In order to build more houses like this, with lots of rock because Canada likes the very distant Rocky Mountains a lot …

… and with a vineyard to draw people in who like to sip wine on top of their own private Rocky Mountains….

… a couple years ago we had a public meeting, at which the original developer of this subdivision wanted to develop a small portion of land set aside as parkland by dedicating a corner as park in compensation for removing the far corner, used by bears and the porcupine. The result is this:

And this.

In other words, it’s not a park but a check mark on a piece of paper in some planning department. The cynicism goes further. On the road winding through the subdivision, developed with many promises for environmental care and sustainability, the company contracted to maintain a golf-course-like appearance chose to spray weedkillers this spring. The result is this alfalfa (as an example.)

See that? The spring poison killed nothing. It just looks tortured and disgusting.

They poisoned the hell out of the world at the same time. I’ve been accused of taking pretty photographs and ignoring real issues, but hey, this is an easy one: don’t use the poison. It’s useless and its killing the world. There’s a reason for this, of course. You can see the result of the reason in this construction tarp that has been hanging on this fence for three months. Nobody has come yet to pick the damn thing up. I guess there’s more money to be made in letting it lie there, or maybe the wrong people are building things. I dunno, but gad.

And just across from it, a cement truck guy did what all cement truck guys do, rinsed out his load on a pile of dirt.

Imagine what the world would be like if we gave a damn about the earth. But there’s a deeper, more sinister story here. This is, after all, the Okanagan Valley, syilx territory, seized from the syilx people in the war of 1858 and the Canadian colonial experiment of 1871, through both violence and law exported from the United States and Britain. The behaviour you see above, all dancing around law and its ability to reach people or not, and at all times dishonouring syilx land, is just a continuation of 1858. So if people say, “That was a long time ago, we need to move on,” yeah, we do. But it was not a long time ago. It’s now. This is the war. It looks like a construction site, but look at it.

Imagine if we put this investment into building the earth, rather than Canada. If you ever wonder what indigenous people are talking about, that’s a good place to start. But, you know, we have help in this. We are not alone. Yay.

In this pile of landscape gravel, chosen so that the Rocky Mountain house can look like it has a nice Canadian river running around it, for, like cheap, eh, one of the locals has already set up shop.

That’s black widow’s nest, that is, all torn up by her suitors, in that way they have. The land is always inviting us home.

In 6 months, no one has sat on this bench yet.