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Why I oughter!
Kootenay Crust
By Ian Cobb
The older you get the faster years go by.
In the case of 2018, that truism brought some relief.
Anyone else just experience a trying and bizarre year? Considering all the bizarreness on display, I have to assume half the planet’s human residents had their fingers caught in life’s door as it pulled away at an erratic speed.
Daily punctuated by Donald Trump’s (quite possibly painful) dump tweets, world affairs unfolded in the most petulant and absurd ways imaginable.
From our pirouetting dandy of a PM and his regular dalliances with the bubble state known as stupid to Ontarioans actually falling for Doug Ford’s buck a beer brouhaha of bullshit bravado (can’t help myself sometimes; this is what happens when you have to edit your own stuff) to the tangoing public trough-oinks in Victoria obfuscating about with electoral reform to President Harrumphs bromances with some of the world’s nastiest pieces of husky digested snausage, I’ve spent the past year salivating at the thought of being able to Three Stooges the lot of the useless parasites.
And then there is the continued heightening of sensitivity among the other half of the planet’s human residents who demand changes to things that rank… oh, what?… Nine millionth down the list of “Important stuff that needs to be done in order to ensure our world is the best it can be.”
Hey everyone, let’s get caught up in a breathless hashtagging campaign to make everyone stop saying things like “bring home the bacon” when there are endless and immediately in need of being solved real social crisis.
To not at all go along with the hyper-sensitivity was the growing divide between the right and left and the loss of the ability to agree to disagree and still get along.
And just to add holy freaking shit to the smoky, fiery slip and slide that was 2018, cannabis became legal in 2018. Smoketober launched a new era, creating new problems while eliminating old ones and as pretty much every pundit short of those with straws poking from their heads for their alien masters to suckle from predicted, governments big and small have balled the stuffing out of the entire affair.
In the sports world (see also: Roman Colosseum, purpose), the Alexander Ovechkin-led Washington Capitals captured their first Stanley Cup, relieving and elating millions of long-suffering hockey fans whose teams have never won cups from the irksome sock burr that would have been the Vegas Golden Knights winning it in their inaugural season.
The Calgary Stampeders finally won the Grey Cup, halting a losing streak of something like 156 years.
The Kootenay ICE blew chunks on and off the ice and aren’t making much of an effort to deny an imminent move to Winnipeg (home of the Jets, Blue Bombers and back alley lugans).
The Kimberley Dynamiters won another KIJHL championship, proving to all that the East Kootenay remains a great hockey hotbed.
The BC 55+ Games were held to acclaim from provincial athletes and organizers; a feather in the cap for both Cranbrook and Kimberley.
Local governments changed colours and stripes and, in the case of the RDEK, obviously trying to confuse my old oft-concussed head, where they sit following the October municipal elections.
The election was immediately following the legalization of the ganj, impacting voters’ clarity and sidetracking them to fast food windows where they mixed up their orders and then blamed the workers. Once home they remembered they were supposed to go vote and headed back out, naturally with a sober driver. Near the voting place they saw a hot dog stand and, having smoked a giant spleef of legal sativa a short time earlier ordered their chauffeur to stop so they could load up with wieners and chili and that frigging delicious Argentinian stuff.
Laughing like a vacuum cleaner with a wet sock caught in it, the voter then remembered they had just snarfed a couple of cheeseburgers and, wow, they better go home because they’re just too ripped. And the voter failed to vote.
The year 2018 was also the Year of the Otter, thanks to the wonderful little koi chomping varmint that buffeted its way through Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden in downtown Vancouver.
Like any increasingly faster year, people suffered losses and experienced great joys.
As a community-at-large we were shocked and deeply saddened at the death of Joan MacKinnon and Captain Clayton Murrell in a terrible crash at Irishman Creek.
We had communities, including the City of Kimberley, on wildfire evacuation alert, while some areas were evacuated. Wildfire continues to become a bigger and more urgent issue.
My head swims trying to remember all that happened in the past 12 months; they went past so swiftly. I am sure I have forgotten many landmark events (West Fernie restructure completion; Windermere water etc.)
We (Carrie and I) again tried to present a daily snapshot of what is happening in the East Kootenay in 2018 and will do so in 2019, thanks to our supporters, readers and contributors.
Here’s hoping 2019 is a little more stable with fewer snotty and snit-laced tweets, more awareness from all individuals that they and their beliefs are no more important than the persons next to them. Yet also, here’s to more understanding and less haughty judgment from personal biases.
Here’s hoping 2019 is a prosperous, healthy and safe year for all.
– Ian Cobb is e-KNOW editor and owner
