Canadian Humour

 

Flair Airlines

When we tried to book our air to Los Angeles last week, Air Canada was sold out going and the return flight was a change of plane in either San Francisco or Salt Lake City.  We managed to get seats on a United Airlines flight to Los Angeles.

The trip home was more difficult.  The only option was Flair Airlines.  It's a low cost, budget airline.  The fares are cheap and you pay for seats, carry on, checked baggage and even a cup of coffee.  Nothing is free.  They even charge you if you check in at the airport!  In the past many people have been stranded when a plane has a mechanical issue.  It wasn't my choice, but the only direct flight we could get.

We paid for carry on and exit row seats.  The flight attendant asked to see our boarding passes and then proceeded to show us how to use the emergency door.  

The flight was 2/3 full.  We were the only people in the exit row.  She told me to move over to the other window as Cheryl was in the middle seat and I was on the aisle.  I had a whole row to myself.  During the flight a gentlemen came up to the exit row behind me and they told him to go back to his assigned seat!  

We were in a new Boeing 737.  The seats were leather and it was very clean.  The flight attendants were professional and friendly.  The flight left early from LAX!  

In the past, I've avoided budget airlines.  I would recommend this carrier to anyone who wants to save money on a flight.  

I'm back home!

I never told anyone what I was doing as I didn't want to spoil it.  In 1980, I went to a filming of Let's Make a Deal in West Vancouver.  I got zonked and won three piglets.  They gave me $75 for the little piggies.  I went back to Let's Make a Deal around 2010 with Cheryl to a Los Angeles taping after departing a repositioning cruise. This time I did a lot better went for the big deal.  I didn't get the big deal but I did get a dining room table, a fireplace that looked like a TV and a full set of Lennox china with cutlery and gorgeous wine glasses.  It was worth over US$6500.00.

Before COVID, Cheryl and I went back for a short trip and she won US$5,000.00 cash!  It was a lot of fun.  At a family dinner, Lexie asked if Cheryl and I would take her to Let's Make A Deal as she's now 19 and able to get into the studio.  She applied online.  Now, they ask for a story about your life.  Where you live, what you do for a living and an interesting fact about yourself.

On Tuesday, August 20th, Lexie got a call from the casting department asking her if she could be at the studio on Tuesday, August 27 at 12:00 PM.  Of course we said yes.  We went as the three pigs!

We went through security and entered the studio.  Lots of people all dressed in costumes.

We met so many lovely people.  Everyone was excited and a lot of fun.  While I can't say much, I will say Lexie was selected and you will have to watch the show to see what happens.  It is tentative to be shown on Monday, January 13th.  It could change but when we know it will be broadcast I will put it on my blog.

We flew to Los Angeles on Monday, took an Uber to Glendale, stayed at the Hampton Inn & Suites right across the street from Galleria Mall!  It was a great place to stay.  Yesterday our Uber came at 6:30 AM and we drove the Los Angeles freeway in rush hour to LAX!  

It was a wonderful "girls" trip and it was so much fun to watch Lexie!  Wayne Brady is a gentleman and he was really nice to her off camera.  

One very excited girl!

I'm off on a quick vacation....should be a blast!

I am taking a break and will be away for a couple of days.  I will be out of the country and will be staying off social media.  I will be back on Thursday.  It's my first trip without my computer.  I hope I can struggle through and cope without electronics!  

A day in the ER reveals shocking reality

We've had a lot of ER closures in British Columbia.  The people who work in the ER are exceptional people that have a difficult job.  In the last year, I've been to ER twice myself and taken someone else once.  All the people who dealt with us were wonderful.  You wait your turn and they triage according to need.  

I thought this article in the Richmond Review was excellent:

I recently spent a day in the emergency department of a Metro Vancouver hospital, and I was shocked at what I saw.

First, kudos to the nurses and doctors working in our emergency rooms – I don’t know how they do their jobs without having nightmares all night long. They are true heroes, and this article is in no way a criticism of them. They are doing the very best they can in an impossible situation.

The listed wait time on the day of my visit was 8 hours and 40 minutes. That was pretty accurate. The person I was with was seen by a medical professional for an initial assessment within about 30 minutes of arriving, but they were not actually admitted to a hospital bed until 12 hours had passed.

That’s not a complaint, just a statement of reality. I realize we are lucky to even have an emergency room while some in the province are closed at times due to staffing shortages.

Meanwhile, while we were waiting, we could not help but overhear and witness some dreadful and terrifying events.

There were people with kidney stones, people with injuries to their arms and legs and people with vision problems. There was a man whose daughter thought he was having a stroke and another man who told the desk he was having a panic attack. One woman had been bitten by a raccoon, another by a dog.

Still, another young woman was sobbing uncontrollably while an elderly woman was quietly waiting in devastating pain while her husband tried to get someone to see her. There was a young man whose leg had swollen to double its normal size with an infection – he fell asleep beside me and leaned on me for a while as he waited.

We saw two particularly scary occurrences when two different young women both checked in separately saying they felt like they were going to have a seizure. Both were told to sit and wait, but within a few minutes, they each had seizures in the ER. Fortunately, there were several paramedics there, accompanying people who had been brought in by ambulance. After that, they both got quick medical attention.

We saw people who were newly diagnosed with tumors, who needed further testing. They were spending the most difficult day of their life, so far, in a hospital waiting room that felt like it was in a third-world country.  

There were numerous people brought to the ER on stretchers or in wheelchairs who told the check-in desk they had been referred from the cancer centre for urgent treatment or tests. Like everyone else, they were told they had to wait in the chaotic waiting room. That doesn’t seem right to me. People who are suffering from cancer and are referred to emergency for extra treatment should have a separate waiting room and a separate queue. Perhaps one that allows them to come back at a certain time for their test or treatment. They are already uncomfortable and certainly won’t benefit from being exposed to any viruses while waiting.

We saw several people who had been brought to the ER by friends or neighbours to visit a loved one who was dying in the hospital. Those people were directed to a telephone in the middle of the room where they could ask how to find their friends.

My empathy was in overdrive the entire time. I felt for the staff, aghast at the demands of their jobs and how they had to become hardened to the human tragedies they witness every day, while still maintaining their professionalism and a smile. I felt for the patients, who were in pain or fearful for their health, and yet had to wait without food, without water and without the knowledge of when someone might help them. And I felt for the companions, who just wanted to help and support their loved ones but found themselves without the ability to do so.

I’ve been to my share of emergency departments over my lifetime, and this was, by far, the absolute worst I’ve ever experienced. Something has got to give because this situation isn’t sustainable, and it isn’t safe for the workers or the patients.

Tracy Sherlock is a freelance journalist who writes about education and social issues. Read her blog or email her tracy.sherlock@gmail.com.

You know it's hot when.....

Yesterday our house was so cool, I turned on the heat!  I only had it on to take the chill off but I had opened windows and didn't realize it was going to be so wet and cool.  My cousin lives in Las Vegas and she is telling me how hot it is.  I know heat is not pleasant and at least with cold you can dress for it when you go out.  I thought she would appreciate these!

Life

 I have lived to see 

5/5/55, 6/6/66 

7/7/77, 8/8/88, 9/9/99,

10/10/10, 11/11/11, 12/12/12

2/2/22 & 12/31/23

My husband has lived to see

4/4/44 (my cousin's birthday)

We are really old!

I love Vince the Sign Guy

 

The Royal gals!

 What a gorgeous collage!

Tuesday smiles

 

Frances Neibrandt

 

Frances Neibrandt

24 February 1934 - 18 August 2024

Frances Neibrandt passed away this morning at Evergreen Terraces in White Rock, B.C.  She is survived by her son Rodney.  Frances was married to Donald Neibrandt, my husband's first cousin for 63 years.  Donald passed away in 2021.

Rest in Peace, Frances

An interesting story from the past

I frequently drive on Highway 15 which is also known as 176th Street in Surrey, British Columbia.  It runs from Highway 1 to the US border and is a busy road.  South of Highway 10, there is an overpass that is dedicated to Roger Pierlet.  On March 29, 1974, Roger Pierlet was shot to death in Cloverdale.  I remember when this happened as he was being married.  

The Surrey Leader Now, published this update, 50 years after this horrific shooting.

This structure is located on Highway 15 near Highway 10 in Surrey. Commemorated in 1976, this overpass is named after Police Constable Roger Émile Pierlet, who was shot to death in Cloverdale by a car driver that Pierlet had pulled over for a routine check.

It is the only historical landmark in the province that honours a French-speaking peace officer, as well as a life lost other than in military service.

Fifty years after the death of police officer Roger Pierlet in Surrey, Debby McLachlan was surprised to see another news story written about the man she was going to marry. 

Last March 29, a story in the Surrey Now-Leader marked the 50th anniversary of Pierlet's passing on 176 Street in Cloverdale, where he was shot and killed by a guy who didn't like cops and was out for revenge.

"Your article touched my heart for several reasons," McLachlan, an Ontario resident, wrote in an email to this reporter. "I am the lady Roger was going to marry."

She'd read "dozens of articles about Roger but never thought that after 50 years I would see a new article about him," she added. "To know that he has not been forgotten means everything to me. Roger was a wonderful man and we were very much in love. His death changed my life and I think of him often."

In a subsequent phone interview, McLachlan agreed to publicly share her memories of Pierlet for the first time ever, and sent photos of the two in happy times before their planned wedding date in September 1974 — a wedding that never happened, sadly.

"Things were different back then, and as an RCMP officer he couldn't get married before being two years on the job," McLachlan recalled.

The day he died, the 23-year-old Pierlet was working his final shift before taking a few days off to visit his parents, who were flying in from Montreal.

"The majority of newspaper articles said the wedding was going to be the following week, the week after his death, but it was actually September," McLachlan clarified. "It was Roger's last shift before a few days off, not his last shift before our wedding. It's been a different story told."

On that fateful March day, John Harvey Miller, 28, and Vincent John Roger Cockriell, 18, were drunk and hunting for a cop to shoot as they drove through Cloverdale in their 1964 Dodge. Cockriell wanted revenge, blaming police for the death of his brother, who was killed during a high-speed police chase.

The pair threw a beer bottle through the police station window. After luring Pierlet out, and he pulled them over, the young Mountie told Miller to get out of the vehicle. As Pierlet stood in front of the open car door, Cockriell, from his passenger’s side, squeezed off a shot from a 30-30 Winchester rifle. The bullet hit Pierlet in the chest, killing him almost instantly.

The killers were originally sentenced to death, but these were commuted to life sentences after capital punishment was abolished in Canada in 1976.

"We both knew what could happen with him working in the police force, but you never think it was going to happen," said McLachlan.

Years earlier, the two met at a dance in Montreal.

"I was 18 and he paid a lot of attention to me, which I loved," McLachlan recalled. "Everything he said and did was perfect, you know. He had a good sense of humour and we laughed a lot. In all of those photos of us together, we were smiling and very happy, so that says something."

With Pierlet sent to Regina for training as a Mountie, McLachlan stayed in Montreal for a few months.

"We waited to see where he was going to be posted, which ended up being in Surrey," she said. "We got engaged at his graduation ceremony and moved to B.C."

McLachlan said Pierlet loved his job very much.

"Of course there was night work, there was day work, but we adjusted to all of that, and as long as we could see each other and be together, we were very happy," she underlined. 

"The morning that he was shot, he had been working all night," McLachlan added. "It is true that his parents were flying in that morning for a visit. I got the call by coincidence that morning from somebody from the RCMP. They didn't really know too much about me, but the word travelled quickly among the people he worked with and somebody said, 'Did anybody tell the fiancée?' So I got a phone call first thing in the morning when I was getting ready for work. Two officers came to the door and I asked, 'Did anyone tell his parents? Because they're coming into town today.' Nobody realized it, and they scrambled and went to the airport to meet his parents' flight. There was all of this scramble, just a blur."

Pierlet is buried in Regina. McLachlan attended the service, but since hasn't visited his gravesite.

"There was a time that I thought I would like to, but I did not," she said. "And as a matter of fact, it took me many, many, many years before I was able to go back to Vancouver, and it was just once that I did that."

After Pierlet's death, McLachlan returned to Quebec and, eventually, moved to a town in Ontario.

"I would like to be able to tell you that I found love again and lived happily ever after, but that did not happen," McLachlan explained. "The scars were too deep. I worked, have friends and enjoyed some travel. I am now retired and live in a wonderful small community on the shores of Lake Huron. I have good friends and live minutes from my sister, my best friend."

McLachlan says Pierlet "was the one" for her.

"We were both fully in love and there was no question about what my future was going to be, it was going to be with him," she said. "We were going to get married, we were going to have babies and raise the kids, and that was going to be our life. My life was never going to be thinking about a career or anything. That was not what I thought, I thought wedding and babies and marriage. And so I had to really adjust everything, and then had to make enough money to live on and everything else."

Today, in Pierlet’s memory, the 176 Street overpass just south of Highway 10 was named after him and two bronze plaques were mounted on concrete pillars on its north end.

 

Vince the sign guy is at it again.....

 

It's been a year since.......

In my years of working, I made a lot of friends.  We are still friends today and we meet frequently for lunch and dinner.  

It was last year at this time Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers had a reunion cruise.  575 former colleagues all gathered on the Celebrity Solstice on a cruise to Alaska.  All I can say is every day at Ritchie Bros. was great.   We made work fun.  We worked hard and were justly rewarded.  I will never forget this cruise!  Thank you Dave Ritchie and Russ Cmolik!

Everyone in this picture worked or still works for Ritchie Bros.  What an awesome group!

Ryan Reynolds

 

Canadian actor, Ryan Reynolds, in a Vancouver newspaper at the age of 3 in 1979

Hump Day Humour!

 I don't wanna party like it's 1999......

I wanna go grocery shopping like it's 1999

Cec said he's never used Calculus to Lexie last week!
It's one of her courses at SFU!