City of Victoria Resolution at the 2011 UBCM Convention

Victoria has proposed a resolution for the 2011 UBCM convention.    The City is looking for a ban on for profit medical clinics.

I am not sure how the City council had time to get into this sort of issue as it is completely outside of what the City is responsible for.   The whereas clauses make assertions for which no evidence is provided.   I wonder, did City staff research this for the council?  Or was the council passing this resolution without background research or on the basis of their own opinion or knowledge?

The resolution feels like an attempt to use the City and UBCM as a partisan way to attack the provincial government.   I fail to see how this is beneficial for the City, UBCM or anyone.   I really do not like the idea of local governments going outside of their area of responsibility and become activist organizations. There are no shortages of activist groups and political parties in BC, there is no reason local governments should enter this realm.   It is a waste of local government resources and distracts councils from the real stuff they need to be doing and in the case of the City of Victoria are not doing that great a job off.

Given how far down the list the resolution is, it is unlikely to make it to the floor this year.

B159 FOR-PROFIT CLINICS
Victoria
WHEREAS everyone must have the right to high quality, responsive and appropriate health care which is publicly funded, publicly accountable and publicly controlled, regardless of an individual’s income, ability, age, cultural heritage, sex, sexual orientation or geographical location;
AND WHEREAS for-profit clinics represent an increasing and serious threat to British Columbians’ health and the financial stability of the health care system;
AND WHEREAS the number of private, for-profit surgical and MRI/CT facilities in BC has more than doubled in the past five years, with a growing number of for-profit facilities operating in breach of the Canada Health Act’s criteria requiring universality and accessibility by charging patients privately for medically necessary and MSP insured hospital or physician services;
AND WHEREAS there is clear evidence that such clinics cost more than public facilities, increase wait times by draining scarce health human resources from the public system, and compromise patient safety:


THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that UBCM request that the Province of British Columbia:
Establish a moratorium on any further expansion of private, for-profit surgical and MRI/CT clinics;

• Require an end to public funding of for-profit clinics, including the contracting-out of day surgeries and the provision of Health Authority contracts to for-profit clinics;
• Require full accountability and transparency on the part of for-profit clinics by ensuring that they submit to all oversight and regulatory mechanisms currently applied to public facilities operating under the BC Hospital Act; and
• Expand public capacity by requiring the development of publicly funded and administered outpatient facilities;

AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that UBCM continue to research and monitor the threat to universal public health care posed by the operations of private, for-profit surgical and MRI/CT facilities in its member communities.
ENDORSED BY THE ASSOCIATION OF VANCOUVER ISLAND AND COASTAL COMMUNITIES


UBCM RESOLUTIONS COMMITTEE RECOMMENDATION: Not Endorse
UBCM RESOLUTIONS COMMITTEE COMMENTS:
The Resolutions Committee notes that the UBCM membership considered but did not endorse resolution 2010-
B155, which called on the Province to:

• Establish a moratorium on any further expansion of private, for-profit surgical and MRI/CT clinics
• Require an end to public funding of for-profit clinics, including the contracting-out of day surgeries and the provision of health authority contracts to for-profit clinics
• Require full accountability and transparency on the part of for-profit clinics by ensuring that they submit to all oversight and regulatory mechanisms currently applied to public facilities operating under the BC Hospitals Act
• Expand public capacity by requiring the development of publicly funded and administered outpatient facilities.

The resolution also requested that UBCM research and monitor the operations of private, for-profit surgical and
MRI/CT facilities in its members’ communities.


This resolution was first scheduled to be considered at the 2009 Convention but due to time constraints, was not
considered and was referred automatically to the UBCM Executive. The Executive decided to refer the resolution
to the 2010 Convention, because they were not comfortable making a decision on behalf of the membership with
no prior UBCM policy on such a high-profile, controversial issue.


Though the resolution was not endorsed in 2010, UBCM members did endorse a related resolution, 2002-
B89, requesting that the provincial government honour the five principles of Medicare, which are: universal
coverage, comprehensive, accessible services, portable from province to province and publicly administered

The CRD 2011 Heavyweight Bout - Kid Cubberly v Frank "Saanich Man" Leonard

The biggest title in the CRD, Mayor of Saanich, is the prize.   Leonard has a long record of a knock outs of any rivals, many in the first rounds before they even get their nominations in.   But this time "Kid" Cubberly came out early and swinging hard.
I was excited, I got my popcorn, I would pay for the pay for view, but where is the contest now?   The early rounds have been nothing.

More seriously, I am in the loop enough in political circles in this town of all sides of the political spectrum and from local to provincial to federal.   I honestly have not heard much action in the Saanich mayoralty race.  

Saanich takes as more effort to run in for mayor than running for MP.   The campaign team you need to run a full effective campaign numbers in the hundreds and the money needed really should be north of $100,000.

I am wondering how it will play out, it feels like a lot is being left way to late.

Alternatives to the LRT

The goal of the LRT, and of all transit, is to provide a reasonable alternative to getting their under you own steam.

The Westshore is growing and there is an issue with the commute, the question is what is the best solution to improve the travel time for the people on the roads?

Do nothing - this is always an option.   The implication of this is that nothing much will get better and slowly but surely things are likely to get worse.   There is a longer term possibility this may not be a bad idea because we may not need more capacity to move people in 15 years time.   If more people work from home, and those numbers are rising quickly, the daily rush hour crush could start to dissipate over time.

Build lots of road works.   Say we three lane the TCH and build a bunch of overpasses.   This would improve the situation but it would come at a large cost.   Two or three interchanges and five kilometers of extra lanes will run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The one piece of roadwork that makes sense is the Mackenzie interchange.   Mackenzie and #1 is a location where there is a major split in the traffic and demands more options in the traffic light cycle than most intersections do.   The traffic light is the cause of a lot of the problem and being able to eliminate it would allow a lot more traffic movement than now.

Together with the interchange, we should build some HOV lanes.   I do not mean very extensive ones, but just ones in the areas where the traffic is the worst.   Towards the Westshore, this would be from Uptown to just past the intersection with Mackenzie.   I would make it a 5+ HOV lane so that buses and van pools would be the vehicles using it.   This would not be an expensive change, but it would offer enough of a speed increase that the current buses could maintain their off peak times.

My whole point out of this is that there are many options that can be considered to deal with the Colwood Crawl and they all need to be considered.  Moving forward with the LRT without considering the bigger traffic picture is foolish.   At this point no work has been done to show if the LRT will have any impact on the traffic, in fact most of the data would seem to point the construction of the LRT making the Colwood Crawl worse.

What we really should be looking in this region is some form of BLine like in Vancouver.   The 99 BLine is one of the busiest bus routes in North America and moves 50,000 people a day.   The BLine moves quickly because it has limited stops and people at the stops have to buy a ticket before boarding.   The public can enter at anyone of the three doors which means people getting on and off is much faster for large groups that for conventional buses.

I think locally there should be a BLine along the #26 and the #14 routes.   Try them out and see how they work.  If our goal is to make it easier to move more people, we have to look at how improve the service for the people already using the system.   UVic is one of the primary destinations in this region.

I doubt a BLine to the Westshore would really make much difference.   The buses to and from the Westshore need a way to get around the most serious traffic backlogs.   There has to be some functional and inexpensive way to do that.

Excess Fruit

I you have excess fruit, I will process if for you.

• I can make jams and jellies - low sugar is my specialty
• I can do dried fruits and fruit leather   
• I can also do apple sauce and fruit purees
• I can can tomatoes or make tomato sauce

• I have a Victorio foodmill that is amazing a seperating fruit from skin and seeds.
• I have a apple peeler/corer/slicer that quickly makes apples into rings
• I have a pressure canner

I can fill jars in 125, 250, 500 and 1000 ml sizes.  I have regular and wide mouth jars.

What will I charge you?  Nothing if you provide the jars.   What I ask is that I get to keep half of the fruit.  If you want me to provide the jars, I will ask $1 per jar no matter the size.


You will notice that there are two things I did not list - pickles or juice.   I have never gotten into making pickles and I do not have the right equipment to easily juice fruit.

For my own use I can stock and fish, but since I do not have a commercial kitchen, I will not preserve low acid foods for others.

HST referendum results in the CRD

Here are the local results - only Oak Bay Gordon Head voted to keep the HST.   The next best No result was in Saanich North and the Islands and the third highest was in the only close riding in the last provincial election, Saanich South.

• Riding                    Yes             No
• Esquimalt-Royal Roads    12073 57.96%  8758 42.04%
• Juan de Fuca             12600 62.50%  7559 37.50%
• Oak Bay-Gordon Head      10738 48.60% 11356 51.40% 
• Saanich North + Islands  14162 51.35% 13419 48.65%
• Saanich South            12370 52.52% 11183 47.48% 
• Victoria-Beacon Hill     11312 55.76%  8976 44.24% 
• Victoria-Swan Lake       11068 57.73%  8103 42.27% 

The overall provincial results actually paint a better picture for the government that I had expected.   The results in this region indicate to me that Ida Chong should be safe in the next election and the two Saanich ridings will be in play, much as was the case in 2009.

Oak Bay and Colwood

In both Oak Bay and Colwood the sitting mayors are not running again.    It is now only a week before the labour day weekend and I have still not even heard a rumour of who might be running for either position.

I have floated possible names past people who should be in the know in each municipality and all I get is "I don't think so.".  

I have heard a rumour of a councilor elsewhere in the CRD that is moving to Oak Bay that plans on running in Oak Bay, but I have no confirmation on that for a second source.

Earthquakes and our city.

Once again I watched some stuff on TV about the Cascadia fault line that we live near to.   It is a chilling reminder that the earthquake we are likely to have in this region is not something small like the January 2010 Haiti earthquake or the two earthquakes in Christchurch New Zealand.   The earthquake we are likely to have is something like the Sendai earthquake.

A list of some better known recent earthquakes and how strong they were:

• January 2010 Haiti M7.0
• February 2010 Chile M8.8
• September 2010 Christchurch M7.1
• February 2011 Christchurch M6.3
• May 2011 Sendai M9.0

This could be Old Town in a small earthquake

To give you an idea of the difference in the power of the earthquakes, the May 2011 Japanese one was 1000 times as strong as the January 2010 Haitian earthquake.  Sendai was more than 11,000 times as powerful as the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake.   The Sendai earthquake was even about twice as powerful as the Chilean earthquake.

You only need to look at some of the pictures of the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake to get an idea what would happen to Victoria Old Town and Chinatown in a small earthquake.  To give you an idea of how small it was, it is small enough in terms of energy released that it is not even large enough to be a rounding error in the earthquake we are likely to see.  Even Haiti is not really large enough to be a rounding error.

The Cascadia subduction zone was only discovered to be there and as serious as it is about a generation ago.  In the case of the recent Japanese earthquake, everything that was thought to be know about the area placed the biggest possible earthquake at about 3% the size of the one that happened.   We really know very, very little about the reality of when and how strong the coming earthquake will be.

At this time the best estimate is that there is a 37% chance of a M8.2 or greater earthquake within the next 50 years, though this is for the southern end of the subduction zone.   Even worse for us, the strongest earthquakes are off of the coast of Vancouver Island but the odds are currently estimated 10-15% in the next 50 years in this zone.

Is this next earthquake overdue?   Likely.   The 311 years since 1700 is a longer interval than 75% of past intervals between earthquakes in the last 10,000 years.

Japanese building tipped on its side

some liquefaction in Japan

How serious would this earthquake be to us?   I would say extremely.    Most of our seismic upgrading has been done to deal with the tiny Haiti like quakes.   The limit of design seems to be a M8.0 earthquake, and this is 3% of the energy of the scale of the earthquake likely to hit this region.

Old Town and Chinatown will be rumble.    The Railyards and Dockside Green will sink into the ground.  The Empress will sink and collapse.  Much of the Cook Street Village and Fairfield will be rubble.  The core of Langford and Colwood will be destroyed.   Hillside mall will be flattened.

It is not clear that any of the bridges will remain standing.   Odds are that both the #1 and #17 will be blocked by overpasses that have collapsed.  It is very likely that all three major ferry terminals to the island will be out of action

We are not likely to have water, sewer, gas or electrical power.    We are also unlikely to see the return of any of them for a couple of weeks.  We could be in real trouble if our main powerline from the mainland is put out of commission.   We are also on an island that is not going to have an regular connection to the mainland for weeks because the ferry system will be compromised on both ends.

People need to be prepared and assume that for a week or two you will have to look after yourself for food, water and first aid.  People also need to take it seriously that this huge earthquake will hit us sooner than most people have thought before.  There is some thinking out there now which posits that given there have been megathrust earthquakes in Sumatra, Chile and Japan, our corner of the ring of fire may be connected and may happen within the next five years.

People still do not take the threat of a devastating global earthquake happening here seriously.   We give the idea lip service and tend to think in terms of the tiny ones like in Haiti of New Zealand and not something that would be like 1000 Haiti earthquakes happening all at once.

Figs

some of the figs the birds hollowed out

Once again my huge fig tree is loaded with fruit and once again I have no need for 95% of them.   It has me thinking about why we have no fig orchards in this region given that fig trees seem to do well here.   I am not the only person with a prolific tree.

Figs are one of those fruits that really have to picked when truly ripe to be appreciated.   The fresh figs for sale in the stores are such a pale shadow of the real deal that I can understand why not a lot of them are sold.    Given that the climate here seems to allow for figs, would it not make sense for someone to plant a couple of acres of trees to supply the local market?

Most years the birds go after my tree just as the fruit is ripe.  I do little to ward them off because I really only use a couple of pounds of the fruit.   If I were to keep the birds off of the tree, I think this one tree would provide about 500 to 1000 pounds of figs.

Figs are not the only thing we could be growing around here that we do not.   We have a real shortage of tree fruits in this region.

This area does not have access to a lot of good quality soft treefruits.   These sorts of fruits do not travel well and the ones for sale in the stores are generally not worth buying.  I will say the quality of the cherries we can buy now is dramatically better than what was available a decade ago.

There is no reason we could not be growing peaches on south facing slopes.   The rock hard bitter things passed off as peaches in the stores are not worth buying, every time I buy some I am very disappointed.  I suspect one could sell them for $3 a pound without much difficulty.  Realistically one should be able to harvest about 15,000 pounds per acre.

Cherries - we should be able to grow these locally but no one seems to be doing it.   Cherries would be an easy $3-$4 a pound and 10,000 pounds per acre.  Organic cherries would be even more money, though there are some real challenges to growing organic cherries due to one pest.   If we do not have it, we could in theory grow a huge amount of organic cherries for the west coast market.

Plums should do well here.   An acre, once the trees are in full production, should bring in 25,000 pounds per acre.   Sell those plums for $2 a pound and you are looking at something in the order of $50,000 gross revenue.

There are people out there that want to farm and some even trying it on small lots.   Treefruits are easier to maintain and look after than ground crops.  It would seem to me to an easy decision to go to soft treefruits.  

I am not going to do it because I have no desire to be a farmer - just not my thing at all.  I will stick to the few fruit trees and bushes that I have.   My only real goal is to eventually be able to grow a couple of hundred pounds of apricots.   My years in Lillooet, the apricot capital of Canada, has left me hating apricots that are not picked ripe off of the tree.

The rain

Today is the first day in 38 days there are has been an real rain in my neighbourhood.     In fact this summer is the driest one we have seen since the UVic weather network set up a station at Tillicum Elementary in 2005.  Oddly enough, since April, 2011 has been the coolest year since their records started - about 2 degrees below the norm in June and July.

As of writing this, there has been 6.3 mm of rain today, though it is still falling.

The amount of rain in millimeters from June 1st to August 21st at Tillicum Elementary

• 2011 18.7
• 2010 22.8
• 2009 46.4 - half of that was one day in August
• 2008 26.6
• 2007 61.6
• 2006 27.5
• 2005 47.5

As you can see, until today, this has been the driest summer going.   We need a few more hours of rain to make the summer of 2011 not as dry as 2006.   The average amount rain we had over the last six years in this neighbourhood in the summer (June 1 - August 1) is 45.75mm.   It would take a very wet week for this number to be reached and the forecast is calling for sunny weather tomorrow.

For the record, the average amount of annual rain in the last five years has been 660.8mm, or a bit more than 2 feet.   This certainly means this neighbourhood, and I suspect most of the city, is actually wetter than I had always been lead to believe.   I think we may get more rain than where I grew up, Tsawwasen, though environment Canada figures are higher than I realized.

I wonder what the impact of a summer with only about half the normal rain has on our resevoirs?

LRT - what type of vehicle will be used?

The Rapid Transit recommendation report has a listing for a 40 meter long LRT carrying 230 passengers.   In looking at various LRTs currently being manufactured, this comes closest to this is the Bombardier Flexity Berlin - the longer model.     Given that the Feds are expected to cough up 1/3 of the capital costs I assume that effectively only Bombardier will be able to supply the vehicles

The Flexity Berlin carries 239 or 240 passengers depending on the configuration.   One configuration has 75 seats and space for up to 165 people to stand, the other has 88 seated and 151 standing.  Notice how many people are standing compared to seated capacity.

An interesting thing to note about LRT vehicles is that they normally are about 1/3 seated space and 2/3s standing space.    It also means that in peak hours the majority of people on the LRT will be standing for their trip if one gets anywhere close to capacity.   Not having a seat means you can not work on a computer, read a book or newspaper, or generally relax.   In a big city like London or New York people will put with being on the Tube or Subway without a seat, but as someone that lived in London and used the Tube, I switched to the buses so that I could have a seat - I was not alone in this.

Realistically few people are going to want to stand for half an hour or more on the LRT in their commute.   The LRT has to be viewed through the seated capacity as that is the trip that people will enjoy.

 The current major buses in Victoria are either 42%, 53% or 82% seated passengers.  At 82 seats, our current double decker buses have more seats than most LRTs.  The capacity for seated passengers is much higher under our current bus schedule than the LRT will allow for.  In fact our current peak hour seated capacity of the core buses running along Douglas is higher than highest possible seated capacity of the LRT if you were to run it at the absolute maximum frequency.   Maximum frequency is reached with 27 LRT vehicles.

There is a longer Flexity that has more seating, the Flexity Classic XXL.   It is 45 meters long and carries 260 passengers with 153 of them seated, this is a higher than normal portion of seated passengers.  It strikes me as a better fit for this region but still will not allow for as high a capacity as buses can achieve.  In general, as you increase the seating, the total capacity of the LRT vehicle goes down.

There is a good reason to consider a shorter LRT vehicle.    At 40 meters, the LRT vehicles are too long to allow for more than one per block in the downtown core.   This means there is a serious logistical problem with how frequently the LRT can run as they can only proceed forward when the next block is clear.   If the LRT vehicle was 36 meters long, two of them could fit per block.   The shorter Flexity Berlin comes in at 30.8 meters though only carries 180 passengers.

In future, I will be using the 40 meter version of the Flexity Berlin as the model for the LRT.  This means the capacity is 4.3% higher than the VRRTP report uses.

Politicians come out in support of the LRT

This week NDP MPs Denise Savoie and Randall Garrison, MLA Rob Flemming and councilors Dean Murdock, Judy Brownoff and John Luton all came out to publicly speak up for the LRT.   This was in part in response to a rising concern about the LRT by groups like the Chamber of Commerce.

It concerns me that the six of them have come out so publicly in favour of the LRT when there are so many issues that very much in question:

• Why got to an LRT if the existing buses have a higher capacity that the LRT will have?
• Why go to an LRT if the travel time is at best marginally better than the current bus travel times?
• Where will all the future transit passengers go given that the LRT capacity is lower the status quo?
• How will be the $10,000,000 a year additional operating deficit be funded?
• Will the LRT improve traffic in the city?
• What evidence is there property values would go up near LRT stations if the passenger volumes on the LRT can not be higher than buses currently move?
• How many transit patrons will be lost because they will have transfer in the future because of the LRT?
• How many non-LRT connected bus routes will have to be cancelled to cover the costs of the LRT operations?

The LRT is a very costly solution that will not be able to actually improve commuting in this region and will not increase the number of transit users.   It is the completely wrong technology for this region and will lead to a dramatic increase in taxes needed to operate transit and a fall in total transit riders.

The only winner from a move to the LRT will be SNC Lavalin as they will be the ones that will most likely build the system.   They are also the ones that wrote the report recommending the LRT, the report that is short in details and has obvious errors in it that bias it in favour of the LRT.

Today the TC has an editorial calling for an independent review of the LRT plans - this is crucial as the information BC Transit has gone forward on is clearly biased towards building rail and

Life without my glasses

As recently as the fall of 2005 I did not have glasses.   I started to have my right eye lose focus by the end of the day during the 2005 provincial election - I was working 16 hour days on the Yes to STV campaign and thought it was just fatigue.   In October I went to Toronto for a Quaker committee meeting and that weekend my right eye could no longer focus.   Since that time my right has never focused again.

It turns out a severe astigmatism in my right eye and have had it since birth.   My brain and eye managed to compensate for the problem for my first 40 years.

We go forward six years and I sank my glasses in the Gorge by accident last week.   I am awaiting new glasses but in the meantime I realize how utterly dependent I am on them now.   I have trouble reading anything smaller than 24 pt type and then I need to cover my right eye to do so.   At the moment I have my computer screen zoomed 300% and things are still blurry.  I do not really trust myself to drive because my vision is blurry.  Bright sunlight makes my vision worse and makes me sick to my stomach.

I hope to get new glasses this week, till then I will not be doing much writing, reading or work.   I am working my way through "Tatort" and doing some refinishing work on my house.

Our Garage Sale Tomorrow Saturday August 5th

We will be garage saling from 8:30 am to 1 pm.  Our address is 3103 Harriet Road - that is at the corner of Harriet and Maddock, a block south of Harriet and Burnside.

Sheila now has a POS for her business, so we can take debit and credit cards at the garage sale.

 Here is some of what is on offer:

2 teak Danish modern dining chairs circa 1962
2 other interesting dining chairs
More bits of furniture
Dish set
Pot and pans
Ikea chair
Ikea wall mounted light panel, about 4' by 1' in size
About 20 different pictures, the good, the bad and the ugly
Baby clothes - for a boy.

We will also be offering
Low sugar blueberry jam - samples available - it is very good
Fresh biscuits
Aromatherapy products - Sheila makes them up for her business
Parafin hand dips

Gorge Swimming and the Veins of Life Watershed Society

Today there was a column in the TC by Paul Willcocks about how wonderful it is that a place that was thought to be lost forever is now healthy again.  His inspiration to go swimming in the Gorge was from the pictures he saw of my boys enjoying the water the other week.

In the same edition of the paper there is an article about the state of the Veins of Life Watershed Society and how it is in financial trouble.  

I have had some involvement with helping improve the Gorge, but not as much as I should have given this is my neighbourhood and I do enjoy being able to use the water.   I will do what I can to help the situation.

In going for regular swims here, I am beginning to understand the waterway better.   This is the sort of thing that is very important to me as I believe it is crucial for humans to know their neighbourhood and not feel alienated from it.   Too many people are still not willing to swim in the Gorge because they still think of it as a smelly and polluted ditch bisecting the city.

Yesterday at 4:30 pm I was in the water and the tide was flooding in.  The water was high, but it was still very warm and wonderful swimming.   I installed a ladder at the dock near Tillicum bridge yesterday afternoon and convinced my wife to try it out after dinner.   We got there at 6:45 pm and the water was even higher, it is a very high tide at the moment.   I had not expected the water to be much different than a couple of hours earlier, but the full force of the water from the Strait of Juan de Fuca had reached the narrows and the water was markedly colder than earlier.

Lakes do not change their temperatures quickly at all.   They also do not fluctuate like the salt water does with the tides.  Swimming at the Gorge is something different.

We will be back at the Gorge and in the water around lunch time today.   Given the shortage of warm summer days in this city, we are going to try and make use of as many of them as we can to swim in the Gorge.

If you can, please help with the Veins of Life Watershed Society

A very small house

This house is at 414 Cecilia. I think this is the smallest house in Victoria, at about 530 square feet, it would hard to have one much smaller.   The lot is under 2700 square feet.  

There is a house on Shakespeare that is on a lot that is under 2000 square feet.  Even though that lot is only 15 feet wide, but the house is two floors and has about 1200 square feet in space.

There are some small lots in James Bay but none as small as the Cecilia Road one  - or least ones that I can find with a house on it.   Also, the houses on these James Bay lots are significantly larger.

I have not idea of the history of this house - how old it is and why this small lot as severed off from the larger lot fronting on Washington.   I have often wondered about it when I have walked from my home to the Galloping Goose.

The Real Estate Market

The latest stats are out from the Victoria Real Estate Board and they are not very good for sellers.

• 5100 units were on the market in July - record for this city
• Just under 1400 new listings in July
• 523 sold

So how does that compare?   A year ago it was not much better, only 527 units, which is only four more than this year.   The difference comes when one looks at the total value of sales.  Last year this was $257,050,956, 7.4% higher than the 2011 value of $239,263,822.

The on going soft market has come through in the average house prices in July.  The $581,117 for a single family home in July is the lowest average in two years.  The 8.3% fall in the average is the largest I can see in the detailed data I have.  My data only goes back 7 years.   The average is now the same as the average of four years ago.

There are quite a few houses for sale for under $400,000 on the market at the moment.   15 in the core, 19 on the Westshore and 43 in Sooke.     Esquimalt had a median price of $415,000 in July for single family homes.   This means half the houses sold for less than $415.000.

Traditionally the fall months each have lower sales than the one preceding it.   The July sales numbers do not point to a very robust fall real estate market.

Headlines from the Daily British Colonist from 150 years ago

I am a history geek and I love how much stuff is now available online.  One interesting source is the Daily British Colonist.   The paper was only four pages long, though there were no pictures in it.

Here are the headlines and tidbits from 150 years ago today:

700 Slaves Escaped in Virginia - worth not less than $500,000 and now held by the US government as war contraband

An add from the Colony of Vancouver Island stating they are seeking tenders to build a road from Victoria to Esquimalt.  2000 pounds were set aside for the tender.

Scorgie, Bolton & Co have opened a new ship building yard on the Indian Reserve.

On page 2 there is a long discussion of the merits of the 1861 Incorporation Act  - the big sticking point was who would be allowed to vote and how often?  The issue was that some people might be able to vote multiple times because they would get one vote per property.  At the same time, property owners were proposed to be the only source of taxes for the City.

The ship the Marcella had obviously recently come into port given all the adds from merchants with goods to sell from this ship.

On page 3 there is an account of 200 "elite of our colored population" celebrating the 25th anniversary of emancipation from slavery in the West Indies.  First with a picnic at Cadboro Bay and then a ball in the evening at the Hall of the African Rifles.   I find the article interesting because it gives me a sense of large the black community was at the time.   The total Victoria population was no more than a few thousand.

The African Rifles were the first military unit formed in BC and was only formed in July 1861, the drill hall was the social centre for the black community in Victoria.

On page 4 there is an ad from the sale of the Cadboro, the brig that was used by the HBC for years on the coast and was the ship that brought James Douglas to the Victoria area for the first time.   No price is listed.

From time to time I will post more exerts from the Daily British Colonist

Victoria is 149 years old today

The Colony of Vancouver Island passed a law to incorporate the Victoria as the first city in the colony.   In fact it was the only incorporation that was approved by the colony of Vancouver Island.  

The Act to incorporate the City was given Royal Assent on August 2th.   The Daily British Colonist has the Act to Incorporate the City of Victoria in its August 4th 1862 edition and lists the full bill.

The act was given third reading on June 9th but amended by the Council of Vancouver Island on July 22nd.  This was not the first time Victoria tried to incorporate.  

On June 26th 1861 the Attorney General of Vancouver Island proposed a bill to incorporate Victoria.   It went all the way through to third reading October 28th 1861.   It did not receive royal assent, I have no idea why.

For whatever reason, it seems James Douglas did not want Victoria to be incorporated.   Given that most of the people on Vancouver Island would have been in the City of Victoria, maybe the governor was afraid the mayor might be a threat to his political power?