A lifelong passion for movies fulfilled weekly 

I must confess I’m an incurable movieholic. Sitting in a darkened theatre munching an overpriced bag of popcorn ranks up there with hearing Oscar Peterson rip off a solo in full flight. Not actually, but you get the picture (no pun intended). 

My passion for motion pictures started when I was four or five years old with The Wizard of Oz. I recall being excited beyond belief viewing the film’s colourful billboard posters as my father and I shuffled slowly through a line-up to the glassed-in ticket booth at the Capital Theatre in Port Alberni. The thrilling opening scene which has Dorothy’s Kansas prairie farmhouse being ripped from its foundation by a howling tornado (filmed in black and white) and then crash landed in a place called Munchkinland (filmed in gorgeous Technicolor) was my first experience with the celluloid art form known as the ‘special effect’. The magical moments which the ever-evolving technical process produces continue to thrill me.  

Moving to the city of Nanaimo eight years ago has allowed me to emerge in my passion for films as many as three to four times a week. Not only am I able to see the latest Hollywood releases on one of the 14 available screens within a few blocks of our home, but also experience via satellite live musical performances from around the world.  At the Galaxy Theatre at Rutherford Mall on Saturday mornings once or twice a month the Metropolitan Opera’s Emmy Award winning series The Met: Live in HD is in its fifth season with twelve live transmissions on tap. When I first started attending the operas there were only ten or fifteen of us in the audience. Now there are two full theatres for every performance.

However, the Galaxy Cineplex is not only presenting opera on the big screen.  On September 12, along with my wife Pat and brother Terry, we took in a live via satellite performance of one of the most popular musical celebrations of Britain’s extensive summer concert season, the Last Night of the Proms from The Royal Albert Hall in London, England. 

Then on Oct 4th I stumbled across a listing for another live satellite feed from England. Pat had driven up “over the hump’ to Port Alberni to rehearse the Timbre! choir. About 6 pm I was looking on the Internet at the local movie listings and to my surprise learned that the 25^th Anniversary production of Les Misérables was scheduled to be broadcast within the hour. I phoned Terry who lives only a few steps from the Galaxy to say the broadcast was a must-see and I’d meet him there shortly. Bar none, it turned out to be the best of all the satellite broadcasts I’ve attended in the last four years. Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s Les Misérables is one of the most beloved musicals of all time and I never tire of hearing its magnificent score. Projected onto the giant movie screen it was nothing less than spectacular and with the Galaxy theatre’s digital surround sound system I’m sure we heard the show better than the audience in attendance at the O2 Arena in London.  

As mentioned above, I’m an incurable movieholic and I’ll go to just about anything that moves - except a horror film.  Currently in theatres, my favourites include Red (a CIA spoof), The Town (an intriguing bank heist flick), Hereafter (Clint Eastwood’s latest release) and The Social Network, a film exploring the moment at which Facebook was invented.  I’d better confess.  Both Pat and myself are on Facebook and as hard as it is to do, we limit the time spent on the social network phenomena. However many past students have found us through our Facebook page and it’s great to track and find out what they’re up to. Many have become professional singers and musicians so that’s a special joy for us to read about.

Further entertainment we enjoy here in the hub city is the Vancouver Island Symphony Orchestra. Many years ago I played the double bass in an orchestra called the Nanaimo Symphony which was an all-amateur ensemble attracting players from every community north of Duncan. We met weekly on Sunday afternoons under the baton of Maurice Kushner (and later John Getgood) to rehearse for two or three concerts a year. With the advent of the handsome Port Theatre, Nanaimo now boasts a fully professional orchestra. Last Saturday evening we attended the orchestra’s first performance of their 16^th season. The concert, entitled Remembrance, featured the world premiere of a composition written by James Mark, a violinist in the orchestra. I met James several years ago when he asked me to play in an instrumental ensemble he was putting together to accompany an annual show called the Yellowpoint Christmas Spectacular.  It’s not very often one gets to write a piece for a full symphony orchestra so I was looking forward to hearing James’ new work which he had entitled Weit ist der Weg zurück (The Long Road Back). 

On stage James explained that his inspiration to write the piece had come from hearing stories of heroic actions as told to him by his Grandfather who had been a soldier on the German side during the Second World. Along with Pat and Terry, we enjoyed the composition immensely. The constant martial-like rhythmical pulse of the piece was haunting and evocative, almost hypnotic. Layered upon this constant rhythm, the brass and woodwind sections periodically created thickly textured blocks of harmony, which to my mind radiated thoughts of multiple numbers of tank weaponry on the move. The strings delicately wove their way through this minefield of sound conjuring up the image of morning mists after a ferociously fought battle.  To better appreciate James’ work I hope I have an opportunity to hear it again sometime.

Presently I’m learning my piano accompaniments for the upcoming Timbre! concert on Nov 7th. Also another Jazz Night at the Step Above Café at Quality Foods is on my gig calendar for Nov 5th.  More on both of these Port Alberni concerts in my next blog.

PHOTO: Nick Jonas may be best known for being one third of the immensely popular Jonas Brothers, but he’s been a Broadway star for even longer. The 18-year-old pop star, who started out on the Great White Way in shows like Les Miserables and Beauty and the Beast, joined the cast of Les Miz’s 25th Anniversary concert at London’s O2 Arena to reprise his role of Marius, which he played on the West End earlier this year. The concert was broadcast via satellite to the Galaxy theatre in Nanaimo on October 4th. 

Note: As a director on the board of the Western Vancouver Island Industrial Heritage Society, I was not a member of the negotiating team charged with acquiring Locomotive #113. Therefore any opinions stated in this blog should not be interpreted as speaking on behalf of the society.

Woss objections place locomotive in limbo  

I’m what’s known as a railroad aficionado, one of those folks who harbours within an insatiable love for trains. This life-long passion was born through trips to the Okanagan Valley in the 1940’s aboard a steam-hauled passenger train called the Kootenay Express to visit my grandparents who lived in Penticton. Another factoring component was listening nightly from my bedroom window to the logging trains of the Alberni Pacific Lumber Co. as they rumbled their way through the Port Alberni city limits within sight of our family home on South Crescent. 

Today, as a member of the Board of Directors of the Western Vancouver Island Industrial Heritage Society and its division the Alberni Pacific Railway, I’ve been semi-involved in the pursuit to bring the steam Locomotive #113 to Port Alberni from its near graveyard status in Woss, a small logging hamlet with a population of 304 on the northern tip of Vancouver Island. Some readers of this blog will already be well aware through various island media of the ongoing efforts by the Industrial Heritage Society to save Loci #113. However for those hearing the story for the first time, following is a little background. 

Last December the City of Port Alberni secured an agreement from Western Forest Products to take possession of their mothballed logging locomotive #113, which has been rotting for almost two decades on a side-track on the company’s north Vancouver Island property at Woss. The forest company had taken possession of the old steam engine when it bought out Canadian Forest Products earlier this decade. The City of Port Alberni and the Western Vancouver Island Industrial Heritage Society (who operate the McLean Mill No.7 steam train and related heritage equipment for the city) applied for and had in place government funding to help move the locomotive to Port Alberni this fall.

However, all these well intentioned plans suddenly crashed and burned when Dave Rushton, chairperson representing Woss in Electoral Area D of the Mount Waddington Regional District, suddenly appeared like a mythical phoenix, claiming the people of the community of Woss were the rightful owners of Locomotive #113. Their proof rested on vague bits of ‘hearsay’ and unauthorized dissertations that Canadian Forest Products had gifted the locomotive to the Woss Residents’ Association before the company went belly-up.

As one can well imagine, the unsubstantiated claim resulted in a war-of-words between the two towns. The hard won funding commitments evaporated as government representatives walked away from the negotiations, unable to support a project which had two communities in dispute. 

Why does Port Alberni want to acquire Locomotive #113 and restore it to running order? Although the locomotive has been part of the history of the North Island, the engine has a significant connection to Port Alberni, running for many years during the early 1940’s hauling logs from tidewater on the Alberni Inlet to Camp 1, which was situated at the foot of the Beaufort Range near the end of Beaver Creek Road. When operating in the Alberni Valley the engine ran as Locomotive #6 (6-Spot). Most importantly having the locomotive would mean the Alberni Pacific would be the only railway on the west coast of North America with three native steam locomotives on their roster with a historical connection to the region they operated in. Also the opportunity to sell train excursions hauled by a large steam engine headquartered in Port Alberni would give the Industrial Heritage Society a major revenue generator and a world-class steam train tourist attraction for not only Port Alberni, but British Columbia itself. 

For 16 years Locomotive #113 has been parked and uncared for by the 300 odd souls of Woss. Now they suddenly claim they care. However with government funding withdrawn, Port Alberni has backed away giving the town of Woss some undeserved wiggle room. The small citizen’s group at Woss say they will make an effort to get the engine under cover before winter and will look at the option of getting the locomotive restored, a herculean undertaking which in my opinion, considering the community’s record to date, has little likelihood of success. 

Meanwhile I keep buying Lotto Max tickets in hopes of a multi-million dollar win. Last summer when the jackpot reached $50 million I fantasized about heading to Woss to retrieve #113.  I had it all worked out in my mind, right down to the catering needed to feed the crews preparing the locomotive for the move. I digress.

The fact is the Western Vancouver Island Industrial Heritage Society with a membership roll of 126, many of whom possess the special skills needed to restore steam technology (a success rate already demonstrated in their operation of the summer steam train to McLean Mill), are the only island identity capable of bringing such an intricate restoration to a successful conclusion. Not only does the society have the skilled personnel, it has the physical plant and tools needed to house and repair the 1920’s era locomotive. The Industrial Heritage Society has stated publically that if Woss fails to get themselves significantly organized, Port Alberni plans to go back to Western Forest Products and reopen the agreement.

Some years back I began collecting information related to railway logging at Camp 1 with the intention of writing a book. Yesterday I dug out the file and found several photos of Locomotive #113 when she ran in the Alberni Valley as Loci #6. For the railroad aficionado’s aboard – enjoy.

PHOTO 1: APL Locomotive #6 (currently WFP #113) is headed eastward to Camp 1 with a train of empty skeleton log cars. The location is where Eric Dunn School now stands. (photo - Alberni Valley Museum)

PHOTO 2: An open siding switch at China Creek road crossing (near where Quality Foods now stands) resulted in APL Locomotive #6 being involved in a major derailment. 

(photo - Alberni Valley Museum)

PHOTO 3: APL Locomotive #6 (currently WFP #113) is seen here stopped on the Roger Creek Trestle. The train is headed westward to tidewater at Polly’s Point to dump its load of logs. 

(photo - Alberni Valley Museum)

PHOTO 4: A young trainee fireman Mark Mosher stands alongside the cab of the derailed Locomotive #6. Mark was one of the instigators behind having the 2-Spot locomotive restored from static display for the Industrial Heritage Society’s original tourist run along the Port Alberni waterfront.

 (photo - Alberni Valley Museum)

Victoria artist Emily Carr honoured

As a youngster I recall my father driving the family Chrysler down Government Street along the causeway of Victoria’s Inner Harbour and being captivated by the sight of the Legislature Assembly Buildings lit up at night. Ever since then, something within draws me back to the city at least six or seven times a year. I assume it’s because of those happy memories although it could be the fact I was born there. 

Last Wednesday was a sunshine filled fall day in the capital city. I’d driven down to Victoria in the late morning to attend a concert. Having a couple of hours to spare before curtain time, I partook in my obligatory stroll along the causeway. Passing the stately Fairmont Empress I noticed hundreds of people gathering on the hotel grounds. What could be going on? As I dashed across the street at the intersection of Belleville and Government to have a look, a PA system suddenly sputtered to life and I heard an unmistakable voice reverberating through the surrounding Arbutus trees. Vickey Gabereau, for many years Canada’s undisputed ‘Queen of Talk’ on CBC Radio, was holding court in the Empress Rose Garden, joyously roasting a number of Federal and Provincial political potentates with her dry wit as she introduced each individually to the assembled peasants. 

The event I’d stumbled on was the unveiling of a 313-kilogram bronze likeness of the acclaimed BC artist, author and hometown heroine Emily Carr. After giving each politician their due, Gabereau introduced the legitimate honoured guests and the statue’s sculptor Barbara Paterson from Edmonton. Paterson, renowned for her Famous Five statue in Ottawa, spoke to the struggles that Emily Carr faced throughout her lifetime - the lack of recognition and having to run a boarding house just to survive. I thought to myself that the artist’s lot hasn’t changed much. Just across the street from the Empress, provincial politicians have been busy this last year systematically destroying arts groups in British Columbia through a series of ill-conceived funding cuts. 

At the conclusion of the installation ceremony I just had time to trot four blocks east to the Royal Theatre to hear the Victoria Symphony Orchestra’s Centennial Salute to Canada’s Navy. Several soloists from the Canadian Forces Naden Band were featured with the orchestra. Chief Petty Officer Pierre Cayer played a beautiful oboe solo from M.C. Baker’s Vancouver Variations and Petty Officer Karen Shields performed a piccolo solo on Shanghai Sailor which left no doubt as to her masterful control of the tiny instrument. For me the selection showing the orchestra to best advantage was a medley from the movie soundtrack of Pirates of the Caribbean. 

This was the second concert I’ve heard played by the Victoria Symphony recently. One morning last month I had a dental appointment in Oak Bay and before leaving home I checked online for the orchestra’s concert schedule and found an all-Gershwin performance listed for that very afternoon. I ordered a ticket online. To my consternation the concert turned out to be a bit of a circus. I kid you not. The headlining soloist, a women from New York City named Janice Martin, actually performed some of George Gershwin’s music (on the violin) while hanging upside down from a trapeze suspended above the orchestra. However all kidding aside, I must say that Martin’s playing in more normal positions was brilliant and the woman’s musical artistry was never in question. Multi-talented, Martin’s piano performance of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue was as good as any rendition I’ve heard. Apparently based on a Youtube video submission, Martin was chosen to appear on Season four of the popular NBC television show America’s Got Talent. There you go. Whatever it takes to make a living in the music business, just go ahead and do it.

I digress. After the Naval Salute concert I hoofed back to the Empress Hotel to get some photos of the Emily Carr statue devoid of the milling crowds. The Carr event was actually the second statue unveiling I’d attended in Victoria during the last year. In May, I drove down to see the Naval Day Parade and as part of the celebrations a statue called the “Homecoming” was dedicated and unveiled in the Inner Harbour by His Honour Steven L. Point, Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia. The statue by Victoria sculptor Nathan Scott depicts that magical moment of a sailor returning from the sea to his daughter’s welcoming home embrace. 

Before leaving Victoria I stopped off at the new Uptown Centre on the site of the old Town & Country Mall. Phase 1 opened this past summer and the development is quite an eye-popper, at least in sheer largeness. The usual suspects like Shoppers Drug Mart and Best Buy are tenants. However anchoring the site is a Wal-Mart Supercentre with enough square footage to park a half-dozen 747’s inside plus an enormous Future Shop stocking just about every conceivable electronic gizmo imaginable.

Heading home in the rush hour I needed almost an extra hour to navigate a local dilemma known as the Colwood Crawl - a daily ballet of automobile gridlock, which I understand over time, causes the beleaguered Victoria commuter to go completely insane.

 PHOTO: The “Homecoming” statue was unveiled May 4/10. The dedication ceremony took place on Wharf Street followed the “Navy Day” Freedom of the City Parade. 

PHOTO: The Emily Carr Statue Committee raised more than $400,00 to complete the monument that features a seated Emily Carr with her sketchpad. Emily's Javanese monkey 'Woo' perches on her shoulder and her dog 'Billie' stands nearby. 

New Community Theatre at ADSS under construction

I believe it was in the fall of 2007 when I first heard that the decision to replace Alberni District Secondary School with a new facility had been finalized. Having been a student when the building opened in the early 1950’s and having spent the last 20 years of my teaching career as the school’s music director, the news gave me quite a jolt. 

During my teaching years two elected school boards had previously over a span of two decades, set in motion investigative plans for the school’s replacement. For lack of available funds the Ministry of Education in Victoria had shelved both requests. However, this announcement was different. The School Board had not only been successful in their appeal to the government to rebuild, the school was going to be built elsewhere in the community, namely the Echo Centre area adjacent to the Bob Dailey Stadium. 

For those of us in the arts community the announcement was as distressful as the Tsunami that had rolled thru the valley in 1964. The question on all our minds was - would the community’s premier performance venue, the 1000-seat ADSS Auditorium fall victim to the wrecking-ball when the old building was razed?   

An emergency meeting of Auditorium user groups was called. Also in attendance were members of the school board and district staff along with interested members of the public. The non-confrontational meeting’s goal was to “determine community interest in the preservation of a large performance facility” for the Alberni Valley. I gave a brief dissertation on the history of the Auditorium and Erica Watson as organizing chair of the special meeting spoke passionately about how having access to strong arts programs in a community can often be a deciding factor on whether or not young families or retirees choose to move to a particular area. 

The most important result coming out of the meeting was the formation of a committee to decide if the old Auditorium could somehow be saved as a stand alone facility, or as an alternative, lobby hard for a theatre to be included in the new high school, something provincial governments no longer provided funding for. 

As a member of the committee representing the Port Alberni Orchestra & Chorus Society, I became quite excited when the school board offered the $1-million expected from the sale of the ADSS property on Burde Street to be earmarked towards a theatre in the new school. Although a few citizens urged me in letters-to-the-editor to the AV Times not to abandon my original hopes that the Auditorium be saved, I’d come to the conclusion that the costs of preserving the old building were prohibitive and there was no way local arts groups could afford to run the theatre independently. There was much hand-ringing in the community as to what the seating capacity of a new theatre should be. Taking into account available funds and some creative planning by the architect, the committee eventually supported a 500-seat configuration to be considered. The school district agreed and the government supported it.

My belief is the committee’s expertise and resulting support went a long way towards acquiring the new theatre. Supporting a 500-seater under the circumstances was not only the right choice, but the only choice. Port Alberni will have a state-of-the-art theatre which will serve the artistic community and their audiences for years to come. We owe the committee our tremendous gratitude for a job well done. 

Since many readers of my blog are past students and others ex-citizens living around the world, I thought you might be interested in viewing the attached video link of the new ADSS. The video doesn’t show the theatre chamber itself but does show the theatre lobby area. 

         

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqma_ZgX6vI

Until my next blog...........

Cheers

PHOTO:

The photo below is a scene from the 1956 Alberni District High School Music & Drama Society’s production of Pirates of Penzance. The newly built Auditorium had seating for 1035 and has been for over 50-years the Alberni Valley’s premier performance venue. (photo courtesy of Sharen (Russel) Scheurich)

View from top of the Hump

Big Bands Perform at VIU

The first jazz recording I ever heard was the Benny Goodman Carnegie Hall Concert. The second was a single by the Stan Kenton Orchestra entitled The Peanut Vendor. 

I was 13 at the time and like many youngsters was taking classical piano lessons. Spellbound after hearing the recordings, which had been played during one of my Grade 7 classes by a jazz-loving teacher, I proceeded to spend most of my enslaved practice time at the piano trying to figure out how the jazz pianists on the albums strung together the solos that seemed to pour forth so effortlessly from their fingers.

After hours of experimentation I realized they were playing various groupings of modular scales laid on top of a given tune’s chord structure resulting in improvisations that were phenomenal feats of spontaneous composition.  Having no one on the west side of the “hump” to guide me, I then spent months trying to clone what I was hearing on the recordings into my own free spirit solos. Listening from a distance, my mother’s only comment during my practice time was the slight reprimand “why don’t you play the song’s melody anymore?” 

I like to believe in time my mother came to understand that my keyboard meanderings were the basic ingredient which made jazz a very intricate and intriguing art form. However my interest in departing from the written score eventually led to me quitting piano lessons. I didn’t return to the instrument until attending Westlake College of Music in Los Angeles after graduating from high school.  The intervening years I’d spent playing the string bass in an Alberni District High School Dance Band called the Lucky Seven. 

I look back at my life in music with a deep appreciation, especially towards Al Chalmers, the teacher who set the needle down on that 78 rpm recording of Stan Kenton’s Peanut Vendor.  Although in fairness, without those classical piano lessons I wouldn’t have had the grounding needed to make it as a musician and teacher. I confess my wife Pat has also given me many keyboard technical tips along the way.

The years have passed quickly and I’m still hammering away at the ivories and loving every minute of it. This week I played piano with the Arrowsmith Big Band at a concert at Vancouver Island University. Brian Stovell, a professor of music at VIU,  organized the event which featured the Arrowsmith Big Band in the first set with the Nanaimo Musicians’ Association Big Band taking over after intermission. 

Standing back stage as the crowd entered the theatre, Bryan mentioned to me he sensed the majority of the audience had likely come expecting to hear music from the so-called Big Band Era of the 1930’s and 40’s, not the more contemporary material written by today’s arrangers. Mixing with the 

audience during intermission I did hear the odd rumblings that selections like Glenn Miller’s In the Mood, Benny Goodman’s Sing Sing Sing and Count Basie’s One O’Clock Jump were not being played on the program.  However my take was most folks were enjoying the concert, expressing how impressed they were with the high level of musicianship displayed.

In the concert’s second set I thought Bryan as MC handled the concern with great diplomacy, explaining to the audience that both bands at various times during the year performed all those perennial hits from the Big Band Era.  In fact he said the musicians on stage had probably played In The Mood more times than Glenn Miller had in his 

lifetime! 

So if you are one who loves the music from the Swing Era and would like to hear all those legendary tunes wrapped up in a single package, mark November 11^th (Remembrance Day) on your calendar. Between 2 pm and 4 pm at the Legion Hall in Parksville, the Arrowsmith Big Band will perform music meant for dancing. And here’s a great perk - it’s free.  Those readers living in Port Alberni will need to make the perennial drive “over the hump.”

Until my next Blog ………..Cheers.  

PHOTO:

I look forward to playing piano with the Arrowsmith Big Band each week. Here we’re seen performing last Wednesday evening on stage at the Vancouver Island University Malaspina Theatre. The Arrowsmith Big Band opened the evening of Big Band Jazz with the Nanaimo Musicians’ Association Big Band directed by Bryan Stovell performing after intermission.

PHOTO:

The Lucky 7 Dance Band, pictured here in 1953 on the stage of the old Alberni Athletic Hall in Port Alberni, was the first ensemble I’d ever played with. That’s me on the string bass. The gig paid $7 per player for three hours. 

Welcome to my Blog - Barry Miller

Why, you might ask, have you received this blog? To be honest I’m hopeful you might take pleasure in reading some of my musings from West and East of the Hump. However, if you’re someone who abhors cluttering your life with yet another email, just let me know your preference and you’ll be dropped from my reader’s list. No offense will be taken.

For those wishing to peruse further and puzzled as to what exactly “the Hump” relates to in the blog’s sub-title, it refers to the mountain pass piercing the Beaufort Range, which divides the western and eastern coastlines of Vancouver Island between the cities of Port Alberni and Nanaimo.

I was raised in Port Alberni, attended 8^th Ave Elementary School and graduated from Alberni District High School in 1957.  Having no master plan for the future I worked for several years in the local plywood plant. In those days one could earn a substantial amount of money working in the forest industry.  Socking away the paycheques, enough was saved to pay for my tuition and living expenses for four years at Westlake College of Music in Los Angeles, California.  

Returning to Port Alberni one summer I met a wonderful and talented girl named Patricia Auld who had just returned from studying piano at the Toronto Conservatory of Music. One thing led to another and a year later we found ourselves married, raising a family and very involved in the musical life of a thriving community. The next 35 years were spent teaching in the Alberni Valley secondary school system. Pat taught private piano lessons and conducted several choral groups including the Alberni Teen Singers, Nu-Port Jazz Choir, AV Chamber Choir and later the Alberni Valley Community Choir Timbre!  Eight years ago Pat and I moved to Nanaimo where we became very involved in music yet continued our musical ties with Port Alberni. Thus my reference: ViewPoint from top of the Hump.

We certainly didn’t vacate Port Alberni lock, stock and barrel and we’ll always consider ourselves citizens of the “community of hearts.” Fact is, we still maintain a summer home at Sproat Lake and Pat drives every Monday evening over “the hump” to conduct the Timbre! Choir and teach piano to our grandchildren. Also we both have non-musical Conductors’ Certification Tickets enabling us to work as volunteer railway conductors aboard the Alberni Pacific Railway in the summer months. I’m also on the board of directors of the Western Vancouver Island Industrial Heritage Society, the Port Alberni Orchestra & Chorus Society and continue to perform with our son Cory in a jazz quartet at Quality Foods’ A Step Above Café. Hopefully these pursuits still qualify us, at least in theory, as Alberni-ites. 

For over a decade I wrote a weekly column for the Alberni Valley Times. However, the column was dropped last year in a budget cut against freelance contributions to the paper.  I miss writing the column and confess this blog is to satisfy my craving to write about things that interest me. Until my next blog posting……cheers.

Photo 1: Pat and myself alongside Loci #7 at the E&N Station in downtown Port Alberni before the 2pm eastward run to McLean Mill on July 15/2010.

Pat uncouples Loci #7 from the passenger cars in preparation for refuelling at the McLean Mill rail yard - July 15/2010.