I’d love to predict a year in which the United Nations actually are. Unfortunately, mankind, for whatever reason, is clearly devolving along cultural and civilizational lines.

“Democracy” in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya will be the tipping point. Popular opinion there supports more religion and less business. Their economies, already bleeding cash, are going to crash. The unemployed will react angrily as they now realize the futility and go afield. Closest place: Europe.

The old Gal Europa ain’t what she used to be. The short work weeks, long paid vacations, perk filled, anything goes lifestyle that once was glamorized can’t pay for itself anymore, never mind feed and house tsunamis of migrants from even more failed states just across the water. Fewer workers will have to work harder to pay for other people’s benefits. The already unsustainable welfare state model simply has no hope of paying entitlements for even its own citizens.

We can see this happening here too. The recent sale of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Jays and Raptors by the Teacher’s Pension Fund shows how having 1.5 workers paying retirement benefits to each retiree cannot work. Our Canada Pension Plan needs topping off because it’s headed in the same direction. We now have, in many places around the world, people getting more from the state than they’re producing for it. The majority will democratically vote for more of the same but it’ll be a matter of the mind writing cheques that the body can’t cash.

Revolutions don’t happen because of high ideals like fairness and justice, but because of economic privation. Because economies are collapsing, humans will fight and it will be ugly. 2012 will be an interesting and bloody year. Have a good one while you can.

Publisher's Note

Since its inception in December 2002, Sun Peaks Independent News Inc. has published nearly 1.5 million copies of SPIN, the Sun Peaks summer and winter magazines and the Sun Peaks Visitors Guide. To put this in perspective, that’s close to 30 million pages of information about Sun Peaks and close to 15 billion printed words. I tried to calculate the number of letters typed but got lost in the zeros.

To date SPIN has inserted over 1 million copies of Sun Peaks literature directly into homes and businesses in various regions of B.C. and to stay in the positive I try not to think about how many cat litter boxes SPIN has lined, how many rainbow trout it’s wrapped up or how many woodstoves or campfires copies of SPIN have lit. Old copies only please folks.

When I look at the numbers, I say “holy cow,” but as with any small publication like SPIN, we’re only as good as the people behind it and it’s those people that truly have made the difference. To date SPIN Newsmagazine has had six editors behind the wheel and each one has not only brought a unique style of writing and English composition to the publication, they’ve also grown with the community through the eyes of SPIN. I also need to take my hat off to the dozens of writers who’ve graced the many pages of SPIN over the years with their tales, stories, articles, letters and sometimes heated opinions on any number of subjects. Without these seasoned writers, journalistic hopefuls and, in some cases, opinionated so and so’s, we could never have become an informative, engaging, news and information source to our readership and the people of this great community.

Many people may not think about it when they’re reading a copy of SPIN with their morning latte or their après beer but no one has ever paid to pick up a copy of SPIN Newsmagazine. SPIN is free and it’s the loyal and continued support of our many advertisers each issue that keep this publishing ship above water. Whether it’s a full page colour advertisement or a black and white business card, we hold all our advertisers in the highest regard as, without their trust in us to market their businesses, SPIN would simply cease to be. In closing, I think that SPIN Newsmagazine has become many things to many people in this community over the past decade and be it good, bad or indifferent in your Sun Peaks world, Sun Peaks Independent News, or SPIN, is here to stay.

Canada’s unique in that it’s a country where the national police force is a symbol of pride and supposed professionalism. Cop cadets around the world thrive on often true tales of lone Mounties on dogsleds, always getting their man. The Musical Ride spectacle and Stetson hat represent justice and fair treatment, or used to.

This bucolic image has taken a beating in the past few years. Never mind that in Trudeau’s day the mounties burned down barns and tried to pin the blame on Quebec separatists. Or that an on duty constable was caught red handed, incredibly on camera, last summer kicking a man on his hands and knees in the head. His punishment: suspension with full pay while the stuff hit the fan. What does one have to do to get suspended without pay in our new RCMP? Even my mother was livid at this travesty.

In the past weeks we’ve been assailed by reports that several female officers are seeking lottery-sized payouts after having to endure years of harassment by their male counterparts. They’re still on the payroll, one of them for over four years now, for stress leave. What these crybabies should get through their heads is that being an RCMP member entails some toughness, and that being subject to off-colour jokes absolutely doesn’t justify sitting on one’s butt collecting pay for some nebulous accusations. If the allegations are serious, physical injury, for instance, fair enough. Sorry ladies, in Copland, as in the real world, hurt feelings don’t justify oodles of cash.

We, in Sun Peaks, have witnessed a series of break-ins lately. By the time the rural constabulary get here, the deed’s done and the culprits have vanished. Policing has been one of the issues in the past civic campaign here, but the cost of $150,000 for one officer is too much for us to afford. Could it be that the force is paying people to sit around while denying us basic service? We’d all love to have a police presence here, but the economics are lousy.

Staying on the topic of sex and power, it appears that the same politically correct idiocy that infects the RCMP is also alive and well in the U.S. presidential campaign sphere. Four women now allege that Herman Cain made unwanted advances towards them up to 14 years ago. No charges were ever brought forward, but his campaign’s now doomed because of his awkward answers and evasive behaviour.

This isn’t an entirely bad thing because his profound cluelessness on economics and basic geography deem him too dumb to be President anyway. Like Rick Perry before him, one must be reasonably cognizant of world events and have ready, realistic answers or suffer the inevitable pointed questions about his preparedness. Ask Sarah Palin how this feels. To her credit, she had the balls to take the heat without lawyering up.

Publisher's Note

As will happen in other resort towns, people from around the globe flock to Sun Peaks, B.C. each winter to ski, work, holiday, party, and do whatever it was that inspired them to come here. While the success of Sun Peaks Resort as a resort community is based on the positive experiences of all our guests and visitors, it’s also directly tied to the positive attitude of those that call it home—the Sun Peaks “locals.”

As SPIN publisher I’d like take this time to enlighten all those new to this great community on a few subjects as the locals see them, so while they’re here they too can also live the positive Sun Peaks lifestyle that sets the tone in this great community.

As we’re a global community, being a Sun Peaks local isn’t really based on years lived here, but is based instead on a positive attitude while living here. True locals don’t litter the ski hill, parking lots, village core, or anywhere else, with their garbage, cigarette butts, dog crap or anything else, as these same locals are the ones who invariably pick all this garbage up each spring. Snow doesn’t make litter, empties or dog crap go away, locals make it go away. Locals never walk on Sun Peaks Road as that amounts to Russian roulette with cars and trucks. They walk the lit and ploughed Valley Trail, night or day. Locals don’t fight, smash bottles and scream at the top of their lungs when leaving the bars and restaurants at 2 a.m., they quietly leave the village core so as not to disturb others not attending their after party. Locals don’t drink and drive, they get a sober ride home or they walk the whole 15 minutes it takes to get anywhere in this town. Locals are respectful of those visiting Sun Peaks and instead of saying, “What do you want?” to a guest or customer, locals say, “What can I do for you?” or, “How can I help?”

While everyone that lives, works and breathes Sun Peaks may be here for different reasons, the simple fact is we’re only as good as the collective show we put on to the world, and the success of that show is on everyone’s shoulders. If you want to be a Sun Peaks “local” during your stay here then we’ll happily welcome you with open arms, but with that title comes the same responsibilities that one would expect if we all moved to your hometown.

Political Point of View

It’s no wonder, given the faux war on drugs, the amateur war on terror and the successful war on poverty in the Western world, that the laughingly ineffective war on Wall Street is going to be a mere footnote shortly. Even the left in our brave new world are incompetent.

Witness the spectacle of urban youth setting up shop in city spaces with space age tents and port-a-potties, complaining about how lousy and unfair life is. I’ve got news for them: the facts of life are conservative. Hockey players on the way to their next five star hotel, in their exquisitely tailored suits, surely shouldn’t be given all that adulation and money, but I don’t hear anyone complaining about them.

When people make lots of money we need to feel those dollars were earned, only then can we grant those rich folks respect. To receive a multimillion dollar severance package while running a bank into the ground is unethical. To get a bonus while polluting the Gulf of Mexico doesn’t do BP stockholders a whit of good, and rightly so. Average Joe can see that. But, the Occupy Wall Street crowd doesn’t complain about someone like the late multi-billionaire Steve Jobs’ wealth because they deem his stuff worthy.
As part of a generation saddled with huge debt caused by unrealistic programs that assumed one can get something for nothing, I too am angry at other’s excesses. Like everyone else in the real world, I’m going to fume at this year’s Wall Street bonuses. Given that many of the banks had to be backstopped by us, the lowly proletariat, I feel rightly betrayed by the sheer injustice of it all.

I’m quietly proud that in Canada our big banks and large corporations are quite profitable. If they want to squander money by over-paying their top people, it’s their prerogative. As a group, we could boycott one company or another, but at the same time one person is withdrawing his account from one bank to another, he’ll meet a person doing the same going the other way. I suppose we could put our money under the mattress so a big-shot banker won’t be able to rip us off, but I don’t think any one of us will make much of a statement that way.

The real question is, if capitalism is so blatantly unfair, why isn’t there another system that even remotely rivals it for material abundance and a lifestyle unthinkable not so long ago? I don’t see a flood of people getting on boats to go to the “Arab Spring” countries; there’s no mass exodus of Mexicans leaving the “Unkind States of America” to their supposedly heartfelt homeland. The asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants leaving their countries seem to be on a one-way street into our money oriented, fake happiness, and consume-all-you-can culture.

Maybe we should put up a sign at our borders that says, “Warning: Capitalism at work,—may be offensive to some.”

Publisher's Note

On Saturday, Nov. 19, eligible voters will cast their ballots to elect the first full term mayor of the Mountain Resort Municipality of Sun Peaks. While municipal status was granted on June 28, 2010, this year we fall in line with all municipal elections in B.C. and will, going forth, vote every three years for our mayor and council.

The Sun Peaks election is different from other municipalities in B.C. this year, as all three of the Sun Peaks elected councillors were re-elected by acclamation with no one challenging their positions. Furthermore, the one provincially appointed councillor (a first in B.C., if not Canada) will be named by the Province after the election. The same cannot be said for the mayor’s race, as Sun Peaks’ first incumbent mayor, Al Raine, is being challenged by local resident Ms. Renate Kals.

Ms. Kals, a long-time resident of the community, has been a very outspoken opponent of the new mayor and council and other community leaders over the past years and currently uses her own web blog to further her “Save Sun Peaks” cause. On the other side of the race is incumbent Mayor Al Raine whose first 18 month term as mayor has been full of new and sometimes bumpy territory in guiding the community through the municipal transition process of bylaws, taxes and legal challenges.

While the democratic system of Canadian politics allows anyone eligible for public office to run in an election, sometimes one has to question the true rationale of political candidates. The job of being a mayor in B.C. is truly a thankless one in the end, and the annual salary, simply put, is less than my truck’s fuel bill per annum.

So the question begs, why would someone run for mayor? There are only two reasons that come to mind. One: they have lots of excess time on their hands and want to do something positive for their community. Or two: they feel that the leadership is lacking and their goal is to smooth out the rocky road of community governance as it stands.

I think it can be safely said that while both may very well be valid reasons to throw your name in the political ring, does the latter really do any good for community well-being as a whole? Is the new municipality of Sun Peaks already broken after only 18 months in existence?

That’s a question you’ll have to ask of or answer yourself once you step to the polls on Nov. 19. All politics aside, just make sure get out and vote as that’s your Canadian right.

Political Point of View

“Can’t anyone here play this game?” — Casey Stengel explaining his 120 game losing 1962 New York Mets.

October seems to be the time of year when financial news headlines are at their goriest. The Great Depression of 1929 started in that month; the biggest one day drop in the Dow was in Oct., 1987 and the most recent Lehman Bros. et al collapse happened this time of year too. The 2011 version is ominously on track with fears of the Eurozone meltdown leading to “worldwide financial contagion” whereby banks and governments will renege on their obligations. This spark will lead other banks to announce that, because of their stakes in each other’s assets, if one starts going down, they’ll domino and you and I will pay for these misdeeds through increased service charges, zero interest on savings and new fees on everything.

It doesn’t help that there are rogue traders making billion dollar losing bets at UBS, former executives pocketing multimillion dollar severances and bonuses, huge insurance and federal disaster relief costs due to wild weather and people building where mother nature is saying, “No, don’t.” Congress had to authorize another borrowing increase for storm damage and it almost shut down the U.S. government.

Borrowing money is the culprit in this scenario. In order to keep the Europeans partying like there’s no tomorrow, the Americans throwing trillions into playing war, and the Chinese building shoddy railways, the sums involved are mind-boggling. C. D. Howe, the famous Canadian finance minister once stated, “What’s a million?” Now President Obama can talk about a mild stimulus of $44.5 billion and nobody except the talking heads on TV pay much attention because we all know how effective the previous stimulus was or wasn’t. Apparently, as a nation we owe more money, per capita, than ever before and yet we’re not alone.

REM’s recent retirement gave their song, “It’s the end of the world as we know it,” lots of airtime, and rightly so, given that it’s the precise anthem for our particular zeitgeist. Politicians and financiers talk of numbers no one can really understand. The whole world has so many IOU’s outstanding it seems logical to go back to square one and start over. The U.S. has no hope of paying off upwards of $14.5 trillion federally, never mind many times that much when you add up household debt. Europe is in trouble because the Germans won’t pick up the tab for other countries because it’s facing internal pressures of its own. China has a fake banking system prone to inflation and Japan is falling off the cliff due to an aging, expensive population. Russia even with its Canadian-style resources can’t make a go of it, and is losing population because people feel there really is no tomorrow and won’t reproduce because it’s too expensive.

It’s a good thing ski season is starting soon because we need a distraction. So, when you’re trying to keep your skis together in the powder, banish from your mind how others are ringing up a tab at your expense.

Publisher's Note

It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost 18 months since Sun Peaks Resort became the first Mountain Resort Municipality (MRM) in B.C. While there are a total of 13 resort municipalities in the province, Sun Peaks’ designation as an MRM allows for special features such as an appointed councillor, additional hotel tax rebates, and other grant/funding streams that many other municipalities don’t have. Although there’s been considerable debate on both the supporting and opposing sides of this new municipality, the reality is, it’s now legislated and written in law that the people of Sun Peaks, B.C. can collect their own property taxes and govern their own destiny from within.

As a long-time local and publisher of the local newspaper, I tend to hear a lot of scuttlebutt about how council should be or shouldn’t be doing this or that, and what they’re doing is good, bad or indifferent to the needs of this community. The funny side of it is that many people, regardless of their feelings toward the new municipality, or Sun Peaks as a whole, have no real clue what they are talking about or what they are really for or against, because they don’t understand local governance or read the bylaws or meeting minutes in the first place! The term “knowledge is king” comes to mind whenever I hear someone complaining about something in this community they really know nothing about.

Democracy is a wonderful thing and it shows in no uncertain terms what the true will of the community is. People running for municipal office are either elected by their peers to represent their community or they’re not, Palin and simple. Pun intended. Local governance is just as it sounds—a town, hamlet or small village governed by elected citizens of that community for the betterment of that community.
It takes a huge amount of personal time and effort to represent your community on council and it’s the people with a willingness to make a positive difference that tend to succeed in these positions, because we all know they don’t do it for the money.

If political change is what the people of Sun Peaks wish for, and this I truly question, then people should not only educate themselves in the governance of Sun Peaks, they should also step up and run for the position of mayor or councillor in the Nov. 19 election.

In closing, I’d like to truly thank our current mayor, council and staff for their baby steps, take our time, let’s do this right the first time, fiscally responsible approach to the governance of Sun Peaks over the last 18 months. To all those that think you can do a better job, you have until 4 p.m. on Oct. 14, 2011 to put in your nomination papers. Good luck to all on Election Day.

Political Point of View

“Politics makes for strange bedfellows.” Charles Warner twisting Shakespeare’s “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.”

Eyeing the possible merger talks between the Liberals and the New Democratic Party is going to be like watching a Discovery Channel program about the mating habits of black widow spiders. You know there’s a good chance that the lusty little male (usually half the size of the female) is going to have to strum the web upon which she sits in order to seduce her into languorous lassitude whereby he will then seize his chance to scramble close, connect his naughty bits, and get the heck out of there before she injects him with liquefying venom. His last thoughts are probably hopes that a new batch of young ‘uns will have made it all worth it.

Human political antics are not much prettier. Remember when the Reform Party came along, took over the Progressive Conservatives and, much like lions in Africa, eliminated the hierarchy and put their own stamp upon the species. Since the NDP and Liberals only used to be differentiated by their electability anyway, this transition will probably take a little time, produce a few minor convulsions and result in no great changes to the Canadian political cosmos.

That big change happened long ago under Trudeau. Whereas he said that the government has no right to interfere in the bedrooms of the nation, he did make it his business to interfere in the pocketbooks of the populace. Under him, peacetime deficit spending became entrenched in the body politic until sovereign deficits leading to debt became facts of life. To be fair, other countries’ governments also believed that borrowing to finance programs rather than reducing spending was the best way to get re-elected. Sticking the unborn with massive debt was never a good idea except for those who won’t be around when the stuff hits the fan.

The recent drama in the U.S., where both parties have no clue how to rein in spending, reveals that the time has now come. Downgraded debt, expensive borrowing costs and reduced basic services are the immediate consequences. The public sector unions are tossing aside basic civility to protect what they claim is rightly theirs. When Scott Walker of Wisconsin made his state employees pay 12 per cent of their pension rather than 5.6 per cent, the unions stated that this was a full frontal assault upon all working people. They all went on strike, illegally occupied the legislature and then realized after a few days that the rest of the state got along fine without them. Pundits like me who wondered why the workers didn’t pay 100 per cent of their pension were ignored for being out of touch.

When governments routinely consume 50 per cent of GDP in order to “redistribute” to themselves, the prevailing mantra becomes “get what you can while you can”. The results will be like the riots in London and Vancouver—people will go feral.

Photo submitted by Bob Ball

I read Adam Earle’s opinion piece entitled “The smell of money” on the Enduro motorcycle race July 9 and 10, and would like to share some facts and opinions with you.

First of all, I don’t have an issue with a motorcycle race if it’s done in a sustainable way that doesn’t harm our wonderful environment at Sun Peaks. Unfortunately, this race left scars that’ll have to be fixed or will be with us for a very long time. I have an issue with Adam’s comment: “The grass and bushes will grow back, the mud puddles will dry and the money will stay where it belongs . . .”

Take a walk up Great Grey Trail and see for yourself the destruction left by this race (see photo). Ruts more than 1 foot deep will not “grow back”. All cover has been removed and this leads to erosion, more ruts, and sediment pollution of the streams the trails cross. Adam calls for a “shout out” for the enduro organizers; I would feel more like shouting out if they had the decency to remove race signs, arrows and ribbons (this is a small point compared to the environmental damage 180 dirtbikes have done to our trail system, but it’s indicative of an attitude of NOT leaving the environment as they found it). And don’t hold your breath if you think they are going to fix up the devastated trails.

The Sun Peaks Resort Corporation has worked very hard to establish a reputation of great environment stewardship for our premier family resort. I, for one, support events that will maintain or enhance this reputation.  Let’s not throw our reputation down the ruts on the moonscape that used to be the Great Grey Trail.

Bob Ball, Sun Peaks, B.C.