The kids had a couple of friends over who had slept over in the living room because the bedrooms upstairs are not finished yet.
In the morning, I worked on adding more insulation to the sloped ceilings in my son’s room and Leanne made a big batch of soup for everyone–lunch for all the kids, lunch for Leanne’s parents and cousin who were coming over to help on the house, and meals for the future.
Later, Leanne’s dad worked with me to finish making an insulated door for the new root cellar in the basement, her mom worked on cleaning up the mess we had been ignoring in the kitchen, Leanne and her cousin worked on clearing out the little yellow house and the kids…continued being kids.
Vancouver yesterday. Photo credit: The Georgia Straight
Meanwhile, millions of people all over the world gathered, rallied and marched in international women’s marches. More photos like this one can be found on The Georgia Straight’s website.
We like to think what we’re doing with our house–exploring and sharing what it’s like for regular folk to preserve and retrofit a beautiful old house–is doing some good in the world but today Leanne and I both woke up regretting we hadn’t taken a day off and gone into Vancouver to join all those people on the right side of history.
There is so many actions we can take to make the world a better place, sometimes it’s just hard to choose.
Lately I have been hearing Leanne say some lines that really echo human-caused Climate Change.
She is playing Titania, The Faerie Queen, in the Bard on the Bandstand production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
I am playing Oberon, the Faerie King.
The King and Queen are not getting along and it’s causing all kinds of problems.
Titania describes it like this:
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound:
And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Far in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems‘ thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set: the spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which:
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original.
Oberon responds with:
Do you amend it then; it lies in you:
Why should Titania cross her Oberon?
Which is a pretty typical response to the global threat of Climate Change, isn’t it? If we’re not denying it’s happening, we’re expecting someone else to do something about it.
The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania by Sir Joseph Noel Paton
So I went in to chat with our new Member of Parliament last month. March 3rd.
I won’t lie, it was because it was Federal budget time and I wanted to put retrofitting homes for energy efficiency in the back of his head. It’s one of those things, like funding the arts, that people say we can’t afford but which are actually a great return for the investment.
As you may know, we elected a new government last year. Justin Trudeau is our Prime Minister now and, surprise of surprises, our local Liberal candidate, Dan Ruimy, is part of Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal majority government in the House of Commons.
Is this photo upside down? Then you’re on a mobile device.
Is this photo upside down? Then you are NOT on a mobile device. Weird.
I say it was a surprise because Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows (and formerly including Mission) has been a polarized Reform/Conservative vs. the NDP riding for a loooooong time. In 2015 I supported the very strong NDP candidate, Bob D’Eith, because I felt that if we sat back and pondered who to support, Stephen Harper would win.
Dan told me he doesn’t want to waste time. He wants to make a difference.
I made an appointment to see Dan in his brand new office before its official opening. I told him about the Maple Ridge Net Zero Home Energy Retrofit Project now waiting on the shelf for someone to dust it off and set it going.
I told him about Solar Colwood which released its final report last year.
And I told him about the Design Charrette we held in 2013 to move the Retrofit Project to the next step: a project manager and project design.
Unfortunately, I have been too busy with our own retrofit and renovation of Hammond Forever House, which I hope will be the test case for the larger project, to have a clear proposal ready for Dan (and Justin, for that matter).
Among other things, we chatted about Dan’s apartment which he said is so badly insulated that there is no point wasting the energy to leave the heat on when he is not home. What a common problem! Tenants and homeowners alike suffer with high energy bills while the climate changes. Our best information estimates that Climate Change will cost Canada $5 billion per year by 2020 and there is very little being done to address the problem of inefficient existing buildings in a meaningful way.
The new Liberal Government, Dan said, is looking for innovative and unique programs they can support. Heritage, Energy, Climate Change, reducing home-heating costs for families–all these things are easy to support. Neither of us had a clear idea for the next steps in the Maple Ridge Retrofit program but Dan suggested we keep talking about it. Then he pointed to the large conference table in the next room and told me what it was for.
I left our meeting thinking it may be time to renew my conversation about the community project with our excellent City Staff to see if they have some new ideas on the subject. After all, I’m not the only one around here with ideas. (I haven’t had time to make that call, yet.)
It seems that since that first meeting with Dan, he spoke to a few other people because last week Leanne and I both found ourselves in that next room sitting around that big table with a bunch of other like-minded people. Leanne was there representing Ridge Meadows Recycling and I was there representing, well, this blog I suppose. Others from local environmental organizations were there, too.
Dan’s idea was to start some sort of ongoing advisory panel on the environment.
There was a kind of stunned optimism in the room as a result of being invited. Many in the room remarked how much of a change the approach was to the previous government. If you remember, I had some professional criticism for our previous MP.
I also remember appealing to our former Prime Minister to attend a climate meeting while he was in New York in 2014. No luck.
It struck me afterwards that many Canadians may prefer the government to make decisions on their behalf without them having to lift a finger. I can understand that and it would be fine if our MPs were infallible gods and/or if everyone agreed with them. Other people, like myself, believe that building consensus is key and that means citizen engagement.
Dan admits that he doesn’t know everything and is willing to collaborate and learn how he can help.
I think I can safely say that everyone in that room will be there next month with bells on. We have a lot of catching up to do!
Question: What do you do for your Valentine when she is sick in bed and you can’t spend any money because you are sinking all of your money into a renovation?
Answer: romantic graffiti!
The concrete basement walls are going to be covered with 2″ of EPS styrofoam then a 2X4 stud wall and then drywall. That’s just for insulation.
I realized that if we “decorated” them, nobody would see it unless they stripped all of that off. Is anyone going to do that? Probably not.
Probably not ever.
So I took the kids over and let Leanne sleep while we created this little video for her. If you remember how we wrote all over our old bathroom walls, you’ll see a pattern developing here.
Happy Valentine’s Day Leanne!
Soon after we met in 1996 Leanne moved with me to Japan where we taught English in a small town in Gifu Prefecture called Ibigawa. My students in the local High School spoke of our relationship as “rabu-rabu” (love-love) which I suppose means true love as opposed to arranged or obligatory love.
Living in Japan proved to us that our relationship could withstand pretty much anything. Well, here we are testing it once again with an incredibly ambitious renovation and retrofit on a shoe-string budget.
I could not do any of this without you, Leanne.
These days remind me of Alvin Toffler’s book from 1980 called The Third Wave in which he argues that we are in the middle of a great shift in civilization comparable to the agricultural or industrial revolutions. There was something in there about love. Something about how we are transitioning away from the hard and fast roles of men and women that arose from agriculture and industry and what we seek now, he suggests, is Super Love–true partnerships where we share work, home and child-rearing responsibilities.
I’d throw in renovating a house, too. I’d say if a couple can make it through a major renovation like ours, it must be a special relationship.
Yup, that’s what we got. We got us some Super Love.
I love you, Leanne. Not only that, I Super-Love you!
Do you recognize these people sitting on our porch?
In 1922 when Carl, Leanne’s grandfather bought this property, there was one house on it with two rooms. Two rooms for his wife Lempi, Lempi’s mother, Lempi’s two daughters, and Carl. Quickly they built two front rooms onto the house.
If you would like to see a map of Hammond in 1912 click here.
By 1923 they had built a larger house next door, inspired by another Finnish family’s house in Webster’s Corners, a neighbourhood on the east side Maple Ridge. The big house is often called the Whitehead Residence, but we’re calling it Hammond Forever House these days.
The first house–we call it the Little Yellow House–was added on to again at the back when the municipal sewer was built. By 1937 both houses had the same footprint they do today. This is a page from the Statement of Significance we created as part of our Heritage Revitalization Agreement with the City of Maple Ridge.
Carl built other houses on the block and rented them out to men who worked in the mill like he did.
Lempi passed away and Carl married Leanne’s grandmother Anna. They had two children together: Julie, Leanne’s mom, and Jim.
Jim’s initials are carved in the side of the house and his BB gun pellets are embedded in the door of the garage. Apparently he was quite a scamp. Recently, he turned up some photos from the days when Carl’s first wife Lempi was still alive. These are from her photo album.
The first thing Julie noticed was that in one photo there is a doorway and small porch on the south side of the house.
1930s?
2011
That door doesn’t exist today. We don’t know who the people on the porch are. Do you?
Carl is on the left and Lempi is sitting third from the left. Do you recognize anyone else? This could have been on a beach in the lower mainland or in Chase, BC, where Carl and Lempi met before they moved to Port Hammond.
We have not had time to research who, what and where the rest of the photos depict, but I thought I would share them nevertheless. If you know any of these people (or dogs), please let me know! Click on the photo to enlarge it.
I don’t want to spoil it for you but it’s about how smart people are sexy and how NASA can do amazing things with math like land people on Mars and get them off again.
Wait, it’s just a movie. They can’t do that stuff, yet.
Well,they can land a robot on Mars. We know because, you know, they did that.
Everybody loves that NASA and that amazing stuff they do. “Yay NASA! Someday I hope my kid will be an astronaut and yadda yadda…”
So why is it that when NASA says that the earth’s average temperature is increasing because we have been burning so much fossil fuel and this is causing major changes in the climate, some of us, including my own government, seem to think there is some wiggle room there.
“The science isn’t in yet.”
Someone on a political Facebook group I’m a part of wrote, “if the evidence were overwhelming I would accept it.” Of course, I took that as a challenge.
Before I share the conversation, please know that I’m not meaning to ridicule this point of view. This person is not stupid. This is the power of a firmly held belief. It takes more than facts and science to change someone’s heart, but where else can we start? Unfortunately, most of us vote from our hearts, or guts, but not from our heads.
Maybe telling a story of the retrofit of a 1923 house will help. Yeah, maybe.
The exchange went like this (I didn’t change a word, I promise, even though I think I could improve on my comments):
If the evidence were overwhelming I would accept it.
“If the evidence were overwhelming I would accept it” John Bobson [not a real name] August 13, 2015. No offence John, but I want to hold you to that because the evidence is overwhelming and we’re only missing the acceptance part.
Show me!
Showing you all the overwhelming evidence would be, well, overwhelming. But let’s start with, say, the UN. You could go to the Pope if you like or any climate scientist…how much do you want? Just don’t come back with a blog or an oil industry funded publication, okay? http://www.un.org/climatechange/
How about the U.S. Environmental Protection agency? Quote: “Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the primary greenhouse gas emitted through human activities. In 2013, CO2 accounted for about 82% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. Carbon dioxide is naturally present in the atmosphere as part of the Earth’s carbon cycle (the natural circulation of carbon among the atmosphere, oceans, soil, plants, and animals). Human activities are altering the carbon cycle—both by adding more CO2 to the atmosphere and by influencing the ability of natural sinks, like forests, to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. While CO2 emissions come from a variety of natural sources, human-related emissions are responsible for the increase that has occurred in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. [1]” http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/co2.html
Meanwhile, here’s another for you and John. How about NASA, John? NASA’s Climate site is pretty overwhelming. Here is a page called “facts”. Please accept the science. It is not theory, it is consensus. I would like my government to quit wasting time and money managing its scientists and instead listen to them.http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
James Rowley the UN Pope and NASA are not any more unbiased than oil producers, who funds matters but the science matters more. Also I like Lawrence Solomon on climate change a famed “denier” but ardent ecologist.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/…/global-cooling_b_4413833…
And many others.
From time immemorial humans have sort ways to control the climate for our benefit this latest attempt is not different it more belief system than empirical. Yes of course human activity affects climate but are not the great driving force behind whatever changes are happening. Of course we should mitigate our activities to minimize deleterious affects, but not the the point of giving up the enormous advances we have made over the past few centuries. The climate had huge swings in the Middle Ages not caused by industrial activity most believe the sun was the cause why could that not be true now, we simply don’t know. I’m not a catastrophist. Actually I don’t believe when it comes to the crunch people will actually give up stuff for climate threats, and governments will be thwarted by common sense. But that’s me ever the optimist.
I. I got nothin…
Alright, so showing you the overwhelming evidence didn’t work (and I don’t believe you actually spent any time at the NASA Climate Change site, the Environmental Protection Agency site, or the UN Climate Change site). Will deconstructing Lawrence Solomon? Global cooling? 14 of the 15 warmest years have occurred since 2000. And it’s 2015. What is remarkable is that thousands of scientists working with the UN Panel on Climate Change do not sway you but one “ardent ecologist” has you completely in his spell. You are not alone in this, unfortunately, which is why Wikipedia notes that there is no debate among scientists, but there is in the popular media. That just means that many people haven’t accepted the science, not that the science is wrong.
I expect my government to accept the science and get on with building a consensus on what to do about it.
No debate amongst scientists really James Rowley that is what they do. No debate no science my point.
At some point we accept that the earth is not flat.
James Rowley I don’t dispute the facts, it’s the unsupported catastrophic forecasts based on theories that don’t come close to predicting what is happening that concern me since we may be barking up the wrong tree. Human contributions importance is unclear to say the least. The Greeks knew the earth is round so flat earth is not a good analogy. What about the universe was created in 6 days?
Where are you getting your information? Is this the passage you’re missing? “Most scientists agree that humans are contributing to observed climate change.[79][215] A meta study of academic papers concerning global warming, published between 1991 and 2011 and accessible from Web of Knowledge, found that among those whose abstracts expressed a position on the cause of global warming, 97.2% supported the consensus view that it is man made.[216] In an October 2011 paper published in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, researchers from George Mason University analyzed the results of a survey of 489 American scientists working in academia, government, and industry. Of those surveyed, 97% agreed that that global temperatures have risen over the past century and 84% agreed that “human-induced greenhouse warming” is now occurring, only 5% disagreeing that human activity is a significant cause of global warming.[217][218] National science academies have called on world leaders for policies to cut global emissions. [219]” From Wikipedia on Climate Change.
The bit that killed me was that, according to this person, there is no difference in bias between the UN, the Pope, and NASA on the one hand and oil producers on the other. Which of these groups stands to lose billions of dollars if the true costs of climate change are figured into national budgets and their subsidies are reduced or ended? Now, which of these groups seeks out the opinions of thousands of independent climate scientists from all over the world before forming recommendations? Which of these groups hire individual researchers specifically to do studies that muddy the waters? We’ve already been through this with tabacco companies denying that cigarettes are bad for you.
I think there is a credibility gap there.
Currently, we have a Federal Government who doesn’t want to hear from all these researchers either. Aside from cutting funding to science that might find things they don’t want found and ending the National Roundtable on the Environment and The Economy and muzzling the government scientists they do still employ, Stephen Harper closed the Office of the National Science Adviser (ONSA) in 2008 after first moving it from the Privy Council Office to Industry Canada in 2006.
I know that the repetition of these criticisms may strike some supporters of Harper’s government as tiresome because they happened years ago, but the lack of reliable information available to our government is frightening. How can you govern like that?
To use another movie analogy, Canada is in that moment near the beginning of The Matrix.
If we take the Blue Pill and vote Stephen Harper in for another 4 years, we are committing ourselves to living in a warped version of reality where scientific data is questionable and decisions are based on Conservative Party ideology and polling, not facts.
If we take the Red Pill and elect ANY other party, even as a minority government, we can slowly begin reversing the damage and restore robust information gathering and sharing.
Let’s take the Red Pill because, although it may be bitter, it’s better to face the truth head on.
When we stayed at their beautiful stone house in Langford, Oxfordshire, England, my two brothers and I slept in two upstairs bedrooms. One day we looked behind the red curtain which hung on the wall behind the dresser in one of the rooms.
There was a door.
It was clearly (in our imaginations) a secret door that Granny and Grandad wanted noone to discover. Everything became instantly more interesting.
We opened the door and found the best thing a child could possibly find in an old stone house: spiral stairs leading down. Whispering all the way, my brothers and I crept down into the darkness.
At the bottom there was another curtain. We had no idea what to expect if we drew it aside. We could have ended up in some underground lair or a passage to London. We peeked carefully, not knowing if there would be bad guys on the other side or monsters.
It was the sitting room.
Did someone tell me it was used as a servants’ passage or did I make that up? I can’t believe such a small house ever had servants scurrying about in passages.
There was an off-shoot passage halfway down the spiral staircase that had a very small door. Behind the door was the room above the garage. I stayed in that room later when I visited my grandparents as a young man travelling on my own. Good memories.
That house was magical for three boys. The large English garden with its stone work, paths and fishpond, the thick stone walls, the wooden floors and the smell and the echoes. And the secret passage. It was all fantastic.
It’s the kind of experience you want to give your own children.
I shared with you a little of what Hammond Forever House was like when we first moved in. The closets between the upstairs bedrooms share a wall. In the summer when it became unbearably hot up there, I considered cutting a hole in the wall and mounting a fan to create a draft from one room to the other through the closets. With the windows open that might cool the rooms a bit.
Upstairs as-is
I joked that we could cut a door–a secret passage–when the kids were too young to notice and then let them discover it when they were older. I could imagine their expressions and how their eyes would bug out just like mine had all those years ago.
Back-to-back closets
By the time Leanne and I were certain that we would put a bathroom between the kids’ bedrooms in place of the awkward closets, the kids were too old to fool so easily. There was no reason not to alter the closets since they would be gutted anyway.
The plan — any room for magic?
I told them the story of the secret passage in Middle House, Langford and got them good and worked up.
Then one day I cut a hole, sanded it down and showed them. They loved it and still do. It is a major attraction to any child who visits the house for a playdate. The only down side is the hole makes the closets even less useful for storing anything. One is full of stuffed toys (soft to clamber over as you head to the passage) and the other is just a small playroom, really.
The Secret Passage in the girl’s room
Just like the bathroom walls, covered as they are in memories and child-art, we will be sad to see the secret passage be destroyed for the sake of progress.
My son who is 6 has been very excited about the prospect of having a trapdoor that leads to the basement, but I had to let him know today that it will probably not happen. He took it well.
I believe it is important to build magic into your plans. Annabel the Architect told us that she may be able to find a place for a secret passage or two. Now if only magic were free.
The Secret Passage in the boy’s room
PS: After my Grandad died Granny couldn’t live in the house any longer and it was eventually sold. I wonder if anyone has since tried to turn it into a net-zero energy house? It would be an even bigger challenge than the one Leanne and I face.
January 2015 will bring us one more visit to Maple Ridge Municipal Hall where our Heritage Revitalization Agreement will hopefully be approved by the new City Council.
From there we will be securing building permits and financing and getting down to the business of turning our dreams into reality. It should be an exciting year and I hope you will join us for the ride.
I started this blog in January of 2014 talking about how our bathroom doesn’t work and how we are letting our kids (and everyone else) write on the walls in there.
The wall by the toilet in January
Well, it still doesn’t and they still do. Maybe this year we’ll finally rip those walls out. I’m looking forward to that, but it will be sad to lose all the amazing art work.
The wall by the toilet in December
To kick off the new year, here is a photo gallery of some of the recent additions to the bathroom wall gallery. First, the latest cartoon art of The Daughter (8):
Underwater
Angel vs. Devil
Next: messages, encouragements and acknowledgements.
“Vote for James in 2018”
“Don’t forget to dance!”
Leanne wrote, “pneumonia sucks” and the Girl added,”knife cuts suck”
Snowball is the latest mouse to be buried. Christmas Eve.
All the very best to you and yours wherever you are in the world from us here in Hammond Forever House.
Dan’s idea was to start some sort of ongoing advisory panel on the environment.
Dan admits that he doesn’t know everything and is willing to collaborate and learn how he can help.
and Happy New Year everyone!
