Hi Neighbour,
I’m sorry I missed you last Friday, but I was busy getting ready for the Great Grand Boulevard Pumpkin Walk on Saturday afternoon. The Grand Boulevard Residents Association (GBRA) were invited to set up a tent and be part of the fun. And fun it was! The weather was fantastic! The crowds of disguised and costumed people — big and little — were happy to be meeting friends and neighbours, and to have a free Halloween photo taken by GBRA’s resident photographer, Oliver. It has been quite a job to process and digitally frame the 42 photos taken last Saturday, but the results are so good! GBRA has received positive feedback about the event, though we can’t take credit for organizing it. The City of North Vancouver(CNV) staff did all the hard work, and we helped them, when they needed it. If you’d like to have another Grand Boulevard Pumpkin Walk in 2022, write to CNV, with your feedback about this year’s event. They weren’t sure how their first Pumpkin Walk would happen, how many people would come and what organizations would do to make it so GREAT! So please, take a moment to write to them at info@cnv.org.
On another subject, at the beginning of November, I received a postcard appeal from Metro Vancouver, asking us to protect our ocean by using less soaps, detergents and cleaning products. As they put it, most soaps and detergents are designed for ‘hard’ water, which requires more soap or detergent than we need to use in Metro Vancouver. In case you don’t know, Vancouver’s water is ‘soft’. That means that it contains less magnesium and calcium. When you are washing your clothes or dishes, soft water makes more lather, so you don’t need to use as much soap or detergent. I use Pink Solution for all sorts of household cleaning. They’re located in North Vancouver.
Some soft water contains more sodium (salt) which you can’t really taste. However you look at it, we are very lucky to have such good drinking water. In BC, there are only 4 protected (closed) watersheds and Metro Vancouver has three of them; Victoria (the Capital Regional District) has the fourth one. I think there’s one in Oregon, too. But closed watersheds are rare.
Metro Vancouver has three watershed lakes, called reservoirs: Capilano, Seymour and Coquitlam. The water in Capilano and Seymour watersheds comes from three alpine lakes: Palisade Lake, Burwell Lake and Loch Lomond. The Capilano reservoir is behind Cleveland Dam; the Seymour reservoir is behind the Seymour Falls Dam, at the north end of the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve.
Before COVID-19 closures, each watershed offered free tours, in July and August. If you have never gone on a bus tour of the Capilano Watershed, watch for Metro Vancouver to announce their Capilano Watershed Tour Schedule, in June. Usually they happen twice a week, but you need to sign up early to get seats. Each bus tour takes about 3-4 hours, including an easy hike into Rodgers Lake.
You’ll get a new appreciation of our environment and fresh water.
Fiona