"Stuff I've Seen In Powell River #20" by Callum Houston

And in addition to seeing flares and chemtrails over Texada Island on a regular basis, another

extremely weird thing I saw over there recently was the deployment of a high-intensity searchlight.

One night last May at about ten o’clock I was in bed when I noticed light coming in through my

bedroom window. I got up and looked out the window and saw a large helicopter over at Texada

Island positioned near those radio towers mid island beaming this incredibly powerful searchlight all

over the place. I’d never seen such a bright light before. The beam must have been ten miles long!

Then another night I just happened to get up out of bed at about 2:45 a.m. and I saw that the

helicopter was back and they were fucking around with the searchlight again.

Let me tell you, that light was so strong it was like a radioactive laser beam. The diameter of the

beam alone looked like it might’ve been a hundred feet thick. They were pointing it all over the

place, including up at the sky, and when they aimed it up at the clouds it just lit them right up. It was

totally unnatural, like something out of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. They even swung the

searchlight around and scanned along the mainland once or twice and hit my house in the process

with it a couple of times. Someone I mentioned these incidents to explained that I’d probably

witnessed a military exercise of some variety.

Some tremendously sad news. I was recently informed that my friend Dave, who began struggling

with a number of ailments since I met him in the Signature Cafe coffee shop in Safeway, passed

away in January. Dave, a Vietnam vet, is yet another person to add to the growing list of people

I’ve met in Powell River who’ve just vanished. I’m going to talk about how people seem to just

disappear in Powell River in more detail in the future.

On an upbeat note, I was riding my bike down Powell River’s iconic Marine Avenue this summer

and was delighted to see that the street is experiencing a colossal resurgence at the moment.

There’s a vibrancy on the avenue I haven’t seen there for a while and it’s very exciting to witness.

There are a bunch of new restaurants and coffee shops as well as one or two other new businesses.

While a lot of commerce in Powell River happens up around the Town Centre Mall, Marine Avenue

really represents the soul of this community and it’s small business and the entrepreneurs behind

small business that fuel that soul. Private business is so important because it’s private business that

brings the color and joy to a town, not to mention providing us with the necessities we need. Where

would we be without the wonderful folks who supply us with clothing and food? Blessed are these

holy saints who provide us with the much-needed essentials of life!

I checked out Sea Fair this year too. I strolled through the event on the Saturday afternoon and was

thrilled to see that it’s just as popular as it was in my youth. It was packed with people and I saw

that some of the food booths even had large line-ups of customers.

However, I was a little dismayed to see that jets had sprayed chemtrails in the sky over the area.

Those military flyboys in their air machines really do like showing off for the crowds, don’t they? I

also noted that the Canadian Armed Forces had a booth there too. I wonder if the chemtrails I saw

tied into the military presence somehow. Isn’t it the job of the military to STOP things like aerial

chemical attacks from happening?

Anyway, after I left the beach area I walked up to the fair rides which were in full swing and took a

look. Must say, the amusement ride component was massive, they’d brought in rides of all

varieties, and it was just packed with people. Kudos to the organizers of Sea Fair for putting on

another successful event this year. Very impressive indeed!

To conclude, I just want to say a little something about the astounding people of Powell River’s

past. A person on an Internet message board I visit brought up the issue of laziness and how for

some people the trait is akin to a crime. I think to a great extent attitudes about laziness are a

generational thing. For older generations, idleness, while not quite criminal behavior, was severely

frowned upon. For instance, my own parents were from the generation that was alive during World

War II and slacking was just not a part of their personalities. In fact, they were the exact opposite

of slackers, they were productive achievers always on the go, as were most others their age. It was

that WWII generation that helped build up towns like Powell River.

A neighbor I’ve gotten to know over the last couple of years is a prime example of this. He’s about

seventy and is one of the most prolific men I’ve ever met. He can repair your car engine, fix your

TV, install your water pipes, do home renovations, build a new sundeck -- just a total superman.

He’s a unique breed of the variety you just don’t see in the younger generations these days.

Looking at myself, I have nowhere near the character my own parents possessed. Nor could I ever

achieve in my lifetime what they did through hard work. In fact, I don’t really want to, and that’s the

difference between me and them. I’ve had a lot of stuff handed to me, for which I’m exceedingly

grateful, but my parents were self-made people all the way. I have immense admiration for those

industrious individuals of days past, many of whom were immigrants, as were my own parents.

These people truly were extraordinary. They just don’t make folks like that anymore. Those of us

under the age of fifty are the sons and daughters of those driven, hard-working men and women of

the WWII generation and every day we enjoy the benefits of the infrastructure they built and for that

we are the most fortunate people in the world.

Next month in “Stuff I’ve Seen In Powell River” I kick off the first of a five-part series I’ve written

critiquing the police and lawyers in this town. My report is based on my own experiences and those

of others who’ve told me about hassles they’ve had with the authorities here too. I’m also going to

reveal what happened to a crook who used my identity in an elaborate ICBC insurance fraud scam

in Powell River. You will not fucking believe what I found out about this person.

As well, if you yourself have had a run-in with law enforcement in Powell River, please send me an

e-mail with your story and I’ll include it in my article.

callumhouston@aol.com

this is a perfect example of the preposterous things the federal government puts manpower into.

Most of what the feds do is meaningless, as this marine activity appears to be; it looks like nothing

more than an exercise in optics -- they want to be seen by me. But some of the other asinine

activities those Nazis are involved in are downright disgusting. The spraying of chemicals on us

from the sky comes to mind immediately.

Am I the only person in Powell River dealing with an infestation of sea otters? In the first “Stuff” I

also wrote about the fight I had repelling hordes of otters that were nesting under my house. Those

dastardly sea rats love to huddle together down there in the dark.

I thought I’d gotten rid of them completely, but they came back with a vengeance last winter,

probably because it was so fucking cold out. I remember one stormy morning I was sitting in my

living room and I watched four of the little devils scurrying across my lawn towards my house. I

was under attack! It got to the point where one or two of them would show up every couple of

days without fail.

The situation was so bad I actually had otters bursting through the walls of my home! One night

after I’d blocked one of their access holes I woke up at 2 a.m. to the sound of high-pitched

squealing under the floorboards in my bedroom. I’d never heard an otter sound like that before. I

was accustomed to hearing them emit these deep pig-like grunts, but this one was making this

distressed shrieking noise that sounded like a woman screaming. It was positively chilling.

Then all of a sudden I heard frantic shrieking and banging in the bathroom down the hall! It

sounded like a screaming banshee was trapped in there. I got up and walked down the hall and

cautiously opened up the bathroom door to find out what was going on and when I did I saw that --

holy shit! -- a fucking otter had tried to burrow a hole through the shower stall wall! It had dug

through the drywall and pushed out the plastic overlay. The bathtub had a pile of drywall debris in it

from the otter hole. What a mess! Was this a new breed of super-otter I’d never encountered

before? It sure seemed like it. I quickly got a hammer and nails and reinforced the wall as best I

could. What a hellish night that was!

Then another time they smashed through a wooden wall on my front porch and I had to reinforce

and otter-proof that breach point as well. In other instances it seems as though they just come to

my house to agitate me. A few times I’ve woken up to the sound of an otter banging on the outside

of my house behind my bedroom wall.

I’ve also wondered if these scheming demons have had tracking devices implanted into them.

That’s something they do in Vancouver, attach tracking devices to animals, including to sea

mammals, and release them into the wild. Could it be that these are Vancouver otters being

instructed via remote control to attack my home? I also have this one seal that’s been coming to my

house almost every day for years. He pops his head out of the water a few feet from shore and just

stares at the house. I’ve wondered the same thing about him too.

So that’s something I’ve been doing lately, obstructing otters. But I’ve resigned myself to the fact

that I’ll probably never see the end of them entirely.

And speaking of weird happenings, one time when I got up in the middle of the night, as I often do,

I went out onto my porch and heard this enormous thrashing sound off in the distance in the water.

It was unbelievable. It was pitch black out so I couldn’t see what was there, but off in the darkness

it sounded like an enormous school of sea mammals was just going crazy out there. I was curious

as hell to know what it was I was hearing, but I guess it’ll remain a mystery.

loaded up with a blackish substance that looked like dirt. There was a crane on the barge scooping

up the dirt from the barge and heaving it into the sea. Believe me, there was a hell of a lot of waste

material heaped onto that barge.

Now, you might think that the dumping of waste into the ocean near a coastal community would be

completely illegal and that it would be the job of the Canadian Coast Guard, in its policing of the

waterways, to prohibit such activity. But no, that isn’t the case.

On one of the nights when the dumping was taking place I actually watched a federal government

Coast Guard vessel slowly travel north up the length of Malaspina Strait. And this was no ordinary

Coast Guard boat, it was a frigate the size of a large yacht. And what happened when the federal

government came upon this marine dumping operation? The Coast Guard ship simply drifted right

past the barge in a leisurely manner without having any discernible reaction to it whatsoever.

So it is legal to dump garbage into the ocean? Sure looks that way. That’s the message I derived

from the federal government anyway, the way they didn’t give a damn about what was going on.

From what I saw they were giving their tacit approval to what was happening. In fact, it appeared as

though they might even have been there to provide armed protection (or at the very least moral

support) for the operation.

But let me tell you, it did not look right to me at all to see that Coast Guard ship just quietly slide

past that tall crane as it dumped scoop after giant scoop of waste into the ocean right next to it. I

mean, if it isn’t the job of the Coast Guard to put a stop to the dumping of waste into the sea, then

just what the fuck IS the role of the Coast Guard? However, in terms of the upside-down, immoral

way the government operates, I guess it made total sense.

When you combine this dumping of waste into the sea from barges with the release of emissions --

chemtrails -- into the atmosphere by zombie jets on an almost daily basis (along with the spraying of

deadly chemical herbicides like Roundup in our neighborhoods), it certainly isn’t hard to make a

case that the Canadian government has declared war on the environment.

Employing two men to mess around in the ocean like this is a perfect example of the preposterous things the federal government puts manpower into. Most of what the feds do is meaningless, as this marine activity appears to be; it looks like nothing more than an exercise in optics -- they want to be seen by me. But some of the other asinine activities those Nazis are involved in are downright disgusting. The spraying of chemicals on us from the sky comes to mind immediately.

Am I the only person in Powell River dealing with an infestation of sea otters? In the first “Stuff” I also wrote about the fight I had repelling hordes of otters that were nesting under my house. Those dastardly sea rats love to huddle together down there in the dark.

I thought I’d gotten rid of them completely, but they came back with a vengeance last winter, probably because it was so fucking cold out. I remember one stormy morning I was sitting in my living room and I watched four of the little devils scurrying across my lawn towards my house. I was under attack! It got to the point where one or two of them would show up every couple of days without fail.

The situation was so bad I actually had otters bursting through the walls of my home! One night after I’d blocked one of their access holes I woke up at 2 a.m. to the sound of high-pitched squealing under the floorboards in my bedroom. I’d never heard an otter sound like that before. I was accustomed to hearing them emit these deep pig-like grunts, but this one was making this distressed shrieking noise that sounded like a woman screaming. It was positively chilling.

Then all of a sudden I heard frantic shrieking and banging in the bathroom down the hall! It sounded like a screaming banshee was trapped in there. I got up and walked down the hall and cautiously opened up the bathroom door to find out what was going on and when I did I saw that -- holy shit! -- a fucking otter had tried to burrow a hole through the shower stall wall! It had dug through the drywall and pushed out the plastic overlay. The bathtub had a pile of drywall debris in it from the otter hole. What a mess! Was this a new breed of super-otter I’d never encountered before? It sure seemed like it. I quickly got a hammer and nails and reinforced the wall as best I could. What a hellish night that was!

Then another time they smashed through a wooden wall on my front porch and I had to reinforce and otter-proof that breach point as well. In other instances it seems as though they just come to my house to agitate me. A few times I’ve woken up to the sound of an otter banging on the outside of my house behind my bedroom wall.

I’ve also wondered if these scheming demons have had tracking devices implanted into them. That’s something they do in Vancouver, attach tracking devices to animals, including to sea mammals, and release them into the wild. Could it be that these are Vancouver otters being instructed via remote control to attack my home? I also have this one seal that’s been coming to my house almost every day for years. He pops his head out of the water a few feet from shore and just stares at the house. I’ve wondered the same thing about him too.

So that’s something I’ve been doing lately, obstructing otters. But I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’ll probably never see the end of them entirely.

And speaking of weird happenings, one time when I got up in the middle of the night, as I often do, I went out onto my porch and heard this enormous thrashing sound off in the distance in the water. It was unbelievable. It was pitch black out so I couldn’t see what was there, but off in the darkness it sounded like an enormous school of sea mammals was just going crazy out there. I was curious as hell to know what it was I was hearing, but I guess it’ll remain a mystery.

The photo below is what I see every time I ride my bike into town -- BC government trash on the side of the highway!

This debris, which has been lying in the ditch for a year now, is notices from the government stating that they’ve contaminated the area near Stark Road with a poisonous herbicide called Roundup. So not only are they using dangerous biohazard chemicals close to our homes (this is right next to someone’s driveway!), but they’re depositing litter there as well. Talk about repellent as hell! This really epitomizes the government’s “who gives a shit?” attitude towards the environment, doesn’t it?

And I see that the disposing of waste into Malaspina Strait from barges hasn’t ceased either.

One night last July I saw a tugboat near Texada Island going around in a circle dragging a barge behind it that was loaded up with a blackish substance that looked like dirt. There was a crane on the barge scooping up the dirt from the barge and heaving it into the sea. Believe me, there was a hell of a lot of waste material heaped onto that barge.

Now, you might think that the dumping of waste into the ocean near a coastal community would be completely illegal and that it would be the job of the Canadian Coast Guard, in its policing of the waterways, to prohibit such activity. But no, that isn’t the case.

On one of the nights when the dumping was taking place I actually watched a federal government Coast Guard vessel slowly travel north up the length of Malaspina Strait. And this was no ordinary Coast Guard boat, it was a frigate the size of a large yacht. And what happened when the federal government came upon this marine dumping operation? The Coast Guard ship simply drifted right past the barge in a leisurely manner without having any discernible reaction to it whatsoever.

So it is legal to dump garbage into the ocean? Sure looks that way. That’s the message I derived from the federal government anyway, the way they didn’t give a damn about what was going on. From what I saw they were giving their tacit approval to what was happening. In fact, it appeared as though they might even have been there to provide armed protection (or at the very least moral support) for the operation.

But let me tell you, it did not look right to me at all to see that Coast Guard ship just quietly slide past that tall crane as it dumped scoop after giant scoop of waste into the ocean right next to it. I mean, if it isn’t the job of the Coast Guard to put a stop to the dumping of waste into the sea, then just what the fuck IS the role of the Coast Guard? However, in terms of the upside-down, immoral way the government operates, I guess it made total sense.

When you combine this dumping of waste into the sea from barges with the release of emissions -- chemtrails -- into the atmosphere by zombie jets on an almost daily basis (along with the spraying of deadly chemical herbicides like Roundup in our neighborhoods), it certainly isn’t hard to make a case that the Canadian government has declared war on the environment.

Speaking of chemtrails, the photo below is a shot I took last Wednesday evening of southern Texada Island getting sprayed with emissions.

Those white lines above the island are zombie jet discharge trails. The other clouds are probably emissions too. This photo is concrete evidence of the aerial spraying of chemicals on the local population. Expect to see more chemtrail photos posted here in the future.

And in addition to seeing flares and chemtrails over Texada Island on a regular basis, another extremely weird thing I saw over there recently was the deployment of a high-intensity searchlight.

One night last May at about ten o’clock I was in bed when I noticed light coming in through my bedroom window. I got up and looked out the window and saw a large helicopter over at Texada Island positioned near those radio towers mid island beaming this incredibly powerful searchlight all over the place. I’d never seen such a bright light before. The beam must have been ten miles long! Then another night I just happened to get up out of bed at about 2:45 a.m. and I saw that the helicopter was back and they were fucking around with the searchlight again.

Let me tell you, that light was so strong it was like a radioactive laser beam. The diameter of the beam alone looked like it might’ve been a hundred feet thick. They were pointing it all over the place, including up at the sky, and when they aimed it up at the clouds it just lit them right up. It was totally unnatural, like something out of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. They even swung the searchlight around and scanned along the mainland once or twice and hit my house in the process with it a couple of times. Someone I mentioned these incidents to explained that I’d probably witnessed a military exercise of some variety.

Some tremendously sad news. I was recently informed that my friend Dave, who began struggling with a number of ailments since I met him in the Signature Cafe coffee shop in Safeway, passed away in January. Dave, a Vietnam vet, is yet another person to add to the growing list of people I’ve met in Powell River who’ve just vanished. I’m going to talk about how people seem to just disappear in Powell River in more detail in the future.

On an upbeat note, I was riding my bike down Powell River’s iconic Marine Avenue this summer and was delighted to see that the street is experiencing a colossal resurgence at the moment. There’s a vibrancy on the avenue I haven’t seen there for a while and it’s very exciting to witness. There are a bunch of new restaurants and coffee shops as well as one or two other new businesses. While a lot of commerce in Powell River happens up around the Town Centre Mall, Marine Avenue really represents the soul of this community and it’s small business and the entrepreneurs behind small business that fuel that soul. Private business is so important because it’s private business that brings the color and joy to a town, not to mention providing us with the necessities we need. Where would we be without the wonderful folks who supply us with clothing and food? Blessed are these holy saints who provide us with the much-needed essentials of life!

I checked out Sea Fair this year too. I strolled through the event on the Saturday afternoon and was thrilled to see that it’s just as popular as it was in my youth. It was packed with people and I saw that some of the food booths even had large line-ups of customers.

However, I was a little dismayed to see that jets had sprayed chemtrails in the sky over the area. Those military flyboys in their air machines really do like showing off for the crowds, don’t they? I also noted that the Canadian Armed Forces had a booth there too. I wonder if the chemtrails I saw tied into the military presence somehow. Isn’t it the job of the military to STOP things like aerial chemical attacks from happening?

Anyway, after I left the beach area I walked up to the fair rides which were in full swing and took a look. Must say, the amusement ride component was massive, they’d brought in rides of all varieties, and it was just packed with people. Kudos to the organizers of Sea Fair for putting on another successful event this year. Very impressive indeed!

To conclude, I just want to say a little something about the astounding people of Powell River’s past. A person on an Internet message board I visit brought up the issue of laziness and how for some people the trait is akin to a crime. I think to a great extent attitudes about laziness are a generational thing. For older generations, idleness, while not quite criminal behavior, was severely frowned upon. For instance, my own parents were from the generation that was alive during World War II and slacking was just not a part of their personalities. In fact, they were the exact opposite of slackers, they were productive achievers always on the go, as were most others their age. It was that WWII generation that helped build up towns like Powell River.

A neighbor I’ve gotten to know over the last couple of years is a prime example of this. He’s about seventy and is one of the most prolific men I’ve ever met. He can repair your car engine, fix your TV, install your water pipes, do home renovations, build a new sundeck -- just a total superman. He’s a unique breed of the variety you just don’t see in the younger generations these days.

Looking at myself, I have nowhere near the character my own parents possessed. Nor could I ever achieve in my lifetime what they did through hard work. In fact, I don’t really want to, and that’s the difference between me and them. I’ve had a lot of stuff handed to me, for which I’m exceedingly grateful, but my parents were self-made people all the way. I have immense admiration for those industrious individuals of days past, many of whom were immigrants, as were my own parents. These people truly were extraordinary. They just don’t make folks like that anymore. Those of us under the age of fifty are the sons and daughters of those driven, hard-working men and women of the WWII generation and every day we enjoy the benefits of the infrastructure they built and for that we are the most fortunate people in the world.

Next month in “Stuff I’ve Seen In Powell River” I kick off the first of a five-part series I’ve written critiquing the police and lawyers in this town. My report is based on my own experiences and those of others who’ve told me about hassles they’ve had with the authorities here too. I’m also going to reveal what happened to a crook who used my identity in an elaborate ICBC insurance fraud scam in Powell River. You will not fucking believe what I found out about this person.

As well, if you yourself have had a run-in with law enforcement in Powell River, please send me an e-mail with your story and I’ll include it in my article.

callumhouston@aol.com