Mired as we are in the dog days of summer—no slight towards our four-legged friends—it seems like a good time to clean out my virtual in-basket and answer some of the more interesting inquiries. Having already answered the abundant and helpful emails regarding the difference between private and independent schools, I won’t bore you beating that dead horse.
Remember, I’m only supplying the answers. The questions fly through the internet and land in my email. Not my fault but I’ve changed the names of the senders unless they’ve already used nom de plumes. No need to drag them into the mire just for asking a question other people undoubtedly have.
Hey Max. What are the dog days of summer? I recall you wrote something about this before. My own dogs don’t seem to like the heat we’ve been having. So why dog days?
-Hot and Bothered
As you can see, H&B, I was inspired to borrow your question to start this piffle. But you’re right; I have written about the dog days because they’re so mythological and astronomical, great combination.
Sirius—not the satellite radio—is the brightest star in the night sky... at least in this hemisphere; I can’t speak for the southern half of the world. Mythologically speaking, it’s part of Canis Major. Canis Major is, in turn, one of Orion’s hunting dogs. Orion, recalling our high-school mythology class, was a Greek hunter. His dad was Poseidon—god of the sea—and his mom was a human gorgon with snakes for hair.
Anyway, when Sirius rises high enough for us to see in the pre-dawn, eastern sky, that marks the beginning of the dog days. This year that happened on July 3. I wasn’t awake to see it. I just report it. The dog days end Aug. 11. I don’t know why. I only studied mythology, not astronomy. But clearly, those are, or used to be, the hottest days of summer. Hard to tell now, they all seem hot.
I’ll spare you the story of why Orion and his dogs were cast into the heavens or what they do up there, partly because you can look it up yourself and partly because it might be too salacious for a family newsmagazine.
Hi G.D. With a public service ad in the Pique about not running the tap while brushing your teeth to save water, new water restrictions in Pemberton, and the hot and dry cycle we are spinning in right now, I thought it might be a good time to revisit your article on how the hotel industry in Whistler wastes water in its cooling systems. People should know about it or be reminded about it when the issue affects them more directly at this time of year. Anyway, just a polite lucky-to-have-the-water-we-have Canadian suggestion.
-Thirsty for Truth
You forgot to mention Whistler’s move to Level 3 watering restrictions, TforT. But thanks for asking.
Back in the day, when we seemed to have an endless supply of water from rain and melting snow and glaciers, it seemed to make sense, in a short-sighted kind of way, to run municipally-treated drinking water through things like commercial and industrial air conditioners, refrigerators, freezers, coolers, ice machines and other things that use heat to create cold, which is the magic of refrigeration. Got to get rid of the heat some way, so why not run cold water around the compressors or whatever is creating the heat? And we know how cold the water is here.
What could go wrong? To imagine we’d run short of treated water was as absurd as thinking we’d run out of old-growth forest to cut down.
But we did. And when Whistler started down the road to water-use restrictions, someone inquired about all this wasted water not just hotels but restaurants and other commercial establishments were using and then running down the drain once it had absorbed as much heat as it was going to during its voyage from snow/ice to water to treated water to coolant.
So the RMOW snapped into gear and—I had to look this up—passed a bylaw in October, 2018, outlawing this wasteful practice. Kind of. The easiest fix was to slap a one-year limit on reservoir-style urinals that ran fresh water 24/7. They represented the low-hanging fruit, since there was a relatively cheap alternative. I haven’t seen one lately so I guess they’re gone.
But the business sector whose ox was about to be gored by this bylaw pleaded imminent ruin if they had to find a less wasteful, more expensive way to cool down things that got hot to make other things cool. So council of the day gave them a 10-year runway to phase out once-through cooling systems.
So mark it in your calendar to ask this question again in the fall of 2028, TforT. You probably won’t need the reminder because I’m sure there will be a concerted effort by the businesses who use this system to somehow keep it in place before they have to spend the money to replace it... which will surely lead to bankruptcy and/or ruin.
Max: You lose! The RMOW just did a switcheroo and gave Waldorf another year before they evict them from Spruce Grove. Why the change of heart?
-Couldn’t Care Less
There are undoubtedly sound governmental reasons for council to inexplicably change its previous inexplicable decision. I can think of several. And think is as far as we’re going to get to ever having an explanation for this mysterious change of mind since it was done under the cone of silence.
Maybe it was the dog days of summer. Hard to make good decisions when you’re hot and bothered. Sometimes you just lash out and regret it later. Maybe they thought they were too hasty with their first secret decision so made a second one. Important to note they not only granted a second year for the school to find a new home, but they told staff to see whether the province would be okay with leaving the school within the Spruce Grove grant.
Maybe they thought there wasn’t enough interesting stuff going on in the world of politics so they needed to inject a bit of comic relief. After all, the brush with death of one old boy running for president south of the border certainly wasn’t enough to hold our attention very long. And they made this decision before the other old guy decided to drop out. Would they have thrown us this bone had they known that? Hard to say.
But if you bump into any of them, ask them. It’s fun to watch their reaction while they tell you they can’t discuss it.
