Why I like being here

Light rye sourdough, take two

2009-03-17T22:32:00.001-07:00

I had another go with the pain au levain style bread this weekend, following my hunch from the first time and making a much lighter loaf with more wheat flour and less rye starter. I was very pleased with the result. It rose really nicely and pretty vigorously for a sourdough. The trick of wrapping it in a floured cloth and leaving it to rise in loaf tins to stop it spreading out too much worked well again, although I still haven't quite got the hang of what's required to stop the dough sticking completely.

The recipe this time was:
400g Rye starter
450g Water
800g All-purpose white flour
1tbsp Salt

As before, whisk together the starter with the water. Add the flour and salt and mix to a dough. Knead for 15 secs, leave for 15 mins, knead for 15 secs, leave for 30 mins, knead again, leave for one hour, knead again, leave for a couple of hours.

Divide the dough into two. Knead into balls and form into baton loaves. Place on floured cloths, roll up the cloths and put the loaves into loaf tins. Leave for 3-4 hours until doubled in size.

Heat the oven to 450F. Spray the loaves with water then bake at this temperature for 5 mins before reducing to around 375F for a further 30-40 minutes until done.

Smashing.

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Scout manure

2009-03-17T22:10:00.000-07:00

Walking down Cambie St at the weekend I was amused to see this sign outside a church. One has to commend the entrepreneurial spirit of these young men and women in today's straitened times. But one is left wondering what it is about a Scout's diet that makes the product so effective?

Light rye sourdough bread

2009-03-08T22:17:00.001-07:00

The traditional French 'Pain au Levain' has always been one of my favourites - a fantastic blend of the lightness and crustiness of a French baguette with a hint of sourness and a background rye roundness of flavour. I also love the caraway flavour that is often associated with rye bread, particularly in North American variations.

This is my homage to both these styles. Like a Pain au Levain it is a wheat-based bread leavened and coloured with a sourdough starter. Unlike traditional pain de levain I've used a rye starter. My rye starter seems to be particuarly vigorous - I believe this is typical of rye starters because there's more readily available sugars in dark rye flour. I was quite pleased with the result - it goes great with cold meats, particularly the eastern european variety - salamis, mettwurst, landjaeger etc.

Recipe
300g dark rye sourdough starter
200g water
350g all-purpose flour/strong white bread flour
1/2 tsp caraway seeds
1 tsp salt

Whisk the starter with the water. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix into a dough. Leave for 10 minutes to rest.

Knead for 15 seconds, return to bowl, cover and leave. After 15 minutes, repeat the kneading and put it back in the bowl again. Repeat after 30 minutes and then again after 1 hour. Leave the dough for 1 - 2 hours until doubled in size.

Knead the dough quickly into a ball, flatten then fold into a baton shape. Roll it to smooth the shape and put it seam-up on a floured cloth. To keep the rough shape of the baton, I put the cloth into a large loaf tin - the dough shouldn't fill it, but it helps stop the dough from spreading out. Of course, if you've got nice baskets to put it in, use them.

Leave for another couple of hours until it doubles in size.

Pre-heat the oven to 450F. Turn the loaf out onto a baking sheet, slash the top a couple of times, spray it with water to let the crust expand and then sling it in the oven for about 45 minutes.

I was pretty pleased with the result - it's really tasty and it doesn't take as long to get results as many other sourdough recipes. I'm not sure if that's because of the high proportion of starter to new flour, or because of the vigour of this starter, but I'm happy. I might try it again with more flour - try to make two loaves with the same amount of starter.

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Houghton Lock on a winter's evening

2009-03-05T10:26:00.000-08:00

This is not about being in Canada as such - it's actually a photo that takes me right back to my childhood. However, if I wanted to make a tenuous thematic link I would say that one of the nice things about living away from the UK is that you can really appreciate the nicer parts of it when you visit as a tourist. And, of course, unlike a real tourist you have all sorts of background and memories to give your holiday that extra meaning.
I lived in Cambridgeshire for the second half of my childhood. This is the lock on the River Great Ouse at Houghton, the favoured twin of the village we moved to in the late 1970s. I spent many happy days playing on and around the river, swimming, boating and exploring the reaches, meadows and islets that are formed by the river and its floods.
The lock itself was a great way to supplement my pocket money. Every fine weekend in the summer it would be in constant operation with boats going up and downstream, carrying the great and good of the district in a gin-fuelled haze. Operation of the lock was manual, requiring the winding up of the large sluice gate you see here and the opening of swing gates and paddles at the other end. I would offer to do this work, borrowing the key required for operation from one of the boats. Nine times out of ten they were more than happy for me to take over while they stayed aboard and stopped their drinks getting warm. For each boat that passed through I would get a few coins and sometimes made five pounds in a day. This seemed like a fortune. My paper round only used to pay 3 pounds a week and involved getting up at 7am, 6 days out of 7, and riding 2 miles round the least densely populated part of the village with a heavy bag full of the daily outpourings of Fleet Street on my shoulder.
I took this photo on a December evening during our most recent visit to the UK. I got to take my sons and show them some of the places I used to play when I was a boy. As I sat and wrote this today, my younger son came into the room and said 'That's where we went for a walk by the river in the dark.' It's nice to know it made an impression.
Several years ago they widened the lock to allow more boats to pass at a time. They also electrified the sluice. I wonder whether Houghton's current generation of 10-year olds are making more or less than I did?

Sanctuary

2009-03-02T00:13:00.000-08:00

The Reifel Bird Sanctuary is one of our family's favourite places to visit any time of the year. Today I went with one of the boys, our family naturalist (he used to be the family naturist too, but has grown out of that).
It was a great visit. A huge flock of Snow Geese was resting on the fields around the sanctuary on their long migration North to their summer grounds in Russia. The hedgerow birds are starting to get frisky and their plumage is taking on a new splendour. The water birds are just starting to shed their winter reserve and the trees and bushes are on the verge of bursting into flower.
But it's not just for the birds. It's a haven for all sorts of wildlife and of course, where there's a free meal there will be squirrels. I know they get everywhere, but I still get excited when I spot one whether it's running up the tree in our back yard, or stealing from one of the dozens of feeding stations at the bird sanctuary.
Amongst the birds we saw today were the amazing technicolor Woodduck, a Hooded Merganser eating a fish it had caught, Northern Harriers making low altitude passes over the reeds looking for unwary snacks and a Bald Eagle soaring high over the lakes like it owned the place. We saw Pintails, Sandhill Cranes, a Cormorant, Moorhens, Canada Geese. We also saw American Robins, bright red House Finches and one of my favourites - the Red-Winged Blackbird with its red and yellow flashes and it's raucous, piercing call.
And at only $40 a year for a family membership, it's the best value in the Lower Mainland.

Sourdough with Rye and Corn

2009-03-01T23:56:00.001-08:00

This recipe was another one inspired by Dan Lepard. His 'Mill Loaf' recipe, with wheat and rye, sounded nice but I thought I'd try it with a some maize flour as well for a little extra sweetness. The result was, I thought, really good, although I still have to get the right method for proving the loaves long enough without them losing their shape.

The recipe I used was:

400g white wheat sourdough leaven
450g water, with 1tbsp malt syrup (malt extract) dissolved in
500g all-purpose flour
100g wholewheat flour
100g light rye flour
100g maize flour
1.5tsp salt

First, mix the leaven with the water. Add all the dry ingredients and then mix it into a dough. Turn it out onto and oiled work surface, knead for 15 secs or so and then put it back in the bowl. It may be easier if you wash the bowl and lightly oil it before you return the dough to the bowl. Cover the bowl and leave the dough to rest, hydrate and rise.

Repeat this after 15 mins, then 30 mins then an hour. Leave the dough for another hour. This whole process takes around 3 hours.

Now turn out the dough, divide it in two parts. Knead each part into a ball then shape it into short batons - kinda rugby ball shaped. I put each one onto a floured linen cloth, 'top' side down, wrapping the cloth round the sides and rolling the two ends together over the top, leaving room for expansion. I then left the loaves overnight at a cool room temperature (17-18 C) to prove - this was around 6 hours. They spread out more than I hoped but I managed to re-shape them on the tray.

To bake, heat the oven to 425F. Turn the loaves onto baking sheets, slash the tops of the loaves twice. Bake for around 40 minutes.

I realised afterwards that even with this overnight proving, the bread could probably have done with extra proving - it may be that my leaven isn't vigourous enough yet. I was pretty pleased with the results, although it would have been nice to have even more of a holey, open texture. The taste was great - just a hint of rye with the nuttiness of the wholewheat and a hint of sweetness from the corn and malt.

Another one to work on!

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Corn bread in a cast-iron skillet

2009-02-27T21:44:00.001-08:00

A year or so back I read a piece in the Vancouver Sun extolling the virtues of the cast-iron skillet. The article made it sound like a real wonder-tool: an all-purpose frying pan that would pay back a little love and attention with a unique cooking experience that flimsy modern non-stick pans just can't match. It piqued my interest on a number of levels, but could I really justify the expense. Back in the days when I was paid commissions and didn't have 3 kids I used to love going and scouting round the fancy cookshops, where you'd spend $20 on the latest silcone non-stick easy grip teaspoon measure or some such nonsense. Now, though, I was back with a mortgage, a baby on the way and these kinds of thing just weren't really essential.

A week or so later I was walking up Main Street with one of the boys. For some reason we had to go to the dollar store, Welk's, at 19th & Main. It may have been halloween, I don't know. Anyway - imagine my surprise when amongst all the plastic food savers and toys designed to fall apart on their second use, I saw a selection of cast iron frying pans. There I was, expecting to have to shell out at least a hundred bucks and the dollar store had the most fantastic, simple, heavy cast-iron 12 inch skillet for only $14.

Needless to say, I bought it. I had great fun seasoning it - rubbing it with vegetable oil and then baking it in the oven upside down at 350F for half an hour. Job done! Ever since, it has given sterling service not only as a frying pan, but also for baking, especially corn bread.

Traditional southern corn bread served with a meal like meatloaf or roat chicken can make a great alternative starch. The kids love it because it's a bit sweet, and it's really easy to make. Cooking it in a skillet gives the crust a really nice caramelized chewiness.

This is the recipe I used for the one in the picture. I like it with less sugar than many of the American recipes I've seen.

4 oz butter
1 cup natural yogurt
1 cup milk
2 tbsp brown sugar
1/3 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp salt
1 cup cornmeal (polenta)
1 cup maize flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder

Heat oven to 350F

Melt the butter in the skillet, swirling it around well to coat the pan. Whisk eggs, milk, yogurt and sugar together and pour in the melted butter. Don't worry about scraping it all out of the skillet - what's left in the pan will lubricate and cook the outside nicely. Put the skillet back on the stove to keep hot, but don't burn the butter in the pan.

Stir in the dry ingredients and mix to a thick batter and pour it into the skillet. Leave it on the stovetop over a low heat for a few minutes until you can see the edges starting to cook. Transfer it to the oven and bake for about 30 mins or until a skewer poked in the middle comes out clean.

It's probably possible to cook the whole thing over a lowish heat on the stove, if you have a suitable lid for the skillet. I'm going to try this soon and report back.

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A fountain in our yard

2009-02-27T20:54:00.000-08:00

We moved into our house about 18 months ago. It's an old house. You'd like to think it had seen better days, although in reality I suspect it's been a bit run down and off-kilter ever since it was built. This is one of the older neighbourhoods outside of downtown, as far as I can tell. I've seen maps that show our street basically surrounded by forest wilderness on at least 2 sides, around the turn of the century.
The neighbourhood probably hasn't always been as pleasant as it is now. It's definitely changing, but you don't have to look far to see signs of a recent, less affluent past. That's why Main Street is such a fascinating blend of modern trendy and 70s shabby.
One of the consequences of this past is some rather creaky water services around here. In the 18 months we've been here we've had to call the city out 3 times to fix leaky water pipes, two within 20 yards of each other in the large water main that goes up the street alongside us.
The first leak appeared within a few days of our arrival in the house, in September 2007. This is not the kind of thing you want to see when you've just paid over the odds for a house you're only just beginning to realise isn't quite as nice as it looked when you walked round with the realtor. The first signs were a slightly squelchy patch on the front lawn, just off the sidewalk. Over a couple of days this became a fully-fledged water feature.
We called out the city, unsure as to whose responsibility these things were. They dug a hole, which exposed the leak, causing the delightful fountain you see in the picture. Fortunately the leak was on the city's side of the shut-off valve - the junction between their pipe and ours. They fixed it and went on their way.
Has anyone else noticed how the City seem to have a never ending supply of sterile grass seed?

Multigrain loaf

2009-02-24T08:03:00.001-08:00

In the end, the secret to making a decent loaf with the 8-grain flake mix was to reduce the amount of water a little and cook it on a shorter program.

300g water

120g milk

150g 8-grain rolled grain mix

25g butter

1tsp salt

1tsp brown sugar

450g all-purpose flour

1tsp yeast

Cooked on the 'sandwich' program, 2.5lb, which lasts for 3h05 overall. The result was pretty good, the different grains giving a different quality to the loaf than the oatmeal. I think overall it still needs work, though. I wonder what happens if you cook the mixture first...

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Dragonfly

2009-02-23T23:27:00.000-08:00

Dragonflies have to be my favourite insects. Their sleek, colourful styling is more like a futuristic spacecraft than an ancient insect species.
In the summer, dragonflies seem to thrive around British Columbia. This was one of a pair that were flying around a reed bed on the edge of Whiteswan Lake in the Kootenay region of Southeastern BC, not far from the Alberta border. We visited this area in August 2005, our first summer in Canada, on our way back from a stay in Edmonton.
I stood in the water on the edge of the lake and just waited for the right moment as the dragonflies hovered around, darting from side to side. I seem to remember things weren't helped much by two young boys chucking things in the lake from the water's edge. Still, dragonflies aren't scared easily and so I managed to get some nice pictures.

Sea to sky highway

2009-02-21T11:22:00.000-08:00

The Sea-to-sky highway, Highway 99 north from Vancouver, is the main route to the Olympic skiing centre at Whistler. After passing the ferry terminal at Horseshoe Bay, the road hugs the coastline of Howe Sound all the way to Squamish.
This is the view you get as you leave Horseshoe Bay on the ferry to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, or to the Sunshine Coast. You can see the line of the road just above the water. The mountains rise up here towards Cypress Mountain, and further along towards the Lions, the iconic twin peaks that dominate the northern skyline in the city of Vancouver.
Driving along the Sea-to-Sky can be breathtaking on a fine day, but for me nothing can beat standing on the top deck of the Langdale ferry as it passes Bowen Island and crosses Howe Sound. Even on a rainy day with limited visibility, the shadowy hulks of the islands and mountains have an awesome magic of their own.

Disaster strikes

2009-02-21T10:27:00.001-08:00

Heady with the early success of my oatmeal bread in the machine I was all ready to try something new. At Famous Foods last week my attention was caught by an 8-grain mixture of rolled wheat, barley, triticale, spelt, soy and a bunch of other things. It looked like it would be an interesting substitute for the rolled oats in my recipe.

I bought a 1lb bag and tried it out earlier this week, substituting the oats weight-for-weight with this new 8-grain mixture in my original oaten bread recipe (not the 'rustic' one). As you can see from the picture, the results were less than inspiring. I guess the fact that the oat bread was a litle bit deflated should have been a warning, but I just wasn't prepared for this.

The problem is that the dough is too light and the bread machine program leaves it proving for too long. I'll have to try a different program (this was done on the standard, basic loaf program) and maybe a little less water.

As old Freddie Nietszche said, Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker. Mind you, he never tried making bread in a bread machine.

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Indian Pipe - plant, fungus or what?

2009-02-20T00:30:00.000-08:00

The first time we went camping at Porpoise Bay, on BC's Sunshine Coast, I spotted this odd, white growth on the floor of the forest. It was just off the main path from the campground to the beach. I was amazed by the fact that it was totally white - not a hint of green at all.

At first, I thought it must be a fungus, because I didn't understand how it could photosynthesize without chlorophyll. I took this photo as much for reference, so I could look it up when I got home.

It turns out that it does indeed have no cholorphyll but it is in fact a flowering plant. This plant apparently gets all its nutrition from a symbiotic relationship with a fungus that itself is dependent on the roots of certain species of tree, including some of the big conifers that grow here in the Pacific Northwest. The plant is called the Indian Pipe, presumably because of its resemblance to clay pipes for smoking.

To find out more about this amazing plant, check out this article, which is ironically from right over the other side of the country.

Sticky Currant Buns

2009-02-17T22:57:00.001-08:00

I love fruity buns. Hot cross buns, currant buns, raisin bran muffins, fruit scones, lardy cake - you name it, if it's got dried grapes of any description I'm in. I did find a bakery in Kerrisdale a few months ago that had a great line in english-style currant buns and it made me very happy for a couple of days.

So I thought I'd have a go at making some for myself. I looked at a couple of recipes for sweet doughs and hot cross buns, and then thought about what I really like (and what I had in the cupboard). I ended up with this. It made 24 good sized buns about 3 inches across - about the size of a large tangerine.

700g All purpose (bread) flour
300g Cake flour
100g Butter
2 eggs
650g Milk (I used 1%)
2 tsp brown sugar
150g white sugar
grated zest of 1/2 a lemon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp yeast
150g currants

First of all I made a sponge. This is not a cake, but a paste of flour, liquid and yeast that is left to ferment for a while before being used as the basis for the real dough. It helps really develop a gluten network and gives a structure around which the softer starches of the cake flour can form.

For the sponge, I warmed the milk to around 30C and poured it into a bowl containing 500g of the bread flour, 2tbsp brown sugar and 1tsp of dried yeast. I beat this well with the cake-beater attachment of my mixer, covered it and left it to stand for an hour.

Meanwhile, I washed the currants in hot water briefly and then strained and rinsed them under the cold tap.

I then poured in the melted butter to the mixture and added the rest of the flour, the spices, the eggs, the lemon zest and the white sugar together with another tsp of yeast. With the dough hook attachment I mixed the whole lot together. When it had started to come together, but before it had formed a proper dough, I added the currants and left it kneading in the machine for around 3 minutes.

I then removed the dough from the mixer, covered it with a plastic bag and left it to prove for around 90 minutes.

Once it had doubled in size, I turned the dough out onto a floured workspace, kneaded it very lightly and cut it into four equal parts. Working each part in turn, I made a rough sausage and cut each into 6, forming each into a round ball with a taut surface by repeatedly pulling the sides down and in under the bottom. I placed them on a greased baking sheet.

I left them to rise again - not for quite long enough: they really do need to be left to double again. They baked in the oven at 475F for around 15 - 20 minutes. After baking, I glazed the tops by brushing with a sugar syrup made with 2tbsp white sugar and 2tbsp water boiled quickly on the stove.

I was very pleased with the result. The dough tasted great with the lemon zest giving it a hint of citrus without the overpowering nature of candied peel that you get in traditional hot cross buns. Nutmeg and lemon go together really well, and I think the ginger helped give it a warm richness. The currants were great, especially having been washed in hot water - giving them an extra chance to plump up and get nice and juicy.

Next time I make these, I might try adding a tsp of salt - I omitted it by accident but they weren't too bad considering. It would also be nice to see if there's a way to make them keep their soft, pull-apart texture into the second day. They didn't keep particularly well and seemed to dry out a bit by day two. They were still very toothsome and would have been great toasted! I'll have to do some experimentation into what helps breads keep their softness.

Unfortunately, it turns out the rest of my family don't like currants, raisins or sultanas. My wife gamely ate one and pronounced it very nice, but I could tell her heart wasn't in it. So in the end, I had to take them to work and offer them to my co-workers, who seemed to appreciate them. I can't complain though, my lovely wife puts up with all this baking, so it's a bit much of me to expect her to eat it all as well!

I think I might have to dig out a recipe for lardy cake next...

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A licence to print money?

2009-02-17T18:11:00.000-08:00

I don't know a lot about the operation of financial markets. I've watched Trading Places, so I know that if you buy Pork Bellies when the pigs are flying then you'll end up losing your seat, or something. But I was listening to a BBC World Service documentary about the financial markets the other day and it struck me that Credit Default Swaps might have a lot to answer for.

This docco was recorded in the early autumn - before everyone finally admitted that the global economy was effectively floating on a cloud of superheated gas emitted from the bottoms of the besuited peakcocks who flock around Wall Street, Bay Street and the City of London. So it was interesting to listen to it with the 20/20 vision that comes from hindsight.

The comment that struck me hardest was that credit default swaps are almost entirely unregulated and that there are no capital reserve requirements for the organisations that write the contracts.

Here's some background, as I understand it:

Banks lend money to companies by buying bonds.

Bonds constitute an obligation buy the company to pay back an amount of money at a certain point in the future, and to pay interest regularly until then. For every $100 the company promises to pay in the future, the bank will pay them some amount now - usually less than $100. The difference between the amount the company promises to repay plus the interest they will pay, and the amount paid by the bank, is the profit on the deal and will vary according to how likely the company is to meet its future obligation.

The amount of money banks make by lending money is dictated by the risk level they take on. If the company makes good on its obligations, the bank will make a tidy profit. If the company goes bankrupt and cannot make its payments, the bank loses out. The overall riskiness of the debt obligations they hold will impact a bank's own credit rating and hence it's ability to borrow money itself to lend out to more companies.

Credit default swaps are basically a way for a bank to reduce the risk that they will lose out. In a credit default swap, the bank buying the debt makes a contract with another bank - the insurer. The insurer promises to pay an amount of money to the bank in the event that the company defaults on its debt. In return, the bank pays a premium. This premium is also dependent on the risk that the company will be unable to repay their debt.

The idea is that the premium paid by the bank to the insurer is less than the profit the bank will make on the debt and so there is still some net profit for the bank. The bank is still making money, but the risk has been reduced because the insurer will cover them if the company goes tits-up. The insurer is happy because they're making the premium. If they want, they can go out and buy more CDS contracts from another insurer to offset their risk.

This all goes along quite well while everyone's behaving and paying off their debt. The system can generally survive the odd corporate bankruptcy along the way - the insurers pay the bank the difference betweent what the bank paid for the debt and what it's worth after the bankruptcy and everything goes back to normal.

However, what's happening now is that banks are starting to collapse. These are the very institutions who are the insurers in CDS contracts. What this means is that the CDS insurance is effectively worthless. Imagine if you are a bank who bought a bunch of sub-prime debt and then insured it with CDS contracts with Lehman Bros or RBOS. Your debt is worthless and your protection is worthless.

What seemed particularly astonishing is that because credit default swaps are unregulated (thanks to an act of Congress passed in 2000 - the same one that allowed Enron to fiddle the books so effectively) there are no capital reserve requirements for insurers. For real insurance - life insurance, car insurance, business continuity insurance etc. - there are laws that state how much capital an insurance company must hold to cover its potential liabilities in case of a spate of claims. For CDS contracts, there is no such requirement.

If banks buying debt are treating these CDS contracts as an effective form of risk mitigation, it seems to me that CDS is enabling a huge increase in the amount of money a bank will lend. It seems also that the banks would be able to fund that additional lending through issuing their own debt at a faster rate because of the apparent reduction in risk the CDSs provide.

With no obligation to actually back up CDSs with real capital, it seems also that there is no real limit to the number of CDS contracts an insurer can write. The more CDSs, the lower the apparent risk of the real debt, the more lending, the more money circulates. Isn't the CDS basically just a licence to print money?

Back once again

2009-02-12T23:11:00.000-08:00

A lot of catching up to do. It will happen in no particular order.

There's a bit in the Lord of the Rings where Frodo recalls what Bilbo used to say about travelling. You have to be careful when you walk out of your front door, because one path leads to another and another and before you know where you are you're on the other side of the world, or something to that effect.

The great thing about living in Vancouver is that here on the westernmost edge of this enormous continent, I can walk out of my front door, turn right and keep walking for 6,142km and end up on the Atlantic coast in Halifax. Alternatively, we could jump in our car, head north through Pemberton, Lillooet, Williams Lake, Prince George and numerous other places either too small or too Albertan to remember and end up in the Northwest Territories, Canada's Arctic.

Although the former adventure remains but a dream for a far-off future free of the cares of work, we did do the latter in 2007. With our clapped out 1994 Volvo 850, a bargain $200 dual-screen DVD player and no air conditioning we headed north for Yellowknife.

One of the places we passed on our way was so small that had it been further south we probably would have forgotten about it. But Fort Providence, NWT, is so remote it is hard to forget. This is it's church - dedicated to Our Lady of Providence.

Fort Providence sits on the banks of the mighty Mackenzie River, just downstream from the Great Slave Lake. Just off the Mackenzie Highway, it is a staging post on this vital supply route from Yellowknife to Alberta and the South. We stopped here on the way up, and on the way back, visiting the general store, a small, windowless functional building and the café. One of the memorable things about this café was the pictures on the wall of various incidents that have occurred over the years on the Mackenzie River crossing. In particular, in the early 2000s when a semi-trailer pulling fuel tankers ignored the fact that the relatively new ice was only rated for up to 9 tons, and ended up falling through the ice. Thankfully the driver made it out and the risk of pollution was averted.

On the days we passed through, the weather was beautiful - 20 degrees and sunny. It was hard to imagine this place as it must look most of the year - frozen in a blanket of snow and ice.

BC is a giant collage

2007-01-12T06:55:00.000-08:00

Judging by the very limited view I get from my little corner of it, British Columbia is a land of incredible diversity. Geographically it has desert, grasslands, estuaries and islands. It has high arctic meadows and low-lying wetlands. It has ocean beaches pounded by the Pacific, and sheltered beaches lapped by pacific fjords.

Demographically it is home to many aboriginal groups with a range of distinct histories. It is home to families whose forebears arrived four or more generations ago as pioneers seeking the wealth and success denied them in their countries of origin. It is home to the many other families who have arrived since from almost every other nation around the world.

So when we visited Fort Langley, a preserved pioneer fort on the Fraser River, base for many of the early incoming settlers for whom the river was the route to a new life, it seemed quite fitting that they should celebrate the anniversary of the birth of the province with this giant collage map. Not a collage in the true sense, of course, but I can't think of a better word for it.

2007-01-11T08:25:00.001-08:00

One fine day, at Steveston harbour. Mount Baker really is quite something. On a clear day it towers over the Lower Mainland like a towering thing.

2007-01-08T21:57:00.000-08:00

Just before new year we went for a walk at Second Beach and for lunch at Vera's Burger Shack on Denman St. Vera's do fantastic burgers, made with real meat rather than the stuff they serve up at the big chains.
While we walked around the seawall we ran into a chap with a long lens photographing the birds out on English Bay. Neither of my sons can resist talking to new people, especially if they have gadgets, and this was no exception - my elder son immediately struck up a conversation. He and his wife were long-time Vancouverites and are hard-core lovers of Stanley Park. He is in the process of building a web site about the natural history of Stanley Park and we spent a wonderful half hour chatting and wandering with him and his wife. They were wonderful with the boys and told them all sorts of interesting things about the beach and the birds we could see around us. It's great to live in a place where you can bump into people like that who will give their time so freely.
So Elder took this photo of the birds that our friend was looking at - not bad for a beginner! They are Surf Scoters and they gather in English Bay (and no doubt many of the other coastal wetlands of the Pacific Northwest) in late Autumn every year.

2007-01-08T11:30:00.000-08:00

So it's the New Year and as a belated New Year's resolution I'm going to try to post to this blog more regularly. If anyone reads it and like the pictures then all the better, but I don't really care.
Most of the pictures on the blog will also be posted on my Picasa web album where it should be possible to download higher resolution copies.

2007-01-07T17:48:00.000-08:00

These pictures give a hint of the devastation suffered by the trees in Stanley Park during the windstorms of late December 2006. Prospect Point seems to have suffered the worst. This picture shows stacks of logs in the parking lot by the café there - I assume these are just logs from trees that fell across the roadway. There are still many many limbs, branches and whole trees left lying within the forest and most of the the trails are closed.
The second photo shows the damage by the road just beyond Prospect Point. As you pass the Point, the road does a tight bend back on itself and the area enclosed by the bend has almost been flattened. What I found most incredible about the damage is seeing mature trees that have obviously been snapped in half, the shredded stumps left sticking out of the ground.

2007-01-07T17:35:00.000-08:00

I went up to Prospect Point this evening to try and take some photos of the devastation of the trees. If decimation is the removal of 10% of a group of soldiers then could the destruction of 20% of the trees in Stanley Park be called ventilation? Unfortunately the sunset light was blocked by yet another rain storm, so it was too dark to really see the tree damage.

I did like this picture because to me it's another of those little encapsulations of Vancouver - the rain, the sun, the forests, the buildings, the natural beauty of the mountains and the man-made elegance of Lion's Gate bridge.

2006-11-12T23:01:00.000-08:00

My lovely wife took this photo at the Van Dusen Gardens with her new camera that's waterproof and (hopefully) childproof. It was late October and the colours of the leaves around this ornamental lake were stunning. Against the backdrop of a clear blue sky, the reds really shine. These autumn colours are one of the reasons why I like being in Vancouver.

Civilisation

2006-09-02T17:09:00.000-07:00

One of the things I have to say I've been looking forward to since we started our family is spending time with the boys doing more grown-up things. Nothing too ambitious, just simple things like sitting having a chat over a cup of coffee (or a mango smoothie) or having a quick lunch in a restaurant that isn't painted in primary colours.

So today was a real treat. Mrs had a day off and went shopping (a novelty in itself) and the boys and I went off to find a barber, a coffee and to see what we could see. We went on the bike and the boys both sat in the trailer - they're getting a bit big for it now, but were very well behaved.
We ended up on 4th avenue, Kitsilano, meandering along the street, looking in shop windows and watching the world go by.

We stopped off in the Book Warehouse and found a fantastic book called "Skippyjon Jones" by Judith Schachner. A hilarious story about a kitten with a wild imagination. Elder and I then had our hair cut at the Kitsilano Barber's and we had lunch at a little chinese diner. Then we cycled home. Simple pleasures, but great fun (apart from the revolting nappies).

Gloat? Me?

2006-09-01T16:44:00.000-07:00

OK, so maybe Vancouver's nice but this is a pretty special spot too - only a 9 hour flight and a four hour drive from here. Sandy Cove, near Lee in Devon is one of the great spots with walking distance from Rockley. A great spot for a week away from it all.

Reasons to be cheerful, part 3

2006-09-01T16:38:00.000-07:00

This spot is about a half an hour's drive from our place. Lynn Valley Headwaters Regional Park is a beautiful corner of North Vancouver, the city that backs the mountains. Our boys walked nigh on 6km up and down the side of the valley a few weeks ago - we're dead proud!

Noise

2006-09-01T10:47:00.000-07:00

Where I work at the moment is surrounded by construction. We are on the corner of two streets in downtown Vancouver. Construction is taking place on three of the four corners. In our building they are remodelling the ground floor retail space that used to be a bank. On the northwest corner they are slowly flaying an perfectly serviceable mall to replace it with a high-class department store. On the southeast corner they have been building a 40-storey residential tower with ground-floor retail units - a project that started before my first visit to Vancouver in recent times - in November 2003.

Add to that the fact that the air conditioning in our building is less than useful and that it's still beautifully sunny outside so windows need to be opened for cooling, and you get a recipe for noise-induced insanity. One small mercy is that with the additional construction project of the Canada Line along Granville we are now spared the noise of buses going up and down and stopping outside. I kind of miss the clacking of the pantographs, though.

'Twas Mulga Bill

2006-08-31T21:52:00.000-07:00

Got back in touch with an old friend from down under today. He pointed me towards his blog and blogs being blogs it seemed like the thing to do to link to it. It was funny reading through some of the things he wrote, though, as they seemed to chime with some thoughts that had been developing in my head for a few days.

Like many thoughts, I'm convinced they're not original but as Pete points out they are mine and no-one else will have had them in exactly the same way. But I'm rambling again. The thing is that so much in life these days just scoots past and becomes part of the general mish-mash that is the past. The past becomes an abstract-expressionist wash of colour and shape. Emotions cast their hues over the landscape of past events.

So much of what happens is destined to become another colourful highlight on this canvas, but it's nice from time to time to have sections that are brought sharply into focus. They become the points of reality around which the landscape is formed. Viewed through the long lens of history some seem funny, some just plain bewildering, others poignant and the rest all have their own meaning and effect.

So what? So I'll put some more stuff on this blog, post some more photos, drag up some more memories and record some more humdrum details until I get bored again. Another snapshot of snapshots. Maybe someone will read it this time.

'Twas Mulga Bill from Eaglehawk who caught the cycling craze
He turned aside the good old horse that served him many days
He dressed himself in cycling clothes, respledent to be seen;
He hurried off to town and bought a shining new machine.
And as he wheeled it through the door with air of lordly pride,
The grinning shop assistant said "Excuse me, can you ride?"
"See here, young man," said Mulga Bill, "from Walgett to the sea,
From Conroy's Gap to Castlereagh there's none can ride like me.

"I'm good all round at everything, as everybody knows
Although I'm not the one to talk - I hate a man who blows -
But riding is my special gift, my chiefest, sole delight;
Just ask a wild duck can it swim, a wild cat can it fight.
There's nothing clothed in hair or hide, or built of flesh or steel
There's nothing walks or jumps or runs on axle, hoof or wheel
But what I'll sit, while hide will hold, and girths and straps are tight.
I'll ride this here two-wheeled concern right straight away at sight."

'Twas Mulga Bill from Eaglehawk who sought his own abode
That lies above the Dead Man's Creek, along the mountain road.
He turned the cycle down the hill and mounted for the fray,
But ere he'd gone a dozen yard, it bolted clean away.
It left the track, and through the trees just like a silver streak
It whistled down the awful slope, towards the Dead Man's Creek.

It shaved a stump by half an inch; it dodged a big White Box.
The very wallaroos in fright went scrambling down the rocks.
The wombats hiding in their caves dug deeper underground,
But Mulga Bill, as white as chalk, sat tight to every bound.
It struck a stone and gave a spring that cleared a fallen tree.
It raced beside a precipice as close as close can be.
And then, as Mulga Bill let out one last despairing shriek,
It made a leap of twenty feet into the Dead Man's Creek.

'Twas Mulga Bill from Eaglehawk who slowly swam ashore.
He said, "I've had some narrer shaves and lively rides before.
I've rode a wild bull round a yard to win a five-pound bet,
But this was sure the derndest ride that I've encountered yet.
I'll give this two-wheeled outlaw best: it's shaken all my nerve
To feel it whistle through the air and plunge, and buck, and swerve.
It's safe at rest in Dead Man's Creek - I'll leave it lying still
A horse's back is good enough henceforth for Mulga Bill.

A.B. ("Banjo") Paterson, 1864-1941

Security: What do these things have in common?

2006-03-31T21:42:00.000-08:00

Iraq

Google

French Students

The company I work for

The Private Finance Initiative

It's all about security in one form or another. Life is a constant balance between taking risks and looking for assurance. Different people look for a different balance. At the scale of individuals this is part of what makes life interesting, and also what makes life possible. Much though I'd like to think that humans could all live together in harmony sharing equally the fruits of the labour, with each contributing according to his means, a contented society would largely stagnate. Progress requires risk.
But why do people take risks? Some people seem to take risks purely for the hell of it. Think about bungee jumping or even skiing. Some people take a more calculated approach to risk. But whichever way you look at it, risk-takers are always looking for some kind of benefit to accrue from their risky behaviour. So if society needs risk to progress there must also be some kind of reward for those who take those risks.
Reward is needed to encourage risk-taking, but what of the other side of the equation. One thing that tends to get overlooked is that risk, by definition, implies some kind of detriment or discomfort in the event of failure. It's all well and good reaping the rewards, but what if the flip side of the equation doesn't really balance?

Bet you didn't know this

2006-03-31T20:54:00.000-08:00

Guess what? Scorpions flouresce all blue when you put them under ultraviolet light. This is a completely unadulterated photo of a real live scorpion. Fantastic.

Customer is King - in the British sense

2006-03-22T11:39:00.000-08:00

One of the fantastic things about modern networking technology is that it allows almost completely secure transactions to take place between networked organisations almost instantaneously.

Of course, this doesn't always suit everyone. Take the issue of transferring money between banks. In the old days, it would take time for funds to move between banks simply because these things presumably had to be done with less automated methods. I still remember the days when automatic bulk bank transfers had to be initiated by writing them to a magnetic tape and sending the tape to the bank. With that kind of background it would be understandable that a cheque paid in to an account would take some time to clear before the funds became available to withdraw.

Now, though, these things happen far more quickly. Cheques may still take a day or two to physically work through the system, but consumers can easily and directly initiate all sorts of transfers and transactions that don't need physical cheques. In the case of transfers to my savings account, the funds are actually taken by the savings bank directly from my chequing account using the "Pre-authorised payment" method designed for collecting variable bill payments.

So why the hell does it take seven business days before the funds become available. The transfer at the bank level must happen pretty much instantly. This means that my savings bank basically have 7 days to play around with my money in whatever way they see fit before they actually give it to me. Granted, they do pay interest, but I can't see there's any other reason for it taking so long.

I was amazed recently when the same thing happened with my chequeing account. I paid in a cheque at a different branch from the one I usually use. The cheque was drawn on an account at the same branch as mine, but I just happened to drop it in at a branch on the way home. 7 days later I was still unable to use the funds.

The delays are frustrating enough, but what is almost more frustrating is this selective use of the benefits of technology. This kind of thing takes so long to filter down to the customer. Competition helps, but I've done that already. However, it perhaps helps explain why I found the comments of Disney's CEO, "The customer is king" so risible.

The media content industry is taking all the benefits of technology and making it all totally one-sided. The DMCA effectively prevents customers from taking advantage of technology to their own benefit. If the customer is king in this market, we're talking a constitutional monarchy where Disney, Apple and Sony are the three branches of government and the king just does what they say.

Did I mention...

2006-03-21T18:58:00.000-08:00

It's great to live somewhere you can get views like this less than half an hour from home. This is Mount Baker seen from Cypress Mountain on a cold crisp evening in late February.

Form over function

2006-03-21T15:01:00.000-08:00

These chairs in the lobby of the Marriott/Hilton/Sheraton/Crowne Plaza at Dulles Airport, Washington D.C. look fantastic. Unfortunately, they are about as comfortable as a bag full of pointy rocks. Nice.

Man with a Mission

2006-03-20T15:53:00.000-08:00

Went to a place called "Mission" over the weekend. It's on the way to Hope. If you ever find yourself there with energetic kids, the Fraser River Heritage Park on the east side of the city is nice - what it lacks in playground toys (it has none) it makes up for in mud piles, open spaces and the interesting remains of the original Mission after which the city is named. Plus, it has cracking views of the Fraser Valley, the Skagit mountains and the northern Cascades including Mount Baker.
The ferry across the Fraser River at between Fort Langely and Albion is also fun, although the queue lasted longer than the ride. At least it's free!
And finally, you could do a lot worse than go to Hava Java for a coffee afterwards - it's in a strip mall next to Safeways off Highway 7 on the west side of town. Their coffees were significantly better than Starbucks.

RFID viruses - magnetic stripe and bar codes are next

2006-03-16T11:48:00.000-08:00

Numerous tech media sites, including this one are touting "research" by some dutch group that claims RFID tags "are as susceptible to viruses as personal computers".

This is, of course, utter nonsense. Like any data-storage device it's possible to store viral code on an RFID tag. It's also theoretically possible to construct an RFID tag that might exploit a buffer overflow exploit in the software that reads the tag data. However, these things are all easy to avoid. The researchers had to actually build their own RFID-reading software with appropriate customised vulnerabilities because none of the commercially available stuff was susceptible to their attack technique.

Realistically RFID tags are no more a risk than smartcards, bar codes (especially the 2-dimensional high density ones) or even old-fashioned magnetic stripe credit cards: all of these technologies carry arbitrary data that is read and processed by software systems that could have vulnerabilities.

Scaremongering like this really unhelpful. Security issues are confusing enough for the mass of computer users without getting them worried about phantom scares. The problem (if there is one) is not RFID tags themselves, but sloppy coding which should be eliminated wherever it occurs.

Mind you, there are plenty of other reasons why ubiquitous RFID tags are a bad thing...

UPDATE: even the usually-sane BBC was taken in by this nonsense.

Freaky eucalpyts

2006-03-16T10:23:00.000-08:00

The Australian landscape is pretty varied - everything from barren desert to lush rainforest. Although it has many different types, there is one feature that distinguishes all but the most barren regions. This feature stands out and makes Australian landscape photos instantly recognisable - it's the trees.

Eucalypts are a kind of tree that has really thrived in Australian conditions and their distinctive shape with tall, sinuous trunks and almost clumpy masses of slender drooping leaves are the thing that make even the greenest of Australian landscapes distinct from pictures of European or American countryside. The picture on the right was taken on the Great Ocean Road in Southern Victoria.

Which is one of the reasons why I always get a bit freaked out when I visit the Bay Area. Eucalpyts seem to have been introduced quite freely in some parts - including avenues of paperbarks (which are actually melaleucas, not eucalypts but then I never claimed to be a botanist) along stretches of "the" El Camino Real. If it was only a little warmer I could believe I was back in Sydney!

Walking into happiness

2006-03-13T22:24:00.000-08:00

I discovered this the other day. It's a great use of Google maps. You can plot routes on it and it will tell you the exact distance you've covered. You can even get a graph showing the profile of altitudes you've passed through so you can tell how high you've climbed and how low you've fallen. I bet you haven't fallen as far as this, though: the worst joke for the day - a Cisco router.

Vancouver has it all

2006-03-13T13:28:00.000-08:00

What a fantastic weekend of weather. Admittedly, I spent most of Saturday indoors, tidying a bit, baking a bit and I don't know what else. Sunday, though, Elder had a party at Grandview Lanes, a bowling alley on Commercial Drive. So I rode over there, in shorts, with Son in the trailer and dropped him off. I was then free to stroll up and down Commercial Drive, sit down, have a coffee, browse the delis, bookshops and grocers and generally enjoy the early spring weather.
Freedom is overrated, and once I got bored with it, I went back to the bowling alley and waited until the party finished. As I waited I realised that the alley was actually 5-pin bowling - something you don't get in the UK and that I hadn't tried for over 20 years. So I had a couple of games by myself. It's great fun - much more skill required than 10-pin bowling.
After the party we cycled back home. The views from Commercial and along 10th Ave were spectacular: It was a crisp, clear, sunny day and the Lions' ears were looking particularly perky. The whole thing reminded me of the motto on a souvenir mug I bought during that trip to Vancouver 20 years ago - "Vancouver has it all" - isn't it. Hmmm.

Skunk works

2006-03-10T10:01:00.000-08:00

Our house is becoming something of a wildlife reserve. We currently have some kind of rodent living in our basement - it seems to have found its way into the wall gaps, or possibly the heating ducts. This rodent, which seems a bit too big to be a mouse, but a bit small for a rat, joins our longer-term resident skunk (or skunks) that nest under the shed where I keep my bike (under our deck).

I had a close encounter with the skunk last night. When I first realised the skunk was living there (they don't hide their presence well) I tried to block the gap through which it was entering and leaving with a small plank. It kept pushing the plank over. I was reluctant to do anything too drastic like nailing the plank up, just in case the skunk was actually trapped inside. I suspect the one thing that might smell worse than a live skunk is a dead one.
As I cycled home last night I saw a skunk cross the road not far from our back alley. Having crossed the road, it made a bee-line for the alley as I overtook it. I thought "this must be our skunk - it's out, so maybe I can block the hole now". I quickly got into the garden, found the old plank and wedged it in place. Unfortunately, it had been sitting in the rain since December and was now rotten - it broke. Having blocked the hole as best as I could I proceeded to put my bike away. The door to the shed is directly above the hole where the skunk gets underneath.
As I was putting the bike in, I glanced down and spotted a white head sniffing my shoe. I jumped backwards, slightly alarmed. The skunk, fortunately, was similarly surprised and ran off towards our neighbours' garden. A bit of an anticlimax for you the reader, maybe, but it is actually the first positive proof (other than the smell) that it is actually a skunk living in our yard.
Elder was very excited when I told him about this. He wondered why the skunk was trying to get in the hole at the same time I was parking my bike. I suggested maybe the skunk was coming home from work too. And thus I discovered the origin of another bizarre turn of phrase!

Things to do in Victoria

2006-03-09T18:06:00.000-08:00

We went to Vancouver Island for the weekend and had a great time, although Youngest was not well. We found a great spot for keeping the kids quiet for an hour or so: Victoria Bug Zoo.
They have a good collection of creepy-crawlies including giant stick-insects, hissing cockroaches and beetles that play dead. You can touch or hold some of the creatures, under the supervision of a knowledgeable guide who communicates well.
One creature they have that was new to me was a Vinegaroon - a really cool Arachnid that looks a bit like a scorpion and can squirts concentrated vinegar out of its arse. Every chip shop should have one. Which brings me nicely to the other cool place we went - Willow's Galley - an unpreposessing shack on Estevan Ave in Oak Bay that does great halibut and chips.

The pros and cons of private enterprise

2006-03-09T16:15:00.000-08:00

As a child of two teachers in the UK in the 70s I grew up with a kind of inbuilt assumption that almost every business or service was ultimately provided by the government. To some extent that was true then, of course, and throughout the 80s I was firmly in the anti-Thatcher camp: selling off our nation's infrastructure to the highest bidder. In reality business has been there all along providing most of the things we need (and much that we don't). On top of that, there's all that other business that provides things businesses need to do business - which has been the source of my living for the past 15 years. I had grown comfortable with that and no longer really thought about it very much, although there was still a part of me that clung on to that socialist view that maybe some things are better off in government hands. But then I moved to British Columbia.
Don't get me wrong - I love living in Canada for all sorts of reasons but there are two particular things that really piss me off. Both are related to the financial services industry. One is an example of why public ownership is a Bad Thing, and one is an example of why private enterprise is not always the ideal solution.
Canadians like their cars: not as much as Americans, but when you live in a country as spread out as Canada they do take on an extra significance. The consequences of this are numerous, including lower driving ages in some provinces. In BC it has resulted in the granting of a monopoly on basic motor vehicle insurance to a crown corporation, owned by the provincial government, the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia.
On the surface the idea sounds great to a closet pinko like me - single insurance rates, based directly on driving record not age, gender or other factors that commercial insurance companies use. On top of all that, they also make ICBC responsible for road safety and driver licensing. This is supposed to give them an incentive to help people drive better in the hope that it will reduce the level of claims and therefore premiums.
In practice, it kinda sucks. We arrived from the UK last year and inherited an 11-year-old Volvo 850 sedan. The value of this thing is probably no more than $6,000. It's a real family car. Insurance, including a modest amount of loss cover, was over $2,500. In the UK, the last insurance bill for our 3-year old Citroen (worth around £8,000) was under £200.
The real stinger was the no-claims bonus. Because I had company cars in the UK I have not actually held insurance for several years, but L had over 10 years of claim-free driving. In the UK, and even in Australia when we moved over there, all you have to do is call up, tell them you're entitled to no-claims from your current insurer and they give you the discount up front. You then just send a confirmation from your current insurer that you've racked up the appropriate number of years. Nice, simple, user-friendly.
Imagine our surprise, then, when the 'broker' who sold us our insurance told us the procedure for getting no-claims discount from ICBC. You have to get a letter from every insurer you've had over the period you're claiming for. This letter must state the dates of the insurance period exactly. You must then send the original letters (not faxes or photocopies), together with a processing fee of $25 to some bunch of pen-pushers in North Vancouver who may, at their discretion, allow a reduction in rate and send a refund. We had to contact around 5 insurance companies, in Australia and the UK. In several cases we no longer had any records of the policies we'd held with them. In one case, they no longer had any record of us as a customer. At least one of them was prevented by their IT systems from sending letters to overseas addresses, so we had to settle for faxes. In the end, we bundled up everything we had and sent it off. They allowed us one year of discount - 10%. Despite the fact that our last insurer confirmed in writing that L had 6 years of no-claims discount.
So why is it that ICBC see the need to put you through a hell of paperwork and actually charge you $25 for offering what insurance companies anywhere else offer so freely? It is because they are a monopoly. Competition is what makes insurance companies in the UK and Australia so willing to offer no-claims discounts. Competition is what keeps the insurance premiums down. The ICBC as a state-run bureaucratic monopoly has no incentive to recognise any of these things because we have no choice but to go to them.
But just having an unrestricted market does not guarantee effective competition. The other thing that pisses me off about Canada is the banking system. I opened an account with a large international bank that just happens to be UK-based, partly because we bank with them in the UK and they made it easy for us to open an account here. The first choice I had to make was which fee package to opt for. Although this is now an alien concept to most Brits, where banking has been pretty much free for as long as I've had a chequebook, we did have a brush with fee-based banking when living in Australia. That doesn't mean I like it, though.
I opted for a package that gave us various benefits, like free chequebooks, and also offered 'free' ATM withdrawals from any bank's ATMs. This seemed like a good idea because although this bank is multinational, they aren't enormously well established outside of areas with significant ethnic Chinese populations. So I went happily on my way, L and I both withdrawing cash from RBC, BMO, TD and other ATMs happy in the knowledge that it would cost us nothing. But not so...
When we got our first statement it showed a charge of $1.25 for all these transactions. This charge was on top of the $1.50 or so added to the amount of the withdrawal by the bank whose ATM we used. Those from our own bank were indeed free. I called the bank and asked why these free transactions were costing $1.25. They had no good answer and refunded the fees.
The next statement had the same fees, and the next. In the end, it turned out that the fee was not for using the ATM itself, but a "network fee" for using the network, or something. They refunded it again and since then I have tried to avoid using non-HSBC ATMs. Whenever I do, though, this fee still comes up. Now, if anyone ever reads this and has an HSBC account in Canada perhaps they could tell me how much they get charged for non-HSBC ATM withdrawals. Either way, the promise of "Free non-HSBC withdrawals" is clearly false and misleading.
But aside from the injustice of misleading advertising, this is again symptomatic of bad competition. The fact that you can be charged $1.50 by one bank, $1.25 by a network and, presumably, $1.25 by your own bank just to withdraw your own money suggests that at some level the banks in Canada are colluding to keep these fees rolling in. On top of all that, remember that one of the big drivers for installing ATMs and encouraging their use was to reduce their costs in handling transactions by avoiding the need for tellers. Again, compared to the system in the UK where there is much more competition, apparently less government intervention and protection of the industry, banks are able to offer fee-free banking and still turn in obscene profits.
Right, I've got that off my chest so now I can go back to just enjoying the mountains, the ocean and the hockey.

Misson statement

2006-03-02T17:06:00.000-08:00

I live in Vancouver. I am not a Canadian. I have two young sons. I work in the data security industry. I think I'm a techie. I've been in business development for three years. I am a musician. I like to read. I am interested. I'm not always certain. I like to travel. I don't like going away. I like to think. I don't like to study. I like to cycle. I don't like exercise.

I hope that these thoughts will be interesting to someone.