1 H1N1: Bitten by the bug

Victoria's Michelle Bossi was front-page news in April: Vancouver Island's first confirmed case of the H1N1 flu, which she contracted on vacation in Mexico, where the pandemic broke out this spring.

The global panic (or prudence, depending on your perspective) spread faster than the flu itself. Metchosin's Hans Helgesen Elementary closed for a week in May after students became sick (they tested negative). A woman was asked to leave a Victoria Transit bus because other passengers feared her coughing. We learned to sneeze in our elbows, eschew the handshake, pump hand sanitizer like Texas crude.

In mid-September, a woman from the Beecher Bay reserve became the first of 10 people on Vancouver Island to die of the disease.

By October, it was a race to see which you would get first, the flu or the flu shot, which became 2009's Tickle Me Elmo, the must-have gift in short supply. Victorians waited patiently in three-hour queues reminiscent of Soviet bread lines (or Boxing Day at Future Shop) as the scarce vaccine was meted out to the most vulnerable (and the Calgary Flames).

The pandemic wasn't as bad as we feared; by mid-December it had killed 51 British Columbians (the seasonal flu typically kills 400 to 800) and about 10,000 worldwide. That raises the question: Have we overreacted to H1N1, or has all that elbow-sneezing and vaccinating prevented it from being worse?

2 MICHAEL JACKSON DIED

Judging from the response, the overdose death of the 50-year-old King of Pop was the worst thing to happen in the world ever, even though there's a strong suspicion that Wacko Jacko was what would normally be called a child-molesting pervert. Apparently his celebrity/talent upgraded his status to "troubled genius," which is what we call famous people when we want to make excuses for them.

Not since Princess Diana had we seen this kind of global grief, or at least ghoulish fascination. Yahoo.com reported "Michael Jackson" was the top search term of 2009 (followed by "Twilight"). His name appeared in the Times Colonist more than 100 times in 2009. A flash mob danced Thriller in Centennial Square.

Jackson's death celebutrumped that of Farrah Fawcett, who died of cancer the same day, much to the sadness of anyone (not that I'm naming names here) who had her swimsuit poster pinned to the wall in 1977.

Both deaths came within days of that of John Houghtaling, inventor of the Magic Fingers coin-operated vibrating bed. The world was shaken.

3 THIS WASN'T IN THE BROCHURE

Jeez, I must be blind. I'm looking through the provincial Liberals' election platform and try as I might I can't find anything about the HST, or axing public servants, or cutting health care, or throwing non-profit groups under the bus. What I can find is Gordon Campbell drawing a line in the sand and insisting that the budget deficit won't be higher than the $495 million announced in February.

Anyhoo, just two months after winning another majority in May, the Liberals thank the voters by -- surprise! -- announcing the 12 per cent HST, which will take effect July 1, 2010, adding to the cost of a whole range of goods that are currently free of provincial sales tax.

And, oh, that cast-in-stone budget deficit? It's suddenly $2.8 billion.

If there's good news for the Liberals, it's that the next election isn't until May 2013 and voters have the collective memory of a fruit fly.

4 GUNS AND DRUGS

A series of high-profile murder trials and major drug busts signalled that we're going to have to dig a deeper moat if we want to isolate ourselves from the bloody narco-wars on the Lower Mainland.

Drug dealer Daniel Aitken was actually convicted of two separate murders; he shot his friend Alex McLean in Esquimalt in 2003 and Adan Merino in Victoria in 2004. Both McLean and Merino were involved in the drug world. Aitken had earlier done time for killing yet another Victoria dealer, Samir Shamoon, in 1995.

A teenager tied to the Red Scorpions, a gang trying to make inroads on Vancouver Island, was convicted of killing UVic student Philbert Truong, whose only crime was to try to save a friend after a minor dispute outside the Red Jacket nightclub in 2008.

Late in the year, former Highlands councillor Ken Brotherston and his two sons went on trial for the slaying of Keith Taylor at a West Shore house frequented by crack addicts.

In September, eight people are arrested in the region's biggest-ever drug bust. Close to 100 cops raid five locations in Saanich, Colwood and Langford, netting $2.25 million in cocaine, $420,600 in cash and four high-powered handguns. Also in September, Victoria-based RCMP revealed that a two-year investigation had resulted in charges against 11 people and the seizure of millions of dollars worth of cocaine, ecstasy, GHB and crystal meth.

Yes, this is last year's story, but the effects were felt in 2009.

5 THE MELTDOWN

Victoria's unemployment rate doubled to seven per cent. The implosion of the Traveller's Inn chain was the most visible sign of trouble in the hospitality industry in this, the year of the staycation.

The half-built Spencer Road interchange, the bridge to nowhere, became a symbol of stalled development, particularly on the West Shore, where projects like Silkwind, the $1-billion Colwood Corners renewal and the $1.4-billion Capella condo towers at Bear Mountain were shelved. (The trials of Bear Mountain's Len Barrie were a yet-to-be-finished chapter in themselves.)

In town, the $160-million Radius mixed-use development is on hold, but work on the Uptown Centre, the Falls, the Hudson and local hospitals bucked the construction trend. Perhaps the biggest head-scratcher was the way real estate rebounded.

Yes, this is next year's story, but the effects were felt in 2009.

6 THE OLYMPICS

Thousands of people cheered when the Olympic torch relay began in Victoria on Oct. 30, a succession of jubilant runners holding aloft what appeared to be a giant flaming doobie. Thousands also jeered the most counter-productive demonstration ever: Anti-Olympics activists (including someone who threw marbles in the path of police horses) disrupted the relay, ruining the day for disabled kids and other would-be participants. (What's next, shooting puppies to protest homelessness?)

There is, to say the least, ambivalence about the 2010 Games, the uplifting nature of the event itself tempered by the associated cost, inconvenience and inaccessibility. The $900-million security measures will trip up travellers and all but shut down B.C.'s criminal court system for the month of February as 6,000 police officers from across Canada are seconded to the Games.

7 MEDIA MUDDLE

The good news story as Canadian media struggled to stay afloat in a sea of red ink: CHEK didn't drown. Employees and local investors bought the station at the beginning of September just as the plug was about to be pulled by debt-heavy Canwest Global.

Other local outlets were wobbly, too. Canwest also owns the Times Colonist, which dropped its Monday edition in June. At Black Press, which owns Monday Magazine and the various community papers around Victoria, employees were pushed to take unpaid days off work; Torstar, which owns a 19.4 per cent stake in Black Press, declared the holdings to have no value. In March, CTVglobemedia Inc. cut 118 jobs -- 28 per cent of the total workforce -- at 'A' News stations across Canada, including 18 of 100 jobs in Victoria, where they also cancelled the morning show. Several jobs were also axed at CFAX radio, owned by CTVglobemedia subsidiary CHUM.

8 STIMULUS SPENDING

To those who shrug and say, "I get my news from the Internet," where do you think the Internet gets its news?

Here's a new drinking game: Every time you hear the words "stimulus package," "shovel ready" or "infrastructure" on the TV news, knock back a beer. You'll be gooned before the weatherman comes on. In the capital region, the feds threw millions at everything from a McTavish Road interchange that we're not sure is the highest highway priority to a blue bridge replacement that we're not sure we need at all. The most important municipal construction project completed in 2009: The permanent outdoor urinal erected at Government and Pandora.

9 THOW AND HERTEL

The long arm of the law finally nabbed Victoria's two most infamous financial fugitives by their soiled white collars.

Investment adviser Ian Thow, who fled his Central Saanich waterfront estate in 2005, was arrested Feb. 17 in Portland, Ore., where he had been living in a high-end condo. He now languishes in the North Fraser Pretrial Centre in Port Coquitlam, charged with 25 counts of fraud. He is accused of bilking clients of $32 million.

Frank Hertel, once lauded as a high-tech visionary who would turn Victoria into Silicon Valley North, took off for Venezuela rather than face tax-evasion charges laid in 1986. The onetime CFAX Citizen of the Year, now in his 70s, has been jailed in England, awaiting word on extradition, since being arrested at Heathrow airport May 9.

10 MIGRANTS 2.0

It's deja vu all over again: Gun-toting authorities shepherd a rusty shipload of migrants into Ogden Point on Oct. 18, a day after the ship is intercepted off the West Coast. Except unlike 1999, when the arrival of four boatloads of Chinese set Islanders aflutter, the 76 men aboard the Ocean Lady, seized in Juan de Fuca Strait, were Tamils from Sri Lanka.

The men remain in custody in Vancouver, but Canada will have to decide soon whether to free them as legitimate refugees or send them home.

11 THE INTERWEB

This was the year your grandma unfriended you on Facebook, then Tweeted about it.

We all became so connected in 2009 that we couldn't hear anything beyond our ear buds, see anything beyond our screens. Your new handheld device does so much ("There's an app for that") that to call it a cellphone is like calling the Swiss army knife a knife.

B.C. finally decided to ban phoning/Googling/texting/sexting while driving as of Jan. 1, 2010. The Google Street View cameras came to Victoria in July, blurring faces and licence plates to satisfy privacy concerns. The dashboard GPS, the best marriage-saving device since monogamy, became common. This month, a viral video (another term you just learned) showed a groom pausing in mid-wedding to change his Facebook status to "married."

12 ROYAL VISITORS

It was a republican's nightmare: Visiting royals stacked up like 747s circling O'Hare in a blizzard. You couldn't set foot in downtown Victoria without having it run over by a speeding motorcade, somebody's crowned head poking through the sunroof of the limo.

In July came Emperor Akihito of Japan, returning with Empress Michiko to the city he first visited in 1953 while travelling to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. Their visit was sandwiched between that of Elizabeth's youngest son, Prince Edward, and her eldest, Prince Charles, who was heard whispering excitedly to Camilla, "I think I just saw Jack Knox." Or maybe not.

It was like something out of CSI: Vic West, except this story was real, which made it sad.

13 SONGHEES SKELETON

In late May, a skeleton found sitting on a box in the back of a five-tonne truck abandoned in a Roundhouse project parking lot turned out to be that of Neil McLean, a homeless man in his late 60s. McLean, who had mental health issues, had been reported missing in January by his Alberta family, who had not seen him for two years. He hadn't been seen around Our Place for about a year. It appears McLean chained the truck shut from the inside, which he was known to do as a security measure.

14 THE RUMBLES

Homelessness continues to eat away at Victoria like a cancer.

It sounds like an earthquake, or God bowling, or James Earl Jones clearing his throat. Whatever it is, all summer long Victorians report this loud, unexplained rumbling noise that continues for up to 30 seconds at a time. Since many of the reports come from Oak Bay and Cordova Bay, the most logical explanation has something to do with a new type of fighter jet taking off from Washington state's Whidbey Island Naval Air Station.

Either that or your bad decisions from the '60s are coming back for a visit, Cheech.

15 OH, DEER

Sure, there's nothing new about deer in residential areas. But deer roaming Oak Bay village, cruising Yates Street, swimming in a Saanich pool, browsing in a Government Street toy store, or hogging the comfy seats at Starbucks? (OK, I made up that last one.) Urban-born deer were all over the City of Gardens (or, as they call it, Buffet By The Sea) this year.

Bunnies were on the move, too, spreading beyond UVic, where it was proposed that some of the 86 million feral rabbits be trapped, given vasectomies and adopted out to appropriate homes. This wasn't done, but nor did Victorians go for the bunny-control measures used in Helsinki (feeding them to zoo animals) or Stockholm (burning them as heating fuel).

We were confounded by critters in 2009. It took several levels of government to deal with a dead cow that washed up at Ogden Point. (They ended up shipping it to Alberta, which could explain why our taxes are so high). Suzy the Tiger finally left the Highlands for a ranch in the Interior.

And of course, we can't forget the biggest animal story of 2009: Tiger Woods turned out to be a cheetah.