REVY'S WILDEST ANIMALS

HUNGRY? SLEEPY? YOUR SUMMER GUIDE TO...

... REV-VVVVVVVVVVVVERYTHING! PAGE 24

INSIDE • PIGS ON THE LAM • HELEN’S HORSES

• ‘RAT’STOKE • CWAZY DOGGIES • CATSIFIEDS • • BEAR TALES • THE BIRD MAN • STINKIN’ STINKBUGS PLUS! ANSWERS TO ALL YOUR DAM QUESTIONS

HEY, CRAZY ANIMALS! LOCALS APPRECIATION

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Reved Quarterly SUMMER 2017 3

‘Ratstoke’ ...is what some media are calling it A spike in rat trap sales is a sure sign you have a rat near you right now. >> BY PETER WORDEN

S

o, I was out buying mousetraps at Home Hardware, and standing next to me was a woman at the glass cabinet of traps and poison. She said she had a rat ... in her fridge.

“You caught it in your fridge?

Like, alive?” I asked, amazed.

“No, it chewed a hole and is going in and out,” she said.

After a few seconds staring blankly at the selection in front of her, she sighed. “This never used to be my problem.”

It’s not just her problem—it is many peoples’ problem. Home Hardware has sold hundreds of traps recently, many more this year than last. What’s worse, the issue of vermin isn’t going away soon. Rats have been

known to become resistant to the harshest poison currently on the market, warfarin.

In the end, she went with a giant neck-breaker rat trap. I suggested baiting it with peanut butter.

“It likes apples. I know that,” she told me. Then someone else stopped to also buy some rat traps and commented: “It looks like a big rat from the traps you’re getting.”

It was. 

PRO TIP: Manager Sheryl Hermansen at Home Hardware, bless her soul, has a full list of tips and supplies to get rat-ready, or if it’s too late, a full eratication.

Did’ya Know ... ?

Earlier residents of Revelstoke were a different type of ‘bear aware.’

“The ethos used to be: ‘see a bear, shoot a bear,’”explains Revelstoke Museum & Archives curator Cathy English. “It was meat and fur.” Run-ins with bears were common, often deadly for the bears and, occasionally, humans.

Clarence Viers, for which Viers Crescent is named, had a trapline in the Big Bend area. In November 1946 he went to check it. When he didn’t return home, a search party left in June 1947 and soon discovered his mangled remains. It’s believed a grizzly attacked him at his cabin, where he is now buried.

One of Cathy’s favourite historic characters is Hart Munro, a larger than life character who she describes as Edward Bloom in the movie Big Fish. “His autobiography is almost unbelievable,” she says. “He was born a 12-pound baby.” In addition to being a customs agent, he also had a fur-buying business. He was up in the Jordan area checking his trap line when he came across a live bear in his trap. He suggested killing it with his hunting knife but opted instead for his rifle. “A small hole appeared just between the bear’s ears and Bruin passed to the land of perpetual honey,” writes Frank Tillman, who was along for the adventure. The two tried awkwardly carrying the bear before Hart finally said to put the bear on his back, reasoning “I believe he carries easier this way.” They walked the 10 miles or so back into town, but not before stopping for a photo, which quickly made its way into the Canadian Rod and Gun magazine, which published the photo on its front cover in November 1914.

— Photo and crazy stories courtesy of Revelstoke Museum & Archives.

‘They’re freaking everywhere,’ says everyone

T

is expensive to produce. Seed bugs are unlikely to use their chemical arsenal unless they feel threatened. Picking them up gently by the antennae is a good way to throw them out a window. This doesn’t seem to upset them too much. Squashing a western conifer seed bug will assuredly release the odour you are trying to avoid.

NOT-SO STINKYBUGS

Attracted by their own smell, seed bugs congregate in large numbers as a defensive strategy to intensify the effect of their odor. But, our local stinkbugs are by no means the stinkiest, so ... small miracles? 

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Is a seasonal scourge of stinkbugs the price we pay for living here? Yes. Yes it is.

hey are ugly, prehis- seen it. We still had them well toric-looking mon- into the spring crawling out of strosities, and every every nook and cranny.” fall they flutter with absolutely zero sense of direction into our CALLING: EXPERTS cars, beds, clothes, hair, hotels IN STINKBUGOLOGY and cafés.

Humphreys supposes we haNOT JUST IN/ON YOUR HEAD. ven’t figured out their value.

Perhaps in Revelstoke’s According to recent studies, near future people will the annual influx has seen flock here to pick stink greater numbers than most bugs to use for some unyears. Western conifer seed known future medicine and bugs—more often referred to then honour them with Revsimply as stink bugs—sense elstoke Stinkbug Days. “We’re cool weather approaching and going to have a stinkbug fesare attracted to warm places to tival,” he says. “You call them spend winter. Like your hair. a scourge, I think they’re our “They’re everywhere,” says res- salvation, our future.” ident Peter Humphreys. “Last DIFFUSING A STINKBUG year was the worst I have ever Like any weapon, ammunition

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Owner of Big Eddy Fuel Services and one-time funny road sign-putter-upper, Peter Humphreys said it all with his road sign that was always a welcome sight in Revy, even if stink bugs aren’t. (PHOTO FROM TWITTER.) Many thanks to the Columbia Mountains Institute of Applied Ecology and to Michael Morris (ret.) of Parks Canada for their expertise in stinkbugology.

4 Reved Quarterly SUMMER 2017

Inside-the-Mill Mini-Series

Find Reved Twitterin’/ Insta’ing @RevedQ Facebookin’ /RevedQuarterly

Have a story?—Write me please I get so lonely online reved.net email editor@reved.net

Part Two: Wood Residuals (... anything that’s not lumber)

What is hog? And more importantly, what can be done with it? >> BY PETER WORDEN

Y

ou know Mount Mackenzie, Macpherson, Begbie, Revelstoke and so on. But there is another local hill you may not be aware of in Revelstoke.

MOUNT HOG “This is Mount Hog,” says Angus Woodman, Downie sawmill co-manager and guy with a very appropriate last name, as we scale a bulldozed path to the summit of the mill’s bark pile. The massive, ever-growing pile of byproduct bark or ‘hog’—cedar, mostly—smack in the middle of the yard is so big it can be seen from space. Well maybe not. I don’t know. Far, anyway. And all day and all night, the mill spits out tonnes more into its already 50,000 metric tonne heap.

At the top is one of the best lookouts in town. You get a 360-degree view of the mill and log yard and I can see my house.

“You ever come here to think?” I ask Angus. “Yup,” he says wistfully with a chuckle, “to just get away from it all.” What Angus

would probably really like to get away from is this gunky, gross growing pile of rotting bark. He, like many sawmill managers, have little use for it. “You can see why anything you try to do with it is fraught with problems—it’s so damn stringy.”

SUPER CEDAR Cedar is valuable. This no-brainer hit me last summer working with a crew tree-banding. Basically, to prevent cedars from splitting into a bunch of pieces as they’re felled, crews sometimes ratchet heavy nylon straps around the base of the trunk, presumably saving logging companies thousands of dollars.

It’s the same mentality at the mill. If you’re a regular reader of Reved, our last visit showed very, very expensive laser-guided machinery optimizing each cut at the sawmill in-feed and in the planer mill. Downie—and it’s safe to say mills in general—is efficiency obsessed. Managers are constantly working to perfect and optimize cuts and procedures. Most of the mill’s product is western red cedar and as cedar bark grows it picks up dirt and silica, so as it burns it clinkers into chunky, caked on lava.

It’s a mess. The bark is also too stringy. It doesn’t compress, it’s like a sponge. Mount Hog is a byproduct that currently serves no purpose, has no value, takes up valuable real estate and is therefore a glaring inefficiency staring workers dead in the face.

“It’s also a major fire hazard next to our mill,” adds Angus, “It’s front and centre to us.”

WHAT’S A TRUCK-LOAD OF HOG GO FOR THESE DAYS? ANSWER: JUST COME GET IT.

ABOVE Angus Woodman hikes up Mount Hog. BELOW (L-R) Comparing stringy, gummy hog with clumpy sawdust and light, fluffy shavings. RCEC can burn shavings and sawdust, but not hog.

LEFT The hog pile can be seen from space, or at least pretty far away. ABOVE Hog piles are notoriously risky because they can catch fire, so it is aired out and pushed around the yard as compost.

The mill used to burn its hog in a beehive burner. But that was dangerous and made problems of its own. So, about 10 years ago, the fast-acting, forward-thinking City Council, namely Mayor Geoff Battersby, sparked the way-ahead-of-its-time Revelstoke Community Energy Corporation—the first biomass district heating system in all of western Canada. It installed a system to make steam for the mill’s kilns to dry lumber. The excess heat is then piped through a labyrinthine district heating system underneath Revelstoke. It was designed to burn hog but hog didn’t burn that well, so now the giant cinderblocked backend port is fed a mix of other wood residuals—sawdust, shavings and chips.

THE BAJILLION-DOLLAR QUESTION

My recent obsession with hog—mainly, what to do with it— began at the 2017 BC Tech Conference in Vancouver, where one chemical engineer I asked about hog described it as a Chips, sawdust and shavings, the mill sells. Chips have the rabbit hole and said something to the effect of how I could be highest value. Sawdust and shavings have some value. Hog or a bajillionaire if I invented a solution. hogfuel has essentially no value. Pull a super-B tractor-trailer As I discovered, it’s many peoples’ obsession. Turning wood waste into biofuel, biocoal and biogas is a global race. Some up to Mt. Hog right now and fill it for free.

All hog presently does at the mill is sit there anaerobically of the best work is being done in Germany, Holland and breaking down and threatening to catch fire. It is wood Sweden where energy costs are high. In Canada, a lot of talk residuals manager, the unfortunately nicknamed “Dirty” Doug with the big players such as Canfor, Tolko, and West Fraser Hill’s job to ensure it doesn’t. He has also moved some of it is where gains are to be made; it isn’t in producing more beside the highway in Malakwa, where it is hoped it will be lumber. It’s how to get more value from residuals. shipped to cogeneration or ‘co-gen’ plant. Some day. “We’re not Cornelius Suchy is one such hog-obsessed Revelstokian. making any money off of hog but we’re getting rid of it, which “The idea that you’re going to make oodles of money with it, I’m not convinced,” he begins by telling me. He has worked is key,” says Angus. in renewable energy and biomass energy for the past 14 years, beginning with an interest in solar energy.

Solar, of course, isn’t a great option in Revelstoke.

“But wood is in a sense stored solar energy,” he said, explaining how when All the mill’s wood residuals— he came to Canada he saw sawdust, shavings, chips and beehive burners and mills bark—are sorted and sent to re- everywhere using propane spective piles through a cool sys- to heat their kilns to dry tem of vacuums, conveyor belts, wood, while at the same sifters and tubes in the ceiling. time burning their own wood waste. It was crazy to him. Sometimes British Columbia can’t see the forest for the trees it cuts down. “There’s no waste in nature, only under utilized resources,” Suchy affirms.

Reved Quarterly SUMMER 2017 5

The Whole Hog 100-MILE FUEL DIET Revelstoke on the whole spends about $25 million dollars a year in energy, a number Suchy calculates from a recent community emission inventory. About half of that is in electricity and heating fuel. “We have hydro, of course, but we also have a lot of wood. We talk about the 100-mile diet … why don’t we extend it to energy? Why not try to get all our energy requirements within 100 miles?” he asks, but then answers his own question: “Here [in Canada] we have oil and gas coming out our ying-yang.”

One of the possible ideas for utilizing hog and mill residuals is not exactly burning it but gasifying it, explains Cornelius. It involves first drying and chipping the hog, then heating it to between 300 and 500 degrees centigrade, then sucking all the oxygen out so the bark smolders. Then it can be turned into long-chain hydrocarbons.

That gas, something called DME—dimethyl ether—could theoretically be fed straight into propane pipes as a drop-in fuel. It can be blended up to 20 per cent with ordinary propane without changing nozzles or furnaces or anything, the way ethanol is commonly blended into fuels. “These days need to come to an end. We can no longer subsidize pollution,” he says.

ENTER: THE CHOPSTICK GUY At a recent industry event, Angus accidentally met “the chopstick guy” named Felix Böck. Böck is a doctoral student at UBC’s Faculty of Forestry. His brainchild, ChopValue, is a Vancouver startup that upcycles hundreds of thousands of throwaway chopsticks and turns them into beautiful and practical home décor. It is an elegant solution to an inelegant

reality of wood waste. Böck was never looking at cedar bark in particular, but as he learned more about wood resources in the urban environment, it brought him to the much broader problem of mill residuals.

“On the West Coast we’re in a very unique position. I used to call it a problem. No one anywhere in the world really understands it. We have too much of one resource to worry about waste wood.”

In other words, mills can access wood fiber in the forest easier, and North Americans have enough cheap energy, for either to have to worry about getting creative with wood waste.

“The truth is many companies pay up to $1,000 per month just to get rid of their woodchips. That’s an unbelievable problem to get rid of a resource because you can’t handle it now.”

Felix explained in a nutshell how the moisture content of cedar bark allows it to be pressed “under very, very high pressure” into high-density fiber boards without the need for a binding resin like other woods.

by train, which is apparently the hog hub in the U.S. If Mt. Hog simply appeared tomorrow in sub-Saharan Africa, people there would surely find some use for it. They’d cook with it or build roads or make homes. In Ontario they’d probably call it a ski hill. But necessity being the mother of invention, there’s no need here for it. Right now just getting rid of hog is the solution.

BUILD VS. BURN The Natives who first harvested cedar used every part of the tree. They built canoes and homes with the wood, and the bark was used to make hats and clothing. Cornelius floats the idea of wood-wool cement board, a spaghetti-type of inlay in cement siding used for sound absorption. Such products are

“...anything you try to do with it is fraught with problems.”

“At the end of the day, I don’t think technology is the issue,” he said. For Felix, there aren’t enough hours in the day to devote to all the wood waste problems of the world. His modest beginning of collecting old chopsticks is now a thriving business of eight people and cash flow.” “It’s kind of sad at the same time. The problem of wood residuals and cedar bark is much bigger.”

WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW IS HOG, SWEET HOG. Back at the mill, I throw a few crazy what-ifs Angus’ way. What if we made a hog-themed amusement park? He goes along with the idea for a second, suggesting we put caves atop Mount Hog. We could open a Downie sawmill daycare. It would be warm enough, he says. What if I could live up here? My hydro bill was the highest it has ever been—why not burn hog for free? Angus says he heard about a local guy who has his own boiler and was taking limited amounts of hog fuel from Kovaks and burning it at his house. Someone else in town dyes and bags it for landscaping cedar mulch. But those aren’t big markets. One idea, says Angus, is sending the hog to Minneapolis

BOTTOM (CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT) Cedar is valuable. Logging crews sometimes band the trees so they don’t split when they’re felled. At sawmill in-feed, a sawyer uses a special laser-guided optimizer to make the best cut and optimize the wood into lumber. The mill always tries to make the best cuts to minimize waste, but sawdust (from the saws), shavings (from the planer mill) and hog (from the debarker) are an inevitable by-product of the Downie mill and mills everywhere. ABOVE Felix Böck, who founded Chop Value, makes home décor out of used chopsticks.

already in use on the highway from Vancouver into Surrey.

Cement is reinforced with the stringy bark, provided that the mill’s debarker doesn’t mangle it. “You would need to change that system,” says Cornelius. “You have to basically mimic what the Natives did.”

NOWHERE FAST The mill, of course, is in the lumber business, not the energy or construction or agriculture or textile or humanitarian industries.

But it does produce residuals, and as Angus knows: “It’s coming to a head here where sites are going to have to deal with their residuals because they can’t rely on others.” Mount Hog can only go so high and it could result some day in the mill temporarily shutting down. “At some point government is going to have to show some leadership or give us some ideas where to go. It’s a real challenge.” It’s likely there isn’t going to be one big silver-bullet solution to the hog problem but perhaps several smaller ones.

“We’re not discouraged by it,” he says. “It does have a use. It’s just figuring out what it is.” 

Ancient HeAling WAters AWAit r e f r e s h yo u r b o dy a n d s o u l ❖

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6 Reved Quarterly SUMMER 2017

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The Bird Man

Q & A: Michael Morris

Explaining local birds’ fascinating—but not crazy—behaviour.

ABOVE: Cinclus mexicanus, American dipper with a delicious bug on on Mt. Macpherson nordic loop.

MEAT HISTORY 101: SAUSAGE PARTIES Did you know that sausage was actually a banned food for centuries? According to one of Ray’s old textbooks from university, the origin of the term “sausage party” dates back even before Ski Season in Revelstoke.

Basically, sausage was such a popular food item and an affordable way people could put some protein in their diets. Eventually, parties started around the food that would get really hedonistic. “The Establishment needed to pin it on something, so they demonized what they called Sausage Parties,” says Ray. “It took 300 years for people to convince Church and State that the sausages weren’t to blame.”

And thank God for that.

Hey, who’s wants to go to Ray’s?

THIS IS RAY.

RIGHT: Perisoreus canadensis, grey jay, Canada’s new national bird —where else—at the Mackenzie Outpost on top of the Mt. Mackenzie gondola.

M

ichael Morris is a local birdwatcher, bird listener and all-round bird admirer. The original theme of the issue was ‘crazy animals’ but Michael correctly pointed out that animals by nature are not crazy. “The word crazy doesn’t work with birds. They may do unexpected or impressive things but animals aren’t crazy because they cant be. An animal not functioning would end.” And that’s sort of how our conversation began.

Why do birds sing?

For two reasons, one, to attract a mate—males do most of the singing—and two, they want to defend territory from other males. Territories are important because within a territory is a lot of bugs. That’s why many birds migrate north this time of year, because we have a burst in insect activity.”

AND HE'S TIRED OF ALL OUR SAUSAGE JOKES.

They’re like Nature’s rappers. (I think ravens also ‘rap’ to eulogize and mock, too.) You said in Reved Quar-

LEFT: Avianis Clickapictus, Canadian birdwatcher Michael Morris. terly a couple years back that your favourite bird was the raven because it plays. Are they still your favourite or has some new bird topped that perch?

Last night we had a storm and all the sensible birds hunkered down and waited it out. Ravens are the only ones that take to the air. You’ll see them playing in the wind. You don’t see a lot of playing in wildlife populations. There’s nothing to eat up there. It’s not a courtship ritual. It’s just soaring in the wind.

I read that birds can’t be astronauts because they have no esophagus and need gravity to swallow.

Birds don’t have teeth but they have a gizzard that’s partway down their throat, which works as a grinder. We get many pine siskins around Revelstoke. They’ll go after a coniferous tree and pull the seeds out of the cones. You’ll see them in the winter going down to the road and then they peck at the grit that’s on the road. You need pieces of grit just the right size and this will accumulate in their gizzard, that will mush it up into something digestible that goes into its stomach. That’s what’s happening. Whether or not they can do it in space is not really important to them.

Siskins I call suicide birds. Why don’t they move off the road? Are they so laden with rocks? Or salt-drunk?

Most of them do. Unfortunately not all get off the road fast enough. Most of the time. Yes, they are ingesting salt, and relative to their body size, that could be impairing their judgement. But not to worry, we have lots of pine siskins. We call them ‘grill birds.’

You can honk them off the road. Use your horn.

What do you make of Canada’s new 150-birthday bird the grey jay?

For reasons I don’t know the Royal Canadian Geographical Society thought that Canada needed a national bird ... The most reliable place to see a grey jay is at the Mackenzie Outpost at the top of Mount Mackenzie gondola. There are four grey jays who make a living off of croissant bits.

They’re living large.

They have no end of handouts.

What they do with all this stuff they get given is they mouth it, cover it with saliva that has a preservative effect and they stash it underneath a bit of bark in the crotch of a tree. They have stashed thousands of bits of food for retrieval when they nest and have young to feed. I imagine we’re seeing croissant-fed grey jay chicks.

The opposite of a bird-lover is someone with ornithophobia. I think it’s a fair phobia. Sharp talons and beak and godless eyes, and what have you. I’m ornithophobic a bit after being attacked by an owl. What advice would you give someone currently freaked out by birds?

That’s and extraordinary story, I’ve never heard anything like it.

I have heard of another owl, an elderly man with a head of white hair and an owl whapped him from behind. Most likely, that white hair triggered a response, maybe he thought it was a rabbit.

I had hair at one point.

Another possibility could be that this was a juvenile bird. A bird that has just fledged on its own and doesn’t know what it’s doing. Sometimes a teenage bird in a search for food will try targets that are inappropriate. They just don’t know what they’re doing. Or it was a parent. As for fearing birds, I think it’s the opposite. We’re a lot harder on birds than they are on us. Like, how often do you eat chicken?

What day is it, Wednesday? Wings?

There you go. So who should be afraid of who?

10 Reved Quarterly SUMMER 2017

From the Archives

THESE STORIES ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN A PREVIOUS ISSUE OF REVED. GET THE BEST OF REVED BOOK.

Feeding Caribou

Dedicated conservationists are bringing caribou back from the brink one handful of lichen at a time. caribou rely on snowpack, using it as a ladder to reach food dangling from upper tree hat do you feed a pen branches. They follow the snow-line with the of hungry caribou? Li- seasons. “It’s March right now so the caribou chen. Lots of lichen. It’s all they are living fairly high in the tree-line,” says lich to eat.

Fla. “Fall gets grim for them.”

They’re picky eaters and gobble it like spa- “If you have a weird snow year where you ghetti. So when it comes to gathering it hand- don’t have a lot of snow up high, that can be ful by handful like Kelsey Furk is doing right problematic for the caribou here,” adds Furk, now, you can appreciate why she’s weaning who prefers to use the term “global weirding.” them off the stuff.

“What we try to do is switch from a 100 per Pregnancy rates for mountain caribou are cent lichen diet when we catch them to a pellet consistently high, however calf survival rates feed,” says Furk, the executive director of the are low; only 20 to 25 per cent of calves born Revelstoke Caribou Rearing in the Wild. She in the wild are expected to live to 10 months explains how the team feeds them less and less of age. Last spring, a team of vets and of wildlife experts inlichen so they The Columbia North caribou cluding Furk safely have time to caught and penned adjust to the herd used to cross the in 12 female adult new feed. But Trans-Canada in droves. caribou. Their obfor now she Now there are about 100. jective: to double will have a calf survival to 10 pen of hungry, months of age to 50 per cent. hungry caribou, so we best get picking.

Luckily RMR is kind enough to let us pick In April 2017, the 12 pregnant female carlichen on the hill. There are four of us this af- ibou settled into their new digs and the ternoon and we’re combing sections of RMR’s RCRW successfully increased the herd size glades for a few garbage bags full of lichen; yel- by approximately eight animals—doubling lowish-green genus alectoria and brown bryo- pen-born calf survival over wild-born calves. rias lichens to be exact.

The adults and young will be released back into the wild, monitored with satellite-linked

SOMETHING TO CARIBOUT collars to track their survival until next March, when we get to start picking lichen Caribou used to cross the Trans Canada for them all over again. ❄ Highway in droves. Between roads and railroads over the last century many were hit and the number dwindled. A million tiny logging cuts and transmission lines later and by the early 2000s the population declined dramatically across the province. They are still hit occasionally crossing Highway 23. Now there are approximately 125 (at last count) that live north of Revelstoke, near Mica. They are listed as ‘threatened’ under the Species at Risk Act and the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) concludes they have become more imperilled since then and should be downgraded to ‘endangered.’ “They’re not in very good shape, let’s put it that way.

Toads on the Road

At the intersection of conservation and logging are thousands of toads crossing a highway.

>> BY PETER WORDEN

W

WHAT CARIBOU EAT & WHAT EATS CARIBOU In a clear-cut the shrubs grow fast. Moose and deer eat shrubs, so deer and moose populations around heavily logged areas spike, and so too with wolf, cougar and bear. But— as I now know—caribou prefer lichen and don’t eat woody vegetation. They have tiny incisors so they don’t eat the wood of shrubs like moose and deer.

John Fla is also with RCRW and explains the distinction between caribou in the Arctic that paw on the ground for reindeer lichen and their counterparts in the Columbia Mountains that rely on low-hanging alectoria and bryorias and lots of it. Mountain Top: Volunteers help Kelsey Furk and John Fla (below) pick garbage bags of lichen off the beaten path of the glades on RMR. Photos by Peter Worden.

>> BY PETER WORDEN

O

n the road of life there are toads and there are logging companies. And there are guys like Monty Paul, sitting on the side of the road hitchhiking to a protest to stop logging and save toads. In March, I picked up Monty on Hwy 6 as he made his way to Summit Lake south of Nakusp.

“We’re going to block the road. We’re going to stop the loggers from going in there. And hopefully we’ll raise enough awareness that we can get people to pay attention,” Monty affirms, then clarifies: “We’re not about stopping logging. We’re about stopping logging in stupid places, sacred places that shouldn’t be logged.”

Every summer on this highway, more than a million western non-vocal toads come out of the woods to cross the road and breed. For a short period, the asphalt is thick with brown toads. The road is never closed, instead, students and the Ministry of Transportation help, funneling them with fences and tunnels and during Toad Fest, carrying them across in buckets.

The Nakusp & Area Community Forest is a mosaic of timber types, ages and densities and a healthy ecosystem for many species, including toads. NACFOR is also a working forest. At the roadblock, Monty joined a small group of like-minded conservationists standing in a half-circle and engaged in civil but frank conversation with NACFOR reps.

“We’re trying to take a different approach and do things slowly,” said NACFOR’s Hugh Watt in speaking patiently with the roadblockers.

“It’s not just toads we’re thinking about here, it’s grizzly bear, domestic water, terrain hazards, visuals. When we plan we work with and model all these restraints.”

That’s not good enough for Monty. “Thirty years ago when the frogs used to cross the road there were great big ones and there were little ones. The big ones aren’t there anymore,” he pleads. “And you call this management.”

To its credit, NACFOR does monitor toad ToadFest is an annual event designed to draw attention to the plight of the toad, to orchestrate labour to move toads and to act as a regional education opportunity about toads.

ToadFest is hosted by the Fish & Wildlife Compensation Program, Columbia Basin Trust, BC Parks, Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Transportation & Infrastructure with support from Yellowbridge Road Builders (YRB). For more information visit www.fwcp. ca or call 250 352 1300.

presence and carries out harvesting from November to March during periods when toads are not migrating. Its operating guidelines state: “If road and terrain conditions prevent winter operations, harvesting and hauling can occur when adult toads move to summer foraging habitat and before toadlets start their migration to the upslope forests.”

Walter Pasieka, who joined the protest, defined his presence as “symbolic,” saying the core of the issue was money and that logging was inevitable. “Let’s just have a little embarrassment ... Everything disappears bit by bit by bit,” he said. “Whether it’s you or some other corporation, they’ll do what they do, people will populate this area and the toads will disappear and this all will mean nothing. We are just here symbolically.”

WHY DID THE TOAD CROSS THE ROAD? Toads move to a forested habitat where they live for four or five years before returning to the lake to breed. That’s about all we know. To date, only a tiny bit of research has been done on breeding habitat because that’s when the toads are easiest to study. But little is known about their lifecycles. Logging opponents say there are too many unanswered questions: Is the population improving or decreasing?

Where and how do they procreate? Most importantly it is unclear what long-term effects forest harvesting might have on population dynamics.

WOOD IS GOOD BUT WETTER IS BETTER NACFOR uses industry best practices such as “partial harvesting and wildlife tree retention areas… retaining broad-leaf trees and coarse woody debris …[to] provide cover and foraging areas for toads.” This year, a mild winter and warm spring may lead toads to breed earlier. A hot summer accelerates tadpole growth, meaning the migration of toadlets could be as early as the third week of July.

IN TOADAL Since 2010, the non-calling western toad (anaxyrus boreas) has been on the blue list in British Columbia. Blue-listed species are at risk but are not extirpated, endangered or threatened. The western toad has suffered the greatest population decline in the southern part of its range in British Columbia. It is why the province has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to protect the toads by putting up signs and building underpasses.

Spot The Diferences

Spot The Differences

DIFFERENCES KEEP SCORE.

EXTRA SPECIAL BASEBALL NEWS

This year’s August longweekend Glacier Challenge slo-pitch tournament (Aug. 4-7) will bring around 1,500 fun-loving visitors—many diehard returnees like the Lumby Drillers who have played all 30 years—and untold economic spinoff to town. The financial bottom line of the tournament has alternated in the red and black over the decades, and this 30th year marks not only a milestone but a test of viability.

t’s a muddy, boozy, busy, nudity-filled baseball tournament Revelstoke’s lucky to have.

I

>> BY PETER WORDEN

organizers Mark and Jen Baron and Maggie Spizzirri soldiered on.

The elements mangled tents, made ponds in the infield, and the homerun derby asteroided unfortunately situated vehicles.

But despite the poor weather and

last-minute planning, criticism was minimal, constructive and the ball tournament has lived to see another summer.

This year, organizers have capped the number of teams at 70 and increased the prize money, so each team has the best all-round playing 2. AND HERE.

scrambling and a proud tournament reeling for some of its former glory.

Last year, with only a handful of volunteers, Glacier Challenge almost didn’t happen. But like the 69 teams enduring a weekend of torrential downpours and hail,

“...the ball tournament has lived to see another summer.”

What began in 1987 as the Kokanee Glacier Challenge was once a beer companysponsored mega-event with an all-time high of 144 teams.

Since then, it has shrunk by half as interest waned and sponsors dried up, leaving organizers

30th anniversary a make-or-break year for the slo-pitch tournament

The Glacier Challenge ... challenge

10

(PHOTO BY PETER WORDEN....I SEEM TO DO EVERYTHING AROUND HERE THESE DAYS. )

WHO EXACTLY ARE THESE PARTY ANIMALS? And why is that man wearing two hats yet no pants?

How should I know? All I do know is that they are winning—loosely speaking—at the annual Glacier Challenge baseball tournament (Aug. 4-7, 2017). You, too, can win (see How To Win At Glacier Challenge). But first!—find 10 differences!

Remove centerfold of Reved Quarterly...

FOR MORE FUN STUFF GO TO REVED.NET

1 WARNING! YOU MAY BE READING THIS UPSIDE DOWN.

2

... Fold on dotted lines, once, twice, thrice ...

...REVELSTOKE STREET FEST LINEUP INSIDE

HOW-TO: READ REVED 1/4’ly WITHOUT HURTING YOURSELF: HANG ON TO THIS!

ANSWER KEY SPOT THE DIFFERENCES: T-Rex, obvs; guy on the cover of Reved is paradoxically holding a copy of Reved with him on it; teammate who was peacing/#2’ing is #1; Bob Ross is in this mosaic of happy accidents; yellow T-shirt is missing logo; red Solo cup is now green; rainbow sock is missing; tree has grown; Doug May sign has flipped; Easton bat now reads ‘Eastof’ as in this team must be from Eastof here. (Calgarians, am I right?)

(HANDY POCKET SIZED EDITION.)

1. FOLD HERE.

EDITOR@REVED.NET

experience. Players in the beerleague slo-pitch tournament have often placed a heavy emphasis on the ‘beer’ part, so it’s one area organizers are anxious to improve on with a Family Zone, plus entertainment, food and contests open to everyone.

The 30th year is as much for visitors as for locals. It’s bottom of the ninth, bases loaded for the tournament, that now, needs to hit one out of the park. 

Reved Quarterly ¼’ly SUMMER 2017

OR SEND BACK TO:

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IF YOU ARE READING THIS, YOU NEED A STAMP.

PLEASE SEND TO:

□ You □ We Should: □ PLAY BALL AT GLACIER CHALLENGE. □ GO LISTEN TO MUSIC AT GRIZZLY PLAZA. □ GO SOMEWHERE—ANYWHERE!—IT’S SUMMER! □ READ REVED QUARTERLY MORE. □ ALL OF THE ABOVE. □ OTHER: ___________________________ (NOW SEND THIS DELIGHTFUL NEWSPAPER TO SOMEONE EQUALLY DELIGHTFUL. )

3. AN-N-D HERE.

... Bam!—Reved 1/4’ly is a mini paper ready for the bathroom or anywhere.

1

11 PLAY BALL. That's what it's all about. Have fun, be safe and we all win.

DO AS THE SALMON ARMIANS DO. These guys were born for Glacier Challenge.

Be like Chet, who can turn any rain delay into the most exciting part of the game.

10

OR HAIL . . . What can I say, it's the GLACIER CHALLENGE, not the warm, sunny cakewalk.

If you absolutely must miss a game, I think you know what to do with all that ice. As they say, when life hands you hail, make more margaritas.

9

DON'T LET RAIN RUIN YOUR YOUR GAME. Use it. The Glacier Challenge usually gets at least four torrential downpours. But rain can bring out your inner mud monster and give you an advantage over other players standing there getting trenchfoot.

8

TAKE IT EASY. It happens to the best of us. Three days of fun in the sun can leave you pretty tuckered out. Make sure to hydrate, chill out and, if need be, hitch a ride on buddy's bat bag to the next diamond.

7

6

CONFLICT WITH A BEAR

IN OTHER OBVIOUS NEWS: Bear poops in woods.CALL 1 877 952 7277 TO REPORT A

AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM REVELSTOKE BEAR AWARE:

SECURE YOUR GARBAGE. Garbage is the Number One bear attractant in Revelstoke.

REDNECK UP YOUR BASEBALL EXPERIENCE. I don't know what's going on here, exactly, all I know is it involves mixing tropical drinks with a twostroke engine. If you get an idea to jury rig a pitching machine to your ice-maker or make team pancakes on an engine block, go with it.

5

YOU'LL NEED THESE, TOO. That's Josiah and that's a margarita fro-yo from Twisted Berry he's holding. You'll want both nearby.

4

SIGN UP AT LEAST ONE HEAVY-HITTER. Preferably Andy, right here. If you don't win the the tournament prize, your cash cow could still win the homerun derby and pick up the bar tab later.

3

ALWAYS CARRY A BEER BONG Always. Even if you're not a drinker — especially if you're not — the beer bong is the ultimate Trojan horse in bush league baseball. While you're "helping" your opponent guzzle a PBR tallboy, your team is rounding third. Well played.

2

GET A GOOD TEAM THEME. I can't stress this enough. A good theme may not improve your batting average or general athleticism per se, but by golly you will win the night life down at Queen Elizabeth Park. Pirates arrrrrrgh always welcome.

BRING THE KIDLETS. Don't let the crazy yahoos deter you. There's a Family Zone and all the junk food your kids can possibly handle. Plus someone's gotta keep the 'dults in check.

It's the streakingest time of the year in Revelstoke—Glacier Challenge. But you won't win with only '"fy balls," no, to take home the big money at the 30th annual Glacier Challenge, follow these 11 simple tips.

IN 11 EASY STEPS—SOLID ADVICE FROM REVED QUARTERLY

HOW-TO: WIN AT GLACIER CHALLENGE

REMOVE • FOLD • READ • KEEP / SHARE •

SEND REVED 1/4’LY Old-fashioned snail mail is the best, especially when it comes in the form of a miniature newspaper. It makes a great gift/ souvenir/forgot so-and-so’s big such-and-such. Heck!—send it back to me with suggestions/ words of adoration/sizeable cheques. Just fold, seal, stamp and plop in the mailbox.

Patience this summer, Gemini. When you go to Wearabouts you’ll have to stand in line behind a bear, waiting for him to find his wallet. #BlackBearLivesMatter CANCER (Jun 22 - Jul 23):

GEMINI (May 22 - Jun 21):

You custom order the Made in America M.O.A.T.—the Mother Of All Traps—to finally kill that giant rat sneaking into your fridge.

You immediately snap it on your fingernail, which turns black and gross forever.

TAURUS (Apr 21 - May 21)

Rent has gotten so bad in Revelstoke that you’ve decided to just live in one of the free bat boxes in the Greenbelt. But you can’t sleep with your roommates echolocating.

ARIES (Mar 21 - Apr 20)

MURPHY

MIKE

"The Medium"

SUMMER HORRORSCOPES & MISFORTUNES

You stop to ask directions but the person you ask is Charlton Heston who just calls you a damned dirty ape.

He's not wrong. If you don’t know now you bonobo.

22):

SCORPIO (Oct 24 - Nov

The voice of God orders you to order a sushi boat at Kawakubo and fill it with two of every fish. You are immediately flooded with friends mooching off your “Noah’s Ark.”

LIBRA (Sep 24 - Oct 23):

Tiffany at Animal House offers a doggy treat that you, misunderstanding she meant for your dog, eat and choke on. Assuming the role as master, your dog performs the only trick he ever learned, the hind-lick maneuver.

VIRGO (Aug 24 - Sep 23):

Like 50 per cent of humans and 100 per cent of Leos, you’re riddled with toxoplasmosis. It causes a fearlessness of felines that translates into a love affair with your personal stalker, a very experienced cougar, who inevitably abandons you with eight hungry kittens and a filthy litter box.

LEO (Jul 24 - Aug 23):

Your secret upbringing by a pack of local wolves is mortifyingly revealed when a friend innocently asks whether you fold or scrunch toilet paper and you, unsure what that means, say “I do this:” and demonstrate how you simply scoot across the ground to relieve minor anal sac impaction.

DISCLAIMER: While Mike is highly skilled at predicting your misfortunes, he and Reved take absolutely zero responsibility if—no, no when— they come painfully true.

There are plenty of fish in the sea, Pisces. Just not this sea. Urgin’ for a sturgeon, you cast your line into the murky shallows of the Revy Tinder scene only to be disappointed when you are catfished by an actual catfish.

PISCES (Feb 20 - Mar 20):

This summer you are found guilty by association after police catch you hanging around with a crow and charge you with attempted murder.

AQUARIUS (Jan 21 - Feb 19):

At the petting zoo, a small child mistakingly pets you.

How you got so hairy is one thing, but why did you bleat?

CAPRICORN (Dec 22 - Jan 20):

On an August “Shoesday” at Universal Footwear, you decide to get properly fitted. But Jordan can’t help you because like all cloven hooved Sagittariuseseses, your Birkenstocks won’t do up. You clop out in a rage, and live the rest of your life bare-hooved eventually forming a mildly successful Pat Benator tribute band called Pat Centaur.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov 23 - Dec 21):

Some Bad News—Your Summer Horrorscope

Reved Quarterly ¼’ly SUMMER 2017

18 Reved Quarterly SUMMER 2017

In Other Animal News

Another Roadside Attraction Revelstoke has a petting zoo. Fiiiinnnally...

I

f you're looking for a friendly face, look no further than the abundance of wet noses, snouts, muzzles and beaks at the popup petting zoo on Hwy 1 west of town by Fullspeed rentals. “I like to surround myself with craziness,” says James Richard, who is often seen around this one-horse town with his workhorse Sassy and carriage. The petting

zoo has pony rides, llamas—watch out they spit—some donkeys, goats, fresh eggs, the whole shebang. You can even bet on the pig races. “We all win in a pig race,” says James. For the more adventurous among you, consider a one-day or three-day trail ride—one to Beaton; one to Mara. “For those who want to feel what it’s like to walk bowlegged,” says James, who even-built the trails through the mountains himself.

Pigs on the lam

Something invasive this way comes

>> BY PETER WORDEN

F

eral pigs. Swine.

Hogs. Wild boars.

Razorbacks. Pineywoods rooter. Many different pig faces. One big pig problem.

As you read this right now, small populations of renegade pigs north of Vernon and around the Cariboos are really enjoying themselves. They’ve freed themselves from the tyranny of farm life (or more likely, been set free). They are now roving the wilds of B.C., out-eating everything in the natural ecosystem, rooting up plant life and chomping down on native animals. How can such a little oinker be such a big problem, you ask? Like many invasive species they are prolific. Pigs can have 10 piglets at a time, twice a season. They vary in how they look as they revert back to their wild, shaggy origins. It may look like the cute pigglywiggly from Babe or more like the monster in Lord of the Flies.

SPEAKING OF MONSTERS

or , heaarsive e e s If youect an invr neck susp ies in yous, call specthe woodWEED of 55-PUL-

[

Bullfrogs. The American Bullfrog is another destructive (and potentially delicious) invasive species on CSISS’ Most Wanted List.

As Sue Davies from the Columbia Shuswap Invasive Species Society explains, during the Second World War there was a shortage of protein in North America, so people raised animals they could eat. “When the war ended, the market for the bullfrog—frog legs—went away and farmers basically let these frogs loose.”

The nearest known population is in the Kootenays, however, CSISS is on high alert and hopes people are on the lookout—or listen out—for the bullfrog’s signature call. June and July is its mating season and the frogs can lay 20,000 eggs per year.

Adults can grow as big as a small cat (about 20 cm from nose to tail, not including the legs). They’re signifi-

1-8

[

cant predators; they inhale the local flora and fauna, even eating ducklings and gardersnakes. “They will make any wetland less biodiverse,” says Sue. THE HUNTER BECOMES THE HUNTED

The B.C government has officially opened season on pigs to help keep populations down. You can do your part in the War On Invasive Species, too. “There are some things in your garden you can totally eat,” says Sue. “There are some weeds I would encourage you to eat. There are some I would not encourage you to eat because the risk of spreading them, harvesting them or consuming parts of them, is so huge...We want to make sure that first of all we don’t add to the problem.” Can we eat frogs? “If you did find one in a pond I would encourage you to try eating it if you like. Not sure that I would.”

$10 HOODIES, T-SHIRTS & BEST OF REVED BOOKS

Reved Quarterly SUMMER 2017 19

Oldest & Wisest*

Helen and her horses

The Selkirk Saddle Club's most senior member is wise in the ways of horses—but don't call her a senior.

>> BY PETER WORDEN

W

Helen was born in Regina, the year, she politely declines to mention—“a long time,” she laughs. (I’m actually amazed she agreed to this interview. The last time she was featured in a local newspaper was after she was nearly mugged for her purse.

Most appalling to her, however, was the newspaper writer calling her a senior.)

She moved to Revelstoke 35 years ago in the winter of 1982 when her husband Bill was transferred for work. The spring that followed was an awful one that nearly washed out the Illecillewaet bridge. It was the first of many memorable, miserable weathered-in seasons to come.

“We like Revelstoke. I find the winters a bit much. It’s like living in a box,” she

hen it comes to finding the town's oldest and wisest citizens, Helen Shuttleworth is a natural, if unique case.

Wisdom she has, particularly in the equine world, but Lord have pity on the journalist who dares call her old.

As I walk up the road at the Selkirk Saddle Club, she’s busy touching up stain on her barn, number 13-14. She wears a straw hat and sunglasses and behind her is Phelen, a 20-year-old half-Dutch warmblood, sixteen hands one inch, who went lame a few years back “It’s almost hazardous to your health and can’t be to ride a horse into town now." ridden.

“Either she or I’ll die first, I’m not too sure who,” she said “But then the sun comes out and it’s begins. “She’s healthy enough. She might gorgeous.” even outlast me, I don’t know.”

Helen got her first horse when she was Also, unlike most of the long-time nine. Nora. She was quite a horse, she Revelstokians featured in Oldest & Wisest tells me. A pacer, so she didn’t have to whom I’ve interviewed at their home, post. (I nod in complete understanding.)

Helen seems most at home here on the Horses have always taught her patience club grounds where she visits three times and humility. A previous bit placed each day to feed and shovel poop, or—in incorrectly in Nora’s mouth severed the this case—to give Phelen her medication. frenulum, the muscle beneath the tongue, “You have no idea how expensive it is so she used to slip her tongue out of the bit to have a horse,” she says, joking but not and run away with Helen. As a nine-yearjoking. Every six weeks, Phelen needs old Helen had to hang her arms around her feet trimmed at $50 a pop. It adds Nora, hold on for dear life and fall off so up. “Buying the horse is the cheap part of she would notice and finally come to a having a horse.” stop. Sometimes in the middle of a field, Phelen brays as if in agreement and Helen had to climb up a barbed wire fence Helen tells her she’s OK, nevermind. It’s to get back on Nora. “She ran away with all a labour of love of course, and it’s a everyone. She ran away with my mother blessing for her that horses do live a long and she never rode her again.” time and that she has, in her own time, She has had a lifetime of horseback had five of them. adventures. She used to ride bareback

up Mount Mackenzie on daytrips to picnic at the top. In Arrow Heights people would collect the horse manure and put it in their garden—“but that was the olden days,” she said. She would ride up Mount Revelstoke when the road was still gravel, trotting up and down again to condition her horse. She did competitive trail-racing and long-distance with Phelen until about 10 years ago.

“Come on, give me some more questions,” she says, getting me to giddy up with the interview.

Why don’t more people at the Saddle Club bring their horses into town? I ask.

“When I first moved here, we did. But they don’t like the poop on the street.

They leave a few little calling cards,” she says. “And traffic isn’t great for horses.

When they hear the jake-brake it scares them. And what’s the point riding into town? There’s too many people. It’s almost hazardous to your health to ride a horse into town now.”

Are horses your secret to longevity? I say.

She laughs. “Just live a healthy lifestyle, lots of outdoor activity. That’s about it, I guess.”

How about when it comes to Revelstoke taking care of its Natural surroundings?

“I hope they do something about the poor bears,” she says. They’re a common sight down at the Saddle Club, but the horses, bears and humans mutually ignore one another. “We coexist quite nicely.” *Helen is by no measure the "oldest" —heck, compared to 97-year-old John Augustyn, profiled earlier, she is practically a foal. However, she is wise beyond her years. If someone is the oldest and/or wisest person you know and should be featured in this section please contact, me, Peter, at:

editor@reved.net.

Reved Quarterly SUMMER 2017 21

More Dam Questions

Answers To All Your Dam Animal Questions

Sturgeon, goats and microbes—BC Hydro has a lot of dam wildlife to take into consideration.

R

eved likes to be useful.

So, when its editor overheard some bar chatter about the likelihood of the Revelstoke Dam busting and drowning us all, I decided to get answers to all their dam questions and put their worried, inebriated, hyperbolic minds at ease. Here is Round 2 of Reved's Dam Questions: Animal Edition.

and Yellow Perch. In the lower Columbia River downstream of Hugh L. Keenelsydie Dam, there are also now Walleye and Northern Pike that could eventually make their way farther upstream into the Arrow Lakes system (although they wouldn’t get past Revelstoke Dam) (see question 9).

QUESTION 5 Does BC Hydro have biologists who study the river system and fish populations?

QUESTION 1: Lake Revelstoke and the Columbia River are misnomers, right? We call them a lake and river because they're lake-like and river-like but they're actually reservoirs?

To quote William Shakespeare, What’s in a name? Lake Revelstoke is the gazetted (that is, official) name for the waterbody although it is a reservoir. And the Columbia River is a river even though portions of it are now reservoirs because of dam construction. And even before the dams were created some portions of the river had different names. For example, Arrow Lakes has always had a separate name even though they are part of the Columbia River.

QUESTION 2 Did (or how did) damming the

Columbia change the biological makeup of the waterbody? Were there fish and animal species in the river that aren't there now? And are there new species that weren't there before the dam(s)?

Yes, there are many changes that come with damming and regulating a river. Some from the initial dam construction and others from ongoing facility operations and time. Other than the notable loss of salmon from construction of Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River in the U.S., as far as we know no fish species disappeared in this area.

There are some new fish species introduced by humans, such as Eastern Brook Trout, Tench, Carp,

Well, a spinning turbine gathers no algae, as it were, so for the most part we don’t have algae growing in the dam. There are a few continually damp walls that have a slow growth of green, but nothing that we can’t handle with a bucket of water and a brush.

Yes, we have biologists and other professionals on staff, as well as a small army of contract biologists, who are studying everything from that slimy algae to fish and turtles.

QUESTION 3 The dam keeps minimal flow

levels, so that even if it's not producing hydro-electricity, the river doesn't just run dry—that's because of the fishies?

Revelstoke Dam maintains a minimum flow for ecosystem benefits, especially algae, bugs, and fish.

QUESTION 4 The riverbed around Revelstoke seems really slimy. Is that OK? What's the BC Hydro take on downstream sliminess?

A slippery riverbed can be from mud or from growth of algae (which can be slimy). Slime, however, is just Nature’s body armour so most of the time we’re OK with it.

QUESTION 4.5 Do you get sliminess on the dam or in the dam in the turbines etc? Is it a problem—how do you deal with it?

QUESTION 6 Sturgeon. I'm still on this sturgeon obsession from last time. Are there sturgeon in Lake Revelstoke? Or sturgeon in Upper Arrow Lakes? How can we know!

We know there are White Sturgeon in the Arrow Lakes because we have caught them, followed them, still monitor them, and even put young ones in every year. We suspect there are a few still in Lake Revelstoke although there has been no definitive confirmation. Some people have reported seeing sturgeon there from time to time as they will sometimes come to the surface. If you see one, please send us a picture!

QUESTION 7 Outside magazine had a story titled "Goats Scale Dam, World Demands to Know Why...." We at Reved Quarterly demand to know if goats scale our dams?

Not dumb at all, in fact you are asking about what we call “entrainment” whereby fish pass downstream through the dam. At Revelstoke Dam this happens mostly to kokanee and usually the small, young ones. But it is not like there is a strong current at the dam’s water intakes that “suck fish in”, it is more that at certain times of the day and year the behaviour of the fish puts them at greater risk. And fish are usually able to pass through and survive because the turbines at Revelstoke Dam are so huge (just over seven metres in diameter).

QUESTION 9 What about going the other way, I've heard of (granted, smaller) dams using fish ladders and even a fish cannon to allow migrating fish upriver. Was anything like that considered for the Mica or Revelstoke dams?

At the time Mica and Revelstoke dams were built, fish passage was not a consideration and was not part of their design. Some smaller hydropower facilities successfully use fish ladders and cannons.

For tall dams like these (Revelstoke is 175 metres high and Mica is 244 metres), other systems would have to be used. At some dams, for example, fish are collected downstream and then transported and released above. 

GOT ANY MORE DAM QUESTIONS? The Revelstoke Dam Visitor Centre is located 5km north of Revelstoke on Hwy 23—open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day until September 5, 2016.

Adults: $6 / Seniors & Youth: $5 / Children No goats so far. under 5: free. Call 250 814 6697 or email revelstoke@bchydro.com QUESTION 8 Dumb question, but does the dam ever suck fish in and then the turbines smush them up?

Reved Quarterly SUMMER 2017 23

The Fun & Games Section WORDS TO LIVE BY: “ONE SWALLOW DOES NOT MAKE A SUMMER, NEITHER DOES ONE FINE DAY; SIMILARLY ONE DAY OR BRIEF TIME OF HAPPINESS DOES NOT MAKE A PERSON ENTIRELY HAPPY.” — Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

QUICK MIND BLOW: THE EARTH IS MOVING AT ABOUT 67,000 MILES PER HOUR RELATIVE TO THE SUN. IF YOU GO TO BED AT NIGHT AND SLEEP FOR EIGHT HOURS, YOU’LL HAVE TRAVELLED OVER HALF A MILLION MILES BY THE TIME YOU WAKE UP. THE MILKY WAY IS OUR LOCAL ISLAND OF OVER 200,000 MILLION SUNS. THE SUN WITH THE EARTH IN TOW, IS TRAVELLING AROUND THE MILKY WAY AT 486,000 MILES PER HOUR, AT A DISTANCE OF 156,000 TRILLION MILES FROM THE CENTRE. AT THIS SPEED IT TAKES 226 MILLION YEARS TO COMPLETE ONE ORBIT. BOOM.

Spot The Differences

IT’S A WILD PLACE AT PARKS CANADA. Summer is a busy time and getting a staff photo is like herding cardboard cutouts of caribou. Luckily, Reved was able to capture these crazy and elusive creatures.

But quickly now, they have important work to return to. (Psst, you have work to do, too—spot 10 differences.) BACK ROW, from left: Tina Whitman, Caribou, Laurie Booker, Faizan Muhammedi, Glenda Eddy, Robin Mackenzie, Catherine Lachaine, Marta Savill FRONT ROW: Amy Clarke, Marnie DiGiandomenico.

TCHARLEY A M

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MATCH THESE REVELSTOKIANS UP WITH THEIR LOVABLE MUTTS...

HIGH-FIVE FROM A MUSICIAN

GET SOME DAMN GOOD MAC & CHEESE

PICK UP REVED QUARTERLY

PEOPLE PLAYING BOARD GAMES

LOG PATIO HOURS ON A WEEKDAY

A MILLION BIKES OUTSIDE

TASTETEST FIVE BEERS BEFORE CHOOSING ONE.

DOG OUTSIDE

RAINY DAY :(

2+ FLATBRIMMED HATS

SUNNY DAY :)

SOMEONE WEARING SOMEWON

TRY THE LAMB

FIND A SQUIRREL WITH A FISH HEAD

MAKE TREVOR SMILE

PASSERBY BLOWS KISS

STRANGER’S CONFIRMED UNDERWEAR COLOUR

FIND OUT WHAT’S GROWING ON THE PATIO

SEE AN EAGLE WITH A BEAR HEAD

SURFING VIDEOS ON TV

IT’S TOO DAMN LOUD

SOMEONE SQUINTING AT THE BEER MENU

ALLEY CAT SIGHTING

... NOT A BAD LITTLE DRINKING GAME, TOO, IN THIS NEWSPAPER'S EDITORIAL OPINION.

NEED MORE REVED IN YOUR LIFE? GO TO

REVED.NET ANSWER KEY SPOT THE DIFFERENCES: There’s a T-Rex; Laurie has sprouted antlers; Marnie’s shirt has changed colours; Faizan is now Bob Ross; Tina is getting butterflies; elk skull now a wild bore skull; the maple leaf in the Canadian flag has more points; Glenda’s sleeve is longer; the photo of the People’s Daily news HQ in Beijing is now the Queen’s Warf in Newcastle; Ithink I forgot to do a tenth one... DOGGY MATCH GAME: A6; B4; C3; D1; E5; F2

REVVVVERYTHING!...

GOOD FOOD, A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP & JUST FEELING GOOD.

Reved Quarterly SUMMER 2017 24

IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR ....

YOU WILL FIND IT HERE ....

YOU SHOULD ALSO KNOW THAT ....

THE ONLY FRO-YO & CREPE SHACK IN TOWN

TWISTED BERRY—either in Grizzly Plaza or beside Subway.

Carlie & Brian are as twisted as their berries, which is a good thing.

THE BEST COFFEE IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND

DOSE—Corner of Mackenzie & 2nd St.

Lauren & John make coffee art. Daily 7 am–5pm.

AMAZING BREAKFAST & LUNCH MADE FROM SCRATCH MAIN STREET CAFÉ—317 MacKenzie Ave ▪ 250 837 6888

They're closed Mondays.

THE ABSOLUTELY BUSIEST COFFEE SHOP EVER

THE MODERN —212 MacKenzie Ave ▪ 250 837 6886

They're closed Sundays ...

STACKED BREAKFAST BAGEL SANDWICHES

LA BAGUETTE ESPRESSO BAR—607 Victoria Rd. & Garden Ave.

You can get espresso poured over your gelato but affogato what it's called.

INDIAN/GERMAN/THAI FUSION

PARAMJIT’S KITCHEN—116 1st St W ▪ 250 837 2112

FINE DINING & SMOOOOOTH JAZZZZZ

112 BISTRO —Inside the Regent Hotel

Everything Goldie makes is incredible. You gotta eat here. See p.6 The River City Pub next door has late-night music and entertainment.

A $5 MENU LAST DROP­­­—200 3 St W ▪ 250 837 2121

The Drop has a $5 menu plus a killer open mic (Wed).

CHEAP WINGS ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT

GRIZZLY PUB—314 1 St W ▪ 250 837 5576

The Griz has liquor store delivery, pool and Keno.

DEEP-FRIED CHEESE CURDS

CHUBBY FUNSTERS—114 MacKenzie Ave

... there are also weird and wonderful cocktail concoctions..

A PANZO THAT COULD KILL A MAN

THE VILLAGE IDIOT—306 MacKenzie Ave ▪ 250 837 6240

A SERIOUS SMOKED BRISKET MANWICH

BIG EDDY PUB & LIQUOR STORE—Alllllll the way at 2108 Big Eddy Rd. It's totally worth the drive all-l-l-l the way over the bridge.

MMM...DONAIRS AND/OR PIZZA

PADRINO’S PIZZARIA—200 1 St W ▪ 250 837 3300

Jess and Dave sell pizza by the slice or by the pie.

MMM ... POUTINE AND/OR PIZZA

NICO'S PIZZERIA­— 112 1 St W ▪ 250 837 7117

Nico has unique poutine combos and the squeakiest cheese curds.

STEAK AND POTATOES WITH ALL THE FIXINS'

ZALA’S STEAK & PIZZA—½ block off Hwy 1 ▪ 250 837 5555

Rick even offers a courtesy limousine service.

ANTARCTICA-THEMED MEN'S ROOM

WOOLSEY BISTRO—600 2 St W ▪ 250 837 5500

That's a weird thing to go to a restaurant for.

A SWEET NEW VIETNAMESE PLACE

MINH TUYET'S BISTRO— 415 Victoria Rd ▪ 250-837-3788

Fancy schmancy, yet affordable!

A KILLER MAC N' CHEESE

CRAFT BIERHAUS— 107 2nd St E ▪ 250 805 1754

Trev also has regional beers & board games. (Check p.13!)

A TACOOOO OR BURRRRRRRRRITO...?

TACO CLUB — 206 MacKenzie Ave ▪ 250 837-0988

They make a deadly homemade gingerbeer.

CHICKEN STRIPS, FRIES & A SHAKE

THE NOMAD FOOD CO— 1601 Victoria Rd ▪ 250 837-4211

They won the "People’s Choice" best poutine and shakes.

THE SPANKIEST SPOT IN TOWN

THE QUARTERMASTER EATERY — 109 1ST ST ▪ 250 814 2565

This totally reno'd hotel has a secret scotch sipping boiler room. Shhh...

100% LOCALLY SOURCED SPIRITS

MONASHEE SPIRITS CRAFT DISTILLERY— 307 Mackenzie Ave ▪ 250 463 5678 Just go. Trust me. Just go and thank me later.

A PRIVATE ROOM HOSTEL

POPPI'S—313 First St. East ▪ www.poppis.ca ▪ 250 837 9192

It's the adventure of a hostel, comfort of a hotel and awesomeness of Poppi.

THE CLEANEST HOT TUB IN TOWN APPARENTLY

MONASHEE LODGE — 601 3 St W ▪ 250 814-2553

It’s a cozy, laid-back bed-and-breakfast off the beaten path.

A CENTRAL YET QUIET PLACE TO STAY

SWISS CHALET MOTEL—1101 Victoria Rd W ▪ 1 877 837 4650

Eric offers non-smoking rooms, free breaky & Aquatic Centre passes.

A CHIC, UNIQUE, COOL PLACE TO STAY

THE CUBE—311 Campbell Ave ▪ 250 837 4086

Owner Louis Marc Simard is a gem.

They also have lotsa beer and make a mean Moscow Mule.

AN EMERGENCY PLACE TO LAY YOUR WEARY HEAD MY COUCH—Near Courthouse Inn ▪ 867 222 4556

It’s my actual couch. (Great rates!)

DEEP-TISSUE MASSAGE & ACUPUNCTURE

WELWINDS SPA — (250) 837-6084 ▪ 509 4 St W

Diane also offers a selection of specialty teas.

A THERAPEUTIC MASSAGE

BODYLOGIC—250 837 3666 ▪ Suite 103-103 1st St E

Karen and her fellow RMT Sarah are miracle workers.

DEEP-TISSUE MASSAGE & MANUAL LYMPH DRAINAGE REVELSTOKE MASSAGE THERAPY—250 837 6677

Dave also offers somatic release.

A ROMANTIC AND RELAXING GETAWAY

HALCYON HOTSPRINGS—1 888 689 4699 ▪ Hwy 23, Nakusp

These hot springs are just a short, magical drive and ferry trip away.

ACUPUNCTURE & CHINESE MEDICINE

JADE MOUNTAIN—250 847 3900 ▪ jademountain.ca ▪ 101 1st St W

Erin is a registered traditional Chinese medicine practitioner.

ALL TYPES OF YOGA FOR ALL LEVELS ...

BALU YOGA & WELLNESS ▪ 250 837 3975

... at all times of the day and all days of the week.

GUIDED ENERGY WORK & SOUL COUNSELING

HEART TO HEART HEALING—250 837 3724 ▪ Frieda Livesey

Freida also offers soul awareness writing and is an inspiration.

YOGA TEACHER TRAINING

NAMASTE YOGA & WELLNESS CENTRE—www.yogasalmonarm.com

200hr Yoga Alliance International Cert. starting Oct. 14.

SOME HELP GETTING YOUR ASANA IN GEAR

REVELUTION (ENTER ON ORTON)—www.revelution.ca 250 814 9929 Yoganna love it.

AN ECO-FRIENDLY (AND JUST REGULAR-FRIENDLY) SPA

BIRCH & LACE­—250 814 2508 ▪ 113 2nd Street E

BYO containers for their soap dispensary of Canadian products.

THE BUSIEST SALON I (PERSONALLY) HAVE EVER SEEN

FIRST IMPRESSIONS—250 837 2344 ▪ 300 1 St E

They have the BEST coffee while you wait.

THE CHEAPEST CUT IN TOWN

THE BARBERSHOP—300 First Street W

Deb is a real barber’s barber. $17. First come, first cut.

WHERE I’M GOING AFTER THIS IS OVER.

Pretty good little ad space here.

Just saying.

Karen Schneider RMT Julia Staniszewski BHK, RMT www.bodylogicmassagerevelstoke.com

BE IN THE GUIDE TO REV-ERYTHING CONTACT ME, PETER — EDITOR@REVED.NET FIRST LISTING FREE. BEER ACCEPTABLE AS PAYMENT.

Bzz ...

Ohm...

Ahh...

Zzz...

Mmm...

YOUR

GUIDE TO

YOUR GUIDE TO

CLASSIFIEDS REAL STUFF

FREE 24/7

CRIBBAGE LESSONS

Why does nobody take me up this?

867 222 4556

CATSIFIEDS

TWEET OR FACEBOOK #classifieds, #catsifieds,

#MissedConnections, #MissedCatnections,

CALL STEVE!

ANYTHING!—

@REVEDQ

CLASSIFIEDS ONLY $5.

Whoozagoodkittywittycats looking for adoptionwoption right meow at the Revy Humane Society (250) 837-8578. You can also try Nakusp PALS (Protecting Animals Life Society) at (250) 265-3792.

Sherri McEwen was reading Reved, and when she finally put it down, her cat Murph picked it up.

(We like it if you read Reved. But it’s OK to use for shade or warmth as well...)

MOSTLY REAL STUFF

WHO SUPPORTS THE SECOND AMMENDMENT?

YOU, CRAZY CAT LADY. ME, KITTY FACE-PAINT GUY. Let's go catch some love rats.

. ..WHO’S READY FOR THE 30TH ANNUAL GLACIER CHALLENGE? AUG. 4 – 7, 2017

(250) 814 0014

REGISTER YOUR TEAM.

www.glacierchallenge.com

LEGENDS AND HEROES TOYS & APPAREL PHARMACIST DAVE from People’s Drug Mart is in the Catsified ads and you can be, too! Rrarr...

Welcome to the world!

Congrats Kirstin & Shaun!

I'd have called them chazzwazzas.

GREEN CAT CONSTRUCTION

#CATNECTIONS

BIRTHDAY LITTLE JACK!

BULL FROGS?

OOOOH BABY!..

CATSIFIEDS

PRIDDY GOOD GIFT IDEAS

Beer acceptable as payment.

HAPPY

&

Reved SUMMER 2017 26

NOW HAS GAMES TO RENT. $3/ 3 DAYS OR $5/ 7 DAYS. BUY AFTER RENTAL AND SUBTRACT COST FROM THE PURCHASE OF YOUR NEW FAVOURITE GAME.

BADASS GLADYS

Hard at work catfood-bagging at the Community Catnections Food Bank.

(Read about this lovely lady at REVED.NET)

LET’S GO TO CHUBBY’S AFTER THIS. Open: Monday — Sunday 11:00 to midnight (250) 837-2014 114 Mackenzie Ave

MORE CAT STEVENS. I MEAN YUSUF ISLAM.

THE ELUSIVE CRAFT #BIERHAUSCAT

MISSING! THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. #BCTECH

SELF-LEARNING A.I. CAT is smarter than us all.

U2 SINGER Stu Smith's cat “Snax” hops into other peoples' cars. If you've seen her...

STILL hasn’t found what he’s looking for.

KAT CADEGAN

MONEY WORRIES?

Me too. That’s, well, all I wanted to say...

CAILA...

GET THE BEST OF REVED

SHAMELESS SELF-VALIDATION:

Mention this classified to LOUIS-MARC at THE CUBE and he might give us a continental breakfast waffle.

10 YEARS OF STORIES ABOUT THE PEOPLE WE KNOW & LOVE IN REVELSTOKE.

...thinks cats are pur-r-r-r-fect.

HOW REVY CATS ROLL #SHOTGUN KITTY Check out this local silver smith's stuff on Instagram @katcadegan

ONLY $20 ORDER AT: REVED.NET OR: EDITOR@REVED.NET

KAT AND THIS PHOTO are awesome.

NEED TO BORROW SOME COOKING-THING-A-MA-BOBBER? BIG MOUNTAIN KITCHEN’S GOT YOU EQUIPPED: Every summer, we grow our gardens (or try) and buy beautiful vegetables and fruit from the farmer’s market. But what to do with all that beautiful produce? Often, the tools needed to process at-home are large, difficult to store and expensive.

The Revelstoke Local Food Initiative offers these items for rent. We don’t all need to own a dehydrator or a pressure canner; we can share it around.

At Big Mountain Kitchen, knowledgable staff will help give you a primer on how to use the equipment with seven-days-a-week of access. This year, the equipment library is moving to the upstairs mezzanine for easier access. Rentals are still free for members and a nominal $5 charge for non-members.

Purchase your LFI membership at Big Mountain Kitchen and join the movement.

215 MacKenzie Ave 250 837 7005 info@bigmountain.kitchen

on STOKEFM.COM

LISTEN TO THIS INTERVIEW

— Eric Marsden, owner Revelstoke Dogsled Adventures

"The good people at the game-cutters in town have been nice enough to hook me up with all their scraps. Right here you're looking at about 100 pounds of deer ... A lot of guys take out a deer or moose and only want the premium cuts, which is good for me. If a drunk Albertan hunter takes four shots to kill a moose, well, then there’s gonna be a lot of spoiled meat for human consumption, but it’s great for a guy with a bunch of sled dogs. Waste not want not. 40,000 wolves can’t be wrong. These guys eat pretty much whatever we can get at’em. We just killed 170 chickens from the neighbours. [Eric reaches into a bucket of meat and pulls out a pig head.] This is something new them. Don’t know how I feel about this..."

When I first got together with Steve we would wake in the morning to find that my dog Butch had piddled on his living room rug. I tacked it up to an incontinence problem until one morning we found he had peed right in the crotch of Steve's jeans. (Message received!) Here's Butch sleeping on Steve once he accepted him. — Poppi, owner of Poppi's Guesthouse

BEAR & DOGGY TALES

­— Gina Goldie, owner Wild Blue Yonder

'Will we see a bear?' is a question we get asked as river guides. Of course, the cheeky answer is they are hard to schedule. But we do see them—and not just from the bus. Our most memorable sighting was when a bear got on the bus. We were down at the river prepping the boats when a bear climbed in the driver’s window looking for snacks. Coming back, our shuttle driver noticed the bus was rocking and spotted a dark shape inside. With some trepidation, he carefully climbed on top of the bus and peered into the front window—right into the face of the bear. Luckily, all the bear destroyed was some cookies.

— Angela Mowbray, COO at Everything Revelstoke

The craziest animal I had was Seth the rescue dog. He was a long-haired Jack Russell with a mental condition slated for the needle. But we took him home and soon discovered why he was homeless. He liked to jump through fire pits, eat hot ash, he got hit by a truck, split his head open and tore half his ear off and lived. He hated an old lady down the road and would escape our place to piss all over her patio furniture. An electric fence didn't stop him either. If he didn't like you he would cock his leg and piss on you or take a **** outside your door. He chewed rocks. I had to pull 10 teeth and still he chewed them on his gums. He was a total asshole, but we loved him.

Streeters

1 Reved Quarterly SUMMER 2017

IS A DOG PARK.

Oota just ruvs reading Reved. Especially the Catsified ads (page 26).

Residents are asked to be extra vigilant this summer bear-proofing their yards after an abysmal last year when 24 bears were shot.

#BLACKBEAR LIVESMATTER

street signage in May, the painting crew made a typo that quickly blew up on RevySell with posts reminding kids to stay in 'scohol.' The mockery made it all the way to Global News, CBC, Huffington Post ... and Reved is no better. The stencils each have two letters: SC, HO and OL, and one was painted upside-down ... then quickly corrected the next week.

FAIL. When Columbia Park Elementary got new

LOOSE MOOSE In March, a young moose made its way through town, dropping a couple calling cards in Grizzly Plaza before clopping up CPR Hill.

#InCaseYouMoosedIt

RUFF!

REVELSTOKE

HELLS YES IT DOES

HELL NO

NEWSFLASH: This is no ordinary newspaper. The middle section folds conveniently into a miniature newspaper that doubles as a post card. Fold once, twice, three times—and voilà! Send as a souvenir or as a last-minute forgot so-andso’s big such-and-such. Tush, saved.

*PROUDLY PRODUCED AT #MOUNTAIN COLAB

Reved Quarterly is published quarterly, obviously.

It has been in proud existence for 11 ½ years and counting.

Its publisher reserves all rights to have fun with this newspaper and its subsidiary miniature newspaper.

Reved Quarterly and Reved ¼’ly are a printed by Reved Media, a division of Reved Global Inc., which is a subsidiary of, oh who am I kidding, my desk is stack of old newspapers in the Colab basement.

GET REVED Do you want the joy of Reved Quarterly at home, your work or office? Who wouldn’t! For $20 get delivery via ukelele-a-gram.

CONTRIBUTORS & ADVERTISERS Reved wants you. If you have an idea, a story, a business, a product, a haiku, classified, catsified—anything!­—call or email right meow.

POOPLISHER Peter Worden DELIVERED BY THE GREAT Bob Cameron HORRORSCOPES & GUY WHO DOES THEM FOR BEER: Mike “y’er the best” Murphy

PO Box 57 Revelstoke, B.C. V0E 2S0 Tel: 867 222 4556 Fox machine:  Email: editor@reved.net

REVED

Please address letters of adoration and sizable cheques to:

Any reproduction or duplication without prior written consent of the publisher is OK as long as you make it up to me with money and/or beer.

VOLUME II ISSUE 7 Published by Reved Media © 2017 Reved Media est. 2005

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Reved Quarterly SUMMER 2017 1 ½

OOHWHOSEAGOODREADERWEADER!

#ICYMI Scohol's Out For Suemmr

Food Bank volunteers Larry, John, Ben and Yuri devour the deliciously rich Spring issue of Reved Quarterly.

FOOD FOR THE SOUL Community Connections

FAN MAIL

 Art by the talented Cher Van Overbeke.

Insta, Tweet or Facebook @RevedQ.

REVELSTOKE NEED A DOG PARK?

REVED POLL: DOES

From The Editor’s Desk ... Stack of Old Newspapers