Folks who live on the coast here are blessed with meterological amnesia. This is a helpful condition in the winter time, when weeks of rain and darkness can be instantly forgottne the moment the murk lifts and the mountains reveal themselves in all of their snowcapped glory.



However, it works both ways. Today is a wet cool day, with fog and rain and low cloud, and suddenly we have forgotten summer, donned the Gor-Tex and started building fires.



Gary the roofer stopped by and plugged up the leak, which turned out to be a hole in the shingle covering the valley of the mudroom dormer. He gooped it up and we'll give it a day or so to dry out and see if that has done the trick. I hope so, because the option is taking off the roofing and properly sealing the connection between the house and the mudroom, a small addition which was added after the house was built. I'll take a few tubes of goop over that calamity any day.

First Pineapple Express of the year last night. It rained hard for a few hours overnight and soaked everything. There was a few inches of water in my bucket in the mudroom. The leak will be fixed soon.



Usually September is very nice, with clear skies and little rain, but this year it has turned out to be a little wetter and a little cooler than normal.



The snowberries are out on their bushes and the maples are starting to turn yellow.

We've had a spot of trouble here over the weekend. A soggy Bowfest seemed to have ended with a lot of strange activity. Police running around arresting people and pepper spraying youth, folks getting drunk, kids in trees...crazy stuff.



Bowfest is a family festival and usually ends in the night with a band a dancing. There are often house parties afterwards where young people make a lot of noise. I have no doubt that there's drinking and drugs involved, but I've never heard of any major problems.



The past two years though, there has been vandalism, and the local RCMP have called in additional officers to patrol the festival. These guys clearly aren't from the Island, and they aren't familiar with the people who live here or the way we do things. This is not the big city; it's a very small community and everyone pretty much knows each other pretty well. Having off island cops working the festival without any previous exposure to the island is a recipe for disaster.



I know a lot of the people in this story. Ella Barrett, the mayor's daughter, babysits my kids sometimes and is a great kid. She is wise beyond her years in a lot of ways. She was sitting in a tree waiting for a ride when she was stopped and accused of being high. Kids on Bowen sit in trees all the time. It's one of the reasons people move here with their kids.



And I know Corporal Greg Lui as well. He is in my taekwondo class and I spar with him all the time. Earlier in the day he and one of his constables shaved their heads to raise money for cancer. I've talked to him about introducing new cops to the island and having people get to know them a bit. We have good conversations. This year Greg took the initiative of setting up an outdoor leadership training program for at-risk youth here on Bowen which I have heard good things about. He invited me to help out if I was needed, on the basis of the work I do with youth.



So I klnow these people and I like and respect them. There are scads of rumours going around about what happened, and everyone has an opinion. Me, I'm keeping my opinions in check, and instead I'm willing to let the complaintants work out their difficulties between themselves. It's not my place to judge anyone involved in this mess. I'll bear witness to how this all plays out, but I don't see things as black and white here. The kids are not "thugs" and Greg is not the "George W. Bush of Bowen Island." I don't find those characterizatins all that helpful in a small community.



What I do like though is the idea that we engage in a dialogue with our local RCMP about the kind of policing we want here as a community. Our mayor, Ella's mother Lisa, has offered to convene that discussion, and I think that's good. It's a way we can all have a voice in what happens here in the future. Lots of people who weren't involved in the events on the weekend have an opinon. I think we would all be better served as a community if people expressed that energy through a community meeting to talk about what we value here and what we want.

Yikes...pouring rain tonight. We've probably had close to 10 mm of rain this evening. It's warm but it does feel like a fall soak. We really needed this.



Unfortunately what we don't need is the rain inside the house. Tonight as I write we have a leak in our mudroom and some damaged drywall. I think it's a result of overflowing eaves which filled up with fir needles last week in the rain. We've got a big bucket catching water and first thing in the morning I'll be on the little porch roof drying everythig out.

Sort of crappy weather lately. Sunday we had a full on autumn downpour which was much welcomed by the parched earth on the island. As it felt autumnal, we all headed out to the trail around Killarny Lake to hang out in the forest trying out various new pieces of rain gear. Notable was the preponderance of both Red-legged frogs and Pacific tree frogs hopping all over the place.

We're home from a trip to Ontario, and as usual things have changed.



The ocean is very warm, warmer than Lake Huron even! Night skies are opaque due to smoke from the hundreds of forest fires burning around BC. We are low on water again this summer. The crickets are out in full force, having started in July and chirping steadily stronger since then. There are eagles dancing in the sky above Deep Bay.



There is a Waco of development happening on the island and I'm starting to feel it. Three new houses are being built nest to each other here in Seven Hills. One of them is replacing an old cottage but the other two have been erected on lots carve from the bush. Cape Roger Curtis is selling and there is great uncertainty and controversy about its fate. It will probably be developed for houses. There is a lot of shouting and worry at the moment, which will have to eventually settle into something more constructive. The developer Wolfgang Duntz, who I have always had some respect for (he has gifted a lot of stuff to the community) is having a bad summer. First he overcut on the golf course development, invoking the wrath of private landowners and the environmental regulatory agencies. Now he has circulated an essay on why preserving Cape Roger Curtis would turn Bowen Island into the West End of Vancouver. The essay makes no sense, and really skews the purpose of those of us who want to see the Cape preserved in some fashion, even if some development has to go ahead.



The tone of things is bitter, bringing to mind the debates of last summer over the ferry marshalling. Perhaps we need the fall to cool our heads and find our way. But I don't think this issue is going away that easily.

Finn has discovered the remarkable pleasures of first swimming and now snorkeling. In the past two weeks he has taught himself to swim with his face in the water and today he has learned to use a mask and snorkel so he putters up and down the surf line looking at rocks for long periods of time. It's funny to see a three year old skin diver, Cousteau Jr.



Tonight was the annual firefighter's dock dance, and evening of live music and reverie on the dock at the Dallas Marina. It's a fundraiser for the volunteer fire department and one of the highlights of the year. We waited too long to get tickets and got stumped at the gate. That wasn't the only tragic news of the day though. More importantly, the firefighters had a substantial amount of the pre-dance sales receipts stolen from VONIGO, the pottery shop in the Cove that sells tickets.



Whoever stole the firefighters' money has a hard life ahead of him if he's caught. I hear they are looking for a specialist to send into burning houses to save people's pets. It's just the kind of community service a thief that steals from charity deserves. Not to mention the fact that this moron stole from firefighters. These are big strong guys, well known and respected in our community with narry a single enemy among them. Where does this fool think he is going to hide? If I were the guilty party, I'd be making an anonymous return of the money in lieu of a creative public humiliation.