|
|
|
|
|
This Home Page was constructed by Michael T. Richards for personal use by family and friends.
Two years in our new home and we're feeling that we now belong here. We found that we had to excavate the property by hand in order to begin gardening. Twice head-size and multitudinous smaller rocks had been dumped as fill to raise the land to the level of the neighbours. Much rubble was under these rocks, including heavy plastic sheet and over a dozen AA batteries (so far). There was also a stone path buried there. Over the rocks was placed a thin layer of clay with a “lawn” on top. The lawn consists of a very irregular surface supporting mostly moss. We have managed to reclaim about a quarter of the back yard, having dug deeply to remove the rocks and condition the soil.
We have done little with the house. (Click on the photo at right for a tour with the previous owner.) Plumbing and wiring had to be updated. New laundry, stove hood and ceiling fan for the bedroom were necessary. We also installed a good wall bed in the office / guest room.
White Rock BC is now our home. If you have Google Earth Plugin installed, the map will appear on the right. If you do not want Google Earth Plugin, don't worry about it, the rest of the page will not be affected.
There are numerous photos now in my Photo Album containing the back yard in various stages of development. Lots of photos of the area are now included. Photos of the move from The Big Smoke (Toronto) are found under the heading “Moving to BC”. Newer pages may be temporarily misdirected. The Triptik of our famous journey here from TO are still available.
My new home is in White Rock, British Columbia, Canada. For some photos of White Rock, see Maurice Jassak’s excellent site. The West Coast is definitely my place.
Morgan LeFay (1981-1994) Morgan was an extremely interesting cat. She had a large vocabulary in English and could understand some French. She would carry on a conversation by responding clearly to questions. Her guilt trips were phenomenal.
Many people are irritated by the presence of pets in Home pages. I make no apologies. Morgan was more a person than many people I have known.
For a novel change to this website, I have temporarily pirated a view from Telemark System’s Live Kat Kam. I don't refresh the view periodically, so go to the author of this picture for a fresh view. The Kat Kam site also has a list of local webcams. I use this view as a good indication of the weather downtown.
This image comes from another direction. Notice the same cupola in the two views. It is from KitsKam Vancouver Webcam.
While I was off work during a lengthy illness, I bought a film scanner and digitized all of my many photographs from the negatives, slides and hard-copies. From these files I produced a large html Photo Album in duplicate sections. The albums are laid out first in their original order, with titles, dates and locations placed on each page. In addition, the data are reordered into locations and listed in chronological order with a trigger set to refresh each page to its successor every 15 seconds. Some of the photos are very good, if I do say so myself. You will notice that I have not travelled extensively and that I do have a bias toward Vancouver and the West Coast.
The Chauvin Family Tree Website is back.
There are exactly 25 105¾ individuals in the file, most of which encompass my maternal (Chauvin) lineage. Her mother (Nadia Marion) also came from an interesting branch. My paternal branch has been much more difficult to trace. The file consists of 470 788 lines of code. (updated 09 Apr 2009)
I am now retired. I began my working life as a teenager working summers for the City of Windsor Ontario first as a surveyor’s assistant then labouring as a sanitation worker for five years and then one year for the Parks Department. Working outside was very good for me.
I received a B.Sc. (hon.) in Biochemistry from the University of Windsor and did some umcompleted graduate work at Queen’s University at Kingston. I received a B. Ed. from MacArthur College at Queen’s University and immediately moved to The Pas, Manitoba, where I taught for one year at Margaret Barbour Collegiate Institute.
I moved to Ottawa in 1977 to look for a teaching position. I supplied for both the Ottawa and Carleton Boards and taught Night School at Nepean N. L. C. and Hillcrest. Many days were spent at Glebe Collegiate and Gloucester High School, although I must have taught at each and every secondary school in the area. When it became painfully obvious that both boards were practicing a policy of zero-experience hiring, I took a job in Toronto, working for a “visa school”. I did not like the goings-on at that school and left after 14 months.
I supplied for the Toronto Board of Education until I was offered a position at Jarvis Collegiate Institute where I stayed for most of 23 years. The first decade or so was quite rewarding.
I grow plants indoors and love gardening but my real passion is orchids. I am a member of the American Orchid Society (AOS), the Peace Arch Rhododendron Society and former member of the Vancouver Orchid Society.
BC residents are used to being gouged. It's part of their makeup. They're proud of it and won't give it up for anything. Witness the governments they elect and reelect if you need any proof of this undeniable fact at all. One obvious point: gas prices. There is no rational explanation for the altitude of the gas prices other than gouging. Witness data from GasBuddy.com.
| Vancouver Historical Gas Price Charts Provided by GasBuddy.com |
| Lowest Gas Prices in Delta, Surrey, Vancouver, White Rock |
| Vancouver Gas Prices provided by GasBuddy.com |
E-mail address: reference@MichaelRichards.ca 
This home page created November 03, 2004; updated January 19, 2009.
Gravissima calamitas umquam supra Occidentem erat religio Christiana.