Seaside Restaurant on Salt Spring Island

Next to the Vesuvius Ferry Terminal on Salt Spring Island is a seafood and burger joint called Seaside Restaurant. It started in the 1940s as a marine service kind of place and evolved over time, and several owners, into a cafe featuring local seafood and fantastic sunsets.



















Halibut and cod are on the menu along with Salt Spring Island mussels and Fanny Bay oysters. When fresh, the halibut can be truly outstanding, succulent and rich with every bite. There are other menu items too, but when the fish is fresh nothing else makes much sense. Service is always friendly and efficient and the restaurant can be especially busy on nice summer evenings.

The deck offers a southwest view of Samson Narrows, the comings and goings of the ferry and the sometimes snow covered peaks around Duncan on Vancouver Island. When the weather is nice, the sunsets are incredible. Come for the fish, stay for the sunset.

Photos by Jim Murray. Copyright 2014.

The end of summer at Lakeside Gardens on Salt Spring Island

It was the last week of August. Why not go to St Mary Lake? To our retreat in Cabin  No. 7 at Lakeside Gardens? So we did. Sort of a last minute thing.













Because the resort was full (little wonder being the last week before Labour Day and the summer weather remaining fantastic), we started out in No. 12. The cabin actually seemed bigger than No. 7, and the bed, if we can call it a bed, felt almost more comfortable. Obviously there was nothing wrong with No. 12, though it wasn't No. 7; indeed, it was nice to have a new perspective.










The light on the lake still danced at sunset and the geese still used the diving float as their own personal sunning deck. Everything was the same, yet everything was different too. It's amazing what a difference ten metres can make, or a number on a cabin perhaps.
























After two nights we were able to move into No. 7. Harmony was restored to the universe once again.









People return again and again to Lakeside Gardens. Children of original visitors are now returning with their children and the amazing discovery of almost camping continues for yet another generation.

The days slow down here, and nights are filled with stars never seen in a city. People fish and paddle and swim. Or contemplate.

There is something magicall about this place. For me that moment of discovery was five years ago and the first morning after arriving late the night before, in the dark, to look out at the lake from the small window at the head of the bed as the sun came up. Then to walk in the early morning quiet before anyone else was awake, and long before the smell of frying bacon filled the air.

In the end it doesn't matter much the number on the cabin. There is a gentleness here, a peace that comforts, awakens and refreshes. We should all be so lucky to find that peace, and to be able to return again and again.

Photos by Jim Murray. Copyright 2014.

Labour Day in British Columbia and the rogue government of Christy Clark

It's Labour Day. A day to celebrate workers and recognise the contributions made to our society by the labour movement. Things like the minimum wage, limits to child labour, weekends, the right to organise, workplace safety and health care. In fact, recognising the need to assist people in our communities, and in the absence of good government, the first United Way in Canada was started by unionists. All of us in Canada, regardless of class or employment status, have been well served by a strong labour movement.

However.

Our provincial premier is at it again, distorting facts and misrepresenting issues as it relates to the teachers of this province and their lengthy battle with a government determined to break the union. Through tweets yesterday, then reprinted on Christy Clark's facebook page, she said:

Unfortunately, the BCTF rejected our offer to reopen schools while the two sides enter mediation to reach an agreement. Instead the BCTF is sticking to its strike and demanding twice as much money as everyone else in the public service has received.

Her tweets are misleading because it was never the teachers' decision to enter mediation. The Education Minister Peter Fassbender, another low wattage bulb if ever there was one, said the decision was left to the mediator Vince Ready and the talks were entirely exploratory. Ready was to determine if the two sides were close enough to proceed with mediation, and they weren't. The teachers did not reject anything. In fact the head of the union is still asking to meet with the Premier in an effort to bridge discussion. Teachers are not asking for twice as much money as everyone else and the Premier knows that too.

Minister Fassbender wants the BCTF to set aside its grievances about class size and composition, which is largely what the dispute is all about in the first place.

Christy Clark needs to turn down the emotional rhetoric and offer real leadership instead of ice bucket celebrity. Political points gained at the expense of teachers and children won't work. Class size and composition do belong in a collective agreement. The Premier needs to restore the funding she illegally cut twelve years ago. That legal fact was determined by the Supreme Court of Canada, though apparently it means nothing to her government.



It's Labour Day in BC. We should celebrate the strides we have made as a society and be wary of the people who want to dismantle public institutions in the name of a market economy. We need to raise our children to be active, thinking citizens, and not just members of a consumer society, whatever the hell that is. Public education is important in creating a just society for all of us and not just the ten percent. We need to be very wary indeed.

Copyright 2014 by Jim Murray.