More driving, more travel. Here are a few images from yesterday’s drive along the Trans Canada Highway through Alberta and British Columbia (Canada).
The Alberta Rockies
Trans Canada Highway
Castle Mountain, Banff National Park
Golden, BC
Snow pile at the Rogers Pass Summit
Revelstoke, BC
Shuswap Sunset
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iPhone photography by Debra Hunter
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After days and days of cold temperatures and snow, it has finally warmed up . By afternoon the temperature had reached +2C and it seemed the perfect weather for a ski.
Today I decided to try Heritage Ranch for my ski spot, I thought a (literal) change of scenery would be nice, instead of skiing my usual route.
The trails were definitely a little bit slippy today with the warming temperatures. I will admit I paused at the top of the long hill before going down it, trying to decide how slippery it was going to be coming back up. After watching another skier tackle it with a slow “snowplow”, I decided to take the same approach.
As I only had a limited amount of time to ski, the plan was to go down to the base of the hill to the large open field and then turn around and go back up.
At the bottom of the hill I had a change of plan. It was pretty slippery in spots on the hill, and I knew it was not going to be fun going back up. I decided to go with “Plan B” and take the bridleway that snakes through the back way instead. It seemed to be a better option to break trail through fluffy snow, than spend the next 10 – 15 minutes sliding uphill. The “unofficial way ” seemed to be the most sensible option.
This just might be the last ski of the season, at least for skiing in Red Deer (Alberta, Canada). The forecast for the next six days is calling for temperatures above zero. Perhaps spring IS going to arrive.
iPhone pics by Debra Hunter
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Last night was the start of gardening season. It may be -22C with windchill outside, and snow deep on the ground, but it is time to get ready for the spring and summer growing season.
This year we are starting quite a range inside, even vegetables you traditionally directly seed into the garden, in an attempt to get some vegetables early.
The list of what we planted is as follows: tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, cabbage, lettuce, cilantro, basil, spinach, chard and kale. We also planted seeds for marigolds and calendula. Little bits of a large range of vegetables to hopefully get a head start on our 2017 garden.
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Just a few views from today’s wanderings through Banff and Yoho National Parks.
A quick get away to the mountains of Alberta and British Columbia allows for interesting views in every direction.
Castle Mountain, Banff National Park.
Kootenay National Park.
Traffic delays in Radium, BC.
Sunset over the Columbia Valley.
Late night outdoor swimming in the middle of winter at the pools at Radium Hot Springs. Water temperature was a beautiful +31C in the cold pool…..much hotter in the hot pool.
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With Christmas Day behind us, Boxing day always brings with it a very relaxed day. It is a nice break after enduring weeks over-scheduled with obligations. I like Christmas, I just don’t get the craziness. I like buying my family gifts, but it doesn’t need to be over the top. I prefer a rather laid back version of Christmas.
So as my family enjoyed the afternoon building with Lincoln Logs and Lego, and giving the PS4 a good workout, I ventured out to play with my new toys…..skis.
My husband and family treated me to cross country skiing equipment for Christmas. Years ago I skied a lot, but in recent years I had swapped skiing for snowshoeing. Now with everyone in school, I am able to sneak away during the day for an hour here and there, so it is the perfect time to get back into the sport.
We are lucky enough to have groomed trails just around the corner, with a lovely loop of trails in Barrett Park ( Red Deer, Alberta, Canada ). This makes for a picturesque ski with views of the woods, creek and bridges. This afternoon also included viewing a coyote in the distance, which is always a treat.
At -20C, it was cool out. My feet and body stayed warm with the skiing, but my legs, fingers and face sure felt the cold.
The final part of the ski also allowed me to watch the Boxing Day sun set. I’m sure there will be many more blog posts featuring skiing in the coming weeks.
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Silent right…………..
No, that isn’t a typo or spelling error, it is however an indicator of current social and political oppression.
This has been a year where social media, ceased to be that, and in turn became a propaganda machine. Social media stopped serving the function of shared ideas and networking, and rather attempted to become a powerhouse of social attitudes and political manipulation.
The first rumblings started last year when anti-left wing Facebook sites started getting warnings from Facebook, followed by temporary suspensions of their on line activity. As of October, Facebook had banned site after site that did not align politically with Facebook’s ideology. Facebook was banning sites in an attempt to twist the public’s political stance. Interestingly it was not only American sites, but Canadian too.
The Facebook suspensions started to align with other online comments, online comments on Canadian news sites on their Facebook supported pages. People making comments on political threads were starting to complain about their comments going missing. They would go back to read a thread and their comment would be gone. More and more this was happening.
As this situation continued, leftist hate started to rear it’s ugly head even further. Political trolls were everywhere, some traceable back to an actual political party (this happened with the Alberta NDP back in May 2016). It ramped up immensely in Alberta (Canada) in the fall. Unemployment was rampant with a leftist government bringing in one policy after another to put people out of work (plus some stripping of religious rights which are actually protected under Canada’s Charter of Rights). The highlight of this era was Alberta’s Premier Rachel Notley calling Albertan’s “xenophobic” for not supporting her Carbon Tax; a tax that will destroy the province through inflation and further unemployment come January.
By November even I was starting to notice the dynamic becoming stranger and stranger. An off-base balance to social media. Social media was no longer echoing the attitude on the street. Social media was being overrun with crazed leftest comments from posters that could spend 6, 7, 8 hours going at it constantly, calling anyone who didn’t agree with them possibly every derogatory term you could imagine. The posts from the left remained in the thread of comments.
So Facebook was becoming stranger and stranger, and this is from the viewpoint of a Canadian following provincial politics. That’s a pretty small microcosm on the world scene; pretty specialist.
By mid-November I experienced my first banned posting, but it wasn’t what you would think…..it was a watercolour painting of a landscape. A note came back from Facebook that I wasn’t allowed to post it. I tried intermittently for over an hour, it wouldn’t let me. Facebook was working, people were posting, I was blocked. Blocked for attempting to post a landscape painting. Weird.
Now I had put that incident of being blocked completely out of my mind until this week when in the span of two days I faced two censorship scenarios .
The first scenario took place on December 21st. I responded to an item on the CBC Edmonton Facebook page. I wrote out a response that included no profanity or hate speech; what the article did feature was a political preference different to the ideology supported by Facebook. The comment was not allowed to post over and over and over. Was this CBC censoring with key words? Possibly. Was it Facebook censoring? Possibly. What my comment was ,undoubtedly, was against the leftist view that social media is trying to push so heavily at the moment.
So I copy and pasted my comment (it can be read in the previous blog post), and I sent it out into the world….and to CBC Edmonton. CBC Edmonton, in many transactions through personal messaging throughout the rest of the day, said they could find no trace of the comment, but they would investigate. So the question is, WHO blocked the comment and why?
By late that day I had remembered the banned posting of the watercolour painting; I had experienced two weird bannings in a little over a month. It left me wondering what was going on and what were the similarities? It was peculiar, as when you post a watercolour painting the text usually reads “en plein air, 5×7, watercolour on white paper”, with perhaps the name of the beach (which this was, we were out on the coast). The only two things that were consistent were either the poster, “me”……..or the fact that the term “white” was used in the text of both posts that were blocked. Was Facebook just simply targeting intermittently individuals that did not share their ideology, or was Face book blocking the word “white”?
Interesting.
The next day I open up my Facebook feed, and the news story for the morning is regarding the Alberta NDP government stating something needs to be done to save money in healthcare. I commented that the Alberta government basically shot themselves in the foot with their Carbon Tax as anything that uses heat or transportation is going to go up in price. Their own tax is making the operation of their own departments more expensive; every piece of food or equipment shipped to a healthcare facility will cost more under the Alberta NDP’s Carbon Tax.
Out came the trolls. First it was one troll, then several hours in it became a second. But then the second troll started answering questions I asked the other one. Ah ha, same person, two accounts, never posting at the same time, alternating back and forth. I called them on it, and then things got nasty.
The troll threatened to call the police, then posted nasty comments on another Facebook page I have where I show photography and paintings. Then the troll started to stalk my husband’s social media, followed by her shouting that I need “meds”. Now please remember this is regarding the fact that I pointed out that the Carbon Tax was going to make everything more expensive, and that the government can’t expect to decrease costs when they implement a policy that is going to cause inflation.
Around nine hours into this scenario, yes nine hours, the troll decides to take a new tactic. She decides to create a fictional person, say it is my friend, then proceeds to say the language I am using in the comments is verbatim to the language I used to harass her and her son this summer. At this point I remind her that the healthcare story only broke THIS MORNING, how could I have possibly harassed you in the summer over this healthcare story? And then she went nuts….followed by me blocking her.
(Just as a side note, around two hours in another poster warned me that this troll does it all the time. So this is a reoccurring phenomenon.)
Guess what. This morning, message from Facebook, MY comments did not “meet posting criteria” and were deleted. My comments pointed out that a left wing government’s policy was going to be detrimental to their very own departmental budgets. I dared to oppose the left. I dared to challenge the left.
Another Facebook blocking for not supporting a left-wing ideology. Once on the 21st of December and the second for comments made on the 22nd.
Facebook is ensuring a SILENT RIGHT. They are attempting to manipulate social and political attitudes. Facebook is trying to create the illusion of left-wing support.
ILLUSION.
You see it is an illusion, and in the left’s overzealous and oppressive ways they have created a very dangerous situation, and that situation is the SILENT RIGHT. The left thinks if they silence other political views they simply don’t exist, but it isn’t true.
Why did the Scottish Referendum result the way it did? SILENT RIGHT
Why did Brexit result? SILENT RIGHT
Why did Trump get elected? SILENT RIGHT
When the those supporting left-wing politics try to silence those with other political leanings, it doesn’t make the voters go away, it doesn’t make them change their political stance, it just makes them quiet. People stop talking online (or are banned as is now a common practice), but they don’t change their beliefs. The left doesn’t silence the talk in the streets, on the playgrounds or in the coffee shops; support against left-wing politics is still there, it is just underground.
SILENT RIGHT
SILENT RIGHT is exactly why the polls, at the moment, are getting every large political decision wrong. Polls can no longer gauge public opinion accurately, and it is the oppression and attempted political manufacturing by supporters of left-wing politics that has created this scenario.
SILENT RIGHT, a situation created by overzealous left-wing supporters, has created a whole new dimension of underground politics. A political movement formed from bullying by the left. A political movement that frighteningly no one has a handle on as it has been pushed underground.
And so today I joined the SILENT RIGHT.
I closed out my Facebook accounts, all five……. businesses, art, personal.
Now I am one more choosing to go underground. The discussions will continue in the street, the living rooms, the schoolyard and the shops. We discuss the business policies and pricing that will be increasing and how our emails going out to our customers will indicate NDP policy as the cause for inflation. We discuss working on a barter system to avoid the government receiving taxation. We discuss how we withhold support from social situations that used to ease the government’s burden. These are quiet discussions, but they do not stop. They are the discussions of the SILENT RIGHT.
Winter sunsets are arriving early this time of year. This image is taken across a field in Red Deer County. If you look closely you can see the Rockies in the distance; it is amazing how far you can see across the prairies on a clear day.
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Rose hips dusted with snow.
Bridges over just frozen creeks.
Winter path marked with footprints.
Frozen fungi clinging to an old stump.
Fallen trees and fallen snow.
Winter creek and flowing water.
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iPhone pictures by Debra Hunter
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Even though the afternoons are getting darker and darker as the days shorten, we still try to get out for walks most days. We are lucky to live near several natural areas with paths, but one of our favourites is Gaetz Lakes Sanctuary. One portion of the trail is a quick loop, perfect for cold days or when you are racing against the light to fit a walk in.
The pictures today are just iPhone pics, lighting was so poor it made no sense to take a camera along. Still, the walk was nice, and it is always good to get outside.
Photography by Debra Hunter
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