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Throwback Thursday – Some Random Thoughts on the Last Day (?) of STC #skpoli

Yesterday was the last day of the Saskatchewan Transportation Company which was shuttered as part of the Sask Party’s extreme cuts in their last budget.

Founded in 1946 by Tommy Douglas’ CCF government as a way to connect and serve a widely distributed and (at the time) mostly rural province, STC hit highs for ridership in the 1980’s before entering a slow decline.

At the time of the Sask Party budget, it was widely reported that only 2 of 27 STC routes were profitable (although there is an equally strong argument that profitability should be a secondary consideration for a valuable public service, just as we don’t expect healthcare, education, libraries, highways and other public services to generate profits.)

This quote from the Minister in charge at the launch of STC reinforces that point:

[STC] will provide employment for Saskatchewan citizens and give the province an efficient bus system operated not for financial profit, but for the good of the whole people.

The company grew and expanded over the years to over 400 stops at one point and even into vacation charters (who knew?)

In 1979, STC began offering escorted vacation tours to such places as Disneyland, Vegas, Florida, Texas and the Maritimes. Those are the glory days to which Kinzel often returns when he talks so passionately about STC.

But now, STC is gone – likely more for ideological reasons as any small financial savings to the government (the government subsidized STC at a cost of between $12-18 million per year depending on whose figure you’re using.  But the main point is that it’s around $1-$1.50 per month for every citizen of the province.)  Tellingly, STC was cut completely with no financial analysis or audit of value received being conducted.

To me, this is no different than the ideological cuts to the Film Tax Credit or the more recent cuts to public libraries.

As they did with library cuts, the government is also cherry picking and framing statistics to bolster their argument – often referring to the “per ride” subsidy (which may sound high at $94/rider) but not thinking of how low the shared cost is to provide a valuable public service that helps cancer patients, the elderly, children, students, non-drivers, business people, farmers and many others.

When I broke my leg a few years ago, I’m sure there was a subsidy greater than $94 for the doctor visit, x-rays, and cast I received.  But that’s part of the deal of why we pay taxes for the common good – so every individual will benefit overall and in many ways that they don’t realise or that will save on other higher costs down the road. (Wouldn’t most non-STC users still be happy to know that farmers can get parts in a timely and inexpensive fashion?  Or that cancer patients can easily get to the city for treatment?  Or that University students can get home to visit their parents on occasion?)

Another way the government framed this as a prudent decision was focusing on the dropping ridership and the “per rider” subsidy but often neglecting to mention the freight operations of STC which were actually profitable.

One small piece of good news (and the reason I used a question mark in the title of this post) is that Interim NDP Leader, Trent Wotherspoon, held a press conference at the STC Depot on the bus company’s last day of operations and committed that a future NDP government would restore bus service to the province.

Our family weren’t regular users of STC but we were happy to know it was there when we needed it – mostly to transport us to Weyburn to my wife’s parents when our schedules would otherwise mean taking two vehicles.  Or if I had a work meeting in Saskatoon, STC was often a good option which allowed me to work and read on the bus rather than focusing on the road.  I’ve also used their freight services in both my personal and professional lives.

Here are a few shots I found in my photos of our STC experiences…

Filling out a luggage tag…

Getting ready for a ride on mommy’s lap

STC was modernizing their fleet in many ways and I’m still confused why the government decided to shut it down completely instead of streamlining and improving service.  

(Oh wait, maybe because the Sask Party thinks that shifty party buses that let guests piss on the Legislature are a better option???)

Posted 01 June 2017 § Family § Jobs § Library § MemoryLane § News § Pace § Photo § Politics § Sad § Sasha § Saskatchewan § Travel ‡ Comments (1) ° Tagged: , , , ,

Today.

Posted 30 May 2017 § Randomness ‡ Comments (0) °

Music Monday – “He might have lots of dough but I know he ain’t right for you.” (Some Thoughts on The New Mosaic Stadium) #reginarocks #yqr

This is one of Bryan Adams’ best songs and it was only ever a “B” side (though it must’ve gotten regular rotation on the radio or video channels when it came out as I feel like I know it quite well!)

Having attended the “Regina Rocks” test event at the new Mosaic Stadium last Saturday night featuring Our Lady Peace, Johnny Reid and headlined by Bryan Adams, I thought this was an appropriate video to post today.


I did a review of the stadium after attending the first test event which was a college football game last fall.  Since I ended up buying some deeply discounted tickets for Regina Rocks which puts me in the relatively narrow Venn diagram of people who’ve attended both major test events at the new Stadium so far, I thought I’d share a few of my random thoughts on our second visit to the stadium (which I’m surprised about as anyone as I was, at best, ambivalent about the new stadium and now I’m a regular!) 😉

  • Once again, Shea and I decided to ignore the advice/suggestion/commandments of the event organizers and drove instead of taking a shuttle.  And after getting a message from a friend who’d taken the shuttle from Victoria Square Mall and ended up missing the first twenty minutes of the opening act, I was glad we did.
  • The first event had 16,500 attend but no upper deck seats were open. This one had seats in the upper deck available plus floor seating on the field (well, whatever they use to cover the field) so it was quite a bit higher – 21,000.
  • With that said, the event was supposedly not a sell-out to what organizers were hoping and there were rumours of many free tickets being given out to put butts in seats.  (Shea and I hadn’t planned to go initially but a co-worker told me about a deep discount which got us $5 tickets that, with the usual TicketBastard charges and stadium fees, ended up costing us about $17/each.  I’ve paid more than that to see a no-name band at a 100-person capacity local bar.)
  • $5/ticket sounds like an amazing deal until you realise you’ll just use it as justification for spending more on insanely overpriced concession food.  For supper, we had two $8 draft beers and two sandwiches (one chicken, one pulled pork) plus some “meat on a stick” thing for about $50.  Later, before Bryan Adams came on, we went back down to the main concourse (we had tickets way up in the nosebleeds – Section 532) and managed to be one of the last people to get Coney Island Poutine before they ran out of potatoes and that was another $40 for two $8 beers and two regular poutines for $11/each.
  • Funny “nosebleeds” story – most people probably know that this refers to seats that are supposedly up high enough to cause nosebleeds due to the thin air.  But one co-worker didn’t realise this and said “Oh, I thought that always meant that was the section where the most fights were!” 😉
  • I asked the guy beside me what he paid for his seats (“Why?  Did you get yours for free?”) and he said he paid $70.  I wasn’t sure if that was for one or two tickets though.
  • We tried walking around the entire concourse like we had for the Rams game last fall but the area behind the stage was fenced off.  I understand this was probably something to do with not wanting people to have access or even a view of the backstage area.  But I talked to more than one person who was disappointed they didn’t get a chance to experience walking around the whole concourse like we could at the Rams game.
  • We found the west side very windy and cool during the Rams game even though it was a hot, sunny day.  This time, we ended up with tickets on the west side and found it windy and warm on a hot, sunny day.  Slightly better than being cold but man, two for two on that place being really bad for wind.
  • I had noted the apparent steepness of the seats in the main bowl during the Rams game.  They felt even steeper way up in the upper decks and my advice if you have any fear of heights, you might want to avoid buying tickets in a higher level section.
  • We took both elevators and walkways to get up and down from our 500-level seats and both worked really well – we only had one overly crowded elevator the whole time (they had attendants which probably won’t be the case once the stadium is running smoothly.)  When it was full to the brim, someone asked if we should keep squeezing in and she said “These elevators are supposed to say when they’re at full capacity” and someone quipped “Well, I hope they’re not just trying to test the elevator’s safety features!”
  • The walkways seemed really long, like giant switchbacks in the mountains or something.
  • The main concourse was *extremely crowded* with long lines at food vendors, for washrooms and people struggling to walk through the crowds in both directions.  I expect this will be much better once the whole stadium is operational – for example, up in the 500’s, there was only a Western Pizza outlet open but lots of shuttered concession windows that would’ve helped to alleviate the congestion on the main concourse.  And the washrooms weren’t crowded on the higher level either.  I didn’t realise it until it was too late but even the poutine was cheaper up high! 😉
  • Kudos to stadium folks who have made sure to include unique local restaurants – Western Pizza, Beer Bros, Coney Island Poutine, etc. in the offerings. I didn’t find any local craft beers (yet) but that’s supposedly coming too.  If I’m going to pay outrageous prices for beer, I’d prefer something that tastes a bit better than Moose Piss (er, Coors Light).
  • Speaking of beer, we found the cups they used to be pretty flimsy.  One tipped over on the counter while we were grabbing our food and drinks because I expected the sides of the cups to be more like Dixie cup plastic, not “that stuff you peel off a new smartphone” plastic.  We slipped about a quarter of a beer (cash conversion – about two buck’s worth of beer!)
  • Not sure it’s resolved but local charities and non-profits used to work some concession stands to raise funds at Taylor Field and it was unclear whether this would continue at Mosaic Stadium. I didn’t get a chance to talk to him but at one concession, I saw a guy I know who has a government day job working behind the counter so I assume he was there with one of his kids’ sports teams or something.
  • It was really cool to hear Raine Maida from Our Lady Peace insert the Tragically Hip’s “Grace Too” into one of their songs and it made me sad to think about how I’d never see the Hip in this particular stadium.
  • The stage had three big screens but it’s too bad they didn’t turn on the SaskTel Max jumbotron as well.
  • I thought the sound was pretty good for both OLP and Johnny Reid but it felt really inconsistent for Bryan Adams for some reason – very bass heavy and then coming in and out of focus (er, that’s not really a musical term.)
  • I admit that I was in the camp that thought Bryan Adams was the wrong choice for this concert (and the lack of ticket sales may back that up.) But that’s no slight on Mr. Adams who was one of the first singers I ever got seriously into. “Reckless” is still a monumental album for me and when I was looking through my CD collection before the show to reacquaint myself with him, I realised I have four of his albums.
  • Speaking of, I remember listening to “Heaven” as a youngster in around grade six or seven and thinking how amazing it would be to actually have a girlfriend to share that song with.  Then, on Saturday night, I was sitting beside my wife of 14 years and partner of 20 years and realised that moment had come true.  Except when I looked over to see if the moment meant as much to her, she was scrolling through Facebook on her phone! Oh well… 😉
  • My wife and I did have a very involved conversation about the switch from lighters to smartphones at concerts, when it happened, how it happened and some of the deeper meanings of this change which is why I love her! 🙂

Overall, it felt like there were a lot glitches but it’s hard to tell how many are things that are a result of it only being the second event without the stadium in full operation (crowded main concourse, running out of food) and how many are things that might not be resolvable (noticeable wind tunnel effect both times I attended, insistence on people taking transit that makes them late for the event instead of having adequate parking options available on-site or nearby.)

Anyhow, when’s the next big event? I’ll be there! 😉

Posted 29 May 2017 § List § MemoryLane § MusicMonday § News § Photo § PopCulture § Saskatchewan § Sports ‡ Comments (0) °

Andrew Scheer Wins Federal Conservative Leadership? #CalledIt #cpcldr

My MP, Andrew Scheer,. surprised quite a few people by winning the leadership of the Conservative Party yesterday.

Not me though.

Way back in October 2015 on the night of the last federal election during the Liberal landslide, I called it:

I doubled down in January 2017 when I reiterated that I thought Scheer would be the winner.

Since I’m obviously a genius political prognosticator, I’ll make another bold prediction – not only will Ryan Meili win the leadership of the Sask NDP, he will lead the party to an upset victory in 2020 (er, or is that 2021?  I can’t find it now but I saw speculation that the Sask Party might override their own fixed election date legislation to postpone the next election by a year so they have more time to “fix” the economy.  Given how successful they’ve been so far, I doubt an extra year will help!)

Posted 28 May 2017 § Canada § MemoryLane § News § Politics § Saskatchewan § Wisdom ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

Saturday Snap – Sasha in the Valley

Posted 27 May 2017 § Photo § Sasha § Saskatchewan § SaturdaySnap ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

Friday Fun Link – What Word Do You Always Mispell?

Reddit’s AskReddit community has lots of good, if repetitive, questions including people regularly asking what words other people regularly misspell.

Posted 26 May 2017 § FridayFunLink § Wisdom ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

Throwback Thursday – #tbt – Las Vegas County Jail

After spending a lot of time this week with Shea’s cousin’s husband who’s an RCMP officer and a member of the Musical Ride, I thought it was important to note what this side of the family gets up to! 😉

Posted 25 May 2017 § Humour § MemoryLane § Pace § Photo § ThrowbackThursday § Travel ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

Some Random Thoughts From #rcmpmusicalride in #yqr

A group of eight of us were very excited to take in the “Canada 150” Edition of the RCMP Musical Ride last night, not least of which because Shea’s cousin’s husband is an RCMP member who has been training for the last couple years so that he could be riding in the Tattoo for this anniversary tour.

Here are a few random thoughts from the event…

  • I was very surprised to see the arena was maybe half full?  Not sure if it was poorly advertised or because it was a weeknight or if people just weren’t interested or if there is lingering backlash from an animal abuse scandal around the Musical Ride earlier this year or just why attendance was so low.  At the same time, I’m not sure we’d have taken our family if we didn’t have that personal connection either.
  • The Musical Ride is one of those things that’s so ubiquitous in Canadian culture that I literally don’t know if I’d seen it before live or only on TV but I feel like I *must have* seen it live at some point.  (I talked to a few people who felt exactly the same way.)
  • We weren’t sure exactly what the program would contain (beyond the actual Musical Ride of course) but, counting the intermission, it turned out to be a nearly three hour program with all sorts of elements – recent RCMP cadets marching in formation, a Metis fiddler, a woman singing a song about a soldier returning home from the war, a barbershop-style singing group, a well-known First Nations hoop dancer, cowboy poetry, trick riders, and more.
  • Speaking of cadets, it was interesting to see one cadet in a turban after all the controversy that surrounded this when it was an issue in the 1990’s.  An an atheist, my own view is that I wish that people wouldn’t wear religious symbols either.  But while some see this as breaking tradition or religion overriding things that it shouldn’t,  for me, it’s because I see religious symbols as fairly arbitrary and ultimately, if you don’t believe in a particular god (or goddess) about as meaningful as wearing the ball cap of your favourite sports team.  But on the flip side, I appreciate the gesture as a way to show openness and inclusiveness of diversity, something the RCMP hasn’t always been known for.  (Do those two sentences make me some sort of a hypocrite?  I guess my point is I don’t really care if people wear/believe in religious symbols as long as they’re not forcing them on other people and it works for them.  I’ve got mixed feelings about the ruling that allowed RCMP members to wear turbans and can see reasons it should be allowed and reasons it shouldn’t.  But ultimately, I wish we’d all get past the superstitions of nomadic desert tribes from two thousand years ago so that these types of things weren’t issues at all.)
  • If you pay attention to history at all, you’re probably going to also have some mixed feelings about what was a fairly “Hooray for Canada!” spectacle.  What does Gord Downie say?  “It’s not about our first 150 years.  It’s about fixing everything we did wrong during that time in the next 150 years.”  
  • It’s cool that the kick-off show was in Regina which is the original home of the musical ride and still home to the RCMP Training Depot (in fact, another cool experience was attending the wedding of Shea’s cousin and the person who is now riding in the Musical Ride at the Depot Chapel about eight years ago.  The chapel is either the oldest building in Regina or the oldest church – can’t remember which. And, even though I’m an atheist, I can still appreciate the history and beauty of religious things including Depot Chapel.)
  • $50 for five small popcorns and five drinks.  Ouch!Not that there has to be an obvious and direct connection but was I the only one who found it weird that the segment of the show about Indigenous people was sponsored by Maaco, the Autobody People?  Sometimes corporate sponsorships are…jarring.
  • At the same time, it was cool to hear that Maaco had sponsored tickets for 300 new Canadians.
  • On the other hand, I couldn’t help wonder if it was disturbing for any of those new Canadians to have guns (firing blanks) pointed at the section where they happened to be sitting during one point of the show, especially if they came from a war-torn country?
  • On that note, the guns were also pointed in the direction of the the nearby dignitary box too which I’m sure was unintentional but was also a bit unfortunate. 🙁
  • Speaking of (real) danger, there was one segment near the end where a pipe band walked out while the thirty or so mounted riders were in the arena and the bagpipes appeared to spook some of the horses who got a bit agitated and unruly. Luckily, the riders managed to keep them under control and, not sure if it ended abruptly or not but the bagpipes seemed to stop playing while the drummers continued.  Planned or not, that was very fortunate.   
  • Because we knew Shea’s relative, it was cool that we got to go to the barns on Monday night for a tour and a visit.  Then right before the show on Tuesday when the barns were officially open to the public, we got another visit (and the kids even got to feed apples to one of the horses!)

So, that’s some of my random thoughts – good and less good – about the show.  Overall, the show was a bit of a mixed bag with some really entertaining parts and some that were less engaging (possibly due to it being opening night?)

But overall, it was an entertaining, educational and fun night and I’m glad we went. And the musical ride was definitely the highlight – not just because we knew one of the riders but for the pageantry and history that it represents – right up there with hockey and Tim Horton’s as a piece of Canadiana!

Posted 24 May 2017 § Canada § Family § MemoryLane § Pace § Photo § Politics § PopCulture § Randomness § Sasha § Saskatchewan § SecularSunday § Shea § Wisdom ‡ Comments (1) ° Tagged: , , , , ,

10 Advantages of a Seasonal Camping Site

I didn’t post over the weekend as we were camping at our seasonal site at Echo Valley Provincial Park.

We’ve had our camper for three years (two full summers since we bought it in August of our first year) but so far, we’ve only done quick hit trips – a week here, a weekend there. Shea’s folks have had a seasonal site at a regional park outside of Weyburn for a decade and having seen some of the advantages of a seasonal site firsthand, we decided to try our hand at a seasonal site as well.  We were fortunate to get drawn for one of our top picks at the provincial park nearest Regina.

(When entering the draw way back in January, we had to put our top 40 picks of the 100 or so sites the park has available in ranked order.  There were somewhere around 500 entries but we ended up getting picked for a site that I’m pretty sure was in our top three – close to the playground, on a corner spot so only has neighbours on one side, close to washrooms.)

After spending our first long weekend at the park, here are some of the advantages over nightly camping (some I knew before, some I realised this weekend while talking to other seasonal campers or that I figured out on my own.)

  1. The best part of camping is…camping.  If you have a seasonal site, you’re not spending a lot of time loading your camper, hooking up, hauling it out to a campground that could be anywhere from one to three hours away, getting it positioned/leveled/set-up and setting up camp, all of which are things that cut into the already limited amount of time you have when camping on a night-by-night basis.
  2. A related point is that we pull our rPod with a minivan.  All the numbers check-out in terms of tow capacity, tongue weight, etc. but it always feels like our tow vehicle should be just a bit bigger to be completely comfortable (ironically, the only true “white knuckle” drive I’ve had with the rPod was coming back from Echo with a serious crosswind!)
  3. This could go either way but you get to camp near the same people for the whole summer.  Luckily, our neighbours are a young couple who live in the same area of Regina as us, the wife runs a daycare centre that’s served by my library, and they have two daughters, one of whom is Sasha’s age.
  4. When the site is yours for the summer, you can make it a bit more of a “home away from home”. So far, we’ve put up a flag, a lean-to to keep our wood dry, some lights.  Shea’s dad is building us a platform to help her reach our back kitchen which is fairly high in our site and we’ve got a few other ideas for things we might add to our site that we likely wouldn’t do if we were only camping in it for a short time.
  5. On a similar note, you can leave stuff from week to week.  Normally, when you’re finished with a site after a few nights, you have to pack up everything and go.  We’re able to leave some clothes, some food, some drinks and other necessities at the site so we don’t have to haul as much once we took our first big load of supplies.
  6. You don’t have to check-out early.  One of the things I hadn’t thought about but that another experienced seasonal camper pointed out – nightly campers have to check out by noon so, for example on the Monday of a long weekend, they have to be packed and ready by midday at the latest (and earlier if they want to beat the rush.)  But if you’re in a seasonal site, you can linger through the afternoon (which is often the nicest part of the day), often with much of the park to yourself.
  7. You also don’t have to participate in the “potty parade” which is when all the nightly campers start lining up around 9am and then there’s a constant line of campers waiting to get to the sewer dump station that can back up for quite a distance and is also a big waste of your limited holiday time.
  8. Free wood!  After the campground clears out a bit, you can check some of the nearby vacated sites and “liberate” any wood that is left behind. 😉   (Er, the etiquette of this is a bit unclear – if the site is vacant but there is wood left behind, is it free game or is it meant to be left for the next person to come to the site?  My take is no one expects wood in their site when they check-in so it’s fair game to take it but that’s just me. I know many nightly campers do this too – grabbing wood left in nearby sites as long as they are empty.)
  9. When you’re in a nightly site, you might be reluctant to “waste” your holiday time by exploring nearby towns or attractions but knowing we’ll be in our site for the whole summer makes it more likely that we’ll visit nearby communities and attractions.
  10. I mentioned that you get to know your neighbours but I suspect we’ll also get to know some of the other seasonal campers as the summer goes on – Shea has a co-worker in a seasonal site in a nearby campground who we already visited with a couple times over the weekend, I introduced myself to some of the other seasonal campers near us and even the kids were already starting to get to know some of the other kids who were in seasonal sites.Bonus point: Since the campground we’re at is only 45 minutes from Regina, it’s close enough that we don’t have to make big plans to go.  And since everything is there and basically ready to go, we can decide to run out on a Tuesday night, have a hot dog and a walk in the fresh air and still be back for the kids’ bedtime if we want.

We’re likely paying a premium to have a seasonal site versus what we’d pay if we only paid the nightly rate every time we plan to go out over the summer.  But once you add up all the advantages that a seasonal site gives you, I think it’ll end up being worth it!

Posted 23 May 2017 § Family § List § MemoryLane § Pace § Photo § Sasha § Saskatchewan § Shea § Travel § Wisdom ‡ Comments (4) ° Tagged: , , , ,

Happy 10th Birthday Pace!

Hard to believe this guy is in double digits!

Posted 19 May 2017 § MemoryLane § Pace § Photo ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: