(sigh) If you won the Lotto Max $50 million prize on Friday, you could buy something like this.....

4898 Fannin Avenue, Vancouver, BC built in 1915 with the only thing between you and Spanish Banks is the public road and the public beaches, oh and a cliff.  To the west, a forest, all the way to the BC Endowment Lands.   Did I mention the price: recently reduced to $13,980,000 ( 49.274348° -123.224485°).

Or this charming piece of property, 4883 Belmont Avenue,  with a rustic gate, Hydro is connected to the land, no house yet, for a princely sum of $36,800,000 (49.275173° -123.223499°) ...you'd have a cool $14 million left over to build a Bungalow for $1 million and use the $13 million remainder to pay the property taxes for the next five years.  The advertisement says that the property faces the Mountains, Water, and the City.... not Vancouver.... but West Vancouver, on a clear day on all counts.  On reflection though with more information from the Realtors the land could accept three house, three subdivided lots, splitting the Thirty Six, let's call it Thirty Seven Million into threes.   $12,000,000 and the difference being used to build a Bungalow on each.

OR

We could consult Christy on how she would spend $50,000,000 since she's the expert on how taxpayers dollars are doled out, with a smile.  Heck it was only last year that she went from a Nobody to a Somebody by the members of her BC Liberal Party... not all the Voters of British Columbia.  And when it came to the Bye-Election MLA riding of Vancouver-Point Grey where she REFUSED to attend any ALL Candidates to DEBATE, she smiled and then REFUSED all invitations.  But  "when all 167 ballot boxes were tallied, Clark had pulled ahead with 7,371 votes for 48.92 per cent of the votes cast." - CBC.  An MLA with 7,371 votes gave the lucky lady the right to spend our dollars willy-nilly.


Back to that $50,000,000 Lotto Max, I guess one could live off of the interest, not touching the principal.

One could put it in their Will that the next six family generations would be forced to live off of the interest too..... based on healthy investment returns.  So many questions, going from a pauper to a prince over night and still those properties near Spanish Banks tug at the long held beliefs of being "property rich - cash poor" is the best way to live.   After all, just how many people have $50 million to spend at any one given time?


PS   If you really want to see what you could do with your winnings check, out the almost competed "house" at the corner of Belmont Avenue and Blanca Street ( 49.274334° -123.215285°) from the above two properties for Sale at the West end of Belmont, just meander down to the East end of the same street. This property measures 160 feet wide by 550 feet deep!  If bus tour operators believe that Shaughnessy is the best place to show off Vancouver affluency, times have changed.  Make it an all day outing, and see how more of the 1% live.


Here's an abode of one of the 99%, that lives in Christ's Riding of Vancouver-Point Grey.

Susan Heyes comes to mind with this: "Indeed in one early Canadian case an owner was put out of business through injurious affection but without redress since the injury was to his business and not to the land." BC Royal Commission on Expropriation 1963

In 1963 I didn't pay too much attention to Expropriation Laws in BC, especially one that was reviewed by a BC Royal Commission that year, but having said that, and having seen what Susan Heyes has gone through, the loss of her customer base, having to move to another location, and then the Supreme Court of Canada turning a blind eye to justice not being seen......  you see, there's this little problem I'm not understanding, that is, how Susan Heyes has been Royally ripped off by the Government(s).

From the Vancouver Sun
The Supreme Court of Canada has refused to hear an appeal from Vancouver clothing store owner Susan Heyes in her six-year-old fight against the Canada Line builders.
The country's highest court, as is its practice, did not give reasons for refusing to hear the landmark B.C. case.
In February, the B.C. Court of Appeal overturned a $600,000 award Heyes won from B.C. Supreme Court in the David-vs.-Goliath battle she launched in 2005.
A three-justice panel unanimously found that the owner of Hazel and Co. was not entitled to compensation for business losses incurred when Canada Line construction impeded traffic in the area.
The panel said the construction companies behind the $2-billion megaproject were legally authorized to disrupt Cambie Street to complete the project.
"In short, the Canada Line could not be built without significant disturbance to many citizens' use and enjoyment of their property," the appeal court said.
"There was no construction method that provided a non-nuisance alternative in building the Canada Line."

The claim that the Canada Line couldn't be built without significant disturbance doesn't give them the right to ruin a perfectly sound business of Susan Heyes.   The fact that the Supreme Court of Canada didn't have to give a reason as to why they wouldn't make a ruling in Ms. Heyes case, could be construed to mean that they knew that its already covered by BC Provincial.






"Indeed in one early Canadian case an owner was put out of business through injurious affection but without redress since the injury was to his business and not to the land."

PROVINCE OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

Report of the

BRITISH COLUMBIA

ROYAL COMMISSION ON EXPROPRIATION

1961-63

THE HONOURABLE J. V. CLYNE

Commissioner

Counsel:

N, T. NEMETZ, ESQ., Q.C.

R. C. BRAY, ESQ.

Registrar:

J. N. LYON, ESQ.

1. The term "expropriation", as used in this Province, encompasses not only the compulsory acquisition of property but also injurious affection to property resulting from the exercise of powers of expropriation. Compulsory acqUisition provides for a transfer of property rights carried out under statutory compulsion and is therefore analogous to a contract for the purchase of property. Injurious affection denotes the causing of damage to property, irrespective of whether property is acquired from the owner, and is therefore analogous to an injury giving a right of action for damages. These two matters will be dealt with separately in this report, but they both come within the area of law covered by the term "expropriation".

If Kitimat LNG tanks, will Texada Island LNG take over?

 In case you missed the UPDATE to the West Coast LNG Project and Proposals, here is the UPDATE (below) and the Original.... here:

As to who owns what on Canadian soil at the proposed Kitimat LNG site

1/15/10 – Apache acquired a controlling 51% stake in Kitimat LNG, with Galveston LNG (SOLD out to EOG Canada) retaining 49%. 1/21/10 – Kitimat signs MOU with ‘major’ Japanese firm after MOU with Mitsubishi expired. EOG Canada acquires 49% from Galveston LNG Inc (May 2010). 10/27/10 – Korea Gas has begun commercial production at the Jackpine field in Canada, in which it holds a 50% stake. March 2011 – Ownership ships so that:
40 %Apache Corp., 30% EOG Resources Canada Inc., 30% Encana Corporation. KM LNG is the operator. 4/27/11 – Haisla Nation and LNG Partners of Houston have joined to propose an LNG export facility just north of Kitimat on Douglas Island in Bish Cove. The project will cost between 360 and 450 million dollars and will move about 125 MMcf/d. The project is scheduled to come online in 2013.

Texada Island LNG

On June 6, 2006 Westpac filed its official Project Description with the Prince Rupert Port Authority, formally beginning the regulatory review and environmental assessment process for the project. 8/1/07 – WestPac LNG Corp. has abandoned plans for a $350-million liquefied natural gas terminal in Prince Rupert, B.C. and has proposed a $2-billion LNG terminal and power plant on Texada Island in the Strait of Georgia. WestPac
LNG plans to file a detailed Project Description with the BC Environmental Assessment Office and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency in early 2009. WestPac plans to put off filing its project description until the company has a better sense of new greenhouse gas (GHG) regulations that may come into effect.

It would be kind of "nice" to see something from whomever is running roughshod over the LNG line to Kitimat as to who the Shareholders are, now, and the background on them, and the same for any LNG site on the West Coast of North America.

"I think a stalwart peasant in sheepskin coat, born on the soil whose forefathers have been farmers for ten generations, with a stout wife and a half a dozen children, is good quality."

OUCH, what a Title, but that search on Google, garnered a lot of hits, 14,300 in 0.65 seconds.


This morning I was down at the Vancouver Archives, adjacent to the Vancouver Planetarium, where the latter is Pay parking, the first has FREE parking, as long as you're doing business at the Archives, researching.

Vancouver Maritime and its Library, is a block away, where their parking is PAY, unless you park wayyyyyy to the West, adjacent to Kitsilano Park, and do it on the street, seaside of the block.  Everything else is Windshield Displayed Permit Only.


"How Vancouver Grows!" 1934 is from the "Sun Directories", there's a multitude of other Directories of Greater Vancouver available at the Vancouver Archives.  There's also a newspaper clipping section where the data is cross-referenced on the old, and I mean OLD catalogue system (library style) where they are then linked to a Micro-fiche database,  TONS of them, AND, if the micro-fiche is not good enough, then the ORIGINALS are in the cavern, neatly glued to a cardboard backer,  and only accessible by the staff, ........ for you.

The Archives "bunker" green roof is undergoing a major refit that covers the cavern that holds all of their records.   The Reading Room, where the open data work is done, where you can really spread all of the information out, has two computers for accessing their website AND free internet for those who have their laptops with them, as long as you're researching.  No coffee (liquid) or food permitted, at any time for visitors.   Plus, or maybe its a minus today, the HEAT was off in the Reading Room, something to do with the Re-construction.  There's Four Micro-fiche readers, spooler capabilities too, along with what appears to be a digitizer hook up.

*************************

Assistance by the Staff, phenomenal!  but leave your back packs and other sundry items in the open storage racks or the lockable variety.   There's also a Gallery area for OLD photos, which, while I was there, was being rearranged by two staffers.

**************************

I took one look at this particular page of the Directory and was amazed at how the population in Greater Vancouver didn't "spike" altogether, Vancouver did though in 1912 -  122,100, the year before (1911) it was 100,409, so I asked myself, or rather I asked Google....."what happened in 1912 that drove the population higher" and realized that I had to refine my search to "what happened in 1912 that drove the Canadian population higher" and found well over 8 million hits.  The Fourth hit down caught my attention....   5. The Immigration Boom 1895-1914 - Canadian History Portal - HCO

From the Sun Directories 1934

Before going to the "Immigration Boom" link, I went here which is the photo below, to reinforce my suspicion that Greater Vancouver, that is Vancouver, South Vancouver and Point Grey, did have a spike in its population... I was half right...... Vancouver alone had the spike, the three "municipalities" weren't amalgamated until January 1, 1929.

The link to the "Immigration Boom" suggests that the Brits weren't sturdy enough to withstand the cold weather of Canada, and that they either went back to the old country, or went South, to the United Stated of America.

But what caused the "spike", again from the "Immigration Boom", it was someone called Clifford Sifton, Laurier's Minister of the Interior.  He was a "PULL FACTOR"
NOTE: whoever wrote the information on Clifford Sifton, goofed, just a touch: 

"Clifford Sifton

However, perhaps the most significant pull factor was Clifton Sifton,...."  Clifton Sifton????

Initially, Sifton and his agents sought immigrants from the British Isles, thinking that they would have the least problem adapting and also brought the additional advantage of helping to distinguish Canada from its southern neighbour. That strategy proved to be unsuccessful as many of the British immigrants found life too difficult in Canada, and many left to return home or migrated south to the U.S.

Sifton therefore changed his thinking. British immigrants had proven not to be ideal. He desperately wanted immigrants with farming experience who also had some familiarity with the rough climate on Canada's Prairies. His new ideal immigrant was best captured in his own words. 'I think a stalwart peasant in sheepskin coat, born on the soil whose forefathers have been farmers for ten generations, with a stout wife and a half a dozen children, is good quality.'

As a footnote here, its Sir John A's 197th birthday today, he was our First and our Third Prime Minister and in recognition of him, the Federal Government renamed the Bank of Montreal building across from Parliament Hill ........