When they were supposed to be there, they never were.
And this was more than just on one or two occasions.
Police, by simply being a “Peace Officer” as defined by the Criminal Code of Canada are often thought of as infallible and beyond reproach.
The roads in British Columbia are governed by the B.C. Motor Vehicle Act.
One would think that the police in this province would know the motor vehicle act like the back of their hand. But they don’t. And honestly they don’t care.
I find that the civilian police operate much the same as the military police.
“BLAME THE VICTIM”.
It’s just much easier that way.
Today I was on my way to get a bit to eat when I had a police officer in a cruiser no less, tell me that my scooter wasn’t a vehicle and that I shouldn’t be on the street.
No wonder alternate modes of transportation have never taken off in this city like they should. This place has year round cycling facilities that should make it second to none in the world, but Finland, Norway, and even Iceland have better year round cycling levels that Vancouver does.
With mis-informed police like this, no wonder no one in the city likes to ride on the city streets.
Bicycle riders, and via the pilot project in effect in the lower mainland, operators of e-scooters are required to operate their cycle following the same rules as car drivers.
Under the motor vehicle act, a bicycle operator and an e-scooter operator wishing to turn left at an intersection must do so from the right side of the lane closest to the centre line of the road.
The only other requirement for bicycles and e-scooters making left hand turns at intersections is that in the case of multiple left hand turn lanes, the bicycle or e-scooter operator must only use the right most left-hand turn lane.
This is what this would look like in the real world.
Marine Drive and Capilano Road in North Vancouver.
Bicycles and e-scooters are permitted to make left hand turns from the right most left hand turn lane and never from the centre left hand turn lane.
When making a left hand turn from a two way to a one way on is to turn from the lane to the right of the centre line and one is to guide their vehicle into the driving lane closest to the left hand side of the one way street. If there had been parked cars on the left hand side of Nelson street I would have turned into the second lane from the left hand curb.
Well, I present to you the BC MVA COP. A transit cop. A transit cop that probably lives in Abbotsford or Langley where killing bicycle riders is a team sport.
Yep, you’re not imagining things. He rolls down his window to announce “you’re not a vehicle, get off the road”.
I despised my full name, but that’s for a different post.
While my family lived on Canadian Forces Base Shearwater in Nova Scotia people like Bill Parker or my uncle Al always referred to me as Bob, Bobby, or Robbie.
No matter how much I preferred Bob or Bobby my father and my grandmother were always of the opinion that my birth name was Robert and that’s what I would be called.
It wasn’t until my infamous August 2006 telephone call with my father that I became determined to change my name.
The telephone call was the first time that I had an inkling that my father knew more about the events on Canadian Forces Base Namao than what he had ever admitted to.
In the aftermath of the telephone calls I had decided that I was going to seriously look at changing my name and possibly going through hormone therapy.
So, I decided that I wanted to work on my name first.
I tried different first names, but I always came back to Bobby, or more specifically Bobbie. What I really liked about Bobbie is that it is a unisex name. Bobby is generally a male name. Bobbi is generally a female name. And Bobbie is gender neutral. Tracing the history of Bobbie through the years it has gone back and forth between being a male name and a female name.
Nothing fancy about the name Bobby / Bobbie / Bobbi. They’re all the diminutive spelling of Robert / Roberta.
And the plan was that once I underwent hormone therapy that I would simply drop the “e” and go with Bobbi.
But then I had to do a stupid thing and I went on to pick a fight with the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence.
The fight was going to be inevitable. There’s no way that the shit from 1978 through 1980 was going to stay hidden and buried in the past.
So, 17 years after my name I’m still Bobbie.
At least I’m on Estradiol and I’m sprouting beewbs……….
That’s why I would never have any interest in working under a “book smart” manager.
So for better or for worse I’m in a position where I don’t have to work under people that aren’t qualified for their positions.
Power Engineers have “Certificates of Competency” they do not have red seal trade qualifications.
In the field of Power Engineering there are people who can memorize steam tables and codes, but who don’t really understand which end of the screw driver they should be holding or how to rebuild a pressure reducing valve.
And when it comes to building automation, it’s very hit and miss as to their skill levels and their desires to learn.
And for the remainder of my time on this planet I have absolutely no intention of working under a book learner that has absolutely no common sense nor the ability to work with their hands.
My father was a piss tank alcoholic with a metric shit ton of demons.
My grandmother was a piss tank alcoholic with her own metric shit ton of demons.
There was absolutely no love in my family.
Anything that resembled love was just an attempt at blackmail.
I know that it’s weird to think, but the only time that I think I will ever feel loved is when people stop forcing me to live.
The best way for people to show their love to me is to admit that not everything is fixable and that sometimes the best course of action is to end the suffering, the depression, and the anxiety.
I’ve never had anything in the way of what I would call a “road trip” until rather recently in life.
My father wasn’t the type of guy to go camping with his kids.
He did borrow a truck with a camper from one of his air forces buddies when we lived on CFB Griesbach in Edmonton from 1980 to 1983, but this was so that he could take his new wife camping in the mountains.
In 2023 I had what you could call “road trips”.
One was to Ontario. And one was to Iceland.
The trip to Ontario was by Via Rail. This trip was booked so that it would happen right after I made my application for M.A.i.D.. I was intending to use the trip to have some quiet reflection after making my application for my death.
But of course, the Government of Canada capitulated to the imaginary friend brigade.
It was an interesting trip, but as usual depression and self doubt were my constant companions.
Initially I thought that the trip was going to be aborted in Winnipeg as there really wasn’t any space for me to be left alone on the train, but thankfully I discovered the “economy class” at the front of the train.
The “sleeper class” section of the train has access to the diner car and the bar car at the rear of the train. But with the exception of meal time, the diner car is off limits for sitting down in.
And the rear of the train is for socializing.
I don’t socialize.
I hate small talk.
And I hate polite talk.
So as can be imagined the trip started off as a nightmare.
But then I discovered the “economy class” diner.
And yes, I could grab a chair and sit at a table and write out to my heart’s content on my laptop.
My trip to Iceland came as a result of the settlement that I received for a previous childhood matter.
Ever since I received my medical reports from the PEI government in 2011 that indicated that my father had been in Iceland on the day that I had been knocked unconscious in a “bicycle accident” I had a desire to go to Iceland to see what was so special that he’d leave my brother and I alone in the PMQ while he flew off to an entirely different country with the Canadian Armed Forces.
The day of the “accident” was in July of 1978. My grandmother had returned back to Edmonton in the spring of 1978, and we moved to CFB Namao in Edmonton in August of 1978. My mother of course had been kicked out of the PMQ by my father in 1977.
I don’t recognize the names on the hospital records of the person who found me “laying” in the middle of the road and took me to the hospital. And my father’s name is the only name listed as Next of Kin, so it’s obvious that Richard wasn’t going to let his kids stand in the way of his flying to Iceland.
So, as I said, I was curious to see what was so special about Iceland.
I booked the trip so that I would be in Iceland for the summer solstice.
Iceland, or more specifically Reykjavik was interesting.
I didn’t get around too much of the island, I just stayed around Reykjavik, but I did violate one rule and I ended up out at the Black Sand Beach on the south east corner of the island.
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So, I never did discover a reason for my father to have buggered off to the island while leaving his kids unattended at home in military housing.
Maybe he thought that the other parents on base would just look after us in the same manner that he just expected everyone else to look after us.
And I can’t see having told his chain of command that he wouldn’t be able to go out on training exercises as he had a responsibility to look after his family.
Iceland is an interesting place. Nice and quiet. Everyone keeps to themselves, but they are very friendly.
If you have depression or anxiety Iceland is actually therapeutic as it gets you away from our toxic and highly dysfunctional culture.
The cycling culture is better than that of Vancouver’s.
Even though the Americans infected Iceland with car culture in the aftermath of WWII due to the presence of an American air force base on the island, bicycling is supported very strongly on the island. As is walking. Reykjavik is a very walkable city.
2023 Trip to Iceland
This counter that was just down the path from the hotel I stayed in shows that 5 bicycles and 16 pedestrians had passed this point by 00:58. Yes, the counter resets at 00:00. And yes, this is midnight on the summer solstice.
And the aforementioned US military presence on the island in the years after WWII is what fuelled the punk rock scene on the island, especially in Reykjavik. The punk rock scene exploded primarily as a force of resistance against the American influence on Icelandic culture.
There’s a wonderful little Punk “museum” in the heart of Reykjavik in an old converted public washroom. These public washrooms weren’t small, they’re pretty large. And hence there’s a museum in one of them. If you’re in Reykjavik you should give it a try.
Walking around in Reykjavik I realized that there weren’t many visible signs of drug use, mental health issues, or homelessness. That’s not because they don’t have these issues. It’s because unlike here in Canada where we are in a never ending race with the Americans to see who can cut their taxes to the absolute minimum while cutting as many social programs to the bone, Iceland heavily invests in social housing, looking after their mentally ill, and looking after their drug addicts.
Yes, their taxes are high when compared to Canada’s taxes, but they don’t have homeless people sleeping in doorways, homeless families living in cars, and homeless people shitting and pissing in the alleys.
And the truth about Canadian taxes is our tax rates, especially our lack of a wealth tax, is that our taxes are laughably so low that they’re criminal.
Canada’s tax rate is even less than America’s tax rate.
Christ, our tax rate is even lower than Ethiopia’s tax rate.
Yeah, it’s no wonder why we don’t have any investment in social programs and why our governments are trying to cut away as many social programs as possible. Our governments are trying to compete against Indonesia, Pakistan, and Ethiopia to be tax havens for the rich.
Anyways, would I go to Iceland again?
I probably would, given the chance. I’d plan for a couple of weeks stay and I’d try to get up to the northern part of the island to get as close to the Arctic circle as possible for the summer solstice.
Yep, the DOJ is appealing the decision of Justice Neufeld.
Nothing unexpected here.
In fact I would have been even more surprised if the CAF, the DND, and the DOJ didn’t appeal.
And they’re appealing just about everything in Justice Neufeld’s decision.
I don’t know how long this will take, but I would imagine that there will be some back and forth on this matter before the main case is allowed to proceed.
Hopefully this all gets wrapped up before Sir Misogyny the Orange invades and annexes Canada and turns us into another Puerto Rico.
And a convicted felon and an adjudicated rapist has become the president of the US of A.
Sir Misogyny the Orange is making wild ass claims that Canadians want to plummet down the “quality of life” rankings to join the US of A near the bottom of the list.
Vying to take Justin’s place is a man who has never worked a real job for a single day in his life, has been collecting a cushy government pension for quite some time now, and claims to support the “little guy” while calling for the age of retirement to be raised to 70 and beyond.
The fact that Christy Clark wants to throw her hat into the ring as the leader of the Federal Liberals shows just how uneducated the Canadian public really is. Christy was the premier of British Columbia after DUI Gordo stepped down. The problem with the BC Liberals is that they had nothing in common with the Liberal party in any other province or at the federal level.
The BC Liberals were the rejects left over from the collapse of the BC Social Credit party, which was as hard right and fundamentalist as they come. After the Socreds imploded under Vander Zalm the party knew that it would never be able to run as the Socreds again. So, it became the BC Liberal Party.
But the BC NDP wasn’t much better as it had veered to the far right, but it hadn’t veered right far enough for the real owners of BC. Even though the BC NDP were pissing off every union in BC and kissing billionaire ass left, right, and centre, it wasn’t enough. And when the BC NDP lost the election to the BC Liberals the leader of the BC NDP jumped into bed with BC’s own favourite billionaire.
I think that the dumbing down of Canada happened with Lyin’ Brian.
Instead of standing up to America, Brian dropped his paper bags of Karl’s money on the ground, knelt upon them, and pledged his fealty to Wall Street and to Ronnie Raygun.
And Canada has been influenced by American propaganda ever since. American propaganda is why there is such a wildly wrong interpretation of communism and socialism in the US of A.
With the absolute exception of the CBC, all Canadian Media is American owned.
Sure, just like in the oil fields, the head offices may be in Canada, but the shareholders and hedge funds are all American owned. And as such the media spews the American view.
There are Americans and Canadians that believe that the Soviet Union and China were / are communist when the Soviet Union and China have always been single party totalitarian regimes.
In the last 20 years China has veered off into some sort of hybrid mix of capitalism and totalitarianism. Meanwhile Russia veered off into some bizarre mix of capitalism and organized crime syndicates.
Communism by its very nature can’t exist in a state which enforces class stratification. For a state to be communist there can’t be “leaders”. Everyone would have to “lead”. And the state couldn’t own the means of production. Communism is where the workers own the means of production. I don’t think that any state workers in the U.S.S.R. or even pre-1990s China owned the means of production.
Socialism is the supposed condition that exists between capitalism and communism with the means of production and distribution being owned collectively for the benefit of the citizens of the country until a state of statelessness and classlessness can be obtained.
Capitalism is where the state serves to enforce the ownership of the means of production by the capitalists, and by force if force is required. Remember back to 1800s and the early 1900s when States in America would unleash state militias on unions at the bequest of the mine owners and would kill strikers to protect the assets of the owners.
It’s sad to see that there are Canadians that get all of their knowledge of America from TV shows like Beverly Hill 90210, House, Scrubs, etc.
The fact that an Australian Oligarch named Rupert Murdoch was able to worm his way into America and peddle his lies without contest shows just how unprepared the American government was for a takeover by foreign invaders.
Rupert lobbied Ronnie for the elimination of the “fairness doctrine” which led to Faux Newz, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Gavin McInness, which of course led to Canada’s very own media of the loons.
The fact that a racist from South Africa can be viewed as a “captain of industry” when his first product was a means to move money around without the scrutiny of the banks, law enforcement, and government which of course benefits one type of enterprise in particular is pretty damning.
And ever since the late ’80s the media, all owned by billionaires, has been skewing hard right and trying to convince people one both sides of the border that a fascist oligarchy is the best style of government.
The greatest trick of the billionaires has been convincing the general public that the media has veered too far to the left when in fact all the billionaires care about is spewing their propaganda in a positive light. To the billionaire class there is no right and there is no left, there’s only the serfs and the elites.
See, back in the early 1900s, America was going through a gilded age. The poor were surviving hand to mouth. American cities had massive slums that rivalled the slums of the United Kingdom. But the rich were making a killing.
But the oligarchs took it too far in the 1920s which led to the stock market crash of 1929 which plunged America into the great depression.
FDR came to the rescue with his “New Deal” which brought in all sorts of regulations and laws that prevented the stock market and the banks from acting like no limit casinos. He also raised the taxes on the multi millionaires to the point of 90% and above tax rates.
No one but an idiot would pay those tax rates. All you had to do was invest in your company, or invest in your work force, and your taxes would come tumbling down.
That’s why America progressed so far up the social ladder in the ’50s and ’60s.
But this wasn’t good enough for the plutocrats or the oligarchs.
They wanted their money without any of the social obligations that came with it.
So these fuckers started putting their kids through Ivy League schools with the goal of getting their kids into positions of government to overturn FDR’s “New Deal” policies. And they succeeded.
Since the ’70s the rich have been waging a war on the public education system. You need to destroy the public education system if you ever want to return to the gilded age. You need to brain wash the next generation into believing that being a billionaire is not a sign of mental illness but is instead a sign of brilliance. You need to brain wash the public into believing that the vote of someone making $65,000.00 per year is worth as much as someone with $120 billion dollars in wealth.
Did one of those DNA tests a while ago, and the results are interesting.
The “France” area doesn’t surprise me as my mother was dyed in the wool French from Quebec.
The Indigenous Americas doesn’t surprise me as my paternal grandmother was Swampy Cree from Northern Alberta.
What is interesting is the Scots. My father always told me and my brother that we were “mutts”, a mix of Irish, French, and Cree. He never said anything about Scottish. And it’s funny seeing that my DNA matches with more DNA samples from Indigenous Americas that it does with samples with Irish DNA.
This is primarily due to how dysfunctional my past has been and how much the past has affected my life in the current day.
All my life I’ve never had anything to look forward to in the future. The future was always uncertain for me as after CFB Namao I never saw myself having a future.
The one thing that I do have to look forward to is death.
The only certainty that life has to offer is death.
Death, as has been said, is the great equalizer.
When we’re dead we’re no better and no worse than the next person.
What is the greatest gift that someone could give to me?
Four simple words
You
Have
Been
Approved
I am so fucking tired.
Tired of this life.
Tired of this existence.
Tired of fighting the lies.
Tired of learning that the truth was more insidious than what could be imagined.
I’m really hoping that my nurse practitioner tells me in 2027 that the two M.A.i.D. assessors have approved my application for Medical Assistance in Dying. “Bobbie, you have been approved”.
Those four words will bring so much joy and relief to me.
Beeshive 