I think it has gone on long enough. Kelowna sits on the best wine-growing land in the West.

Crazy, really. Take a different look. Two wineries, and both of those (red markers below) industrial factories. But no grapes in all that grey stuff, in Kelowna, south to Okanagan Mission, East to Rutland, and north through Glenmore Valley to MicKinley Landing and on.

Now, isn’t that a shame. I mean, any grapes in the pic below?

Well, there’s nothing for it. All that stuff is going to have to go. Yeah, sorry. The asphalt. The concrete. The works. All of it. Luckily, we have the technology. In recent years, many blocks of agricultural and wild land have been turned into vineyards, after all. The tech is proven. These are Mr. Frind’s guys mixing clay, plastic and soil together in Vernon, before they blasted out some lumps of bedrock and then put it all back 2 metres deep.

See how that works? If agricultural land can be turned into a vineyard using tar sands technology, well, heck, gosh, whew, eh, so can the highways and houses of Kelowna. And if the precious grassland slope below, with its unique habitats. can be turned into a vineyard in Vernon (to sell houses at increased prices) by the same method, so can the shopping malls of Kelowna.

We have the capability to do this. People would have to leave their houses, or move them, but they aren’t exactly vineyard homes, anyway. More like someone’s dream of Banff or Colorado, perfected by using artificial stone imported from the States.

That just won’t do. This is vineyard land. Sorry everyone, but either Kelowna has to go or it has to stop advertising itself as a wine town. Ethics and right language matter. Either we use them or we don’t have them.