Life in Ukraine

 

The resilience of the Ukranian people is unbelievable.  This war has gone on far too long.  Here is an incredible story:

"Through the night, fear, and exhaustion." Ukrainian mother and daughter spend the night in a field after ballistic missile alert on their way to the sea Anna Voronina has touched thousands online with a Threads post describing how a Russian attack interrupted her family's journey.

She and her young daughter were traveling on an overnight train to the seaside when the train made an emergency stop due to the threat of ballistic missile strikes, and passengers were evacuated from the carriages.

To comfort her daughter, Anna rocked her to sleep in her arms before the two lay down on a blanket spread out on the ground.

“I quietly sing a lullaby. My daughter falls asleep — she spends an hour in my arms, then we lie down on a blanket, right on the ground. For a moment, the world feels smaller, warmer, safer. That's how, through the night, fear, and exhaustion, I'm taking my child to the sea so she can go swimming,” she wrote.

Social media users praised the resilience of the Ukrainian mother, who continues fighting to give her daughter a normal summer childhood despite the war.

How home heating has changed!

When I was a child, we had a sawdust burner furnace.  Every morning my dad would go downstairs and shovel sawdust.  Our house was warm.

We moved into a townhouse when we got married and had a natural gas furnace.  It worked just fine.  When we had our house built the plans showed electric baseboards.  We lived in our house for 38 years and they worked great.  It never stopped and we never repaired anything.

We moved to Surrey and again had a natural gas furnace.  In our second summer in Surrey we added an air conditioner.  After seven years our furnace was broken and there were no more parts so we had to get another furnace.  It's now 10 years old.  It broke down when it was still under warranty.  This year when we got our yearly service it wasn't heating properly in the very cold weather.  The service guy said "could be two things, one is $100 and the other is $600 but I don't know which one it is".  He put in the $100 repair piece.  Then he went to our air conditioner that is now 15 years old and said it had a leak.  It would be $10,000 for a replacement.  I asked about rebates and he said "no longer available".

I kept hearing about rebates so I went onto my computer and sure enough, they were available.  We contacted Jetson and found they are a Canadian company and it's new electric technology. The heat pump was invented by a Canadian!  They helped me get a $12,500 rebate for a new furnace and air conditioner.  

It was installed yesterday.  We control our heat pump from the app on our phones.  It doesn't matter where in the world we are, we can control the heat.   Jetson monitor our heat pump 24/7 from their control center.  They say if there is a problem, they will know before we will.  It's got a 10 year full guarantee!  

We've come a long way from the sawdust burner.

https://jetsonhome.com/ca/

Jetson heat pumps, known as the Jetson Air, were invented by a team of technology entrepreneurs led by CEO Stephen Lake, along with co-founders Matthew Bailey and Aaron Grant. 

Lake, Bailey, and Grant—all mechatronics engineering graduates from the University of Waterloo—previously founded the smart-glasses startup North (formerly Thalmic Labs), which was acquired by Google in 2020. Following the acquisition, they launched Vancouver-based Jetson Home Inc. in 2024 with the goal of modernizing residential HVAC by treating home heating systems like consumer electronics that integrate software optimization and direct-to-consumer installation.

Thank you Bryan Adams

Bryan Guy Adams is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, record producer, and photographer. He is estimated to have sold between 75 million and more than 100 million records and singles worldwide, placing him among the best-selling music artists.  

Bryan Adams celebrates Canada Day with a brand-new patriotic anthem. The rock legend has released his latest single, '51st State', marking the occasion with a powerful tribute to his homeland.

He is taking a chance with his career by releasing this but he's already a super star!

Henry Winkler

 

October 30, 1945, Henry Franklin Winkler was born in Manhattan to German Jewish parents who had fled Nazi Germany in 1939, just one day before his uncle, who was unable to leave and later perished in the Holocaust along with most of the family they left behind. It was a beginning shaped by survival, sacrifice, and the weight of everything that had been lost, and Henry grew up carrying that history in a household where academic achievement was expected and emotional warmth was scarce.

His parents ran a lumber company and assumed their son would one day join them. Instead, young Henry sat in classroom after classroom understanding almost nothing, struggling silently with a learning difference nobody yet had a name for, while the adults around him called him lazy, grounded him for months at a stretch, and his father nicknamed him in German what translated to dumb dog.

He spent his school years watching words swim off the page and developing the survival skill that would eventually make him famous: the ability to memorize what little he could and improvise the rest with total conviction. In sixth grade he saw a dance company perform at Madison Square Garden and something cracked open. At thirteen he watched West Side Story and knew with sudden certainty that performance was his way out.

He applied to twenty-eight colleges and was accepted by two. He managed to graduate from Emerson College in 1967, then auditioned for Yale School of Drama by forgetting his prepared Shakespearean monologue completely, improvising the entire thing, and being admitted anyway. He studied under Stella Adler and Norma Brustein, earned his MFA in 1970, moved to Los Angeles on September 18, 1973 with just enough money saved from commercials to give Hollywood one month, and was cast as the Fonz during his second week in California. He did not discover he had dyslexia until he was thirty-one years old. Every book he has ever read since then sits on his shelf as a trophy.

Happy Canada Day

 

We are going to have a BBQ dinner with our neighbours.  At 10 PM we will watch the Canada Day fireworks at Cloverdale!   

Whatever you plan, I hope you enjoy your day!

Earthquake Preparedness

 

I am a Block Watch Coordinator.  I received this invitation and I thought it was worth sharing:

You are invited to the Block Watch Society of BC's next important and timely Block Talk:

• Earthquake Preparedness, Thursday, July 9th, 2026, from 6:00pm to 7:30pm via Microsoft Teams

 SHARING PERMISSIONS

• Block Watch Leads & Participants
• Open to the public (priority to BC residents)
• Approved for posting on your social media

If you wish to attend, please email blockwatch@blockwatch.com by July 8th.    

 This session will not be recorded.

A gift I didn’t know I’d rely on, but it ended up being exactly what the moment called for

 

We just came through a ten‑hour power failure, and let me tell you — one small gift made all the difference.

Yes, we have the usual flashlights tucked away, but a few months ago my nephew Brad surprised me with a rechargeable lamp. I charged it when I first got it, checked it again a couple of weeks ago, and topped it up. USB charging — simple, quick, and no fuss.

When the lights went out, this little lamp lit the entire room. Not a dim glow, not a corner light — the whole space. And while it was keeping us out of the dark, it was also charging my phone at the same time. I couldn’t believe how useful it turned out to be.

If you don’t have a reliable light source for power failures, get one. Truly. And if you’re hunting for a practical, thoughtful gift for someone, this is one they will genuinely appreciate.

Thank you, Brad, for giving us something that turned a long outage into a much easier night.