JohnStall.com

Christmas. The time of year when I most passionately celebrate the Italian  side of my family roots. No, “Stall” doesn’t sound very Italian, but don’t let the name fool you. My dad married into a large Italian family, which really means he and most parts of his Ukrainian culture were swallowed up or surrendered to his wife, my Italian mother. I was raised in the bosom of Italian culture, which is synonymous with food.

Food, to an Italian, doesn’t just mean the love of  eating it. It means the love of shopping for it, preparing it and   serving it to as many people as can gather round a table.

Both of my parents and grandparents are gone,  but I learned enough about cooking from my mother to thoroughly enjoy preparing for the “Mother” of all dinners – Christmas Eve. It’s mostly a fish night , served with rappini and pasta. All  kinds of fish or seafood, from squid, to smelts to baked clams (lightly breaded)  – to the traditional “bacala” — which is a dried salted cod that takes about three days in water to “swell up” enough to “fry up” or bake in the oven.  In addition to fish, a little pasta  is served in a lighter textured sauce than usual. Fruit, roasted chestnuts, coffee and cognac wrap it all up as the evening lingers in front of the fireplace.

I would give you the recipe for all of the above, but I’ve got to run now to do some food shopping!

” Beam me up Scotty! ”  Those were the first thoughts and words that came to mind when I slid behind the wheel of a brand new Chevy Volt, the first electric car from GM.  It’s because just settling into the driver’s seat even before the car is started triggers a sound and dash board light show that signals you are about to ” boldly go where no electric car has gone before”.   The computerized dash board dance magically bumps up a notch when the ignition button is pushed displaying an array of metrics that resemble the touch screen of an ipad, accompanied by a sonic whoosh of sound. I was expecting to hear the voice of Steve Jobs magically ooze out of the sound system delivering one of his famous audio tutorials about what all of the icons on the dash could do.

GM wanted me to experience their first electric car so they offered it to me for a week to drive around town and up to our cottage for the weekend.

In a nutshell, even though the Volt is powered ( up to 50 kilometers at a time with full charge) by battery alone,  it rides like regular luxury car,  but quieter.  It’s so quiet you can’t tell that the  engine is on while idling and is quiet enough while driving that you hear the tire rubber meeting the road.  I’m not a techno geek so I wouldn’t understand or have the patience to learn about the physics of torque/lb -ft  ratio that some people need to know to get the picture.  What I can tell you is that when you step on the gas peddle it accelerates and responds in the same way you expect from a regular gas powered engine.  I thought before driving it that it might feel like a battery powered golf cart with a bit of a lag compared to combustion engines and with a lower speed or cruising limit,  but that is not the case.  The specs claim it goes from 0- 60 in under 9 seconds and that is  pretty much what it feels like.  I cruised on the highway at  between 115 – 130 km/h.  The specs claim a top speed of 160 km/h, and Yes, it does have enough torque on the highway at the speed I was travelling to pass.

What is really game changing about the Volt, is that it has overcome the range restrictions of an electric car.  With full charge on the battery it  will go about 50 kilometers without using any gas.  When the battery runs out of charge, the propulsion system flips automatically to a gas powered on board generator that creates enough electricity to take you up to another 500 km before filling up with gas – or charging up the battery by plugging into a standard 120 – volt household outlet.  It takes about 8-10 hours to fully re-charge the battery. One end of the power chord goes into a standard 120 volt outlet and the other into the car’s power receptacle. GM tells me it costs about a dollar to charge for 8 hours.

In my case, I plugged it in every night and drove to and from work everyday ( 20 km ) without using any gas at all, and then took off to the cottage on Friday.  The car flipped over to the gas powered generator on the 400 hwy just south of hwy 7 and I didn’t feel or hear a thing.  I just found myself  looking at the icon of a gas pump instead of a battery on the dashboard.  I plugged it in again Friday night at the cottage and drove around to do some shopping throughout the weekend without using any gas at all.

The Volt  is a head-turner as well. It drew a lot of attention in the local LCBO parking lot from folks who had heard about the electric car but were really curious about how it worked.   Up to a dozen guys went on a walk around to check out the silver and black chassis while asking how the car performed in comparison to a gas engine.  They all wanted to know how long it took to charge the battery ( 8 hrs.),  at what cost ( $1.00 )  and how far it would go before running out of juice ( 50 km).  They were all trying to do a quick mental calculation of how much gas they would save given their own driving habits.  You can do your own calculations based on yours.

Now,  the car is not cheap, nor does the battery last forever.  The battery is warrantied for 8 yrs. or 160,000 km.  The Volt I tested for a week was loaded with all imaginable options including Satellite radio and OnStar.  The retail price is $41,500 but the Ontario Government rebates about $8,000 as a clean energy incentive so you could probably pick one up for about $33,000.

At age 59, I’m not sure I will see the day when the electric car is the norm, but I can certainly see after driving it for a week that it is a giant step towards breaking our addiction to oil and gas – and makes a ton of Urban sense.

What an awful sight. Thousands of dead birds, I mean, maybe as many as 10,000 are scattered across the pristine beaches of southern Georgian Bay, from the tourist mecca of Wasaga Beach west to Collingwood and north east to Penetang.  They are diving-type birds that feed on bait fish. Long tail ducks, Grebes and Loons.          

As a resident of the region, I have seen fish and fowl wash up on the shore before and I’m familiar with the seasonal “sea change temperatures” that can cause these incidents – but Jeez Louise, I’ve never seen anything like this before , nor has anyone else. Which is why residents were alarmed this weekend over the lack of local or provincial government presence on the beach.

The situation started to developed a few weeks ago when bottom-feeding Sturgeon began to wash up.  The species is already considered endangered with a strict ban on fishing for them imposed by the Ministry of Natural Resources. There were more than 100 Sturgeon killed by what the ministry suspects is a naturally-occurring case of e- botulism that accumulates in zebra mussels, which act as a filter for the lake water. The ministry suspects it is the same toxin that is killing the birds after eating the fish. The Ministry also confirms  that the botulism toxin will clear naturally when the waters get colder and that the water is perfectly safe , the toxin is confined to the carcass.

It  would have been  really reassuring to residents and tourists, who are still strolling the beaches around Wasaga,  if somebody in some official capacity showed up to calm the concerns of people who were shocked, and in some cases, terrified that something very deadly was lying at their feet and was about to spread into the rest of the food chain.  Not a soul was around, leaving residents to share their revulsion with each other.

To make matters worse, those residents who live along so-called private strips of beach (meaning not under jurisdiction of townships) were told (when they inquired) that they would have to remove the carcasses themselves, that the township had no responsibility to do so.  Residents of Tiny Township  were instructed by email to be cautious of the carcasses, to keep pets away and to wear rubber gloves and face masks when touching or disposing of them.

Now, if these carcasses are dangerous enough to warrant that kind of protection, why the hell wouldn’t public health officials be on the scene for the cleanup, regardless of who manages the land?  The Township may not have a legal responsibility to clear the carcasses from so-called private beaches, but doesn’t it seem under the circumstances that it has a moral responsibility do so?

The instruction to residents is to place the diseased carcasses into green garbage bags and to haul them over to designated roadside locations where regular township garbage would be picking it up. Do you have any idea how much a green garbage bag of dead diving birds weighs?,  about 50 pounds or more. Not only can the average resident not carry that kind of weight without a mechanical aid (we are talking hundreds of birds), but most of the residents outside of Wasaga are seasonal and not even around to do the clean up even if they were inclined to pitch in.  My sense from townships like Tiny is that those carcasses are staying on the beaches if the residents don’ t clear them out themselves.

You have to wonder what kind of other wildlife will  feed on those carcasses  left decaying on the beach — seagulls, fox, raccoon or coyote?  Will the botulism toxin they ingest kill them too as they limp back into the bush to die? Dunno, but obviously the Township of Tiny is prepared to risk the possibility or is slam-dunk sure that the toxin that killed the birds cannot be transferred to other wild life or that other wild life can withstand the infection.  Why else would the council not be holding an emergency meeting to authorize a clean up crew from emergency funds to deal with what looks very much like a potential public and wildlife health emergency.

Government ( no matter what the level ) is at its best, when it recognizes an emergency and shows leadership. It’s at its worst when it puts its own head in the sand while shirking one of its only real responsibilities.

Me thinks the latter is at play here.  Good God I hope I’m wrong.