Page 4 August 1988 Cassiar Courier HELLO CASSIAR LOVE TELK WA HELLO CASSIAR This is Sonja Willits writing you from Telkwa, (near Smithers) B.C. We recently had a Cassiar reunion at our home on May 28th to be exact. Several families from the Cassiar area have recently moved here and I decided it was time to have a get together. A pot luck barbeque was planned and we had a terrific turn out. In attendance were Marilyn Whitney, Jim and Heather Collins; Kim Madore; Nelson Pinto; Don, Cheryl, Micheal. and Cory Larson; Raulie Holman & Yvonne Dyck; Evelyn, Ross, and Ken Frenette; Geraldine, Shane, Danny, Kevin Loughran (Kevin was at work); Anners McKiernan, Edith McDougal, (Ed & Brian Farrell were at work); Karen, Shannon and Cheryl Farrell; Chris and Chrishandra Hassell (Kelly was at work); Pauline, Bradley, Christopher and Lil Woodrow; Harvey Callow, Sonja, Dad, & Amanda Willits. We supplied burgers and hot dogs, and others enough salads and desserts — what a feast! Most of the fellows congregated outside and got caught up in all the news. Us ladies talked the evening away and the kids were running here, there, and everywhere. It was a bit of a mad house but all enjoyed the reunion. The weather was gloomy,cool, and sprinkling. Not a great day for barbequing but we all reminisced about life in the north and the changes we’ve noticed here. No snow. in May, thank goodness. We don’t have squash courts or a pool like Cassiar though. There certainly are more opportunities here but my memories of Cassiar and the hospital remain fond. I love it here and am sure the rest will agree. We hope your community is happy. Most of the news filters down the province and we keep informed of the latest Cassiar happenings... Take care all, just another month and a half before your snow SHES! Sonja Willits “4 GO Go PYG NG PGP NAG Gre GG GrXG A “4 S*G PY°GPANG S*XG Go Gre 4 PPM RLF YG Go 44 GUGrG Go “A G Gun “4 GrG SG*GYUG G GGG G G Org Go Go gZ CANADA This is the first of a series of twelve news features on activities and projects undertaken’ through the federal provincial Forest Resource Development Agreement (1985 - 1990) in British Columbia. SEED CENTRE AT SURREY STORES BILLIONS OF SEEDS VICTORIA -- Billions of tree seeds, indispensable for the reforestation of British Columbia, are today stored at the Seed Centre in Surrey. Some day they will be the forests of the province. The Seed Centre, in the south Cloverdale area, is a state-of-the-art facility for processing and storing the seeds of some two dozen species of trees grown in B.C. It’s the starting point for nearly every seedling grown at nurseries throughout the province. “Anything that is going back on provincial land -- which is just about everything -- is stored here, prepared here and shipped from here,” says Rob Bowden-Green, superintendent of the centre. The $4 million to build and equip the centre came from the provincially-funded part of the Forest Resource Development Agreement. The five-year pact between the federal and pro- vincial governments calls for the spending of $300 million on reforestation between 1985 and 1990. The Seed Centre, a fast-tracked construction project, was built on a farmer’s field beside the B.C. Forest Service’s Surrey tree nursery. It was completed and in operation in less than a year. One-of-a-kind- equipment, drawn from brewery and sawmill technology, was custom-built for the centre and combined with other Swedish machinery. The highly mechanzied assembly-line dries the cones and extracts, cleans and sorts the seeds. The work is done by a skilled staff of just seven people, which increases to 14 at seasonal peaks through the year. “At the seed centre, semi-trailer trucks pull up regularly to unload cargos of burlap sacks filled with cones, gathered all over the province. Each sack has a four-to-six-digit number spray- painted on its side. This number is duplicated on tags attached to the outside and included inside with the contents. The number identifies the seed lot -~ the tree species and where and when the cones were harvested. It is entered into the centre’s computerized, tree-seed Ve Metts and ranma gin lia with sigan Wil, BCA lab results. “The seed lot number stays with it forever, from cone to seed to seedlings,” says Bowden-Green. It is crucial information, because any problems with growing seedlings on reforested sites can be traced back all the way to the original seed. “If it’s going back onto provincial land the public has a right to know. Somebody can’t just buy some junk seed and throw it back on the hillside,” he says. Quality control is critical. Good genetic quality seed, matched to. the site it will be used to reforest, provides a strong foundation for the province’s silviculture program. Poor quality or mismatched seed cannot be cor- rected by future silviculture programs. “That is why the functions carried out at the Seed Centre are so important to the success of B.C.’s silviculture program.” Covered outdoor storage areas hold the sacks of cones until they can be processed. Some sones are also conditioned this way, par- ticularly those from the true fir family — balsam, grand fir and subalpine fir. They need several ene of cold to prepare for seed release. Cone processing starts with the sacks being dump- ed by hand into a hopper. It takes out dirt and aebris and distributes the cones onto mesh-bottomed aluminum trays. A stacking machine piles the trays 15 high. Then an employee rolls the stacks into a drier. The drier is similar to sawmill kilns which dry fresh-cut, green lumber. “They'll go in overnight and be there for about 18 hours. You’ve got to do it gradually. If it’s too hot, theyll open very quickly, dry out the seed, and kill it,” explains Bowden-Green. The oven is computer-controlled with different programs for different species. Lodgepole pine require it hot, around 55 degrees Celsius. Douglas-fir are heated to 40 degrees. Cedar needs not much more than body- heat temperature to open up. After a night in the kiln, where the cones slowly warm up and lose moisture, they are dropped into a revolving drum. It tumbles the seeds out one end into large plastic bags. The empty cones are vacuumed out and taken by overhead pipes outside the building to a big dumpster. They used to be ground up for mulching the grounds, but now a local entrepreneur hauls them away for resale to craft shops. The seed is further processed on shaker screens, in,a drum tumbler, and a water separator to remove the wings, resin particles, and empty seed. They are then sorted and sized by air suction. The goal is to get seeds that are at least 98 per cent pure, with five to nine per cent moisture content, and 100 per cent filled and potentially viable. A representative sample of seed is taken from : each seed lot and tested for quality, germination per cent, seeds per gram and moisture content. After completing its trip through the centre’s machinery, the seed is packed in plastic bags inside cardboard boxes, then cooled to two degrees Celsius. The final step is the placement of these boxes in the massive walk-in freezers. They keep the Seed Centre’s 2.25 billion seeds at minus 18 degrees Celsius. The seeds are withdrawn from these frigid vaults when the nurseries need them. Seed for the nurseries are first soaked in water for a day or two and then surface-dried before being placed in a near-freezing cool room for three to four weeks. Here winter conditions are simulated to induce rapid germination. The seed is then ready for shipment by overnight courier to nurseries of the BCFS, private operators and forest companies. How long can conifereus seed remain frozen and still grow into a seedling after thawing? “Nobody knows, but we’ve got some in there that are 30 years old,’ says Bowden-Green. Douglas- fir seeds from the original seed centre at Duncan are still germinating. The Seed Centre aims to keep a 10-year seed supply on hand as a ‘reserve, since some trees don’t pro- duce cones more than once a decade. This reserve now totals about 45000 kilograms of seed. And the seed centre’s continuing quality control tests, which check seed samples for purity, weight, mois- ture content and germination rate, are almost as im- portant as its storage capacity. CONTACT: Laura Stringer Elaine Teske Ministry of Forests and Lands Canadian Forestry Service Phone: 387-5255 Phone: 388-0600 FOR INFORMATION ON OKANAGAN PROPERTIES FOR SALE WRITE: — Lorraine Hartmann Hoover Realty Ltd. 290B Highway 33 West Kelowna, 8.C. 765-5155 Pane Pe Pa. PELE DE re arerenpe nt SE A TR RR ie lc THE ea ae ee 1788-1988 CELE BRA TION | OF A NATION Australia’s 100th Birthday Celebration Australia 1788-1988 _ by Anna Guarducci Adelaide is the gateway to Australia’s Outback and ; or = capital city of South Australia. It’s a well planned city of broad streets encircled in a band of beautiful parklands. Mn ssctaice, today a vibrant and sophisticated city, has a or population of almost 1 million. f Adelaide is a convenient city. Fine international “hotels stand within a stone’s throw of the city’s centre. M4 The internationally acclaimed Adelaide Festival Centre A few hours /ater <4 stands on the banks of the Torrens River just a few min- utes stroll from the city centre. Adelaide now plays host to the Australian Grand Prix through the city streets and boasts a “Monte Carlo” style casino. A range of day ay and half day tours will show you some of the most excit- ing and interesting attractions in Australia. WINE South Australia is the nation’s vineyard. Names like the Barossa Valley . . . the Southern Vales . . . the Clare Valley . . . the Riverland and Coonawarra. The : delicate whites and generous reds of these areas have won ' themselves. the acclaim of connoisseurs the world over. % Each of these wine growing areas are easily accessible from Adelaide. Day tours are available to some of these areas from Adelaide. ‘s - OPALS Two of the world’s most prolific opal mining me] areas, Coober Pedy and Andamooka are located in South Australia’s outback. In these far north mining towns, i miners work to win brilliant, fiery or subtly coloured ~ gemstones from the earth. A visit to Coober Pedy will reveal a life us that cannot be found anywhere else in Cont. on ee 16 WHAT IS A CASSIARITE ? This is a tough question. What is a Cassiarite? I have been in Cassiar for a year, and I am learning just what it means. Living and working here is a unique ex- perience that once felt, you never really forget. I have heard several times now that anyone who has lived here always comes back. Since there are no exact statistics on the matter, only evidence of people who have returned, the best guess I have is that maybe half of those who leave ‘come back. You can take into account that a person can make excellent money working up here, but there must be something more. Maybe it is the magic of the beautiful land, the clean crisp air, and of course the people. How many other communities in the world can you think of where you can go, that you know just about everyone and even those you don’t know are friendly? Walking from one end of Connell Street to the other can almost tire you out. There are so many people to ac- knowledge, but that is by no means a hard task. That’s the Cassiar spirit! Everyone has.a smile, a wave or a friendly “Hello”. AN OPINION Jack J. Kemp, M.L. A. FOR OMINECA Yesterday’s turn of events in the legislature took most people by surprise. I was not among that group. "It was only a matter of time before even a Cabinet mem- ber would be unable to stomach what is taking place in British Columbia. Perhaps Brian Smith will not be the last. The fundamental cause of the former Attorney General’s resignation from Cabinet was his fear of the Premier destroying the independence of the office of the Attorney General, as he so cleverly has done with M.L.A.s through so-called ‘regionalization’. Actions by Vander Zalm during his few short months as Premier . .of .the-province, have placed our-democratic constitution at risk. by Laura hgeren Coming here from a major city like Edmonton was a horrifying shock to the system. There, people very rarely acknowledge your existence, even if they are driv- ing right over top of you. Even after living there for years, you are lucky if you really know and trust five people, which to me is awful. If only people would take ten seconds to smile or say “Hi”, each day could be so much brighter. We are pretty lucky up here. That is what is so special about Cassiar. It is great to walk into the store and joke around with some- one while shopping; or start on a walk alone and almost always run into someone who says, “Hey, I’m going that way, I'll walk with you.” Now I am not saying that Cassiar is the most won- derful place on earth, because. it is not, by any means. It has its gossips, its “‘social” order, and community dis- agreements which are normal parts of a society. But I think if you really look around you, you'll find that Cassiar has a special charm, if you take the time to notice and absorb it. You just might find being a Cassiarite is a great joy and, in a sense, an honour. When ‘regionalization’ and ‘privatization’ were first born, I warned of consolidation of power by the Premier’s office ... of the hint of totalitarian rule. The “move by Brian Smith certainly confirms in my mind that this consolidation is becoming even more of a reality. It’s one thing to usurp the powers of duly elected re- presentatives, but it’s another to seek’ to undermine the independence and neutrality of the office of the Attorney General. It is absolutely ironic that the front page of this morning’s newspaper printed the Brian Smith story side by side with Mikhail Gorbachev’s address to the first Communist Party conference, in which he called for “democracy now.” I believe we in British Columbia should be calling for a little of the same. Don’t you? " I can be reached by phoning 387-3038 days, 384-9285 evenings, or by writing c/o Parliament Build-° ings, Victoria, B.C., V8V 1X4. SUPPORT THE DEMO. CRATIC PROCESS. KEEP IN TOUCH WITH TAS M.L.As | CIO Vat Pie wo 06 Oa fo | fast Be MH | Cassiar Courier August 1988 Page 5 Uniter's Corner _ by Katherine Lanteigne WINTER IN THE DARK Night comes in the small Northern town A town called Cassiar, where miners dwell in their hard work And children - play in streams of laughter But children aren't always that smart, they know that when night falls on this silent Northern town that the creatures of the night stalk the woods © for food. “Just one little child,” Says the wolf to himself, “That will make me content. For food is scarce in the woods, when things seem so cold.” What is this? says the wolf, “achild’s mitten,” ~“MMM let me see a nice little child would be very tasty. The Wolf's eyes grew wide and his mouth watered and he sharpened his teeth on the nearest bark. For he knew by his - nose that the poor child was lost, and he would be until light came, But light was far away. And the child lay crying about two miles from where the wolf preyed. He was very quiet, and he prowled in the dark very slow. And he thought of the child’s mother saying to him, “Don’t go into the woods there’s wolves in there,” Oh yes she was _ damn right — about that! There was wolves that prowled in the forest, such as this one, And now the mother should be more careful. Careful with her kids, for the little boy Jimmy was silasty, tasty — |. indeed. .