Could our ingenious technology run amuck?

The Martin Mars had a contract this summer to train a group of Chinese pilots who will be flying some new 4-engine tankers currently being built in China. Then virtually within sight of the Mars bomber base, Dog Mountain caught fire. Although the Mars wasn’t quite ready to fight the fire, as they didn’t have a contract, public pressure did prod the authorities into giving a one-month fire-fighting contract to the iconic aircraft. The Forest Service’s spin the last two fire seasons has been the Mars is not as efficient as smaller more modern aircraft. Sadly that decision resulted in the loss of an entire mountain on Sproat Lake when the zippy new land-based airplanes couldn’t control the blaze. Thousands in BC are hopeful the Mars will now be given a five-year contract.

However, one can still see the government’s reluctance to include the Mars in their toolbox of forest fire fighting aircraft. Is it my imagination, but whenever there’s a media report relating to the Mars the cost of the contract seems to be always mentioned? In all fairness the cost of all the other contracts should be published as well. Yes, the Mars likely costs more but it has proven its worth over the decades and can dump more water and gel on a fire in a shorter time span than any other aircraft.  

As of this writing the Mars has attended several fires in the province and has been doing an outstanding job. Follow the Mars at https://www.facebook.com/coulsonflyingtankers

Photo: Our daughter-in-law Jessica Booker took this photo from our float as the Martin Mars was landing on Sproat Lake. 

I’ve added another flag to our float flag pole. On top of course is the Maple Leaf, below it the flag of the Colony of Vancouver Island and below that the newly minted Martin Mar’s flag.

The upper half of a burnt tree from the Dog Mountain fire. When the lake starts to rise in the fall I fear tons of similar debris will be floating on the lake. Hopefully someone has a plan to remove these safety hazards. Meanwhile the BC Forest Service continues to allow the fire to burn itself out, a decision many lake residents find unacceptable with the Mars Bomber available to put out hotspots within the fire’s perimeter.

Could our ingenious technology run amuck? 

I remember when personal computers were first introduced into the public school system. I wasn’t overly impressed with what the machines could do. However, one had to pay attention because the government was willing to dole out substantial funding to teachers willing to figure ways to incorporate computers into their programs. I was convinced it was just another passing fad and things would soon return to normal. Boy was I wrong! Today I embrace technology as much as anyone.

Yes, computers can do wonderful things but of late, many people are starting to fear them as well. Even Bill Gates, who is responsible as anyone for putting computers into our homes, stated recently in a Newsweek article that artificial intelligence is dangerous and could doom humanity.

There are so many things that computers have replaced in our lives that it boggles the mind of someone like me who was a child of the 1930’s. My career choice became that of a musician. I often think of how computers wiped out the jobs of thousands of professional music copyists. Before the advent of computers, committing musical notes to paper using distinctive fountain pens was almost an art form. Then came computer programs tied to the Internet that enable musicians to record studio quality performances in the comfort of their own home and sell the created music worldwide, eliminating almost overnight a studio based recording empire.

The computer incursion into our lives continues today at an ever-increasing rate. Today the very art of writing language longhand is threatened as elementary schools across the country downgrade cursive writing to make room for keyboarding lessons. Learning to write in my elementary school years meant having to dip a straight pen into a glass inkwell fixed atop my graffiti scarred wooden desk. Meticulously my classmates and I practiced daily to scroll so very carefully all the letters of the alphabet. Thinking about it calls to mind my mother’s beautiful longhand style that was pure artistry. Computers have obliterated that era.

Youngsters these days can’t even write their own names.  I recently read a newspaper article where an Ontario father was in a state of shock when he realized his teenage son didn’t how to sign his name in longhand on the Canadian passport application. The boy needed the passport for travel to Europe on a school field trip.

And let’s be frank. Does anyone know how to spell anymore? As I write this blog Microsoft Spell Check is silently churning away, letting me know the millisecond I’ve misspelled a word and offering suggestions to correct my flub. Unfortunately for poor spellers, the program doesn’t recognize the difference between words like  "your" and "you're". No matter, in this world of Smartphone texting, today’s youth simply avoids the effort and types “ur.”

Going back to Bill Gates’ remark that, “artificial intelligence is dangerous and could doom humanity.” Referring to computer-controlled robotics, he stated “at first the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage it well. A few decades after that though, the intelligence will be strong enough to be a concern.” And another really smart guy named Stephen Hawking has declared, “the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race,” especially since “humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete and would be superseded.” Wow! Given that brilliant people the likes of these are expressing such concerns should alarm us all. Is our future to be placed in the hands of a bunch of robots? There won’t be a decent job left for a human to do.


Steam Days at McLean Mill National Historic Site (Port Alberni)

My wife Pat and I continue to work as conductors aboard the Alberni Pacific Railway that travels between the Port Alberni downtown waterfront and the National Historic Site McLean Mill in the Beaver Creek area east of the city. The weekend of July 24/25 was called Steam Up and Antique Machinery Show Days and featured steam operated equipment from various points of Vancouver Island. Here Pat and I are in charge of a much smaller train than we’re used to, a model railway steam ride brought to the McLean Mill steam weekend by the Vancouver Island Model Engineer Club based on the Saanich Peninsula north of Victoria.

 Can you imagine dragging this monstrous steam operated saw around in the bush to buck up a fallen tree? The photo was taken at the recent Steam Up and Antique Machinery Show at the National Historic Site McLean Mill.

 The notorious Beaufort Gang continues to harass the Alberni Pacific Railway, periodically getting away with the entire payroll for McLean Mill employees.

There is a scenic spot in the Alberni Valley known as the Hole in the Wall. Oddly, taking into account the many decades I lived in the valley, I can’t believe I never got around to visiting the locally known gem until this summer. At long last on a blazing hot afternoon last week, Pat and I decided to hike in and have a look. 

We began by parking Pat’s loyal Toyota Camry in a small pull-out on Highway 4, directly across from Coombs Country Candy where one begins the drive up the hump. Being a very warm day, walking the first section of the trail through a shade-less replanted logged off area was somewhat desert-like. However, within a short distance the trail passed into a cool forest of second growth. Unfortunately there was no signage to tell one which of several forks in the trail led to our goal Hole in the Wall so we found ourselves backtracking at one point. However, with some direction from other hikers we soon located our destination.

The watercourse running through the area is Roger Creek. Considering the drought conditions this summer I was surprised the small waterfall tumbling out of the hole hadn’t been reduced to a trickle.  The little information I could find online said the gaping hole had been blasted through the massive wall of volcanic shale to provide a direct delivery route from a reservoir that was the source of drinking water for the Town of Alberni before it amalgamated with Port Alberni in 1967.  I spotted several old wooden pipes wrapped with wire exposed alongside the trail which I deduce carried the water into town. Our visit to Hole in the Wall was well worth the trek and every bit as impressive and picturesque as I’d been led to believe it was by others. A second visit has been added to my bucket list.

Magnificent Mars flies again

This past week has been surreal at our summer home on pristine Sproat Lake in the Alberni Valley. It started July 4th as I was working as conductor aboard the Alberni Pacific Railway’s heritage steam train ride to the McLean Mill National Historic Site. The train was travelling downgrade to Port Alberni when it was suddenly robbed by the Beaufort Gang. A number of well-known valley citizens lost their valuables to the venomous thieves who escaped into the forest on horseback.

Proceeding down the grade, the rail right-of-way emerges from the woodlands near the Chase & Warren Winery. The view across the Alberni Valley at this point is quite spectacular.  Looking towards Sproat Lake we could see a thin wisp of smoke curling skyward from the top of Dog Mountain, the unmistakable sign of the birth of a forest fire. Over the train’s PA system we drew our passenger’s attention to the developing event.

On subsequent trips throughout the day we watched the fire grow ever larger in size. It was several hours before any fire-suppression aircraft appeared on the scene. On all our minds was the fact that the world’s largest firefighting water bomber, Hawaii Mars, was sitting beached on the shoreline of Sproat Lake within sight of the fire. The mighty Mars had been declared redundant by the government two years ago and was not part of their future plans to fight forest fires in British Columbia. This decision would prove to be a colossal mistake this past week. Had the Mars been operational it is likely the fire could have been contained until firefighters arrived on the ground. Instead the result was a massive wildfire that burned an entire mountain and spread to the beaches of Two Rivers and Taylor Arms.

 

Above: I took this picture of Sproat Lake’s Dog Mountain fire from my boat at 11pm on Tues. evening July 7. An awesome and scary event to witness live.

As the fire raged and expanded towards several shoreline cabins, social media went crazy. Why was the Mars just sitting there onshore? “Get it up and running!” Alberni residents and others further afield cried. For days the government wouldn’t budge, refusing to give the Coulson Group of Companies (a local corporation and owners of the Martin Mars) a contract to get the aircraft back in action. Finally the heat became too much to ignore, not only from the fire, but also from BC citizens of all political stripes. The government finally caved, spewing a stack of political bafflegab why they now considered the Mars Water Bomber part of their arsenal in battling forest fires in the province. The result is the Hawaii Mars will operate on a one-month contract that could be extended if the dry weather continues. Wouldn’t it be a revelation if a government agency just stated that they’d made a mistake in the first place and get on with the job.

As I write this blog the Martin Mars has just landed after completing a number of test flights including a water drop directly in front of the bomber base. Our lake house is exactly under the landing flight path of the mammoth machine and every landing is an exciting event that sets all our cupboard dishes dancing. Although safely high enough, the Mars always seems close enough to clip the treetops surrounding our sundeck.

Everyone here in the Alberni Valley and I’m sure in other parts of the province are relieved the Mars is back in service. She has proven her worth in the past and given the opportunity, no doubt will once again.

Photo: Pat and I along with our grandchildren watched the Hawaii Mars  launched into Sproat Lake early Tuesday morning for the first time in two years. The following evening the huge aircraft did a test flight over Port Alberni with the whole community cheering.

Saturday morning July 11.What is this? Am I hallucinating. I’ve just woken up and heavy rain is falling, the first seen in numerous weeks. I had to rush down to our float to get our boat covered. Last night when I went to bed the weather report was calling for light rain, not a 12-hour long deluge. Will the rain put out the fire? Possibly. However, there’s more summer days ahead and having the Mars Bomber floating in the lake on standby, ready to fly at a moment’s notice is definitely comforting.

And all that jazz….

Two weeks ago I drove down to Victoria to catch some concerts at the TD International Jazz Festival. Packing a case of CD’s, I’d decided from the moment I left home I’d listen to jazz non-stop. No tuning in on the car radio to eavesdrop on the latest talk show rants regarding political scandals. This was to be a few days submerged in music and also do a little touring on my new e-Bike.

Victoria is a superb city for cycling with some excellent bike trails crisscrossing the surrounding communities. Arriving in the Capital City, the first thing I did was ride the Galloping Goose Trail on the old Canadian National Railway grade out to Sooke.

Later the same day I rode a newer paved commuter bike trail that has been laid out between Victoria’s historic E&N railway roundhouse and the Naden Naval Yards in Esquimalt. The only drawback to accessing the trail is one must ride smack in the middle of vehicle traffic across the old Johnson Street lift bridge. The railway bridge that was situated alongside the vehicle bridge and had incorporated the separated bike path lanes has been removed to make way for the new bridge currently under construction. When finished the new bridge will include designated bikes lanes and will act as the trailhead to serve the region’s Galloping Goose, Lochside, and E&N biking trails.

After bike riding most of the day it was time to hear some live jazz. The first festival event I took in was a two hour performance by the  Christine Jensen Jazz Orchestra. They were incredible. Made up of 19 musicians from Montreal the band was world class. You wouldn't hear big band jazz played any better anywhere. Jensen is a beautiful arranger and a fair portion of the program was based on her Juno Award winning album Treelines. Currently she is working on a new work that will be jazz interpretations of the paintings of Emily Carr. The concert also featured Christine’s sister Ingrid on trumpet who is based in New York City. For those blog readers who may not know, both began their music studies in the Nanaimo school system and have gone on to achieve world wide success, like another Nanaimo bred musician by the name of Diana Krall. Hats off to CBC Radio and The Canada Council for underwriting the costs of Jensen’s concert. Touring a large jazz band across the country is a rare event these days considering the current political climate relating to support for the arts.

The second concert I attended was a piano trio called GoGo Penguin from Manchester England. The group’s dazzling improvisations were based on everything from Shostakovich to the British group Massive Attack. Pianist Chris Illingworth boggled my mind with his ability to split his brain in two to state one melody with his right hand and another with his left with such breathtaking precision of metre. It was uncanny how he made it work so seamlessly. Nick Blacka’s huge sound on the double bass and drummer Rob Turner’s unyielding staccato styled rhythms filled every corner of Herman’s Jazz Club where the concert was held. The overall trance-like musicality of the group is something that has to be heard live to be believed.

Above: Christine and Ingrid Jensen perform an improvised duet backed by Christine’s big band at the TD International Jazz Festival in Victoria. 

 Below: New flag added to our float flag pole on Sproat Lake

 

Did you know Vancouver Island has its own flag? I didn’t until I noticed a Nanaimo neighbor flying from their balcony an unusual flag containing the Union Jack in one corner. Unable to find the flag listed on a world flag site on the internet, I asked our neighbor one evening while out walking with my wife Pat, what country the flag represented. To my surprise I learned it was the official flag for the Colony of Vancouver Island. 

Aside from having the Union Jack, the flag also features the trident of Neptune (for the ocean), a pine cone to represent the Island’s forests, and a beaver to represent the fur trade. It was approved by Queen Victoria in 1865. However events ensured a short shelf life. In 1865 the Colony of British Columbia and the Colony of Vancouver Island merged so the designed flag was never flown. Our neighbor had purchased his from the Victoria Flag Shop on Fort Street. I immediately ordered one.

This year starting Canada Day, on our Sproat Lake float flagpole we not only raised the Maple Leaf, but Vancouver Island’s very own official flag.

E-Bike a revelation

I’ve been riding a 10-Speed bike for many years and enjoy the pursuit immensely. However, at the end of our street I have to pump my bike up an incredibly steep hill before hitting more level terrain. Lately I’d taken to dismounting and pushing my bike up the incline. My knees were beginning to wag a flag of surrender. After all I had to concede, I am a retired senior so feeling joint pain does come with the territory.

Then one morning while reading the local Nanaimo newspaper, I spotted an advertisement placed by a Qualicum store promoting a product called Pedego electric bikes.  “Come see us and take one of our electric bikes out for a test ride. Recapture the fun of being a kid on a bike again – able to go anywhere, forever” their ad declared. I jumped into my van and thirty minutes later was in the store donning a bike helmet and taking an e-bike model called the City Commuter Classic for a spin. Having spent a decade of summers during my youth at my parent’s beach house in Qualicum Beach, I knew where all the really steep streets in the area were located. I had to see if the e-bike could perform as advertised.  What a revelation! The hills I selected melted away as the e-bike zipped effortlessly up every grade. I was sold. There was no way I could leave the store without owning one.

Originally my perception of an e-bike was that it must be like a motorcycle – just climb on and the thing will cart you wherever you want to go, no pedaling necessary. That, it turned out was just ignorance on my part. Electric bikes are normal bicycles that have been built to incorporate the assistance of an electric motor. It’s more accurate to call them electric-assist or pedal-assist bicycles because they do not go unless you pedal them. However, having said that, mine has a throttle that works independently from the pedals when needed. I use it whenever I need to take off quickly from a standing stop such as after waiting for a traffic light.

When I was in Switzerland a couple of years ago with my brother Terry, I noticed that most city public parking garages had more bicycles parked in them than cars. Apparently in many European cities, e-bikes have extended the distances cycled so much that bikes are second only to automobiles in total mileage traveled. The rise of e-bikes as a practical commuting option in Europe is actually eroding sales of cars.  

After getting my new e-bike home aboard my utility trailer, I could hardly wait to take off. However, I had to be patient and wait a few hours to charge the new battery pack. Remember that first hill located at the end of our street? The e-bike charged up the grade like it didn’t even exist. I was onto the Parkway Trail behind the Woodgrove Mall in moments and heading south. Upon reaching Vancouver Island University I took a wrong turn and got a little lost on some unfamiliar side streets. However, my Apple Smart Phone GPS soon bailed me out and guided me through Bowen Park to where I was able to access the E&N bike trail and ride it northward to home.

I had a little fun on this leg of the trail. Pulling up behind three cyclists I indicated I was going to pass them on the left. I then kicked in full battery power and roared past, leaving them far behind. The group caught up with me as I was waiting for a long light change at the Bowen Road and Island Highway intersection. They were flabbergasted and had to know how a senior citizen had left them behind eating his dust. I gave them a technical rundown on the phenomenal capabilities of my new bike and told them where I’d bought it. They all wanted one. I may have given the Qualicum store a few more sales. Perhaps I’d better inquire about receiving a sales commission.

It’s an understatement to say my first extended trip with the bike was awesome. As one bike reviewer I read online put it, “it’s thrilling to add 400 watts of power to the 400 watts your body is already putting out.” Also, whenever I needed to leave the bike trails and travel on city streets, I felt much safer than on my old 10-speed because I can now keep up with the traffic. On hills, I was constantly smiling to myself as I marveled at how little effort it took to climb them.

The following day I decided to do my bit for the environment by ditching the car to do the grocery shopping via my bike. An article I’d read that very morning stated when an e-bike replaces a car, the e-bike offsets 1,550 grams of globe-warming hydrocarbons; 1,460 grams of carbon monoxide; and 770 grams of nitrogen oxides for every 500 miles ridden. Perhaps I should consider voting Green in the next election. Interestingly the only federal running politician at this point in time to knock on our door was the Green candidate for our area – an intelligent young fellow by the name of Paul Manly. I digress.

Bottom line – my new bike has extended my life on two wheels into the future and my knees are thanking me. Riding gives me a sincere connection with the community, venturing into neighborhood areas I’d never bother to go with a car. I am aware that some in the biking fraternity assert that riding an e-bike is not a pure cycling pursuit and fundamentally is lazy. However, the way I see it, it’s my car that breeds laziness, while my new e-bike will have me out riding more than ever.

Everything you ever wantedf to know about The Sound of Music revealed in newly released book

Last Sunday I toddled off like an excited youngster to see the film version of the iconic Broadway Musical The Sound of Music. This year being the 50^th anniversary of the movie’s release, the Galaxy Theatre in Nanaimo as part of their Classic Film Series scheduled two showings. The previous week I’d stumbled upon an article in the Art’s section of the Victoria Colonist that mentioned a new book by Tom Santopietro about the making of The Sound of Music. Downloading the book from Amazon to my iPad, I couldn’t stop reading.

It was June 4^th, 1964 and Julie Andrews was freezing. “If this is spring weather in the Austrian Alps, what is it like in February?” she thought. The location was a meadow high above Mehlweg in Southern Bavaria and the schedule called for the filming of The Sound of Music’s title song – the scene that opens the story that has Maria cresting a hill at a flat run, throwing herself into a full-bodied twirl with arms outstretched as if to embrace the entire world launching into The hills are alive with … 

The logistics involved a rental helicopter that would swoop down from above to film the scene. Helicopter rentals were enormously expensive and the 20^th Century-Fox front office back in Hollywood was pleading with director Robert Wise to rein in the escalating costs affecting a studio that was just emerging from bankruptcy.  There was no money for even one more day’s helicopter rental. Seeing the scene replayed on the big screen last Sunday, I’d forgotten how spectacular the sequence was.

The Sound of Music soundtrack has proved to be the most successful soundtrack ever released, but aside from Julie Andrews, no one who sang on the soundtrack ever received any money from it.  

Reading Santopietro’s book before attending the film added so much more enjoyment to the multiple times I’ve seen the film, mostly on video when preparing for one of the live productions I’ve played piano on and conducted over the years. Santopietro’s tome is loaded with so much detail about the filming that the data was continuously spooling through my brain as every scene played out. Apparently the helicopter’s downdraft proved so strong that Andrews found herself constantly knocked over and trying to avoid the meadow’s muddy sections during multiple morning takes. The regular Hollywood cameraman had refused to dangle himself from the aircraft’s doorway so a fearless German operator had to be hired for this part of the shoot.

The overriding question for 20^th Century-Fox during three months of filming was would the movie-going public buy into a story about a nun bursting with song. Audiences were starting to expect more reality from their films in the early 60’s. Marked relaxation of production code taboos had changed the very nature of moviegoing. Religious epics were no longer in vogue and musicals had fallen out of favor. I recall seeing the Academy Award winning film version of West Side Story by the same director Robert Wise in 1961 at a movie theatre in Port Alberni. Most of the audience had left the theatre before the end, unable to accept the premise of street gang hoodlums who sang and danced their way across the screen.

However, as we all know, The Sound of Music turned out to be a worldwide film phenomenon that continues to resonate with audiences some five decades after the film’s initial release. This, was in spite of the critical scorn heaped upon the film when it opened. Santopietro’s book devotes a number of pages regarding movie critics in this pre-Internet age. He states critics in the mid-sixties simply grew mean, as if the more vicious the attacks, the more firmly they established their importance.

Some examples - the New Yorker’s Brendan Gill wrote “the film’s handful of authentic location shots have a hokey studio sheen. The acting of Andrews, Plummer, and Parker are well under ordinary high school level.” Wow! As author Santopietro points out, “It’s safe to say that there was not a high schooler alive in 1965 or 2015 who possessed anywhere near the acting skills of these three award-winning actors.” McCall’s magazine critic Pauline Kael found the movie phony. She struck the pose of a world-weary upholder of artistic standards writing The Sound of Music makes it “even more difficult for anyone to try to do anything worth doing, anything relevant to the modern world, anything inventive or expressive.” Pressing her attack further she declared that a film of such “luxuriant falseness” was “probably going to be the single most repressive influence on artistic freedom in movies for the next few years.” She blamed the American public for foolishly buying into a film that promoted the “big lie, the sugarcoated lies that people seem to want to eat.” Incidentally, the review cost her her job as the magazine’s film critic. I assume too many McCall’s magazine readers cancelled or threatened to cancel their subscriptions.
 

Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer and the children. Plummer thought the film beneath him and worried how the movie could affect his career as a classical actor. In one interview he called the film “The Sound of Mucus.” However, over time he finally came to understand and appreciate how much the film meant to people.

 The hills are alive with ...

What seemed to particularly confound the critics was the fact that The Sound of Music represented a return to old-fashioned “saccharine” fare they thought had finally disappeared. Films like Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, others that depicted nuclear destruction like Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove were the fare of the day.  Yet here was The Sound of Music, old-fashioned to the core, rising to be the most popular film on the planet. The most severe critics continued to assert the question: “had audiences all around the world lost their collective minds?”

When the Oscar nominations were announced early in 1966, The Sound of Music and Doctor Zhivago had each garnered a total of ten nominations. When the dust settled on Oscar night, The Sound of Music triumphed, marking two years in a row that a musical had won the Academy Award as Best Film. The previous year was My Fair Lady. Critics once more rolled their eyes. Although nominated, Julie Andrews didn’t win best actress. The Hollywood scuttle-buck was Andrews had already been well rewarded for winning the Oscar in 1964 for her role in Mary Poppins.

Country by country, continent by continent, The Sound of Music juggernaut rolled on setting box office records, except in Germany and Austria. The cold hard fact in these two countries was the film flopped outright – big time. Santopietro poses the reason for this was that the Nazi-era setting of the movie seemed to remind the population of an era that they would rather totally forget. The movie’s depiction of Captain von Trapp’s principled refusal to serve in the Reich’s Navy only served to remind Austrians that masses of their fellow citizens had eagerly welcomed Hitler. The first run of the film in Salzburg lasted only three days. Only those who had acted as extras showed up.

  However the passage of time does heal. Today Austrians are grateful for the decades’ long boon to tourism fostered by the film’s worldwide appeal. As Austrian minister of arts and culture once stated, “Salzburg may be the home of Mozart, but The Sound of Music locations appear to have surpassed Wolfgang Amadeus’s birthplace as the ‘go to’ Salzburg destinations.” Today at the height of the summer season one tour company claims their Sound of Music location tours still attract over two hundred paying customers per day. Tourists also attend the Salzburg Marionettes production of The Sound of Music. It appears the company turned down an offer by 20^th Century-Fox to stage the famous marionette scene that appears in the film. They judged being in a Hollywood movie undignified - beneath their legendary performance standards.

  
The famous Marionette scene from the film.




 

Today the Sixteen Going on Seventeen gazebo sits in a city park. Across from the Salzburg Sheraton Hotel, the manager claims that guests don’t ask for their room number when checking in – they only want to make a beeline for the iconic steps of the Mirabell Gardens across the street where the finale of Do-Re-Mi was filmed. Here tourists flock to re-create the stair-hopping climax of the tune that featured Maria and the children on a summertime outing.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of the quantity of information packed into this new book by Tom Santopietro. If you’re at all interested in film musicals, The Sound of Music Story is a must read.

Piano in family since 1939

The past month I’ve been going through stacks of cardboard boxes bursting with old photos, sheet music, letters, clothing and other paraphernalia stored in our garage. Many containers hadn’t been cracked open since we moved from Port Alberni to Nanaimo 14 years ago. One box containing correspondence belonging to my parents and written in the 1930’s I found to be of significant interest, a link I felt to be my prelude connection to the world of music. 

Photo: Our Grandchildren Nathan and Matthew play a duet on the Mason & Risch Grand Piano that my parents purchased in the summer of 1939.

Three letters written in June and July of 1939 were related to a Mason & Risch Grand piano that my parents had purchased in Vancouver and were in the process of having shipped to Port Alberni. This was the piano I would ultimately learn to play on. In 1939 I was a year old. The Mason & Risch piano company of Toronto dates back to the late 1800’s. They were among the earliest piano makers in this country and grew to become a giant of the Canadian piano industry, producing more pianos than any other company. In supporting young Canadian musicians my wife Pat won the company's national scholarship in 1960/61 which enabled her to study at the Royal Conservatory of Music of Toronto.

The first typewritten letter addressed to my father was dated July 20^th, 1939 and signed by the manager of the Vancouver branch office of Mason & Risch. It indicated the Grand piano purchase had left their hands in “lovely condition”, and hoped that it would reach Port Alberni “without mishap.”

It appears from references in the correspondence that my father was apprehensive about assembling the piano when it arrived and wondered if someone from the Vancouver store could be sent over to do the job. The manager acknowledged that he had “made enquiry of our local Dray Company, who handle all our Grands, what it would cost to send their foreman over to Port Alberni to supervise the work to ensure safe installation. The cost of such a trip seems almost prohibitive. The round trip fare would be $6.55, the wages of a man for two days $10.00, and estimated for meals and bed $6.50, a total of, approximately, $23.00.” The reference to a “Dray Company” I found fascinating – harkening back to a time when freight was moved aboard horse-drawn wagons.

The piano arrived by railway express at the Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railway in Port Alberni the first week of August in 1938. A second letter arrived at the same time explaining in great detail how the piano should be assembled. The “draymen who transport the piano to your home from the Port Alberni railway express warehouse should fasten the Grand on their skid to take it to your living room, where the setting up takes place. Obviously it cannot be set up on its legs outside the house. Inside the Grand is to be lifted bodily by five husky men so as to not put any strain on the legs until the Grand rests on the legs naturally. Let the men get themselves distributed around the Grand for the lifting of it.”

On and on for three-pages the instructions go, the piano company apologizing for repeating sections of the directive so many times, “but we have done our best, in everyday language, to make this clear to you, and it is really not as involved as it would appear, especially as you will see when you have the Grand before you. Please do not be scared over our prolonged description of how to do it.” 

In closing the letter writer states, “realizing your profession (my father was a medical doctor) it is possible that you would anticipate a major operation instead. The writer has enjoyed among his close personal friends several physicians and surgeons, and we feel quite confident that you can handle this situation satisfactory. We will await with considerable interest your letter after the Grand has been installed in your new home.”

The piano occupied a prominent position in the livingroom of our parent’s home for decades. Upon the passing of my mother Evelyn Miller, the piano was placed in my wife Pat’s piano studio after traveling with us when we moved to Nanaimo. Recently the Grand was transported back over the hump to Port Alberni to be used by our two grandchildren, Nathan and Matthew.

Loci ready to move

My blog of Dec 6^th featured photos taken during an exploratory trip I made north to Woss Lake with members of the Western Vancouver Island Industrial Heritage Society. The trip was to assess the possibility of moving steam locomotive #112 from the Nimkish Valley to the Alberni Valley by highway on board a flat deck truck. Western Forest Products had offered the locomotive, situated in their Beaver Cove rail yard, to the Industrial Heritage Society. It was decided to go ahead with the move and backed with a donation of $10,000 from the BC Railroad Association, society members have been working weekends readying the steam locomotive for the move. Here are some photos taken recently by IHS member David Hooper.

The Nickel Bros Moving Company has been tasked with moving the steam locomotive to Port Alberni. The company is the largest house moving company in the Pacific Northwest, transporting everything from a castle built for Expo 86 to an entire two-story pub. The photos above show the locomotive being jacked up and blocked. 

Arrowsmith Big Band on mid-island tour

The 16-piece Arrowsmith Big Band will be making a 3-concert tour starting next week. The band is comprised of some of the foremost musicians on mid-Vancouver Island who have between them many years of professional experience playing jazz. There are also three talented students in the group, one from Kwalicum Secondary School and two who attend the music program at Vancouver Island University. The adult members hail from several communities on the Island and meet weekly in Parksville to rehearse.

The concerts will be a rare opportunity for jazz fans to hear the sound produced by the traditional big band instrumentation of four trumpets, four trombones, five saxophones accompanied by a rhythm section of piano, bass and drums. After more than 70 years the configuration continues to be a platform for training young jazz musicians in high school and university music programs world wide.

Some of the arrangements that will be heard during the tour will be Pete Coulman’s Yardbird Suite, Mark Markus’ Med. Basie Swing, John LaBarbera’s A Delicate Balance, Bill Holman’s Aura, Quincy Jones’ Quintessence, Gordon Goodwin’s Hunting Wabbits, Gary Urwin’s My Foolish Heart, Bob Brookmeyer’s Spirit Music, Rob McConnell’s Groovin’ High amongst others. 

Band members include Michael Irving, Dave Stewart, Greg Bush, Susie Craven (trumpets), Paul Nuez, Julian Telfer-Wan, Will Oxland, Jeff Agopsowicz (trombones), Claudio Fantinato, Caleb Boorboom, Dan Craven, Trevor Hooper, Rod Alsop (saxophones), Barry Miller (Piano), Marisha Devoin (bass), and Michael Wright (drums).

Dates:

Thursday February 5 @ Georgia Strait Jazz Club, The Avalanche,  275 Eighth Street Courtenay.

Start time 7.30pm

Sunday February 8 @ Crofton Hotel, 1534 Joan Avenue, Crofton. 

Start time 2pm

Thursday February 12 @ ADSS theatre in Port Alberni - 4000 Roger Street.  Student groups at 7:00pm. Arrowsmith Big Band at 8:00pm. Admission by donation at door  - Proceeds from the concert are in support of a music scholarship awarded annually by the Port Alberni Orchestra & Chorus Society to an ADSS music student.

White Noise app leading to peaceful sleep

I have no trouble falling asleep when first hitting the sack. However, more often than not, around 2am I wake up and can’t get back to sleep. That’s why most of my blogs are written in the middle of the night.

During the Christmas holidays an ad popped up on my computer promoting the website of TV pop-medicine guru Dr. Oz. On the site there was an article about how to attain a restful night’s sleep using white noise. Listening to something referenced as being noisy when one is trying to fall asleep you may think, as I did, to be a rather wacky idea.

Photo: White Noise App - Ocean Waves

What is white noise? Simply put, it’s a type of noise that’s produced when all the imaginable tones that a human can hear are combined together. Because white noise contains all frequencies, it is often used to mask other sounds. For example, the sound of a fan produces a good approximation of white noise and can be used to block the sound of people talking in a hotel room next to you.  

Apparently when a noise wakes you up in the night, it's not the noise itself that wakes you up, but the sudden change or inconsistencies in noise that jar you. White noise creates a masking effect, blocking out those sudden changes that frustrate light sleepers, or people trying to induce sleep. 

I figured I’d give Dr. Oz’s sleep therapy a go and downloaded the linked white noise app onto my iPad. The app incorporates 25 different sounds with a link that enables you to download dozens more – everything from storm waves crashing ashore to birds chirping away in the steamy jungles of the Amazon. 

Over the years my technique to falling asleep has been to think of something pleasant in my life. A visit to the West Coast of Vancouver Island is one always treasured. Whenever staying overnight in the Tofino area, Pat and I will invariably reserve a waterfront suite at Pacific Sands Resort. At night we’ll sleep with the windows wide open and let the sound of the ocean waves engulf the room. Getting back to sleep in that environment I find almost instantaneous. 

Now a downloaded app on my iPad has made it possible to recreate anytime, albeit on a small scale, my West Coast soundscape recollections. All I do is click on a photo of ocean waves in the app, set a volume level and bingo, combined with a little imagination on my part I’m transferred back to Tofino and Cox Bay, minus I admit the smell of beached seaweed. I wonder if there’s an app for that?

Another soundscape I’ve created with the app centers on family camping trips made to Glacier National Park in the late 1960’s and throughout the 1970’s. During that time we owned a converted Volkswagen Bus, two different pickup campers plus a Winnebago motorhome in which we’d travel every July & August the highways and byways of British Columbia. There was a particular campsite we loved to stay in on Rogers Pass called The Loop. A creek fed by the Illecillewaet Glacier ran through the site. 

The sound of the rushing creek water and the throbbing hum of CPR diesel engines entering the nearby Connaught Tunnel is a soundscape that’s been impregnated in my memory for years. With the app there was no problem reproducing a live facsimile. I clicked on photos of babbling brooks and railway train links. The app, which allows up to 5 separate sounds to be mixed simultaneously, instantly produced a soundtrack to accompany my Glacier Park memories. This has resulted in an improved sleep pattern as I allow my mind to reconnect to those happy family trips. 

According to the Dr, Oz article, using white noise to kindle sleep isn’t everyone’s cup-of-tea. One’s partner in life may not take pleasure in having the sound of a plummeting waterfall fill the night air. In such cases the use of ears buds is recommended. However, Pat also enjoys the roaring waves.

As a teenager I volunteered to be put to sleep by a touring hypnotist performing a show in Port Alberni. On stage in front of an audience he had me asleep in a matter of minutes. Apparently I was a good subject for such shenanigans. My father, a medical doctor, was not amused when he heard about it, especially when the hypnotist wanted to put me to sleep in a store display window to advertise another show the following evening. I was grounded until the show left town.

Photo above: The first vehicle we used for camping trips was this Volkswagen Bus. I installed a bed, a baby crib and window coverings as the unit was not built by Volkswagen as a camper. We cooked on a Coleman stove set up on a portable table outside the vehicle. I’m dressed in a suit for this photo taken by my wife Pat. We must have been going somewhere special. However, according to her, I was on my way to teach school. Do teachers still suit up for work? 

Photo above: A few years later we upgraded to the pickup camper seen here backed up to the boulder-strewn bank of the Illecillewaet River in Glacier National Park.

Photo above: Our most luxurious camping unit was a Winnebago Brave-class motorhome. The picture was taken in 1976 on one of our summer camping trips to the Loop Campsite in Glacier National Park. We bought the unit new in 1971 from a motorhome dealership that had just opened at Granville & Broadway Streets in Vancouver. I recall being very nervous driving the unit through downtown traffic to catch the ferry from Horseshoe Bay. It was the widest vehicle I’d ever driven.

Photo above: The Winnebago Company headquartered in Forest City, Iowa, introduced the Brave series in 1970. They came in 17 and 19-foot lengths. Ours was the 19-foot model. In the summers of 1973 and 1974, I attended UBC to gain my BC teacher’s certification. I lived in the unit parking it at night on a university lot. We kept the vehicle for 10 years and sold it for almost the same price we bought it for - $12,000. 

Film studios down-sell the fact a film is actually a musical

I read recently a report that this fall’s flu shot has not been as effective as other years. Apparently some of the virus strains included in this year’s flu vaccine have mutated into other virus strains. Unfortunately, I seem to have picked up one of those marauding mutates that were part of my flu-shot cocktail. 

However, along with Pat and my brother Terry I still managed our annual New Year’s Eve outing to the Chemainus Festival Theatre for dinner and the company’s Christmas play. Probably not the wisest thing to do when not feeling well but I didn’t want to spoil our New Years Eve. On the way home we passed through Ladysmith to view the town’s impressive Christmas lighting display.

I felt close to normal on Saturday morning which enabled me to drive up to Parksville to take in the final of the BC Men’s Junior Championship. Sportsnet TV was broadcasting the game live and I found it amazing how much lighting equipment they’d packed into the ice rink to enhance the game for viewers. (see photo below).

Pat and I read all our favorite magazines on our iPads through an online service called NextIssue. Browsing the latest Maclean’s magazine I noticed an article by Jaime J. Weinman about how selling a musical to modern moviegoers involves being a bit evasive about what it is. It started me thinking about the Annie movie  I reviewed recently in this blog and how the advertising trailers had promoted it. 

I got out my iPad and previewed a few trailers of the film. As the Maclean’s article had pointed out, there was only a few seconds of onscreen singing used. One of the trailers concentrated only on the dialogue for Cameron Diaz (Miss Hannigan), making it “look like a comedy without music.”

Another movie musical out this Christmas is Into the Woods which I haven’t seen yet. The article points out that if a person didn’t know the Broadway catalog, they might be very surprised to find it is a musical. Even though the film is based on Stephen Sondheim’s 1987 song-filled take on Grimm’s fairy tales, the first theatrical trailer had no singing whatsoever.

According to Matthew Kennedy, author of the book Roadshow! The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960’s, he claims that studio marketing departments often believe the musical is in disrepute. They feel if people hate musicals, then why give that information.

Even last year’s mega-hit Disney film Frozen was first marketed as a non-musical, concentrating instead on a character called Olaf, a comedy-relief snowman voiced by Josh Gad. It wasn’t until the hit song Let it Go took off worldwide that advertising slid into a musical mode.

According to Weinman’s editorial, the 2002 film version of Chicago is considered to be the ultimate example of how a musical can be sold to a modern movie theatre audience. The studio trailers mostly ignored the music and sold it based on its dark comic plot. 

The article quotes Samual Craig, a professor of marketing at New York University who explains that music will attract people to a concert but not a movie. He goes on to say that without a strong story, a film’s appeal will be limited. With this in mind the studio promotion of Chicago concentrated on convincing people there was a compelling story behind all the music. The film itself made sure the audience kept focused on the plot by setting most of the numbers in a dream-like world, making it possible for musical-haters to speculate that the characters were imagining the songs.

In conclusion the Maclean’s article claims that ever since Chicago’s success at the ticket booth and at film award ceremonies, no matter how much singing there is in a film, the studio-marketing departments usually aim their promotion material towards people who prefer a more realistic film style.

However, no marketing guru could hide the fact that the 2012 film version of the musical Les Miserables had non-stop singing from start to finish. Instead the marketing staff emphasized that the music was recorded live right on the set instead of having the actors lip-sync their songs to a pre-recorded soundtrack, thus making the film more musically authentic.

Photo above: Dancers strut their stuff in the film version of Chicago.

It appears at this point in time the film studios will continue to sell musicals to the demographic groups that appear, at least in their eyes, as hostile to the form. They know fans of musicals like myself will automatically buy a ticket to a movie based on a Broadway show. However, their job is to get more bums in the seats and if it takes a little sleight of hand to do it, so be it. On the up side, it may be some of those people who don’t know it’s a musical going in, just might be surprised and actually like it.

Sunday wrapped up our New Year’s week. Pat worked most of the day on organizing her next Timbre! choir concert and I started noodling through the score of Anything Goes that I’m doing for the Bard to Broadway company in Qualicum next summer. Late in the afternoon both of us took in the big budget Hollywood epic Exodus: Gods and Kings, another politically controversial film playing this holiday season. 

Joining the extraordinary banning throughout North America of the Kim Jong-Un assassination movie The Interview, Exodus: Gods and Kings was banned in Egypt for what the country’s culture minister Gaber Asfour explained was the films “Zionist view of history” and that it contained “historical inaccuracies.” O dear. I think it’s time some of these world leaders lightened up. When did Hollywood ever worry about making a script historically accurate?

After the film we scooted home to watch Canada thrash Slovakia at the World Junior Hockey Championships. We then viewed an episode of The Good Wife on Netflix. We’d planned to watch the opening of another season of Downton Abbey but decided we’d had our flick fill for the day.

I let the digital recorder do its job so we’d be able to view the show later in the week.

Bard 2 Broadway Theatre’s 2015 Summer Season.

General AUDITIONS for all three 2015 shows (The 39 Steps, Play it Again Sam and the musical Anything Goes are being held in Parksville at the McMillan Art Centre (133 McMillan Street) on Sat. Jan 24 from 1:30 - 4:30 pm and Sun. Jan 25 from 1:30 - 4:30 pm. 

In Nanaimo Auditions are being held at St. Paul’s Church Hall (100 Chapel Street) on Sat. Jan 31 from 1:30 - 4:30 pm and Sun. Feb 01 from 1:30 - 4:30 pm. - Call-backs are Sun. Feb 08.

NOTE: Please prepare a 1-2 minute monologue.  If auditioning for the musical, please prepare a song, and provide sheet music for our accompanist, or backing track on CD or iPod.  Please wear comfortable clothing.  Please be prepared to stay for about 2 hours.  If you wish more information, or if you are genuinely interested, but cannot make these dates / times, please contact:- Gary Brown 250-468-9545 - stageguy@shaw.ca or Eileen Butts 250-248-3782 - ebutts@shaw.ca