What’s Happening in the Oil Industry?

Last week I again found myself waiting at a railway crossing, waiting for a train carrying oil to pass. As I waited, I got to thinking. Such trains were a rarity just a few years ago, but they are becoming increasingly common. We are told this increase in rail traffic is occurring because there is a lack of pipeline capacity. Without pipelines, the only way to move the oil is by rail. We are pointed to the Trans-Mountain Expansion Project, the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project, Keystone XL Project, all pipeline projects on hold.

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Home-in-a-Hill

We built our home-in-a-hill near Richer in 1985. We worked with an architectural draftsman on the plans and during the planning stage discovered we were building on a granite shelf so we couldn't afford to put in a basement.

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We Built a Clay-Straw House in 2009

Ten years ago when our last child finally graduated high school, we decided it was now or never to follow through on our many years-long dream of building a house... an alternative house … in “the country”. We had investigated a number of construction methods … straw bale, stack wall, rammed earth, earth ship, log, etc. ...and lent a hand as friends and others we got to know through the search followed their alternative house building dreams.

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Rethinking Resilience

Those of us who have become concerned about the sustainability of our lifestyle; how our lifestyle affects resource depletion, catastrophic pollution, climate change and a host of other environmental issues, are well aware that the activities of any one of us will do nothing to save this planet for our children and grandchildren. Global action is necessary to address the threat of climate change. National action could significantly affect resource depletion and some other aspects of sustainability and our vote once every four years, in a small way, contributes to national direction. We can add to that vote by writing letters to our MPs, but beyond that, there is little we can do to affect national action. So, in the end, does it matter what we do?

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Does Spending Money make you Happy?

We recently had “Black Friday” followed by “Cyber Monday” when people queued up to buy stuff that in all probability in many cases they didn’t really need. Knowing that people love a bargain, stores take the opportunity to dispose of old stock, discontinued lines and outdated items.

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