out the HST the movie industry stays strong. Actually we are as busy as can be expected with, thanks to the meddling of the Liberal party, our shortage of crews, and studios.

I worked on 3 separate productions last week. Alcatraz, Once Upon a Time, and Secret circle.

Serena has booked China for Dec. and Jan. I will stay home this year, though I might grab a week or two in Mexico or I might go North.  It kind of depends on what my doctors have to say. I had two doctor visits this past week and I have five separate specialist to go see over the next four weeks.

Despite the doctor visits, over the past couple of weeks I continue to slog through my website, removing advertising and checking all my links.

As I said last time, Bear’s Page is now `stand alone’. However I am probably only about ¼ of the way through Lee’s Page.

I have had time to go through some pictures and I have added a new page that I hope you will find interesting, even if you are not a fisherman. Read, enjoy.  CHAPMAN CR. FISH HATCHERY.

Donate if you wish, it is a worth while charitable organization.

So is Bear’s Page, Donations welcome .

Speaking of `fishing’, Serena caught 30 salmon yesterday, though she was only allowed to keep four.  For some stupid reason you have to catch them through the mouth. If you snag them in the tail, or their side, you have to throw them back.

If a hunter wounds a deer, or a bear, he will stay on its trail for hours, or even days, until he kills it. Yet if you wound a fish you have to throw it back,  so it can die.

I don’t know what bone head politician, or government employee, made up that stupid rule.

These fish have just left the ocean and some have another thousand miles of; lakes, streams, and waterfalls to negotiate before they get to their spawning grounds. How they are expected to do that with a hole in the guts is beyond my comprehension.

Right now the fish run is so heavy that you could catch the fish with your bear hands. Sat. morning the fisherman lined the shore of the river. It is estimated that there was a fisherman every five feet. And everyone of them was catching and releasing ten wounded fish to one that they could take home.

Literally millions of fish are not going to make it to the spanning grounds because they were wounded and thrown back in the river.

The intelligence of our government continues to amaze my. Though it shouldn’t.

As Mark Twain once wrote, `Never underestimate the expanse of the universe, or the stupidity of mankind.

Talk about conniving two faced politicians. The people of B. C. demanded the removal of an overburdening tax called the HST. The party in power neither removed the Tax nor stepped out of office. Instead they made the leader of their party their scapegoat and asked him to resign. They bribed him to do this, and slapped the citizens of B. C. in the face, by giving him the Order of B. C. To add insult to insult the Federal government then gave Canada’s most unloved politician a post as a high commissioner to the U.K. After such insults no self respecting Canadian could possibly consider supporting; the Liberal party provincially, or the Conservative party federally.

Talk about conniving two faced politicians.

The people of B. C. demanded the removal of an overburdening tax called the HST.

The party in power neither removed the Tax nor stepped out of office.

Instead they made the leader of their party their scapegoat and asked him to resign. They bribed him to do this, and slapped the citizens of B. C. in the face, by giving him the Order of B. C.

To add insult to insult the Federal government then gave Canada’s most unloved politician a post as a high commissioner to the U.K.

After such insults no self respecting Canadian could possibly consider supporting; the Liberal party provincially, or the Conservative party federally.

SHARING - PART OF A WEEKLY COLUMN

The population of the world is continually growing. As each person reaches that magic age they all want to own a vehicle. Nowhere is this more evident than on downtown streets. Each of us can help reduce `Road Rage' by simply being courteous to our fellow users of the streets.

Cars today are partially computerized, newer cars will be even more so. Some vehicles are partially powered by electricity and a couple are completely electric. In the not too distant future; fuel burning, and atmosphere polluting vehicles, and most of the motor vehicle act, will become as obsolete as service stations.

Speed signs will be replaced by transmitters. A sensor in your car will pick up the signal and your car will not be able to move at speeds above the posted (unposted) limit.

If you are travelling too slow and impeding others a computerized voice will tell you to pick up your speed. (Sure wish we had that now.)

If you turn on your signal light the car's computer will pick up a signal from a sensor and the voice will tell you, "You may not turn left at this intersection between three and six PM. Please proceed to the next intersection and turn right."

Sensors will pick up the lines in the road and prevent you from changing lanes or passing when it is dangerous to do so.

Gone will be the fun and exhilaration of careening through traffic. Gone will be the danger and mayhem of fools behind the wheel. Gone will be the long hours the police officer has to stand in the rain while the ambulance crews remove human remains from a twisted hunk of metal.

But those cars and those days are not here yet. In the meantime we must all learn to control ourselves, and our vehicles. We must learn the rules of the road so that at the end of each hectic day we can return to our loved ones safely.

And, if it is our day off and we are just goofing about, there are still rules that we should obey to help make our leisure time more enjoyable. In this column I will give you some safety and courtesy tips, courtesy of the many years that I have spent as a driver and a pedestrian.

I hope you enjoy my comments and criticisms over the next year. As I have learned from you I hope you will learn from me. Vancouver is a beautiful city. With a little courtesy and common sense we can all enjoy and share the streets.

Next week I want to talk about backing up at intersections.

Bear has been driving professionally for over thirty years. He has driven police cars, taxis, busses, and trucks. He has driven tractor trailers from coast to coast accumulating over one million accident free miles.

Comments in this column are the opinion of the writer and not necessarily shared by this website.

Re: the HST.
Previously Christy Clark said that if the people didn’t support her on the HST she would call a provincial election after the referendum.
Well, she lost.
But is she going to keep her word?
No!
She is such a poor loser she has reneged on her promise and says she will hold the election in 2013. Not only that, but, like a spoiled child she seeks to punish us by saying it will take 19 months to remove the HST.
It didn’t take anywhere near that long to implement it.
And it doesn’t take anywhere near that long to disassemble it.
A mere 24 hours of announcements in the media is all it will take to tell; purchasers they no longer need to pay HST, and businesses they no longer need to collect it.
At the same time they tell all businesses that any HST collected, and not filed, to date, need to be submitted by Sept. 30.
Also at the same time they notify all employees of the HST that all rebates must be sent out by Oct. 31. And finally the same announcement informs the gov’t employees that they will be laid off by Nov. 30 which gives them time to; clean out their offices, wipe all their hard drives, send all their desks and office equipment to the store room, and apply for transfer to another dept.
All told, a lot less than 19 months.
Then, the people will see that Christy is an honourable person who believes in democracy and maybe, just maybe, she will win the next election, whenever it is held.
Lee A. Wood

Yeah, no HST

Well, thank the lord, that farce is over.
Of course I am talking about the HST referendum.
The wise people of B. C. saw through Christy Clark’s smokescreen and voted against HST.
But don’t relax. The big fight is still ahead of us.
Getting rid of the GST.
If you think the Liberals were scheming and prevaricating to hold on to the HST, you can believe they will fight even harder to keep the GST.
So, fellow British Columbianers, we must dig in and fight even harder to get rid of it.

HST FACTS REBUTTAL

My paycheque, (my sole source of income for the last 15 years) is directly related to the film industry. When the number of productions in this province is up, which it is from 15 years ago, and when it is down, which it is from 6 years ago, my yearly income is, in direct relationship, up or down.

When I say film industry, I speak of what we had built it up to in the early 2000s, from the early 1900s. When I say we have lost the film industry I mean it has reverted to the equivalent of the mid 1900s. as compared to the mid 2000s. Obviously it has not gone away completely. However, because it died so badly, because of the Liberal Gov’t., in the late 2000s, it will take many, many years to recuperate, if ever.

That fact that the streets of downtown were busy with film crews after the installation of HST was only because of the removal of the Olympic ban on downtown filming which happened at the same time and the Liberal Party used this as propaganda to praise the HST.

This is the axe that I have to grind, the Liberal Party, though everyone pointed their finger at Gordon Campbell, as if he was the sole decision maker, used the rebirth of all the visual film making to praise the HST.

Unfortunately many of the public believed the propaganda.

When you sight features such as MI4, you are mistaken. MI4, filmed under the name of `Tank’, never started filming until well after the HST came into effect. That is to say started filming in Vancouver. They had actually started filming in other countries and were late filming in Vancouver because the film studios that they had leased, many months before HST was ever thought of, were being used for the filming of `Little Red Riding Hood’ which ran over budget and way past the end of their shooting schedule. It actually got to the point where MI4 was building sets in the same studio in which LRRH was filming.

We have lost shows to Toronto lately, we always lose shows to Toronto, and we will always do so.

However the reverse happens more frequently, Toronto loses shows to us.

There are many reason for this, none of which have anything to do with the HST. The biggest reason, the biggest reason that any film crew goes anywhere, is location. `LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION’

Just like the Real Estate industry, `LOCATION’, is the key. The one most important key. The second is studio space, the third is trained and efficient crews, and another major attraction that Vancouver had is film editing facilities.

Vancouver still has the locations but because of Gordon Campbell, and here I say Campbell, rather than the liberal Party, because it was his personal hatred of unions, although people blame it on Vince Ready, but he was only acting on Campbell’s orders, we no longer have the; studio space, crews, or editing houses.

We still have most of the supply houses, such as yours, though I have never had the opportunity to deal with you as I have all the major suppliers, because, though most of them have had to downsize, they have managed to survive by laying off staff and sending stock back to their head offices in L.A.

And speaking of Real Estate, ask them what they think of the HST. Ask them, or any home buyer, how many sales have been lost because of the HST.

HST hurts every citizen in this country.

How many tax payers’ dollars have been wasted, and will continue to be wasted, in the Liberals fight to retain ST.

This referendum is nothing but an expensive smoke screen and is a perfect example of why the citizens of this fair province are sick and tired of the Liberals and their high handed attitude.

The citizens do not have bottomless pockets and can no longer afford the Liberals or their tax increases.

When the people ousted Gord Campbell it was to get rid of the HST. We never once mentioned reverting to GST. Nor did we want Campbell to leave by himself, We wanted the entire party gone.

With no ST Canadians will stay home to shop rather than spending their weekends shopping South of the border. No ST will attract customers from other countries.

Doing away with ST will mean lower taxes because the Gov’t. can close all the offices that are used to calculate all the STs and their rebates.

The lack of St is a win win situation for all concerned except, for some obscure reason, the liberal party. Why they are trying so hard to hang on to it, in spite of their electorates’ desire to get rid of it is beyond me.

HST FACTS

Here are the facts from the set decorators we speak to everyday:

The film industry never left BC. Even during the Olympics. We saw business all the way through the recession. It may have slowed down but it was always there. Permits were only halted but production studios were operating business as usual in Vancouver and Burnaby. We had trucks here every day during the Olympics picking up or dropping off props.

Once the HST was in place, it brought lots of new shows and movies that have yet to air. Mission impossible being one of them that saw a $7 million dollar benefit from filming in Canada, purely from the HST.

We have lost shows to Toronto in the past month because of the uncertainty of the HST here. Shows that if popular could have multiple seasons and provide years of work for dozens of productions staff and vendors alike.

To say you are mis-informed is an understatement. Vancouver no longer has a film industry? The film business is 10 times as busy in Vancouver as it has ever been. The HST , vendor infrastructure, and the US-CDN dollar exchange all play an important part in the equation.

I’m not sure why you have an axe to grind but you should get your facts straight before you start writing articles in municipal publications in municipalities that benefit from the movie business.

Kevin B. Vancouver, B. C. Canada