An Adventure into the Great Bear Rainforest (Part 2)

This trip into the Great Bear Rainforest (GBR) was rich in learning. It would be impossible to describe all the knowledge and experiences gained through it. Two experiences stand out in my mind and may help me illustrate.The first experience was the opportunity to observe wild life in the GBR environment. I had mentioned the many encounters with whales in my previous post. But this time we were on land in a stand overlooking a creek. We were fortunate enough to see a number of black bears hunting fish in preparation of their hibernation.[All photos courtesy of Mike Robbins].

One of the three black bears that we were able to observe was an older one, getting slow and less successful in catching fish. It fed on the leftovers of the other bears. It was not certain to survive the coming winter. Watching it was sad but reminded me of the immutable realities of life.

The ultimate experience was to be able to see the very rare Spirit Bear and to observe it for over half an hour relatively close. The Spirit bear was the most successful in catching fish. Apparently he has an advantage because of its white fur; fish don't get alarmed as much as with black bears. Another amazing fact I learned from our guide is that bears artificially constipate themselves ahead of hibernation by eating sand with the fish. In spring they then consume a specific plant that gets them normalized again. In the first photo below you can see the Spirit Bear looking for the fish hiding under a tree fallen into the creek .

In the second photo you can see the Spirit Bear finishing a large fish it caught a minute earlier.

Until very recently Gitga'at people were forbidden to speak about any sightings of Spirit Bears in order to protect them from hunters. But with support from Tides Canada the Gitga'at people have set up a watch program that has significantly reduced hunting and poaching in their territory, though not completely eliminated them.

The second experience that marked my memory of this trip was the visit to Whale Point. We landed on the southern tip of Gil island at a rugged rocky coast (no docks of any kind) and climbed a steep hillside of slippery black rocks. There we found two wooden buildings. A house in a small clearing and at the cliff overlooking the sea, a barrack. It turns out these are the home and workplace for Janie Wray and Hermann Meuter for the last 11 years! The house was built without cutting a single tree, using mostly drift wood, we were told. Power is generated through 2 banks of solar cells, one tree-top wind generator, and a run-of-the-river generator all charging a bank of 12 volt batteries. The batteries in turn feed a DC/AC inverter that provides 110V AC for the house and the barrack.

The barrack houses a lab (part of what Janie and Hermann call their Cetacea Lab) with electronic gear to listen and record whale signals from hydrophone (underwater microphones) placed at strategic points around Whale Point. Over the years Janie and Hermann have not only accumulated an extraordinary collection of recorded whales vocalizations but gained amazing insights into the whale songs construction. Janie told us about their observation of a whale adding a "sonnet" or segment to the pod's song, which then gets picked up by the rest of the pod. They also developed a number of catalogs for the different whales observed in the region.

 You can learn more about this amazing story of commitment at forwahles.org where you can read about Janie and Hermann work and even try to listen live to whale signals.

The follies of our Charities

A few years back around Christmas time, I was discussing with my kids the importance of charity and how to choose who to donate to. The kids got interested and wanted to participate in making such choices. As a result we ended splitting up the amounts we had earmarked for charity among a number of organizations serving various social needs.


A short time after we sent our donations I noticed a substantial increase in mail soliciting donations, not only from those organizations we donated to, but from many others we never dealt with. This started me thinking on the lax ethical standards of organizations that promise not to share your address, but then feel they can do so under the pretext of a "good cause". From there I got thinking about the efficiency of those organizations in fundraising and started a small experiment: over a period of 2 years I collected all soliciting mail from organizations I had stopped donating to and analyzed the contents.

The first surprise was the sheer volume of soliciting mail we received, which indicates to me the scale of donor address sharing going on in the charitable sector. Here is a picture of just a year's worth of these solicitations.

The next surprise was the scope of unsolicited gifts and print materials we received: calendars, planners, tot bags, pen, paper pads, key chains etc. Here are some samples:

While paper pads and calendars could find some use, there were also items that could be useful if it weren't for the excessive quantities we received. Here are 2 examples - greeting cards and address labels:

In an age where regular mail use is declining in favor of electronic communications, the greeting cards we got were way more than my team of 10 people at work needed for ALL occasions. The address labels were just a humongous waste, not to mention other labels of even rarer use like these:

More ridiculous were things that didn't make much sense at all such as "Supporter Cards" that can't be used for much, or nickel coins:

Some thought that overwhelming donors with multiple mailings will do the trick!

All of this made me realize why the charitable sector is so inefficient and vulnerable. Others may enjoy the continuous flood of unsolicited junk. For my part I'd rather see the organizations I support avoid the waste and offer donors choices of electronic communications as well as choices of what gifts they'd like to receive if any at all for their donations.


Until I see such behavior that indicates some financial rationality and responsibility for our environment as well, the bags of soliciting mail is going straight to the blue box.

Shame on you, Nissan Canada

I like Nissan cars and have driven many of them over the years, so my name is in the database of Nissan Canada. Every year I get a number of promotional mailings about new cars and around Christmas I usually get also a card. This year we got two such cards, because my wife decided to drive a Nissan Versa.

It is nice to feel appreciated as a years-long customer. The cards used this year, were quite different. When you opened the card, you heard street noise and cars honking. The novelty of the card was interesting at first and everybody got startled opening the card and then laughed about it. But by the time I was gathering the Christmas cards for disposal, it hit me that those cards could not be just thrown in the garbage.

I performed some surgery on the cards to see what's really inside. To my dismay I discovered a small printed-circuit board (PCB), with a small speaker and 3 power cells model LR 1130, all embedded inside the card.



Just imagine the thousands of PCBs and batteries that will end up dumped in the environment because of Nissan Canada's ill-advised promotion choices. I have taken the electronics and batteries out for separate disposal, but what about all the others? I am starting to appreciate the German legislation making vendors responsible for the recycling of their packaging materials. I wish we had something like that in Canada.

Nissan Canada: Shouldn't you be more thoughtful about your promotion choices?