Surfers can be seen paddling and riding in to shore as the sea lions leap into the air, presumably to escape the orcas.

“It looked . . . → Read More: Orcas chasing sea lions]]> Videographer Adam Chilton doesn’t think surfers in Tofino were at risk from a pod of orcas that came surprisingly close to shore in pursuit of some sea lions.

Surfers can be seen paddling and riding in to shore as the sea lions leap into the air, presumably to escape the orcas.

“It looked like they [orcas] were teaching their young to hunt,” said Chilton, 28.

He said the whales killed one sea lion.

Chilton posted the following video of the encounter on YouTube:

Chilton said orcas come by Ucluelet and Tofino regularly throughout the year, but it’s “very rare” for them to be seen so close to shore and so close to surfers.

He estimated the whales were approximately 100 to 125 metres from shore and less than 100 metres from surfers.

“The surfers, they knew what was going on and they got out [of the water],” he said.

Chilton is originally from the Sunshine Coast but now runs a video production business in Tofino — and surfs.

Against the background noise of a buzzing generator, professional wrestlers jostle across the screen of a satellite TV as Bimbo snatches and then gobbles down a cigarette from . . . → Read More: Ucluelet Women keeps pet deer]]> Inside their one-storey, metal-roofed, plywood shack on Vancouver Island’s rugged west coast, Janet Schwartz and her domesticated deer, Bimbo, are returning to their normal lives.

Against the background noise of a buzzing generator, professional wrestlers jostle across the screen of a satellite TV as Bimbo snatches and then gobbles down a cigarette from the lips of a couch-bound, 70-year-old boarder named Mike Miller.

The law — represented by men and women dressed in black uniforms and carrying guns — is no longer threatening to forcibly separate Schwartz and Bimbo, freeing the 10-year-old doe potentially to the fates of the surrounding rainforest and its hungry wolves and black bears.

FOUR-DAY SCARE

Once again, a sense of peace permeates this home that flies a faded and weathered maple leaf flag from the corner of an outside wall.

“We love each other,” said Schwartz who turned 70 on Saturday. “She’ll come up to me and she’ll kiss me right on the lips, like a man kisses a woman. She does the same thing. She kisses.”

For four days last week, Schwartz’s life turned as rocky and pitted as the undulating logging road that connects her to the outside world.

Conservation officers had arrived at the property in a remote valley near Ucluelet with orders to release Bimbo from the thin tether the deer is attached to when outside, said Schwartz.

Schwartz was told she wasn’t allowed to touch Bimbo any more.

COMPLAINT WAS MADE

It seems somebody had complained, said Environment Minister Terry Lake earlier in the week, noting it’s illegal to keep wild animals as pets.

During those tense four days, sleepless nights were made even more restless by nightmares, said Schwartz.

There were news stories and Facebook pages, and by Friday, the government had changed its mind: Schwartz could keep her pet with the help of a veterinarian and conservation officers.

“It makes me feel good,” said Schwartz of the announcement. “She is my life, OK? And I’ve had her since the day she’s been born.”

AN ORPHANED FAWN

The relationship began when a friend found the orphaned fawn along a nearby logging road not far from her current home, said Schwartz.

The friend brought the fawn over because she knew Schwartz had raised a buck before.

Schwartz named the fawn Bimbo, based on a Gene Autry song that was playing inside her home at the time, and began feeding the animal goat’s milk and Pablum.

‘SHE IS MY FAMILY’

“She is my family, as though I bore her,” said Schwartz. “It’s like I had her myself. That’s how I feel.”

Days turned into months and years, and now Bimbo’s a part of the family.

At night, Bimbo sleeps on a blanket on the side of Schwartz’ bed, and once in a while, she kicks Schwartz off her bed, forcing the senior on to a nearby couch.

In the middle of the night, Schwartz gets her up and guides her to a square-metre plastic tub where Bimbo urinates.

Bimbo spends the day outside, tethered to the home, joined by three dogs and a goat that roam a property dotted by broken-down vehicles and metres-tall piles of cedar planks and other refuse.

BIMBO IS PREGNANT

Sometimes, supported by two canes or a walker, Schwartz strolls the rocky property, smoking her favourite cigarettes, Number 7s, while searching for fresh foliage to feed Bimbo.

When that’s not available, especially in the winter, Schwartz drives into town to buy food.

Recently, a friend brought over a buck, said Schwartz, and now Bimbo is pregnant.

When Bimbo gives birth, Schwartz said she’ll keep the animal tethered, and keep the babies until they are old enough to do what they want to do.

Asked how he feels about sharing his life with Bimbo, Miller said, “Sometimes it’s a pain in the head, but I enjoy it. I wouldn’t part with her for nothing now. She’s got attached to me.”

CHOCOLATE A FAVOURITE

Among Bimbo’s favourite foods are apples, oranges, cookies, but right now it’s chocolate, said Miller.

Jane Hunt, a veterinarian who lives on a rural property not far away, said she first met Bimbo when the doe was just three weeks old.

Hunt said Schwartz has looked after Bimbo “a little too well,” noting with a chuckle that the animal is a little heavy right now.

Nonetheless, Hunt said, she believes Bimbo is better off with Schwartz.

“It has no previous experience with being a wild deer. It wouldn’t last in the bush. The wolves would have it in no time.”

She said the deer and Schwartz have bonded and co-exist happily.

LINGERING FEAR

“That’s who keeps me going,” said Schwartz. “If I lost her, I’d probably just die myself, because she keeps me going, she keeps me active, and that’s what I like about her.”

Schwartz said she hasn’t yet talked to anybody from the government about Bimbo and she’s still afraid conservation officers will return and order her to free the doe.

But she remains positive, noting somebody has offered to build a fence around the property so Bimbo can run free without a tether.

“I know one thing, I’m not going to let her go,” she said. “I’ll go to jail first.”

Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/news/deer+stay+with+woman+home+near+Ucluelet/7849924/story.html#ixzz2IdsV4n9T

SalmonFeedlotBoycott.com (SFB) is hoping to make 2013 the year that Canadians stand up to protect wild salmon, lobster, the marine environment, and the thousands . . . → Read More: 2013 New Year’s Resolution: Salmon Feedlot Boycott]]> Days before the end of 2012, a campaign has been launched that calls for Canadians to stop purchasing and consuming salmon that has been raised in open-net feedlots.

SalmonFeedlotBoycott.com (SFB) is hoping to make 2013 the year that Canadians stand up to protect wild salmon, lobster, the marine environment, and the thousands of jobs that rely on them. In time for the New Year, SFB is encouraging Canadians to join this campaign as their New Year’s resolution.

There is growing concern on both the East and West Coasts of Canada that wild fisheries and marine environments are being irreversibly harmed by industrial salmon feedlots. These feedlots are industrial livestock operations in the ocean, with up to one million fish raised at a single site.

Anissa Reed, coordinator of SFB commented, “Many years ago I used to manage an Atlantic salmon ‘farm’ so I know the nature of the beast. Today they still use open nets, they are still crowded feedlots, and the fish waste and excess feed fall to the sea floor. I have travelled all over British Columbia and, more recently, into communities throughout Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The faces of the people who know what is happening haunt me.”

Reed added, “This boycott is a platform for stories to be told on our social media pages, and the public can then participate and choose what they want for themselves and this country. I see this industry as a predator. They lobby the government for access into our communities with promises of good jobs, and pit neighbour against neighbour. They spend millions on advertising campaigns saying it is good for us, but I have seen, and believe, otherwise.”

Despite recent findings by the federal Cohen Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River, salmon farm leases continue to be granted by provincial governments for high-risk locations and no actions have been taken on the federal inquiry’s recommendations.

This campaign follows decades of attempts to negotiate with the industry and have government honour their own numerous reviews that recommended getting salmon feedlots away from wild fisheries. People have become more aware of the potential severe consequences of the practice of raising salmon in floating feedlots on Canada’s east and west coasts.

“While salmon feedlots have been contentious on the West Coast for a long time, this issue is rapidly becoming a hot topic on the East Coast with the increased rates of feedlot site lease applications and the growing awareness of the impacts these operations have on wild salmon, lobster, and coastal habitat,” stated Inka Milewski, New Brunswick-based SFB supporter and marine science advisor to community groups.

SFB is interested in spreading the boycott message throughout Canada but is also conscious of the global implications of salmon feedlots, since wild salmon go into decline wherever open net-pen salmon farms operate. There is also a boycott underway in Ireland.

Polling undertaken last month by SFB indicated just over half of Canadians would support boycotting farmed salmon. Support for a boycott is highest in the Maritimes, Quebec and B.C. The most frequently cited reasons for supporting a boycott were: concerns related to the products used to kill sea lice harming lobster; a diminished wild salmon population will impact orcas, eagles and grizzly bears; concerns about viruses in food; and the knowledge that wherever salmon farms operate wild populations are in decline.

The campaign website at SFB provides a series of easy-to-deploy actions designed to help educate Canadians and pressure politicians and other regulators into taking action.

Canadians who want to demonstrate their concern and have their voice heard can:
- Boycott the purchase and consumption of farmed salmon
- Ask markets and restaurants not to carry the product
- Check the label on your pet’s food and avoid farmed salmon
- Educate friends about the issue
- Sign SFB’s petition and/or write a letter to federal members of parliament
- Ongoing and informed conversation by Canadians with their supermarkets, pet food
manufacturers, fishmongers and government is an important starting point for positive
change.

In addition to asking Canadians to embrace their call for action as a New Year’s Resolution, a series of educational activities to raise awareness of the impacts of salmon feedlots are planned over the next several months.

Fillipoff, an elementary school teacher at the Queen Elizabeth School in Perth, took the trip after a series of . . . → Read More: Missing girl on Vancouver Island]]> Two weeks ago, Shelley Fillipoff put everything on hold and flew from Ottawa to Victoria, B.C., where, day by day, she searches the city streets. She plans to stay there until she finds her daughter.

Fillipoff, an elementary school teacher at the Queen Elizabeth School in Perth, took the trip after a series of phone calls she received from her daughter, Emma, 26.

Emma was in a fragile emotional state and was living in a women’s shelter. With a history of mental illness in the family, her mother was worried.

Over the course of five days, her phone calls home alternated between asking for help and pushing it away.

“For every phone call that said, ‘I need your help. Would you come?’ There was at least one that followed that said, ‘No, no, please don’t. Let me do this by myself, Mum. I need to figure things out.’ And I respected that.”

But to the mother’s ear, the last call seemed different. On the morning of Wednesday, Nov. 28, Shelley heard something in her daughter’s voice that led her to a decision. She lied and promised not to come, then she bought a plane ticket. Her daughter needed her.

At 11:00 that night she arrived at the Sandy Merriman House, but was told Emma had left the shelter five hours earlier.

Shelley couldn’t find her, and she has not been seen since. All of her possessions, however, including her laptop, her passport and recently borrowed library books, were found inside the 20-year-old Mazda Emma drove.

Emma, who trained and has worked as a chef, has no history of disappearing, no criminal record and no history with drugs.

Yet, staff at the shelter told Shelley they feared Emma could be a danger to herself.

Shelley said she is staying focused on her search, not on thinking about what might be.

“I can’t sit, I can’t sleep, I can’t eat,” she said. “What am I going to do? I have to look for her. That’s the bottom line: I’m going to find her. I’m going to make sure she’s safe. I don’t know that I’m always positive, but I’m always positive that my love for her is undying and that we as a family can’t be without one of ours.

“I can’t be without one of my kids, so I’m going to find her.”

So, every day she works to build her network of people who know Emma or who might be in a position to cross paths with her. She talks regularly with the Victoria police, updates the Help us find Emma Fillipoff page on Facebook at www.facebook.com/HelpUsFindEmmaFillipoff, and she distributes flyers with her daughter’s picture.

“I’m working with everybody here,” she said.

Emma, whose often-braided hair reached below her waist, is described as sensitive, shy, artistic and dreamy. She is five-foot-five and somewhere around 100 pounds.

Shelley Fillipoff said she has set no time limit on the search for her daughter.

“My search is going to be until I find her safe.”

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Perth+mother+desperately+searches+daughter+missing+Vancouver+Island/7684492/story.html#ixzz2F0HO9Ure

In front of me sat an elderly First Nations woman with hands as large as . . . → Read More: Pipeline protest spills democracy on legislature lawn]]> The granola-eaters were… eating granola. And yoghurt and fruit and other Whole Earth fare. The rest of us chased the 7 a.m. cobwebs with bacon and eggs aboard B.C. Ferries’ Queen of Somethingorother transiting between Tsawwassen and Victoria.

In front of me sat an elderly First Nations woman with hands as large as paddles, work-wrinkled knuckles like pine whorls. She had a beatific look and chatted amiably with the fashionista, twenty-something granddaughter escorting her — a picture of inter-generational solidarity.

Against the wall, a woman sat cross-legged in a blissed-out Lotus, eyes closed and fingers touching, ignoring the swirl of kids excited to be out of school. Around her sat business suits, MEC rain jackets, woolen ponchos and parkas with union logos. Folks were on their phones, their laptops or sitting in circles going over how to get arrested peacefully. It wouldn’t come to that but they were ready.

I noticed all this because when you’re heading to a protest it’s normal to check out those with whom you’re expressing solidarity, dropping your everyday judgments to give a free pass of association.

Far from the acephalous, nutbar-peppered mobs that descend on G8 summits, those heading to the provincial capital on Oct. 22 to voice opposition to the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway (ENG) pipeline and supertanker scheme were a diverse and legitimate cross-section of British Columbians: I joined doctors, lawyers, fishermen, artists, computer techs, engineers, teachers, professors, an Air Force pilot, families, First Nations, retirees, and bubbly high-school students carrying a sign proclaiming “Gingers for Climate Action.”

We flowed off the ferry and into a stream of 4,000 people to make Monday’s Defend our Coast action at the B.C. legislature an unprecedented display of provincial unity, or, as one wag put it “what a healthy democracy looks like.”

The day started with moving introductions from First Nations leaders that focused on the reasons we stood together in the cold.

Speeches from a broad range of critics followed — strong on We’re Not Gonna Take It but light on why that might be.

Gazing over a sea of signs like “There is NO Economy on a Dead Planet” and “There is no PLANet B,” however, speakers were perhaps apprised of the collective awareness in a crowd that clearly didn’t buy the economic fear-mongering emanating from Ottawa (or the Fraser Institute, that very day). Here were 4,000 people who knew that the environmental risks of the ENG project were too large to even be measured; that even if the significant impacts of pipeline construction could somehow be managed, the subsequent risks of transporting tar-sands bitumen diluted with highly toxic condensate would skyrocket, and that even a small spill would be catastrophic. Examples were legion: the Enbridge pipeline rupture that leaked three million litres into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River saddled hundreds with respiratory, gastrointestinal, and neurological symptoms and left 60 kilometres of water, sediment and wetlands contaminated; the Pembina rupture a decade ago put one million litres into the Pine River in northeastern B.C., killed thousands of fish and contaminated the water supply of Chetwynd. More insidiously — prescient of how governments might handle an ENG spill — was the 4.5 million litres of bitumen that soaked into the Peace watershed of northern Alberta on April 29, 2011. Oddly, it wasn’t until the day after the May 2 federal election that the magnitude of the spill was reported.

This last incident was retold at the rally by Melina Laboucan-Massimo, a Cree from northern Alberta who testified in March before the U.S. Congress about how spills have affected the health of her family and impacted a previously sustainable way of life. Despite speaking of it many times, Melina was moved to tearful summation: “Our land and people will never be the same.”

Listening in the audience were former federal Liberal environment minister David Anderson, NDP MP Kennedy Stewart, several NDP MLAs, and B.C. Green honcho Jane Sterk. But the star political speech came from Ottawa’s lone Princess Warrior — federal Green Party Leader and Saanich-Gulf Islands MP Elizabeth May.

May rightly connected the pipeline projects to the secretly penned 31-year agreement on investment with China, pointing out how the document would make it difficult to stop resource mega-projects without being sued by Chinese state-owned companies. “Christy Clark,” she said poignantly, “get yourself a lawyer.”

It wasn’t lost on a crowd brandishing signs like “Tarper” and “Chairman Harpo” that communist China and our libertarian PM share odd-couple common purpose and ideals: short shrift to workers, unfettered and unregulated capitalism, scathingly low corporate taxes, and little or no environmental oversight.

Early on, Tsleil-Waututh First Nation’s Rueben George had stirred the crowd. “We’re winning,” he’d begun to loud cheers, noting that pipeline opposition needed to be rooted in values surrounding the sacredness of land and water. “There’s no price we can put down on these things,” he said, stating that his band was going to oppose the pipeline for their children, and the children of all in attendance.

Then, noting that the folks behind the pipeline were too blinded by greed to soberly consider the future, George made the most inclusive gesture of the day.

“And we’re going to [fight] it for their children, too.”

Behind me, a pair of large hands slapped together like wood.

by Leslie Anthony
Source: http://www.piquenewsmagazine.com/