The first reason was because it had these two beefy tugboats attached to either end of it.  When I first saw it it was clear that one of the tugs was towing the barge, but there was this other tugboat behind it that didn’t seem to be dragging anything.  I saw the two tugboats and wondered, What the fuck is that second tugboat towing?  I couldn’t see its payload.  Then I saw that the first tug that was towing the big barge was also towing the second tugboat too!  Huh?  That’s when I knew something VERY STRANGE was going on.  Never seen anything like THAT before.

The second reason the barge stood out is because it was a frickin’ BEHEMOTH!  It looked to me like a marine construction operation, something that’d be used to build a harbor or a ferry terminal somewhere.  It had all these giant cranes on it and stacks of mobile offices and other large structures on it too.  Even the tugboats that were with it were the biggest tugs I’ve ever seen.  And it was ugly!  It made the old McDonald’s Expo 86 barge look like an elegant work of art in comparison.  What an eyesore!  It came across as a hodge-podge collection of as much junk as they could pack onto a barge before it would start sinking.  It was extremely top-heavy.  Ergo, it looked dangerous as hell, as though it could easily capsize should the waters even become just a little bit choppy.

And the third weird thing about the barge was that, instead of disappearing from sight after going through Malaspina Strait, once it got to the southern end of the strait it changed direction and began traveling north again and then it did the same thing when it got to the north end of the waterway.  And this was where the second tug came in.  When the barge changed direction the first tug would go into neutral and the second tug would pull it the opposite way.  And that was the procedure, the barge would troll up and down, back and forth the length of Malaspina Strait and this continued on and on from Saturday afternoon until Sunday night.

So I Googled Arctic Challenger and according to Wikipedia it’s owned by Shell Oil and is based out of San Francisco.  It’s American!  But of course it’s American!  Just look at it and you can tell.  It’s way too imposing and intimidating to be anything BUT American!  And even though it’s supposedly owned by Shell Oil, they’re using the logo of a Texas company called Superior Energy Services as identification on the barge.  Also, neither the barge nor the tugs had any visible country-of-origin flags on them.  Plus, the word “Arctic” in the barge’s name implies it’s Canadian.  This blatantly evasive deception regarding who owns the thing instantly sends up a red flag suggesting it isn’t a law-abiding operation on the up and up.  I mean, let’s be frank, ID subterfuge is rarely a sign of honesty.

What it was doing here I have no idea.  However, the way it was going around in a circle the length of the strait is consistent with waste dumping, especially considering that the Canadian federal government issues permits for dumping here.  And if the Americans DID have a waste dumping barge I was thinking that that thing is EXACTLY what it would look like.  They wouldn’t have a front-end loader scooping up waste and dumping it into the sea the way the Canadians do it, they’d go all fancy and big like Americans are known for.  They’d have a floating refinery on a big barge that processed the waste before discretely disposing it into the ocean through some submerged discharge system underneath the vessel.

So that’s what I think might’ve been going on, that they were discharging waste into the strait.  It’s disgusting to consider that they might’ve discharged TWO FULL DAYS’ WORTH (!!!) of pollution over the length of the strait while they were here.  And I find it very telling the way the Canadian government was nowhere to be seen throughout any of this.  It’s possible that the Arctic Challenger wasn’t dumping waste into the sea at all and instead was experiencing problems of some kind.  But did the Coast Guard show up to check them out and see what was going on?  Nope.  They were completely absent; conspicuously so in fact, as though they were DELIBERATELY avoiding the situation.  I’m telling you, if we ever got invaded by a foreign country that’s exactly what would happen, the government wouldn’t do anything to repel the incursion and instead they’d run for the hills.  Their lack of action on chemtrails (refusing to acknowledge they exist even!) is another example of government indifference when it comes to dealing with these kinds of issues.

Anyway, that barge was an extremely unnerving sight to see.  It didn’t look right out there at all.  At one point I wondered if they were going to start building a harbor or something near my house.  I was quite pleased when it finally went away for good.  Watch my commentary on my home page to see video of the Arctic Challenger barge in Powell River.

And then there was the American weather ship that showed up earlier in 2015.  It was the afternoon of Friday, February 13th and rain was coming down hard from gray skies when I noticed this medium-size vessel traveling north up the strait.

Last year the barge showed up in August and I noted it had the identification VPD 412 on it.  I checked on a federal government website and saw that a company named Vancouver Pile Driving does receive permits to release industrial waste into Malaspina Strait, so I’m guessing VPD might be an acronym for that company’s name.  On the other hand VPD might stand for the Vancouver Police Department, so who knows?

But Christ, those Vancouver boors really like coming up here with their trash, don’t they?  You might recall how I wrote about all the discarded debris I saw on the sides of the highway in 2015 after Telus had been here.  Well, here’s another Vancouver operation using Powell River as a dumpster.  And the thing is, this disposal of garbage into Malaspina Strait happens EVERY YEAR in the EXACT SAME SPOT, so you can just imagine the tremendous amount of MASS WASTE on the ocean floor in that one location.  And the dumping is done at night in the dark so it can’t be scrutinized nor is there any on-site government supervision of any kind going on either.  They can dump anything they want out there and no one’s the wiser.  Shouldn’t an operation like that be CLOSELY SUPERVISED by the authorities?  Damn rights it should!  And it’s not like the government doesn’t know about it.  This company VPD purchases permits from the federal government that allow them to discard this wholesale garbage into the water.  But I guess the thinking here is that the entire ocean itself is just one gigantic landfill so there’s no need to keep an eye on anything.

To tell you the truth, I don’t actually have a huge problem with the dumping of waste into the ocean.  I mean, let’s be honest, it happens all the time, right?  But the part I find OFFENSIVE AS HELL is the way they do it in plain sight of us like that.  Hardcore waste dumping should be done way out at sea or up some isolated inlet or fjord somewhere where no one lives, not right in front of our faces like this.

And just why DOES the government direct companies to go to Powell River to dump industrial waste in a prime salmon-fishing and shellfish-trapping location?  Well, it’s because the government HATES Powell River and is using it as a go-to location for dirty operations and drills which include everything from chemtrail spraying and other bizarre aerial exercises to medical executions and herbicide attacks and various other suspicious activities, all of which I’ve talked about in my articles.  Powell River is basically an unpoliced NO-LAW ZONE where the government can go to do anything it wants.

And this behavior also demonstrates how the government pays lip service to environmental concerns and isn’t CAPABLE of tackling pollution issues since it’s a major polluter itself through its issuance of disposal permits.  Why would they want to stop pollution when they’re making big bucks off it?  Enjoy your contaminated salmon steaks, people!  And watch out for mutant seals -- it’s an unrestricted free-for-all out there!  Check the video commentary on my home page to see this dumping taking place.

Hot Talk Advisory!  Next month’s “Stuff” is another super-fascinating “River City Q&A” interview.  In this one I speak with longtime Powell River resident Edward Brant.

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Contaminated ocean!  Mysterious vessels!  It was last November when I saw the MONSTROUS SHELL OIL BARGE in the photo below drifting up and down Malaspina Strait.  I first noticed it on the afternoon of Saturday, November 7, 2015 as it traveled south.  The barge was called the Arctic Challenger and it was here for two days (!) and it stood out for three primary reasons.

I could tell instantly it was a government ship.  I’m not sure how to describe it but there’s something about the build of government vessels that sets them apart from other boats, even from industrial boats.  They just look different, more military or something.  At first I thought it was a Canadian navy ship, vessels I see periodically in the strait, but the color wasn’t right.  Canadian navy ships are gray but this one was white.

So I grabbed my binoculars and zoomed in on it and saw that, no, it wasn’t a Canadian navy vessel, it was some other kind of government boat.  It was outfitted with a myriad of communications antennas and what appeared to be cranes.  I then noticed a small Zodiac-type boat with several passengers coming up behind it.  The Zodiac traveled halfway up the side of the moving ship and stopped and the passengers climbed aboard it.

The ship looked just like Canadian Coast Guard vessels I often see; in fact, if it’d been painted red and had a white stripe bisecting it diagonally it would’ve been indistinguishable from a Coast Guard boat.  But with the downpour and wet haze obscuring my vision I couldn’t see what it was called.  So I went to my telescope and aimed it at the boat and it was then that I was able to identify it.

The ship had a couple of different names on it.  At the bow it said NOAA R557 which I knew right away meant it was American since I’m aware that NOAA is a U.S. organization.  Adjacent to that was an emblem:  a blue circle with a bird in it, or maybe it was two hands held together, I wasn’t sure which (I later found out it was a bird).  And at the stern it had the name Bell M. Shimada on it.  And it was flying three joint flags: a Canadian flag, an American flag, and a blue flag which may have had that same bird emblem on it.  (This is interesting since the Canadian navy ships I see don’t display any discernible country flag.)

The next thing I did was grab my camera and snap a couple of shots of it.  Curiously, when I aimed my lens at the vessel the red “low battery” light on the camera viewfinder started blinking like mad, even though the batteries had just been charged.  That was weird as hell.  Could the ship have been emitting something that interfered with my camera?

The next thing that happened is the weather conditions started to suddenly intensify.  As the ship cruised up the strait, the gray skies abruptly darkened and became ominously black and rain began pouring down even heavier than before, as though the floodgates had been opened up in the heavens.  With the rain now oppressive and unrelenting, the vessel continued traveling north and disappeared from sight towards the north end of Texada Island.

Since it was a U.S. ship I figured maybe it was heading to Alaska and that perhaps they were using the cover of rain to stay out of sight, doing some kind of covert surveillance operation or something.  Who knew?  But then to my surprise an hour or two later the ship reappeared, patrolling south now!  It was as if they’d found what they were looking for and were leaving.  And yes, the boat eventually did vanish into the misty rainclouds at the southern end of the strait and disappear for good.

But what happened next was the strangest thing of all.  As if by magic, the torrential precipitation that was coming down in buckets stopped and the clouds started disappearing and the sky began clearing and all of a sudden blue skies could be seen.  My God, it was positively biblical -- it was like a scene out of The Ten Commandments!  And adding to the contrived artificiality of the whole thing, the following day the weather was pristine -- the sky was sunny and spotless!  Holy weather manipulation, Batman!

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Edward and I dive headfirst into a number of “alternative” topics including chemtrails, death waves, locking up the mentally ill and the hassles he’s had with the cops.  See you here April 1st for that ultra-intriguing discussion!

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I later went on the web and discovered that NOAA (pronounced Noah, as in the guy with the ark) is a United States federal government agency.  The acronym stands for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  They’re a scientific organization that deals with the weather.  And I have to say, that was exceedingly suspicious considering the schizophrenic weather changes that happened when they were here, not to mention the exceedingly heavy chemtrail spraying that constantly goes on in this area.  Plus, it was weird as anything to observe a U.S. federal government vessel in our waters.  That’s about the same thing as spotting an LAPD cop car driving around Powell River -- it’s not something you’d ever expect to see!

But just what were they doing here anyway?  Conducting surveillance in the area clearly, just like the Canadian government does.  And as I say, perhaps adjusting the weather too.  As well, the appearance of a U.S. government ship in our waters could be a sign that the Canadian government has relinquished national sovereignty to the Americans in some capacity, although to be fair, that was the one and only time I’ve ever seen an American government boat in the ocean around here.

You may have heard how Vancouverites segregate their trash into individual categories when they throw it out now.  Well, apparently some of that segregating involves setting BARGE LOADS aside for disposal up here in Powell River!  Every summer a tugboat shows up in Malaspina Strait towing a barge filled with waste and a tractor on the barge scoops up the waste and dumps it in the ocean.  I’ve written about this before and it makes me want to puke every time I see it!  The operation starts during daylight hours and the dumping goes on all night.