Editorially speaking…
There will be no great fanfare this week for the departing Phillipine Mars water bomber, as was the case for her sister Hawaii Mars back in August. Her final flight to a military museum in Arizona, after decades in the Alberni Valley, will be determined by weather conditions.
In August, the major consideration was making the Mars visible to 10s of 1000s of fans who wanted to watch her last flypast before she took up her permanent berth at the BC Aviation Museum in Sidney.
The Hawaii Mars at work; she’s now the star attraction at the BC Aviation Museum in Sidney. Sister Philippine Mars is about to head out for a military museum in the U.S. —Courtesy Andrew Waldegrave
But, as noted, this time, so much later in the year, it’s a matter of opportunity.
The Phillipine Mars has been refitted for flight—it will be her first since 2007—and all the paperwork is done. Other than a fly-by for Port Alberni residents, it will be all systems go to San Francisco, her first stop en route to Tucson, AZ and a new life as a museum attraction.
She and the Hawaii Mars are among the most remarkable aircraft ever built and it would have been nothing less than tragic to have lost them to a scrapyard.
PS: The Hawaii Mars’ colour scheme of red and white honours her Macmillan Bloedel providence, but I sure prefer the navy blue colour scheme of the Philippine Mars. That’s the way she and her sisters looked when they flew for the U.S. Navy.
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The recent provincial election has posed challenges for MLA’s seating plan in our 130-year-old Legislature Buildings. The major reshuffling necessitated by the ruling NDP government having lost numerous seats to the opposition and revised electoral districts in recent years are pushing the old girl’s infrastructure, according to news reports.
After all, she was built just as electricity was becoming the new norm, long before the requirements of our current digital world.
Can you imagine Victoria’s Inner Harbour without the Parliament Buildings? —Author’s Collection
I’m reminded that Victoria’s Parliament Buildings, probably B.C.’s most recognizable icon, date all the way back to Premier Theodore Davie. Who, today, doesn’t take pride in such a magnificent structure, the design of the famous and murdered architect, Francis Rattenbury?
The irony is, upon completion, they received mixed reviews. (I say ‘they:’ the wings were added later.) Many, it seems, considered the new Parliament Buildings to have been an unnecessary, even outrageous, expense. Can you picture the Inner Harbour without them?
And speaking of ironies, no provincial government over the past 50 or so years has dared to face up to the fact that the Parliament Buildings need—I say, need—seismic upgrading.
Needless to say, this would cost 100s of millions of dollars. As the late John Horgan, told me years ago before he became premier, no government was going to risk its popularity by earthquake-proofing the Legislative Buildings while scores of public schools throughout the province remain seismically challenged.
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First it was at Nanoose; now it’s the outskirts of Victoria.
The E&N Railway, inactive for a decade while trying to resurrect itself under the Island Corridor Foundation, is in danger of being severed again, this time beyond possible salvation.
The Songhees Nation is suing the federal government and the ICF for the return of the right-of-way through reserve lands, and for an environmental cleanup. The rail corridor was expropriated in the late 1800s from various Indigenous bands between Victoria and Courtenay for use as a railway. The fact it’s been moribund for a decade has inspired this suit for its return to one of the original owners.
Already, the section of E&N mainline at Nanoose has been torn up and the genie, in effect, is out of the bottle. How can the ICF restore the Island’s only surviving railway to service if it’s in pieces?
Almost every day, I walk the abandoned stretch of the Tidewater Line, the Canadian National Railway track from Cowichan Bay to join the mainline at Deerholme. It’s a lovely walk through trees and farmers’ fields and I wouldn’t trade my location for anything.
But it’s not even a dedicated public trail because much of it’s on Tribal lands, and some stretches have already been reclaimed for housing. What I walk is just a small segment, likely too narrow for development or housing.
So I enjoy it while I can, and I mourn the passing of our Island Tooterville Trolley (the Dayliner), probably never to be seen in these parts again.
And I count the dump trucks that operate between nearby gravel pits and Victoria, hauling mega yards of gravel that could be delivered more efficiently and environmentally friendly by train, to a loading facility at Langford, and save all the truck traffic on the Island Highway.
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