Paul Cipywnyk's Blog

Louise Towell at Deer Lake Gallery

Louise Towell, the Stream of Dreams Murals Society art director, had one of her works called Pacific Gyre Spring on display at the Deer Lake Art Gallery today.

KINA Hosts Burnaby Cleanup

The Kingsway Imperial Neighbourhood Association hosted a successful community cleanup this morning. The politicians were out in force, including Burnaby Mayor Derrek Corrigan, BC MLA Raj Chouhan, and MP Peter Julian. Unfortunately I couldn't stick around for the entire event, but it got off to a great start with Diane Gillis of KINA and many volunteers helping out.

Two Schools Release Fry

Byrne Creek Streamkeepers were kept hopping today, as two schools released their chum fry from Salmon in the Classroom programs.

South Slope Elementary released their chum at 9:30 a.m.

Kenneth Gordon kids released their fish around noon.

BC Ferries Sunset

Coming home from Victoria we had a wonderful sunset on the ferry.

BC Achievement Awards

Several Burnabarians (as I like to call citizens of Burnaby :-) were honoured with BC Achievement Awards today.

One was Paul McDonell, a super-volunteer who is a major contributor to the Edmonds Town Centre Business & Community Association, of which I am president.

Another was Jennifer Atchison, chair of the Stoney Creek Environment Committee, a formidable streamkeeper who has done incredible work to protect and enhance that urban watershed.

The ceremony was hosted by Steven L. Point, OBC, Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia at Government House, along with BC Premier Gordon Campbell.

Jennifer with Premier Campbell (right) and MLA Harry Bloy

Paul McDonell receiving award.

Government House.

OK, one more shot. My wife Yumi snapped this one of (left to right) me, Zo Ann Morten of the Pacific Streamkeepers Federation, and Maurice Coulter-Boisvert, our DFO Community Advisor.

Off to Victoria for BC Awards

Yumi and I headed off to Victoria this afternoon. I'll be representing the Edmonds Town Centre Business & Community Association at the BC Achievement Awards ceremony tomorrow, where one of our most active members, Paul McDonell, will be honoured. I know several streamkeepers will be there as well because Jennifer Atchison of the Stoney Creek Environment Committee will also get an award.

I love taking the ferry across...

Leaving Tsawwassen.

The carbon stack :-).

A mess of seals and gulls had a school of fish in a frenzy in Active Pass.

Byrne Creek Chum Release With Clinton School

Students from Clinton Elementary School in south Burnaby released chum salmon fry into Byrne Creek this morning with the help of DFO and Byrne Creek Streamkeepers. This is one of my favourite annual events because the kids are so excited and happy, and it connects them a bit to nature.

DFO's Maurice Coulter-Boisvert talks salmon.

Kids get chum fry to release.

My wife Yumi assists.

Kids point and marvel as silver hatchery fry turn brown to blend into the creek.

Chum schooling in the creek.

Trillium Graces Byrne Creek

A rare trillium has appeared in Byrne Creek Ravine Park. We usually spot only one or two of these flowers in the riparian zone each year. Apparently it is illegal to pick them in British Columbia. I see we spotted one on almost the same day last year and I posted a photo to this blog.

We also spotted a large bumblebee checking out a dandelion.

Choices Earth Day BBQ - Byrne Creek Tours

Choices in the Park hosted a salmon BBQ for Earth Day, and once again Byrne Creek Streamkeepers had our booth set up for the event. We also did two tours of the creek for people interested in getting out in nature and learning a bit about what streamkeepers do.

Thanks again to Choices for having donations from the BBQ this weekend and last weekend going to help efforts to keep Byrne Creek clean and habitable for all the fish and wildlife that it supports.

We presented two hand-cut, hand-painted cedar salmon to Choices CEO Mark Vickars and Choices in the Park manager Dominic Uy in appreciation of their efforts.

Me, Dominic and Mark

Pointing out park features on creek tour.

Byrne Creek 1 of 10 Best!

According to the Newsleader, Byrne Creek Ravine Park is one of the ten best places in Burnaby for a bag lunch and a walk! The story also mentions the Byrne Creek Streamkeepers and asks walkers to help keep the creek clean and healthy.

Burnaby Parks Volunteer Dinner

The Burnaby Parks, Recreation and Culture Commission put on its annual Volunteer Recognition Night this evening, and Yumi and I attended representing the Edmonds Town Centre Business & Community Association, of which I am president. I have had the pleasure of attending the event in the past representing Byrne Creek Streamkeepers, and the Stream of Dreams Murals Society. Tonight our table was made up of representatives from Byrne Creek, Stream of Dreams, and the City's Parks department. It was an excellent event, as always, and the food provided by the City's Deer Lake Catering was fantastic.

Streamkeepers Push For Ponds At Translink Event

A couple of Byrne Creek Streamkeepers attended a Translink workshop this evening on the BC Parkway bicycle and pedestrian trail that links Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster and Surrey. Work is afoot to realign parts of the trail, provide better connections and crossings, add public amenities, etc.

Byrne Creek Streamkeepers are most interested in the parkway course through Burnaby, and in particular the section between Gilley and Griffiths just north of Rumble. We envision the addition of beautiful vegetated biofiltration swales that could intercept and treat stormwater flows before they enter Byrne Creek. The area north of the parkway in this section has a lot of light industrial and automotive businesses that historically have been problematic point sources of pollutants into the storm drain system that connects to the creek.

Our ideas appeared to receive a warm reception! Here's hoping....

Byrne Creek at Blue Cross Earth Day

A couple of Byrne Creek Streamkeepers put up a small version of our creek display at the Pacific Blue Cross Earth Day event this afternoon. It was a windy, sunny day out on the cafeteria patio and we enjoyed talking to people about the connection between roads, storm drains and creeks. People love our 3D relief map of the watershed.

Streamkeepers, Stream of Dreams Tame Lions

Joan Carne and I spoke to the Burnaby Host Lions club this evening. I spoke about Byrne Creek Streamkeepers and Joan spoke about the Stream of Dreams Murals Society. We were warmly welcomed to dinner, and our presentations got lots of questions. The Lions generously asked if there was anything they could do for us, and are willing to bring out their rolling BBQ gear and do hot dogs and burgers, or pancake breakfasts, if we do any fund raisers. Thank you! It is community volunteers pulling together within and across organizations that make Burnaby a great place to live!

Byrne Creek Habitat Looks Like Pea Soup

The spawning channel, sediment pond and overflow pond in the Byrne Creek spawning and rearing habitat in southeast Burnaby looked like pea soup around noon today. Yumi and I had gone down hoping to ID some fry (baby fish); however, visibility was zero. The creek was clean, so the sediment was likely coming down the stormwater pipes along Southridge Dr.

Fortunately, we did not see any dead fish, but we'll watch closely for the next few days. We called the incident in to the City, and an environment officer said the situation would be investigated.

The overflow pond.

The sediment pond.

Yumi and I checked several areas up the hill along Southridge Dr. but did not spot any smoking guns. Hope the City has better luck.

Choices - Byrne Creek BBQ Huge Success

The Choices BBQ today was an overwhelming success. I don't know how much money was donated by people today that will go to Byrne Creek Streamkeepers, but I imagine it must be several hundred dollars. We had a constant flow of people all day long. Choices also provided seven gorgeous gift baskets for prize draws along with several gift certificates.

The staff were incredibly responsive and did special orders on the BBQ for vegetarians or people who wanted chicken instead of beef, in addition to the burgers, European wieners, and bacon... Oh yes, there was also an apparently endless river of chocolate cake!

I was blown away. Thank you Choices managers and staff!

Setting up for the event -- it was a gorgeous day.

Prize baskets.

A happy winner receives her basket.

Join us for more fun tomorrow! Pancake breakfast from 9:00-11:00 and another BBQ from 12:00-3:00. Food and drinks by donation, with donations supporting the Byrne Creek Streamkeepers. Come and learn about Byrne Creek and streamkeeper activities. Our bug team will be doing a bug count of samples collected from the creek at the Choices site from around 10:00.

We will be back at Choices for an Earth Day event on April 20 from 12:00-4:00. Streamkeepers will lead tours of the beautiful ravine park and Byrne Creek starting from Choices at 12:30 and at 2:00.

Burnaby Mayor Speaks to Board of Trade

Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan delivered an update on the state of the City at a Burnaby Board of Trade luncheon today at Eagle Creek Restaurant at the beautiful Burnaby Mountain Golf Course. The event was sold out and the mayor delivered another of his uplifting speeches on economic, social, and environmental sustainability in the city. I enjoyed speaking with City staff and councilors. The mayor's address is available here.

Choices Weekend Celebration Benefits Streamkeepers

Choices Markets is putting on a breakfast and two BBQs this coming weekend, and Byrne Creek Streamkeepers are thrilled that donations from the events will support their efforts to restore and maintain the watershed. Wow!

The Choices location near Byrne Creek is on the park side of Edmonds Skytrain Station in southeast Burnaby.

BBQ at the Park: Saturday, April 12, 12:00 - 3:00
Breakfast at the Park: Sunday, April 13, 9:00 - 11:00
BBQ at the Park: Sunday, April 13, 12:00 - 3:00

Byrne Creek Streamkeepers will also have their booth set up at Choices in the Park for an Earth Day event on Sunday, April 20 from 12:00 - 4:00. Streamkeers will be offering tours of the creek and ravine park.

We Miss You, Mom

Today is the first anniversary of my Mom's passing. It's hard to believe it's been a year already for she is still everywhere in my life, and will forever be in my heart.

Previous entries:

Initial announcement

Language Lanterns carries on

Obituary

Love of kids and teaching

My Royal Roads MA graduation -- she was a huge supporter

Posthumous UCC Nation Builder's Award

My citation for Mom's UCC award

Thanks for everything, Mom. Love, Paul.

Computer Disintegrating?

Strange things have been happening with my main work computer. The first sign of trouble with the Windows XP machine was when I became suspicious of louder than normal seeking noises from the hard drive and ran a CHKDSK on it a few weeks ago. The scan found a corrupted file which it proceeded to "repair," resulting in all the dates in my Palm calendar disappearing. Fortunately I synch with the Palm fairly often, so I reinstalled the Palm Desktop and synched back 99% of my schedule.

Then a few days ago Eudora froze while going through email and while trying to shut it down, XP crashed completely. When I rebooted, the computer would get to a point in the boot cycle and fail, going into endless rebooting loops. Oh-oh!

I used the XP install disc to boot into the Recovery Console and ran CHKDSK with the /R (repair) parameter. Once it finished, the computer booted OK, but very slowly. It also appears there are problems with the sound driver and that USB 2.0 ports have dropped to USB 1.1 speeds.

I backed up the hard drive and have been using the machine for a couple of days, but am worried about its flaky condition. While the HD is no longer chattering, I get the sense that it is likely going south, and perhaps there are issues with the motherboard as well, so it appears shopping for a new computer may be in order. In the meantime, I'm backing up My Documents and my email daily to a second internal hard drive, and every couple of days to an external drive as well.

Technology is great, but it also sucks when it takes up hours of your time fixing it. I wonder how many hours I've put in over the years replacing defunct hard drives and reinstalling software and restoring data? I've dealt with toasted hard drives at least three or four times for our own machines, and twice for family members.

So remember, it's not IF your hard drive will die some day, it's WHEN it will die. Some people are lucky and go years and years without encountering such problems, but my experience indicates that after three to five years of intensive use, HDs start developing Alzheimer's. Multiply that over four or five computers in our house/office and that's a major meltdown once every year or so.

Backup, backup, backup!

More Fry, Oil, Flicker in Byrne Creek

Yumi and I spotted more fry in Byrne Creek today, along with a flicker in the ravine park, but were dismayed by the amount of oil accumulating in the sediment pond.

Salmon fry in the sediment pond

Blue and purple oily sheen on water surface

I think this is a common flicker of the red-shafted race.

More Signs of Spring

Cherry blossoms, a plump robin, and a small school of salmonid fry (baby salmon) all pointed to signs of spring on our Byrne Creek ramble after lunch today.

Global News Piles On Errors

I am amazed at the errors in Global TV's coverage of the South Burnaby Public Safety Forum tonight. I have degrees in journalism and communications, and several years experience as a journalist, and I find this lack of accuracy appalling. It makes me question the integrity of the Global news organization.

According to the Global coverage, tonight's safety forum "was organized by the RCMP" blah blah, "in response to three home invasions of a senior..." blah blah.

Organized by the RCMP?

Wrong.

It was organized by volunteers from the Kingsway Imperial Neighbourhood Association, and the Burnaby District 3 and 4 volunteer community policing organizations with support from volunteers from the Edmonds Town Centre Business and Community Association.

In response to home invasions...?

Wrong.

The planning for this forum began months before the outrageous multiple invasions of a senior's home in the Edmonds neighbourhood.

How did Global screw up? I don't know, but I suspect it was a combination of several factors:

1) Overly focusing on the home invasion hook. AKA the "if it bleeds it leads" mentality. I can imagine the conversation:

"We need a hook!"

"OK, we'll tie it all into the old guy being invaded three times in a few days..."

2) Laziness in researching the history of such forums in Burnaby and digging for the truth. Tonight's forum was portrayed as citizens trembling in their homes, afraid to go out. In fact, there has been huge improvement in south Burnaby, particularly in the Edmonds area. The City has been doing a great job, the RCMP has been doing a great job, and volunteers in many organizations have been doing a great job. But that's not "news," is it?

I was amazed at how positive tonight's forum was. But I guess the "journalists" present were disappointed at the lack of fireworks.

Let's focus on the anomalies. Let's focus on the negative. Let's screw up our facts, even the simplest ones.

Shame, Global.

Spring Salmonberry

I patrolled for fry this afternoon in Byrne Creek this afternoon and was happy to find several more spread in pools in the spawning habitat. As I was scanning one pool a curious chickadee flitted over and danced from branch to branch just a foot or two from my face. We had a little chat and then he bounced off as I moved on. More salmonberry bushes are beginning to blossom.

Reifel Sanctuary Birding Foray

The Easter weekend brought a lot of people out to the Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary in BC's Lower Mainland today. Yumi and I spent over three hours walking and taking photographs. I'm amazed at the variety of beautiful birds we saw today, ranging from teeny balls of fluff to impressive great horned owls and cranes. Before we even arrived at the sanctuary, we ran across a field filled with thousands of snow geese:

We could also hear killdeer, and we finally spotted three of them across the road from the snow geese:

I'll just throw up a bunch of photos from this point -- enjoy, I sure had fun taking them!

American Coot

American Wigeon

A territorial Canada Goose that took some feathers out of a mallard's butt...

Bufflehead

Female Ring-Necked Duck

Great Horned Owl -- this fellow had about $50,000 worth of huge lenses and spotting scopes locked onto him :-)

Mallard male

Mallard male face closeup

Mallard female face closeup

Lovely female mallard feathers

Lovely female mallard feathers, take two...

Northern Pintail

Wood Duck

Redwing Blackbird

Sandhill Crane

Sandhill Crane profile

Sandhill Crane closeup

Rice Lake Ramble

Taking advantage of a sunny Good Friday holiday, Yumi and I did a quick walk around Rice Lake in North Vancouver.