It’s cooler this weekend, almost time for long pants. Almost time for long faces. Labour Day, as in better get our heads out of the clouds, our toes out of the sand and our butts back to work.
First step: Catch up on the news you missed over the summer. Is Trump in prison yet? Is the McKenzie Interchange open? (They did say fall of 2018 when they started.) You’re pretty sure there was something about Lisa Helps wrestling a Ronald McDonald statue out of the Douglas Street Mickey D’s, but other than that you’ve been out of touch.
Here’s what you need to know: Uber is coming to B.C., Trevor Linden replaced John Horgan as premier, and Nanaimo council got its own reality show. Also, just in time for October’s local elections, Saanich’s tent city became Greater Victoria’s 14th municipality. Then it split into Central Tent City, North Tent City and Tent-City-by-the-Sea. (Just kidding; we’ll never see Uber.)
For real, here’s what happened: We spent much of the summer fussing about the malnourished J-50 and another resident orca, J-35, who spent 17 days carrying her dead calf around the waters of southern Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»Island. You know a species is truly in trouble when you’re on a first-name basis with the entire population.
For the second summer in a row an apocalyptic gloom fell over the city, blotting out the sun. With our eyes watering and our throats raw, we all agreed that the wildfire smoke was a reminder of how climate change is the greatest threat to the planet and needs action RIGHT NOW, but then the sun came out and our eyes stopped stinging and we decided to put off that action until next year, or maybe the one after that.
Speaking of smoke, if you think it was hazy in August, just wait for pot to become legal Oct. 17.
Speaking of pot, there’s a big tug-of-war over whether to allow concrete-bottomed marijuana greenhouses to be plunked atop fertile farmland in the Agricultural Land Reserve, which, fine, is a reasonable debate to have, but seems a tad hypocritical when you consider that NO ONE MAKES A PEEP ABOUT THE OPEN AND UNCHECKED GROWING OF (jeez, it’s even hard to type with without gagging) KALE! (Bleh! Ptooey!)
Speaking of bans, a Chemainus strata council barred children from playing in the street. Victoria banned plastic bags. Seattle and San Francisco banned plastic straws. You can still buy an AR-15, though.
Speaking of weapons, VicPD fielded a complaint about two men throwing guitars at each other on Pandora Avenue, which is weird because I didn’t even know Oasis was back together, let alone playing Victoria.
Speaking of internal English conflicts, there are fears that a no-deal Brexit could A) block exports of meat to the continent (just like that Yes, Minister episode where the European Union ruled the traditional British banger didn’t include enough meat to be called a sausage, so must be labelled Emulsified High-Fat Offal Tube) and B) block imports of human sperm from Denmark, which, for reasons I don’t want to know, has become a vital source.
Speaking of terrible things happening to Britain, France won the World Cup (though soccer’s biggest winners were the dozen Thai boys rescued after being trapped in a flooded cave for 17 days).
Speaking of soccer, it was announced that Victoria is getting a professional team next year. If that works out, maybe pro hockey will return to Vancouver.
Speaking of own goals, the federal government reached a deal to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline (what, was Blockbuster already taken?) just before a federal court halted the project, which prompted Alberta to A) back out of Trudeau’s climate plan and B) build a wall and make B.C. pay for it.
Speaking of petulant petro-powers, Saudi Arabia went, like, totally Mean Girls on Canada this summer, cutting trade, deleting that skeez Trudeau’s Instagram account and dropping a “nice wig, Chrystia, what’s it made of” on Canada’s foreign minister after she, OMG, hurt Saudi feelings in a tweet.
Speaking of Trudeau, the prime minister spiked in the polls after a Love Actually moment in which he stood up to the president of the U.S., who slapped tarriffs on us after deciding A) Canadian dairy farmers constitute the greatest threat to ’Merica since the Civil War (good people on both sides, BTW) and B) he needed to distract his base from stories about caged babies, secret payments to porn stars, the criminal conviction of his cronies and Omarosa’s book. But then Trump went NAFTA nutty on us again this past week, which at least helped take Trudeau’s mind off the pipeline.
That’s it. You’re up to date. Back to work.
