No, the big island topic this week – the burning issue, as it were — is smoking.  Very confusing issue, smoking.  If you’ve done any traveling across Canada you know that smoking laws and restrictions are pretty much a mish-mash from province to province and even from city to city.  Light up a smoke in Toronto and Ontario’s Tobacco Police will have you spread-eagled and cuffed you before you can ask for an ashtray.  In Alberta you must not indulge in hospitals or government buildings…but in casinos, bars and bingo halls – smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.  Quebec has some of the strictest anti-smoking laws in the country — or will have, by the time the snow melts.  As of May 31^st Quebec will be one hundred percent ne fumez pas in all indoor public places from Baie Comeau to Kujuack…to Hull and back.
 

Here in British Columbia the legal air is a tad murkier.  In some parts of the province bars and restaurants are allowed to offer smoking rooms that don’t even have to be enclosed.  Other places – especially if those jurisdictions are close to the Greater Vancouver Area – are pretty strict.
 

Here on Salt Spring…we are – as usual – neither here nor there.  You cannot smoke at the bar or at your table in our restaurants or pubs, but all a smoker has to do is walk about ten feet to the patio or the outside deck and fire up.
 

Which is the reason a lot of islanders are talking about smoking this week — because it looks like THAT odiferous little loophole is about to snap shut.   The powers that be here in the Gulf Islands are looking at an outright ban on smoking on all outdoor decks and patios wherever food and beverages are sold.
 

Me?  I’m in favour.  Not because I’m a nicotine Nazi.  Hey, I smoked for more than twenty years, but I’m past my Messianic Thou Shalt Not Smoke stage.  I don’t want to give smokers a hard time.
 

I just want my damn patio back.
 

Before the government got to decreeing smoking areas I used to seek out the patios and outside decks at my favourite pubs and restaurants.  It was somewhere to go to get away from the recycled cumulo-nimbus thunderheads of stale smoke inside.  Then the lawmakers gave smokers the heave ho and the poor desperate devils came out and took over my patio.
 

Which it looks like they are about to lose.
 

I’m just glad I’m not a smoker facing this latest wave of persecution.  Of course I’m even gladder that I’m not a restaurant or a pub owner, some of whom are still paying for the specially engineered smoking rooms and enclosed patios they had to put in after the last flurry of legislation.
 

Personally I never understood the frenzy to provide ‘specially ventilated rooms’ for smokers.  Why?  These are people who enjoy filling their lungs with smoke.   What do they care about ventilation?  Give ‘em a small room, tape the windows shut, leave them one exit to the outside and send their beer and burgers in through a doggie door.
 

Be a lot cheaper.
 

Back in the 1990’s a Canadian prophet by the name of Maurice Cook wrote a book called The Aquarian Wave in which he made a number of predictions, one of which was that by the year 2010 the smoking of cigarettes will have virtually stopped.
 

Just three years from now?  I think Maurice was unduly optimistic on that one, but there’s no denying that our tolerance of smoking in public has undergone a sea change in a short time.  Can you remember when Air Canada offered designated smoking rows on every flight?  When the back half dozen seats on Grey Coach buses featured ashtrays in the armrests? 
 

When people merrily lit up in theatres and taxis?  In coffee shops and five star restaurants?  Wasn’t so very long ago, chum. 
 

Amazingly tenacious habit, smoking.  Nobody approves of it, but it just won’t die.  Back in the 80’s the U.S. Surgeon General  made headlines by declaring that tobacco was more addictive than heroin.  Wasn’t news to those of us who’d tried to kick the habit.  I went through acupuncture, hypnotherapy, quit smoking clinics and good old Cold Turkey before I finally crushed my last butt.
 

Will we ever see the end of smoking?  Humourist Dave Barry says cigarette consumption would wither away if manufacturers were forced to print a simple disclaimer on the package that read:  WARNING: CIGARETTES CONTAIN FAT.  Stephen Wright, another humourist disagrees.  He says smoking cigarettes “will actually take care of your weight problem.”
 

“Eventually.”
 

All I know is I am absolutely certain that I will never smoke again – on or off a patio.  Not because I have a will of steel.  I don’t.  Not because I’m afraid of lung cancer, emphysema or heart disease.
 

Nope.  See, when I started smoking, a package of British Consuls cost 28 cents.  Thirty-two cents for filter tips.  This morning I checked the price of a package of Rothmans at a grocery store here on Salt Spring.  Nine dollars and 60 cents.   For 20 cigarettes!
 

It’s not will power or fear of mortality that’ll keep me smoke free.  It’s my Scots heritage.  I’m just too cheap.
 

From Planet Salt Spring…I’m Arthur Black.

Man, have we got potholes. Oh, the main roads are pretty good, but you point your hood ornament down some of our secondary roads and you are in for a ride that makes white-water rafting look like a paddle in the kiddies’ pool.

And I’m not talking about temporary, pop-up in mid-winter, paved-over-by-late-spring potholes here. In the Gulf Islands we have heritage potholes. Entire generations have grown up dodging the same roadway caverns, canyons and crevasses. Some of our potholes are so old they have First Nations names.

I could never understand why our potholes endured so long until a letter to the editor of our local paper, The Driftwood, explained it all. It’s because our potholes are good for us. The letter was written by Jean Gelwicks, a well-known environmentalist and avid cyclist. In essence her letter said ‘don’t think of our potholes as potholes; think of them as complimentary speed bumps’.

Perhaps, her letter suggests, the condition of our roads forces us to go more slowly. “Maybe”, she writes, “the potholes say that islanders are not so driven by the automobile as people in the city. Maybe they say we don’t even care if we have to travel slowly. In fact, maybe we like going slowly….We can enjoy the views of our hedgerows, pastures, trees, glimpses of the ocean and maybe a deer or two as we drive slowly down our roads.

Well, sure. Makes sense. Only a fool (or a first time tourist) drives fast on island secondary roads. It could cost you your entire undercarriage.

Jean Gelwick’s letter reminded me of a place I used to live in rural Ontario. The secondary road which ran by my front gate featured a beautiful old railway underpass built in the late 1800’s out of huge blocks of hand-hewn limestone. In its heyday, I suppose, the trains went over and the horse and wagons and Model T’s went under. That bridge was beautiful, and now that I think of it, it was kind of…our community speed bump. The bridge was built to accommodate horse-drawn wagons and Model T’s….Not SUV’s and Cube Vans and Hummers. You had to drive real slow and negotiate the underpass one vehicle at a time. More than one driver in a hurry left streaks of fender paint on those limestone blocks.

Alas, the trains disappeared and the tracks were torn up, but the bridge remained, slowing down vehicular traffic in both directions. So naturally the town fathers voted to demolish the bridge.

They called it a bottleneck. They tore it down and paved the road and widened it so that within a year the road was handling 80 percent more traffic including dump trucks and tractor-trailers that used it as a short cut to the highway. Brave new world.

I just got back from a few weeks in the south of Spain, where the approaches to many small Andalucian towns feature what they call a policia dormido – a sleeping policeman. It’s a ridge of concrete (frequently unmarked) that runs right across the road. Hit it at 30 kilometres an hour or less and you’ll notice a bump, but you’ll be okay. Hit it at highway speeds and you will be airborne. Savvy Spaniards tend not to speed through those small towns.

All comes down how you look at the world. I see down in the states that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is going after hybrid cars. They’re asking Congress to impose a special tax on the hybrids because, the Chamber of Commerce spokesman complained, “those cars consume less fuel than regular cars and therefore aren’t paying their share of the gasoline tax”.

Potholes or speed bumps? Depends on your point of view. As Jean Gelwicks says in her letter, “Perhaps our pothole-riddled roads remind us of a time when everyone traveled more slowly. When there were fewer cars on the road and people walked more.”

Could be. And maybe they serve to remind us that driving down the road is as good a time as any to slow down. Roll down the window, smell the Nootka roses. And take in the Big Picture.

I’m Arthur Black on Planet Salt Spring.

Okay not EXACTLY like a urinal…more like those deodorant pucks they put in urinals? I smell like a deodorant urinal puck because of the raccoons. In my tree house.

See, I have this treehouse. It’s a modest loft up in some tall cedars where I like to go and watch the sunset. Or used to. Until the raccoons took it over.

Nothing against raccoons. They’re very cute with their little bandit masks and stripey tales and they don’t howl like coyotes or chew electrical wires like squirrels…

But they eat a lot. And after they eat they leave…calling cards. All over the deck of my tree house. I wouldn’t complain if I was sharing the tree house with one raccoon. Or even a mom and a couple of kids.

But judging from the deposits I find each morning, I’m playing host to a West Coast raccoon convention every night.

Now as a kid I worked at the Stock Yards, and I’ve mucked out stalls in a horse barn. Believe me, raccoons can hold their own with horses and cattle. Actually, I guess ‘hold’ is the wrong verb. If raccoons could ‘hold’ anything we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

I know what a farmer would do in this situation, but I’m an old Peacenik. Termination with Extreme Prejudice was out of the question from the get-go.

Dogs? I have two dogs. But they are certified Welfare Bums. They know the Alpo will be in the bowl come sundown regardless of their performance on night patrol. Besides, raccoons are ‘way smarter than dogs.

So, what? Live trap them? Well, live traps are expensive. And besides, that would catch me one raccoon. I’ve got about thirty-five. I was looking for a group solution.

I tried wrapping the trunks of the cedars in polyethylene. The coons just dug their claws in deeper and trudged on up to the tree house. I tried a tiny electric perimeter fence. The coons daintily stepped over it.

I bought some expensive pest powder guaranteed to discourage all kinds of rodents. I believe the raccoons ate it.
A biologist friend assured me that the answer was to sprinkle mountain lion urine around the deck.

Yeah. That would be good. If I knew an incontinent mountain lion.
“Try mothballs” somebody else advised. “Raccoons hate the smell of mothballs.” All right! I bought a box of mothballs, made up a half dozen net bags and placed them hither and yon on the tree house deck.

And watched as the mothballs disintegrated in the rain.

I was buffaloed. I remember standing at a urinal in the BC Ferry Terminal (I do some of my best thinking there)…muttering to myself “I need something that smells bad but won’t dissolve in moisture”….

It was my Eureka moment. The solution to my problem was practically…at hand. It was staring me right in the face.
Urinal deoderant pucks! If raccoons hate mothballs, they’ll despise urinal deodorant pucks! And urinal deoderant pucks are used to moisture.

Just to set BC Ferries custodial minds at ease, I want you to know I bought my own. At a Janitorial Supply store in Victoria. Bought ‘em, brought ‘em home and dished them out like poker chips all over the deck of my tree house.

Did it work? Too early to say. I’m going to give it a couple of nights, then pop up to the tree house and see what’s what.

But I can tell you this…if the smell of those pucks deters raccoons the way it’s deterred my friends, neighbours and folks on the bus I’ll be getting my tree house back to myself real soon. All to myself.

I’m Arthur Black on Planet Salt Spring.