The Atlin Whisper

“Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world.”

Margaret Mead

PLEASE NOTE THE NEXT WHISPER WILL BE ON THE 22ND NOT THE 15TH

The Historic Globe Theatre

LIVE AT THE GLOBE THEATRE

Friday March 3, 2023

To kick off the Atlin Frosty Frolic events, we are having another Atlin Cabaret and you are invited.

Whether you are a performer of music, poetry, dance, comedy or you name it. Perhaps you enjoy the comforts of being a supportive audience member we have a great evening of talent planned for you.

On Yukon Time

Doors Open 7:30 Starts 8:00

Enter By Donation

Performer sign up https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/543305921637

Email exploreatlinsales@gmail.com

Coffee/Tea Service Available by Donation

We are respectfully asking that everyone who attends comes in good health, and is not required to be in quarantine

Facebook: @ExploreAtlin Email exploreatlinsales@gmail.com

Atlin Historical Society is holding its Annual General Meeting on March 9th, 2023, at 6:30 pm (Yukon Time) at the Atlin Rec centre (in the meeting room upstairs).

AHS Board Elections

President’s report

Financial report

Review of new 5 year AHS Strategic Plan

All welcome!

“I Walk Alone”

There are times I walk alone on a path leading somewhere new to me, so I can see more of the world and a side of me revealing what I’m made of, who I want to be.

I’m adventurous as family, friends are in my corner rooting for me to succeed.

Jeff Salmon

Talk To The Animals

Where I Encounter Large Mammals

by Paul Lucas

Atlin,1980s. A guy just can’t sit around playing guitar all day, no matter how comfortable he is sucking back coffee in that seat beside the wood stove. There are chores to do - wood splitting, water hauling and cabin repairs. Today, it was the roof.

It was a clear, quiet autumn afternoon, and I was nailing down an errant piece of roofing material. Job done, I stood up, and the spectacle of Atlin mountain standing etched against the sky stopped me in my tracks. It was one of those moments. One of those pauses between breaths.

It was a pause that wasn’t to last though, because the sound of thundering hooves, approaching fast, suddenly shattered the silence. In a swirl of dust and branches, a moose cow and calf came barreling past the north side of the cabin followed closely by the lightning fast, tawny shape of a cougar.

They disappeared out of sight, but I could still hear them, and the racket over the next few minutes was alarming. The spitting and growling, grunting and thrashing, suggested the mother was trying to fight off the cougar. The racket went on for a while. The cougar wanted his dinner. Then silence. Who knows how it turned out. One thing was for sure. I wasn’t about to go down and find out.

Nature can be surprisingly brutal. It can also be majestic, scary and downright comical. Bears, in particular, seem to have their own perverse sense of humour. Phil Timpany, a fishing guide with a camp on the Nakina River, a prime habitat for grizzlies, told me about a pair of clowns that he had observed since they were cubs. They were troublemakers. They would stand behind trees lining the trail like muggers in an alley, and spring out at the last minute purely for the pleasure of seeing you jump. They became known as the Smothers Brothers.

Another example of the average bear’s sense of humour took place on a little island at the south end of Atlin Lake, which turned out to be on the only trail connecting Teresa Island to Copper Island. The night before, I had pitched my tent in a remarkably convenient clearing.

The next morning, I was sitting on a large rock, clutching a cup of coffee and staring across the small body of water separating the islands, when a big black bear stormed out of the bush and began angrily pacing back and forth on the beach. Every now and then, he would stop and stare up at me with a look that I recognized immediately - a look I’d seen just weeks before on the face of an indignant wine drinker.

On a recent trip to Italy, my wife Ilene and I travelled through the picturesque villages of Tuscany – villages that had maintained their ways and traditions for centuries. We stopped at a local watering hole, and were surprised to find an empty table in the courtyard. The best table, in fact – in a quiet, shady spot that looked out over the rolling Tuscan hills. Our luck was all the more remarkable because all of the other tables in the place were occupied. Sitting down, we turned to find a waiter, and noticed that we were getting the evil eye from everyone in the joint.

Some messages translate across all languages, and this message was clear in every detail:

‘You people are sitting at the Don’s table, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave ... now!

My beach bear was clearly the Don Barzini of this tale, and he wasn’t about to allow some interloper to intrude on his territory. So, not wanting to ruffle any fur, I quietly retreated to the beach, climbed into the boat, and pushed off while he angrily swam the channel, stormed across the island, then swam across to the Copper Island shore.

It wasn’t until he was gone that I realized I had left my guitar standing against the tree near the tent. Oh no! What if he’d decided to swat it? Or sit on it? I beached the boat and hustled back to the campsite only to find that it hadn’t been touched. Waiting for me there instead, was a token of the Don’s displeasure. Right in front of the tent flap, dead centre, he had left me a huge, steaming gift. There was no doubt about it being a message, the placement and the timing were simply too precise.

Oh the tale he must have told the crew later that afternoon while they were scarfing ants out of the hollow log near Bruno’s place ...

“... so I made the face and scared the skinny white kid off. Then I went up to his tent and left him a wee gifty on the porch, if you know what I mean.”

Raucous laughter all round then Penelope, the cute little female from Sandy Beach, chiming in with,

“Oh Guido, you’re such a card.”

Goats also, it seems, are not without their sense of humour. I remember that early goat hunt with my old pal Jamie: Two Bungalo Bills, fully provisioned, armed to the teeth, with oversize brains and prehensile thumbs. How could success elude us?

We climbed. And we climbed. We climbed all day but never seemed to get closer to our prey. We could see them, but they were always just out of reach. Eventually it occurred to us that they might be toying with us; laughing at this pair of fools – these simpletons who didn’t understand that inept, noisy, clumsy primates were incapable of competing with the mountain goat in his territory.

Worn out and defeated, we tottered on home, convinced we could hear the sound of snickering as we stumbled off the mountain. To add insult to injury we found, when we got back to the boat, that the ground was covered in hoof prints. Evidently, while we were chasing Murph and Marty ‘round the mountain, the rest of the family was partying down at the beach. The irony!

Still, the little buggers are not invincible. One day, I was rounding a big boulder in the high country of the Vancouver watershed, (from downwind I’m guessing), and I ran smack dab into a goat blissfully chewing his cud. Startled and stunned that he had been caught napping, he squeezed out a strangled squeak, jumped four feet straight in the air, and bolted off with that little tail between his legs.

Another incident that gave me some perspective on our nimble, elusive, condescending, cloven hoofed friends, was the time that Alec Sharp and I were bushwhacking down from the Lions - two famous peaks north of Vancouver. There is a trail, but we just couldn’t resist ‘boot skiing’ down this particularly inviting snowfield - great fun but a decision that would end us up in some sort of dense, cliff ridden no man’s land for the rest of the descent.

Picking our way carefully down this minefield, we pulled up when we heard a racket high above us. There followed a short silence, then something heavy hit the deck with a thud. Looking to our left, towards the source of the sound, we saw the body of a mountain goat sprawled on a flat mesa shaped tower. Evidently it had lost its footing and plunged 100 feet or so to its death - landing dead centre on a piece of real estate no bigger than a helicopter landing pad. I guess nimble is as nimble does.

So where were these fumble footed goats when I was out hunting? That’s what I’d like to know.

On the less hilarious side of the ledger I have, over the years, been charged by a bull moose, stalked by a black bear, and treed by a cow moose protecting her calf, (you would be amazed at how fast the average human can get out of a pair of snowshoes and up a largely branchless tree with the proper incentive).

Still, if I had to pick a favourite animal story, it would be the one involving a young black bear and my trusty old Honda Civic. That’s next.

British Columbia Ambulance

Congratulations to Dorothy Odion

Clinical Operations Manager, Northeast District, Jonathan Brnjas presented the now-retired Dorothy Odion with her 25-year pin on November 17, 2022. He was honoured to recognize her dedicated service to the community of Atlin from 1995 through 2021. She was an awesome mentor, navigating the crew through many changes, and a dedicated unit chief always lobbying for patient care. Dorothy retired in 2021. Looking back, she noted that the biggest changes occurred in the last four years of the toxic drug crisis, COVID-19 and the introduction of scheduled on-call. She fondly remembers the camaraderie working in the service. Dorothy, thank you from past and present staff at Station 751. Enjoy your retirement

Sector Resources Canada Ltd

Current Work Opportunities

Seasonal Restart

Sector is accepting applicants for surface equipment operators for the 2023 season.

Applicants must have experience operating the flowing equipment:

Cat 345 excavators

Cat D8L dozers

Toro 40D haul trucks or equivalent

Cat 980 loaders or equivalent

Cat and Manitou telehandlers

Cat graders

Skid steers with attachments.

Applicants must have a current drivers license, and confirmable experience in the equipment or equivalent listed above.

Surface work includes maintaining High density polyethylene (HDPE) pipelines including welding of HDPE pipe connects, building retaining structures, building berms and dams for tailing ponds and ongoing reclamation activities.

Plant operations that include loading of the wash plant, loading haul trucks and trucking washed rock to the specified waste storage area.

Please provide a resume with your previous work experience. Sector treats this as a team position where communication and working with others in a safety conscious, collaborative approach is a requirement. The candidate must demonstrate a positive and efficient work ethic.

Please sends resumes to: brian@sectorresources.ca Or call at 1 603-627-0416 ext. 4

ELECTIONS & ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

The Atlin Community Improvement District (ACID) has the object of operating the following services:

- Drainage

- Solid Waste Disposal

- Fire Protection

- Street Lighting

- Sidewalks

- Waterworks

- Representing the Community in communication with provincial agencies on land use matters and advising or making recommendations to the Minister of Community Development on land use matters

The ACID meets the second Tuesday of each month at 7:00pm at the Fire Hall. Meetings are usually 2 hours in length. Each trustee receives an honorarium per regular board meeting (currently $100.00/meeting). Attendance at as many meetings as possible is extremely important.

Call For Acid Trustee Nominations

March 1 - March 31, 2023

4 Three-Year Terms & 1 Two-Year Term positions are available

ELECTIONS will be held at the AGM on April 18, 2023

Nominees with the highest number of votes will receive the three-year terms.

Persons entitled to vote at an election must be:

• a Canadian citizen

• at least eighteen years of age

• an owner of land in the improvement district

• a resident of the province for the previous six months, or the legal representative of an owner of land in the improvement district who has died, become insolvent or insane.

When more than one person is registered on title as a landowner, each person may vote providing all requirements (set out above) are met.

One vote is also allowed for each board or corporation that owns land within the improvement district. The board or corporation must designate one person to act as authorized agent to vote on its’ behalf. This must be done in writing for the polling clerk to verify the voter’s eligibility.

A person is allowed only one vote irrespective of the number of properties owned. However, a person meeting qualifications as authorized agent (set out above) may also place a vote on behalf of the board or corporation.

Qualified voters of the improvement district are eligible for trustee positions.

NOMINATION & OTHER FORMS are available at the Atlin Service BC Office

Completed Forms are to be submitted to the Atlin Service BC Office

Before 3:00pm March 31, 2023

Atlin Community Improvement District PO Box 388 Atlin BC V0W 1A0

Phone/Fax: 250-651-7582 Email: atlincid@gmail.com