Hello everyone…
June 8 I posted “A Thumbnail Tour of My Life”… (taken down pending a major re-write) I intended it to be a private video to send to my cousin Lyn so she could have an idea of how myself and Medea are living in the Autonomous People’s Paradise of Woke British Columbia… Not too well obviously, and for awhile there I wondered both before and after, how appropriate it was to post something so intimate for public viewing. (Trouble was you see, Lyn couldn’t persude the video to play on her cellphone… “Share, and enjoy”… 🙄) But on reflection, decided to do so; as I wrote at the time: “This is what can happen to you when you buy property on native land... Or when you trust politicians... Or believe any of the lies they taught you in school… 😐🕳 / This is what $1,530.00/month (=64% of my take-home) — not including parking — will get you for Lebensraum in the snotty, pretentious, stuck-up, crummy little hicktown of Victoria, BC.”
As opposed to my paid-for home of 7 years ago, and pad rent of $400/month…
Obviously some background might not be a bad idea, thus I’m reposting the tryptich of articles I first posted on my neglected blog, Sex Diary of an Oboist (named in honor of Colin Wilson’s curious “Bildungsroman” Sex Diary of a Metaphysician and while the sexual anecdotes in his work are few and sketchy; as you might expect given the training and inevitable lifestyle of a classical musician, the sexual escapades in Sex Diary of an Oboist are of course, utterly non-existent… but I digress…
Starting with “Expulsion, Dispossession and Confiscation”, first uploaded September 23, 2017. 😥
For awhile there, I owned my own home, a somewhat dilapidated single-wide with some ramshackle additions, representing my parent’s last gift to me. In the grossly overheated real estate market of Victoria in 2012 I paid $93,000 for it.. Now I suspect it would sell for $400,000 no problem, beat to shit though it was… Lyn blessed us with a new roof, and an addition, giving us about 1,400 square feet of space. Worth at the time about $125,000 when all was said and done (likely $500,000 now), and I’d just bought two sheets of pegboard to start the renovations in my workshop.. The major item was to decorate that addition in a kind of Steam Punk neo-Victorian style, and I was working on the purchase of a new-to-me Yamaha 6’ studio grand piano.
All gone. Beyond any hope of recovery. There is no way short of winning the lottery, I will ever be able to afford a home again, and certainly not with the extortionate rent I’m forced to pay every month.
All this before the orchestrated lunacy of the Covid Scamdemic; and while apropos of nothing at all but to add insult to injury BC Health Care without warning has turned my account over to a collection agency for non-payment of premiums after I’d proved to them at the time I was “low income” ... and to be quite delicate if they think I’ll ever pay those premiums after what I’ve been through they can go suck a c***: After being unceremoniously tossed into the streets in 2018, between November 2021 to July 2022 as a Pureblood I was denied the ability to work, emergency health care, unemployment insurance and welfare…
Yet I wonder… Besides compensating me for the theft of my home, which will never happen, will the — socialist mind you — Government of British Columbia ever compensate me the $7,500 vacation pay I had to liquidate after I was forced to walk away from my job in November 2021 rather than take the (illegally) “mandated”, deadly dangerous, untested, experimental bio-weapon? Will they ever compensate me the approximately $30,000 of lost wages I sustained in consequence from November 2021 to July 2022? Probably not.
Life sucks. Then you die.
Best wishes,
Capt. Roy Harkness
PS Never forget this Gentle Readers: Like Big Pharma, big business, the medical racket, the professions and the media, and indeed all “isms”, The Government is not your friend.
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“Experience is what you get right after you need it.”
— G. Perry “Perky” Bauchman,
observed to me at far too many points along the way…🙄💩
Sunday, April 1 of 2012 the payment of $93,000 went through so I could buy w/o encumbrance and move into my dilapidated single wide with an addition tacked on — looked to be the largest mobile home I could find at the time — with the intention of doing a lot of renovations; I had $64,378.38 left from my inheritance to do them with, and my intention was for it to be my permanent home.
Tuesday, April 29, 2014 at the tender age of 55 came The Great Awakening: that I had frittered away my nestegg for the sake of a worthless alcoholic who didn’t give a damn about me; and all the “valuable antique horns” that I’d bought on ebay which I was going to repair and sell for a handsome profit — that’s what I told myself they were, that’s what I thought I was going to do — were in fact old junk that no-one wanted. That I was once again in debt to the tune of $32,000 and had no income.
All I had left was my parents’ final gift to me: the roof over my head.
Wednesday, July 30, 2014 as I’ve mentioned posts passim, I started working for a not-for-profit corporation whose foundational purpose was to provide meaningful employment for former members of the military and civilian police forces…
It’s been tight. Very tight. $12.99/hour these days is barely enough to live on. My cousin Rennie said he wouldn’t get out of bed for $12.99/hour, but then he got a trade instead of a useless Liberal Arts degree.
But since July 30, 2014… slowly, agonizingly, I have been pulling myself up out of the abyss I tossed myself into out of misguided loyalty and compassion. A paycheque every two weeks, just enough to pay down the consumer proposal, keep the month-to-month bills under control… a bit of repair work coming in… The course in musical instrument repair I took during my mid-life crisis to save my marriage which they assured me at Keyano College would guarantee me an income of $50k a year — educators will tell you anything — is likely never to be more than a hobby that occasionally pays for itself.
That … and the astonishing, miraculous aid and succor from my cousin Lyn whom I’ve seen maybe a dozen times in the last 20 years…
A merciful peace descended.. A bit of TV after work.. Every now and then on a day off Medea and I would head on over to the 6-Mile Pub.. Sometimes we’d take in a movie..
Friday, August 11, 2017 we went to Home Depot, got a couple of sheets of pegboard so I could start the renovation work in the workshop, pursuant to putting up bookshelves in the new Room of Requirement Lyn gifted me last year, along with a new roof.. $30,000 and the barest beginning of badly needed renovations, which a year later I was starting to add to.
Wednesday, August 23, 2017 came the fell tap on the door, a letter via registered mail from “Tribe Works Creative.”
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The sensation I experienced reading that, might be like that of the one you get when, you know? You’ve finally visited your doctor about that slight persistent cough, s/he’s dismissed it as “no big deal” — but referred you to a couple of specialists for a follow-up “just be on the safe side” …
… And you’re sitting there in the stillness of your kitchen, the words of the answering machine ringing in your ears: “This is Doctor Pulaski’s office, could you please call us back as soon as possible? The Doctor needs to speak to you.”
Yeah. That sensation.
… Except Merciful Goddess, that particular kind of call hasn’t happened, not for me, quite yet. Thus I can only imagine …
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“Thursday September 15”, the letter said. Funny thing about it: There isn’t a Thursday September 15 on the 2017 calendar. A colleague at work looked at The Letter and dismissed it as a “classic bullying tactic.” Called the former park superintendent, the meeting was in fact on the 14th, and no, he had no idea what it was going to be about…
Softening us up I guess.
The three weeks slowly, agonizingly crawled by, as I chatted with neighbors and learned their fears were the same as mine: “We’re to going to be kicked out so they could put up condos” was the common conclusion. My cousin who has worked in construction on the mainland assured me “it’s likely no big deal.” My realtor said: “Songhees tried this 25 years ago, it came to nothing, this is likely no big deal.” A retired paralegal in the park who’s lived here 20 years said “It’s likely no big deal.. Every five years it’s ‘here we go again.’ — it’s just this time there’s this letter…”
I, in the meantime got busy reading the provincial legislation on tenancies, and e-mailing agencies. Like Glorfindel searching Frodo’s wound, what I learned disquieted me.
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Manufactured or mobile homes in mobile home parks are a bit of an odd duck. Due to residential zoning and tenancy legislation — all of which are deliberately designed to make it very difficult for the average person to live independently and cheaply — you who are reading this know this as well as I do — you can’t just buy a chunk of land somewhere and plonk a manufactured/mobile home on it, hook up water and power and Bob’s your uncle. But even in this day and age on Vancouver Island, a locale I’ve discovered is as valuable to “The Top 1%” as The Riviera, I’ll bet you could still buy a lot, put a mobile home on it and do it for under $150,000.
If only you were allowed to. But you’re not.
You are constrained usually to buy a mobile home in a mobile home park, or at least buy and place your mobile home in a mobile home park, and rent the land it is situated on. This living arrangement in British Columbia is governed for the most part by “The Manufactured Home Park Tenancies Act” and if my reading of it is accurate, it is a worthless and Kafkaesque practical joke. Fully half the act’s 70-odd pages are taken up with “conflict resolution” — though why this is so I cannot imagine, because that same act stipulates at the dissolution of a mobile home park, the landlord is obliged to give his tenants a year’s notice, and 12 months’ worth of pad rent. (The clueless assumption of the writers apparently being the tenants just have to hook up their mobile homes to a pick-up truck and away they go.) In our case, the 200± tenants of Triple Oaks Mobile Home park, this would mean we would receive as compensation $4,800 each. Too bad as I’ve said, I spent $93,000 to buy my home and then my cousin gifted me $30,000 for a new roof and addition, both very badly needed… A 40-year-old mobile home with the wheels removed, and two additions added to it? … Yeah.. Very movable.. For likely another $50,000-$100,000 plus a crane and an oversized flatbed truck.
And most of the tenants’ situations here are similar.
In a very few cases the mobile home is situated on land that — still in a mobile home park — the mobile home owner gets to own as well, but then it’s as expensive as living in a condominium: $300,000 and up. Still, better than trying to buy a traditional house on a lot, which in Victoria and environs at this point start at $800,000 for a fixer-upper.
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The situation just described was atrocious enough, but as a result of contacting BC Housing, I learned that because Triple Oaks Mobile Home Park was situated on First Nations’ land, Provincial legislation did not apply. It comes under Federal jurisdiction, specifically Section 91 of the Constitution Act… Also I gathered that the Federal Government considers First Nations Reservations to be “independent countries.”
Thus we are at the mercy of the Band Council. And not unlike Colombian drug cartels, apparently the Council can make up pretty much any bylaws it pleases… On the fly, willy-nilly, any time of the day or night… Weekends included. And there are stories across Canada of a most unpleasant sort, about what can happen to tenants in mobile home parks on First Nations’ land. Most of them seemed to turn on tenants who had been there for years being turfed out of their homes on a month’s notice with no compensation.
Alas, ironically — and coincidentally — enough, about the only economical housing available on Vancouver Island… are mobile homes on rented First Nation’s land.
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Thursday September 14 slowly rolled around and our collective fears were soon justified — Not as bad as could be. But plenty bad enough: Seems our Landlady, Carolyne Morris, has been having a very stiff time of it lately “doncha know, Dear?”… in fact, has been for some time… Hasn’t been able to make leasehold improvements… not enough money to do what was necessary… feels ever so remorseful for all of us… she’s turned it over to Tribe Works Creative to administrate. There’s 650 in the band but 300 don’t live on the reserve and Songhees has to take care of its members (actually they tacked that on for the Times Colonist article. Sure didn’t mention it at the meeting.) “We’ve got to wrap up the mobile home park, you folks have to move…”
Personally I found their sympathy towards us very reminiscent of Lewis Carol’s wee versets:
A loaf of bread,’ the Walrus said,
Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed —
Now if you’re ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed.’
But not on us!’ the Oysters cried,
Turning a little blue.
After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!’
The night is fine,’ the Walrus said.
Do you admire the view?
It was so kind of you to come!
And you are very nice!’
The Carpenter said nothing but
Cut us another slice:
I wish you were not quite so deaf —
I’ve had to ask you twice!’
It seems a shame,’ the Walrus said,
To play them such a trick,
After we’ve brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!’
The Carpenter said nothing but
The butter’s spread too thick!’
I weep for you,’ the Walrus said:
I deeply sympathize.’
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.
Some of us actually dared to think we might, listening to Mr. Baker’s peroration… there would be a measure of compassion, some offer of reasonable compensation… At the beginning at any rate… For 5 consecutive minutes at least, like Digory with his Uncle Andrew, I was taken in completely. But the message in the end was unambiguous: Eight months to vacate. No compensation for the value of our homes. “There’s no law says we have to and we won’t. We can throw you out with 30 days notice!”
Never mind some people have been living there 25 years or more.
The dishonesty of the whole nauseating charade was palpable. Mr. Baker was subtly, yet deliberately inflammatory. After 30 minutes’ worth of his bright shining lies I shut up my video camera and departed in a rage. I gather the remainder of his audience left about 15 minutes after me in a similar state. Some of that may wind up on Sex Diary after I’ve managed to get my gag reflex under enough control to view it and edit it.
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It’s curious however, when you do the arithmetic.. 40 homes times $400/month pad rent each = $16,000/month times 12 = $192,000/year. $192,000/year times 10 years = $1,920,000…
And Carolyn was having trouble? Found it necessary despite her compassion for us to pack up and vacate her home in the park in the middle of the night?
Hmm…
When I moved into the place I thought the rents were remarkably low… The rent was raised couple years back from $385 to $400.. But seems to me.. Rate of inflation? … Cost of living adjustments? … Cost of doing business? … Who was advising this silly woman? 10, even 20 years ago a pad rent of $400 month would have been ridiculously low. When I checked in 2012 pad rents on the mainland were around $800 and up.. Still an absolute bargain, and the mobile homes on the mainland were in much better shape.. Thus Toby’s sob story adds up — for me at least — not one little bit.
Should have moved to the mainland when I had the option and the money, I suppose… I would have had to get some type of job to support the pad rent rather than naively try to make my business work and right now I’d be in much better shape than I am.. 20/20 hindsight, I was uselessly worrying about a sick sister… and I wouldn’t have Medea.. Of course Goddess Only Knows what might have happened and she ain’t tellin’. Still.. Even without having a competent financial advisor, even granted the low pad rents, our landlady was having difficulty living on $16,000/month?
Meanwhile Triple Oaks has been in existence for 40 years, and over half of Songhees band has not been living on the reserve all that time, nothing was done for them that I was aware of even though it should have.. But suddenly they’re a concern for the Band Council?
I’m not hearing “moribund business models.” I’m not hearing “compassion for band members,” however belated or badly needed. What I’m hearing instead is: “Incompetence” and “Greed” and “Cash Grab.”
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Meanwhile there is no law to protect us. I gather some of the tenants had a wee chat with Mr. Randall Garrison, our New Democrat Member of Parliament, just the other day about The Mess, who brusquely informed them it was “between you and the Songhees.”
Strike One for Identity Politics and Cultural Marxism.
Dimly, I begin to comprehend how the Palestinians must feel, dispossessed of their homes, chased off their land at bayonet point, robbed of their worldly goods, their wives and daughters raped, many of them murdered… The rest of the world not paying a blind bit of attention…
Meanwhile we of Triple Oaks, like too many mobile home parks before us, have an ugly and possibly futile job ahead trying to obtain compensation, possibly attempt a class action lawsuit if only we could find a lawyer and afford it, do what we can for the less fortunate among us, pathetically try to enlist the aid of the powerful yet indifferent, keep the media’s attention, maybe mount a civil disobedience campaign, pack up our belongings and look for a new place to live…
In a region with a 0.5% vacancy rental market with the rents for anything decent starting at $1,200/month.
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I attach a copy of an article printed on the Victoria Times Colonist for your perusal.
To describe the Songhees Nation’s position as “disengenous and deceitful” would be charitable in the extreme. I personally am to be dispossessed of my home, which is worth to me at least $125,000 before inflation is factored in. The other tenants are in similar circumstances; more than a few have a chattel mortgage on their home, which they will still have to pay. The Songhees band will be making from this, the developers doing this to us are worth, many millions of dollars. But they’re crying “poor”?
If White People were doing this to Aboriginals — instead of the other way around — they’d be screaming all the way to the UN Security Counsel. And they would be listened to, and justly so: Because what is being perpetrated here is a Crime Against Humanity. Some of the tenants of Triple Oaks will end up permanently homeless. Some will die. And some of those who die, will die by suicide. But the Provincial Government can do nothing to help us, our venal and spineless Federal government will do nothing to help us, because of the optics of it.
If the victims were aboriginals or blacks the Media would trumpet this appalling crime to the highest heavens.
But because in this case it’s First Nations versus “poor white trash” — as opposed to Muslims or Palestinians Somewhere Far Away as it too usually is — it doesn’t matter?
Give me a break, damn you. And for anyone reading this, if you’re thinking of; if you know of anyone who is considering, buying a manufactured or mobile home or setting up a business on leased First Nations land:
Sad. Your story reminds me of a family who homesteaders on Kodiak, AK called the Malmbergs. They had ~6 children... all super successful today. I believe they built their ramshackle home on land they believed they owned. Unfortunately they were off by a few feet or yards, whatever. They crossed onto tribal land. The father was evicted from the land he raised his kids. This was out in the middle of nowhere... a dispute over land no one except a few Kodiak bears would care. They tried trading land to no avail. I worked nearby during summers to pay my way through college. This eviction happened long after that time but I remember old man malmberg, a mechanic, at the facility we were employed. Theirs is a remarkable story. All their kids were homeschooled and are to my knowledge successful.They have a daughter who’s a lawyer today in LA who grew up like Robinson Crusoe. I mean as primitive as can be. She actually fought the tribe and tried to win this land dispute for her father. But fighting natives to the land is not very easy. This sort of thing sucks. And I see more and more of this. You are not alone. Sadly. Was there any kind of ‘at will’ disclosure at the purchase this could happen?
I am not the Lyn in this substack. I don't spell my name that way.