Mountain High

Our plan this year was to spend 3 or 4 days in Yoho National Park in early October for some hiking and gentle mountaineering. An e-mail received in late August had us going in a new direction. Cathedral Lakes Lodge was having a sale, 3 nights for the price of 2. We have ventured into Cathedral Lakes Provincial Park on three other occasions so didn't hesitate to change our plans. The hiking is out of this world
.

This awesome park is located in the mountains 80 kilometres south west of Penticton. Access to the park is by one of  3 different hiking trails between 16 and 26 kilometres long and with elevation changes of between 1100 and 1700 metres or if you have a reservation at the lodge, a chauffeur driven ride up a scarey mountain road.

Our previous trips have always been in the spring when the weather can be a bit iffy.

On those trips, we have experienced lightning storms, snow storms, torrential rain and sunshine, sometimes all on the same day.

But no matter how nasty it got, the weather always seemed to break at just the right moment for that perfect photo op. Please note, that I crawled out to the edge for this shot, stood up long enough to take the photo then  immediately dropped back to my knees to crawl back from the edge.

My fear of heights was awoken in the Cathedrals.








When we booked it was with the hope that the weather would be a bit more stable as we were traveling in the fall.  We left Penticton in a torrential downpour. The rainy drive to the lodge's base camp required a paved 60 kilometre highway ride to the town of Keremeous, where we crossed over to the south side of the  Similkameen River using the newly repaired red bridge.

Photo: ourbc.com

Once over the bridge we had a 20 kilometre gravel  road to the base camp where we would meet up with our ride up to the lodge.

The rain stopped as we arrived to the entrance of the Park. Perhaps an omen of good things to come.

Our ride up the mountain was in a fairly new 4x4.  We loaded our gear for a comfortable and decadent  ride up the mountain.

On previous trips, our rides have been in a unimog truck. It is as uncomfortable to ride in as it is ugly to look at.

Photo: naturalplacesphotography.com

The rain started again as we powered up the mountain.

Just  as we arrived to the lodge the rain fall had turned to snow fall and we were greeted by a winter wonderland.

The park had not let us down. The weather was going to be as iffy as ever.

Our stay in the lodge included all meals, so a snowy hike around Quiniscoe Lake seemed like a good way to get our appetite in working order.


The hike was made a good deal trickier when even a small incline took some fancy footwork to stay on our feet.

At our age, not wanting to risk a hip, our 30 minute stroll around the lake became a 60 minute shuffle.









But the photo ops were still pretty good despite the falling snow.


A good end to our day with the hopes and dreams of a less iffy day tomorrow.

But iffy it was. Our plan today was to scale Quiniscoe Mountain, seen in the background.


We awoke to find it blanketed in a thick, dark, ugly looking clouds. The forecast said it would probably remain socked in for the day. Time for Plan B.

There are no lack of great hikes in the Park.

So we are off to Lady Slipper Lake.  As we climbed, things were starting to warm up making the trail less treacherous as the snow melted away.

It has been at least 20 years since we last visited Lady Slipper.

It is still as beautiful as it was then.


However, I'm a little older, have a little less hair and my beard could give Santa a run for his money.


Okay, and perhaps I have  a few extra pounds as well.

The weather improved with the snow melting away faster than an ice cream cone on a hot Penticton (smoke free) summer  day.



Things were looking up for tomorrow, our last chance to summit Quiniscoe Mountain.

We woke to a clear view of Quiniscoe Mountain with nary a cloud marring it's snow capped peak.

Quiniscoe Mountain reaches an altitude of 8,369 feet.

Since we had done the first 6,561 feet by 4x4, this would leave us with another 1,808 feet to hike.

The first 1,000 feet was a pleasure but then it became a bit of a scramble over a field of boulders.

As we clawed our way up to the summit, nasty dark clouds started to roll from the wet (SP)  coast and they arrived with a big helping of wet sloppy snow.


Let the "iffy" begin.

The final climb to the summit was slow as the thick fog and fresh snow cover were making it difficult to find the rock cairns that marked the trail.
Rule 1 in the Cathedral's is always know where you next cairn is before you move on. But as in the past, the iffy weather broke and the snow stopped just as Nonie  reached another summit and another great photo.

As we returned to the lodge, the weather just got better and better and better.


Photo ops as well.

Our successful day made our hot tub session especially sweet.

It was another great sojourn to Cathedral.

It's always nice when things from your past can be revisited and you find that they have managed to remain the same. Iffy weather and all.

Then We Took Berlin

Berlin was definitely on our bucket list and only a 5 hour train ride from Warsaw; how could we not go for a visit.

 Built in 1884, the train station has a beautiful glass roof which was letting in the sun as we arrived. The forecast for the next few days was sunny with temperatures in the mid 30's.

The station did not look like this after the Second World War. Nearly one third of Berlin had been destroyed by air raids, Soviet artillery fire and street fighting.




Photo: worldwarphotos.info

Berlin was over run by  Soviet forces in the early morning of May 2, 1945. In late 1944 the London Protocol agreement was reached by the Allies that had divided the country and Berlin into occupation zones that were to be controlled by the Allied Forces of Britain, USA and Russia with France joining later on.

Photo: Wikipedia

Germany and Berlin were to remain partitioned for the next 56 years. East Berlin controlled by the Soviets and West Berlin controlled by US, Britain and France. My first memories of Berlin were stories of the Berlin Wall, built in 1961 to keep German citizens living in Soviet controlled East Berlin from escaping into West Berlin. Between 1961 and 1989, 80 people were killed trying to cross the dead man's zone into West Berlin


Photo: Wikipedia

In the late fall of 1989, with the Soviet Republic collapsing, the Berlin Wall was opened between East and West Berlin. Dismantling of the wall began almost immediately.

There are only a few sections of the wall left standing. Amazingly, with the original graffiti intact in some places. In the early days of the wall, it could be very dangerous for West Berlin graffiti artists to tag the wall. In some areas, the wall was built a meter inside East Berlin so anyone approaching the wall too close could be shot at, as they were considered to be in East Berlin. I decided to chance it that day.

With only a few days in Berlin, we opted for an intense 6 hour walking tour of  the sights of Berlin.

The day was heating up as we started the tour.

Our first stop, the Berlin Old Museum.

The museum survived  while all around it were destroyed.






Photo: moddb.com

With temperatures in the 30's, our tour guide was awesome, taking us on only the shadiest routes.


Brandenberg Gate and plaza.

Home to some of Hitlers most extravagant parades, that is before the Allies arrived.



Photo: Wikipedia

Checkpoint C or more well known as Checkpoint Charlie was a busy crossing between East and West Berlin during the years after the war.



Photo: BZ Berlin

More cars and less tanks today.  Now a cartoonish tourist photo op complete with sandbags and guard.

We visited the Holocast Memorial, constructed in honour of  the  6,000,000 jewish lives lost in Europe during the war.

With the rise of Nazism in 1933, Berlin became ground zero for the persecution and descrimination of German Jews.

Jewish stores and businesses were boycotted. Book written by Jews were publicly burned. Culminating in 1938 with Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, when most of Berlins Jewish businesses and homes were looted and  synagogues destroyed.

Beginning in 1941, the city's 160,000 Jews were deported to camps around Europe and by 1943, Berlin was officially declared Judenrein (clean of Jews).



Photo: U. S. Holocast Museum. Holocaust Musem






Berlin Cathederal. Inaugurated in 1905, bombed in 1944.










Photo:Pinterest




Rebuilt in 1975. Currently going through another rebuild.


It has been our experience that owning a cathedral can be a real money pit.












Berling National Gallery survived the war almost intact with only the internal areas destroyed by a Russian incendiary bomb. 










Photo: Wikipedia

Now a beautiful place to catch a few rays and rest our tired feet in the 35 C heat. 

The Fuherbunker, home to Hitler for the last few months of his life.


He shot himself here, on April 30, 1945 and his body was burned in a garden near by. Or so they say?

Now, just a little dried up piece of grass in the middle of a parking lot. 


Any signs of what was here have been removed to avoid becoming a site for the Neo-Nazi movement to gather . 

Now you might be thinking that stories of death and destruction are the only things that Berlin has to offer a tourist. You would be very far from the truth.  

A planned 30 minute stop at a small Dali museum turned into a 2 hour romp through his life and art. He was way cool ahead of his time. 

Berlin is a young, vibrant city with lots to see and do. We only touched a little of what she has to offer. 

Of course for Nonie, no visit to any city would be complete without a visit to a fabric market. 

Finding this one, involved one subway, two buses and a several block walk to reach.

But, Nonie found her Zen and a few metres of fabric. 

Note: I file this blog on November 9, 2019, the 30th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down. 

Perhaps Gdansk

Another city not considered for a visit but a city that had some small meaning to me. Gdansk, located along the Gdania River and a port city on the Baltic Sea.


Thanks to another high speed train, we were able to make the trip from Warsaw to Gdansk, a distance of 340 kilometres, in just over 2 hours and 40 minutes.








 It was heavily bombed during WW II by the Allies and Russians after being occupied by the Germans.


















The plan was to visit some museums and its old town. Sadly, like Warsaw, it had been destroyed during the war but rebuilt to become one of the more visited places in Poland.

One of the pleasant aspects of Main Town is that the River Gdania flows in a circuitous route throughout the it.

Reminded us very much of Amsterdam with out the smell of marijuana and the ding, ding, ding of  bicycle bells.

Some of buildings survived the war. The Gdansk Crane dates back to the 14th century. It was used to load and unload cargo. It houses a museum exhibiting daily life of the port from 1500 to 1700. A interesting place to spend no more than 30 minutes.

The main attraction for me was the European Solidarity Centre which is devoted to the history of Solidarity, started in 1979 by Polish trade unionists and then morphed into civil resistance movement that spread throughout the Eastern Bloc countries. Some say that the creation of the Solidarity movement was the start of the beginning of the end of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics in 1991.

It rose from a shipyard worker's strike. Solidarity became a reality in the late summer of 1980 when it was recognized by the Polish communist government who signed an agreement allowing its existence. Led by Lech Walesa, a worker from the shipyard,  the movement grew to 10,000,000.

I had a small and personal connection to the Solidarity Movement. For me, it began in May of 1983; I was a 30 year old husband and father of two young boys. The world was going through the worst economic conditions since the 2nd World War. Inflation was in the double digits. We had just finished building a house with construction interest rates rising from 8% to 21% during the build and locking into a regular mortgage at 13.5%.

The Social Credit party led by William (Bill) Bennett junior had just been re-elected to a third term. Filled with power, the Socreds brought down draconian labour laws and terminated many of the social services that had been instituted over the past several decades. Bennett was following the same radical conservatism ideology of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Twenty-six bills were tabled.

Two bills dealt serious blows to the public sector unions. Under Bill 2, the unions lost the right to negotiate anything but wages and benefits and included the indefinite extension of wage controls. Bill 3 gave the government the right to fire anyone with out cause regardless of seniority and terminated any type of job security. 

On July 15^th, Operation Solidarity was born; a coalition of 400,000 BC unionists was formed to fight the Bennett restraint program.  The name grew from the Solidarnosc (Solidarity) movement protests happening in Poland. 

They  even using the same red and white banner used by the Polish movement.

Photo: Vancouver Sun

It was July 19^th and the union called an evening meeting of all Tranquille employees. Tranquille Institution started life as a tuberculosis hospital before becoming a mental institution.

At the time, I was the chief engineer of the heating plant and mechanical maintenance department for Tranquille.  

At the meeting we were informed of the closure of Tranquille and the layoff of all employees. There was no plan for what would happen to the residents and there was no actual date for the closure but under the new legislation all employees would loose their recall rights. That night, it was decided  the staff would occupy Tranquille and evict all management staff.

During the night a handmade flag was raised over the steam plant.

The next morning, I was waiting at the front door for my manager and the fire chief to arrive. I informed them that the union had taken over the institution and that they were not allowed to enter any of the buildings including the fire hall. The same thing was happening to management all over the complex.




http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/community-stories_histoires-de-chez-nous/solidarity-bc-protest_solidarite-protestation-cb/story/chapter-6-the-tranquille-occupation/

For the next three weeks, I lived on site, bunking down at the fire hall. Initially, I was contacted by Victoria and threatened that I would be held personally responsible for any facility problems that could occur on site but as time progressed the calls were more conciliatory as it became apparent that we were maintaining the institution as we normally would have.  

Fire Hall Photo: The Game of Nerds

Three stressful weeks later, we turned the institution back over to management, formed a huge parade and joined by other unions along the way, walked from Tranquille to a downtown Kamloops park where a huge Social Credit rally was being held to celebrate a by-election win for the Socreds in the Kamloops riding. We spoiled all their fun that day. 

Photo: Vancouver Sun

Operation Solidarity continued for the next three months with the largest demonstration ever witnessed in Vancouver, over 60,000  marched past the hotel where the Social Credit Party was hosting their general meeting. Two weeks later, a general strike and Nonie and I were spending some quality time on a picket line at a local liquor store.


Photo: Victoria Times Colonist



Six months later, I was offered and accepted a management position and we moved to Vancouver. 

Meanwhile back in Gdansk, we are headed for the War Museum. We planned to spend the morning there before catching an early afternoon train back to Warsaw. 

Our enjoyment of touring the Solidarity Centre the day before was quickly crushed by the memories stirred up at the War Museum. 

Given the direction of the world today, the lessons of past wars have been lost and forgotten. Everybody should tour a war museum every few years.