Brazilian Granite and Chinese Pipe

This week I was unloading Brazilian granite blocks from the Westfield at Lynnterm East. I thought Canada had lots of granite of our own, but I soon saw that it comes in many different colors and textures - just these stones from Brazil were different shades of green, black, brown and honey; and Googling I found that red, pink etc can be obtained from places such as Saudi Arabia and India. Looking at the blocks (check the photo), I admired the precision drilling of the quarrymen who drilled the holes for the explosive that broke them free from the quarry. My colleagues are landing the block on timbers called "dunnage", so that they can get the slings free again, and to hold up the block so a forklift can get its tines under. When you order a counter top or tombstone from a Canadian stone company, remember that people drilled and blasted in some far-off quarry, seamen sailed and longshoremen loaded-unloaded it.
Seeing that the next hatch was unloading pipe, I went to look at the tags, thinking that it would be Brazilian too. Much to my surprise, the pipe came from China, as most of our pipe imports do. My guess is that the Westfield took on a cargo of soybeans for China in Vitoria, as well as granite for Canada in hold #1; unloaded the soy in China and filled the aft holds with pipe for Canada.

Trees to Pulp to Paper - Loading Pulp on Ships

Squamish Dock, owned by Star Shipping of Bergen, Norway, primarily ships Canadian pulp to other countries. Everybody knows that paper is made from trees, but before wood can be made into paper it must be made into pulp, which is packaged in bales the size of a smallish cardboard box. These bales are bundled 4, 6, or 8 together with lifting wires to form units which are unloaded from rail cars at the dock, stacked in the warehouses with clamp trucks, and then conveyed to the ship on double-wide trailers accomodating 15 units to a side. The tractor driver has disengaged his machine from the trailer and moved safely out of the way while the lift is performed. The ship in the photo can load only 15 units at a lift, but some new vessels take both sides of the trailer (30 units) at once. The dock crew, standing on the portable ramps (the green things), fastens the hooks from the gantry crane head (the blue thing) to all the lifting wires to allow the units to be hoisted, but the hooks are released by pneumatic remote control once the pulp is stowed in the hold. The longshoremen rarely enter the hold during this type of loading except to inflate large air bags to fill gaps in the stow and keep the cargo from shifting.

Kite Surfing/Kite Boarding Squamish, BC

When I am not busy loading ships at Squamish Terminals, BC, Canada, I like to watch the kite boarders. Sometimes they get picked out of the water and fly 50 or 100 meters before setting down again. Squamish, at the head of Howe Sound, has constant powerful winds that funnel up the channel and is ideal for this sport.

Falklands/Malvinas War

A while ago I got thinking about the Falklands War and the tension from the continuing irredentism in Argentina over 'Las Malvinas'. So I sent the following email to the Penguin News on the islands, naively thinking that people there could recognize a win-win proposition when they saw one:

"Twenty-five years ago more than 900 persons died in the Falklands War and billions of dollars were spent by Britain and Argentina, with the result that the Falklands remained as British as ever. The big reason that the UK fought the war, and the main reason the Brits still garrison the place today, is that the Falklanders want to remain British. If the 2,379 inhabitants asked to become Argentines, Britain would quickly rid itself of this expensive albatross. So why don't the Argies just offer the Falklanders money? Argentina, with a population of 38.2 million, could give every Falklander a million American dollars at a cost of $63 per Argentinian. Not every Falklander would be persuaded by a million dollars, but I am sure an overwhelming majority would vote for unity with Argentina for that price. The obstacle is Argentine arrogance: they would find it too humiliating to buy what they regard as already theirs.
The situation is like the time in Chile when some guys in a bar knocked me down and stole my shoe: instead of getting into a horrible fight, I just bought my shoe back for one dollar. Sometimes you have to think outside the box."

The Penguin News:
"You have no idea what you're talking about. I assume you live in U.K. Would you accept money to have another country (for instance, let's say Russia) rule you?"

My reply:
"I live in Vancouver, Canada, and for $1,000,000 Am I would be happy to salute the Stars and Strips tomorrow, and have the added bonus of being able to live in Hawaii or Florida. A Falklands buyout would include dual Argentine-British citizenship, so suddenly independently wealthy Falklanders could stay home or take their choice between life in the EU or Argentina (both pleasant places if you have a bit of money, in my experience)."

The Penguin News has not replied to this treasonous common sense, clearly preferring bloodshed and patriotism to deal making and prosperity. What they do not seem to realize is that one of these days the UK will be unable or unwilling to defend the Falklands any more, and the Argies will just walk in and take it for nothing.