Syria. Stompin’ Tom. Sharknado. Calgary floods and a deadly Philippines typhoon. The Boston Bombings and the Harlem Shake. #hashtageverything.
From Miley to Mandela, 2013 took us from the ridiculous to the sublime and back again.
The Pope pulled the plug but Rob Ford wouldn’t budge. Apple spawned the iPhone 5s and Kate Middleton invented childbirth. The NHL lockout came to an end. So did Breaking Bad. Nigel Wright went wrong — or at least took a bullet for Harper. You learned what “twerking” and “selfie” meant, but hopefully didn’t use them in the same sentence.
Locally, 2013 brought the weird and the wonderful. Marty the Marmot was mugged on the ice, while Bongy was run out of Esquimalt. A Victoria man won a $25-million lottery prize, while a Lake Cowichan guy forfeited $2.6 million cash that he threw overboard during a dead-of-night boat chase through the Gulf Islands.
We had no shortage of sobering news, though. Here, in no particular order, are 20 stories that Victorians will remember from 2013.
1. CHRISTY’S COMEBACK
Politically, she was dead. Monty Python parrot dead. Osama dead. Elvis dead. (OK, maybe not Elvis). Unable to scrub off the stench of Gordon Campbell’s HST, mired in the quick-win scandal, down in the polls, her own party in revolt, the only question was how long it would take the Liberals to replace Christy Clark after what promised to be less of an election than an execution.
The May 14 result: an increased Liberal majority. In related news, post-election surveys show 119 per cent of us still have faith in pollsters.
It wasn’t all good news for Clark. She lost her own Vancouver riding, had to wait for Kelowna MLA Ben Stewart (later rewarded with a $150,000 Asian posting) to give up his seat for a byelection.
The Liberals were also skunked on the south Island. When UVic climate-change scientist Andrew Weaver defeated 17-year MLA Ida Chong in Oak Bay-Gordon Head, it marked the first election of a provincial Green party candidate anywhere in B.C. It also left the capital region without a single government MLA for the first time since 1952 — guess we can forget about getting a McKenzie/Trans-Canada interchange anytime soon.
2. TERRORISM? HERE?
If it seemed surreal when a pair of homemade pressure-cooker bombs killed three and injured 264 at the Boston Marathon in April, it bordered on the unbelievable when we were told of a plot to unleash identical devices on the Canada Day crowds outside the legislature.
The story got stranger as we learned about the accused bombers, a couple from Surrey: Police described 38-year-old John Nuttall — a onetime member of the Victoria punk scene with a history of violence — and girlfriend Amanda Korody, 30, as a “self-radicalized” pair inspired by al-Qaida ideology. Both had struggled with drug abuse.
Authorities have said little about the plot, other than to assure the public that the bombs, packed with rusty nails, were inert and posed no danger — a statement that raised more questions than it answered.
Nuttall and Korody remain locked up as the case against them proceeds.
3. CORY MONTEITH
If there’s one thing we learned from Cory Monteith’s death, it’s that the familiar arc of a Hollywood story is only found in Hollywood. In real life, the road to recovery from substance abuse has peaks and valleys, and doesn’t always have the ending we want.
Monteith, the Glee star who overcame a troubled youth in Victoria, had been a poster boy for redemption — making it seem even more tragic when he died of a toxic combination of alcohol and heroin in a Vancouver hotel room July 13. At September’s Emmy awards, Glee co-star Jane Lynch called the 31-year-old’s death “a tragic reminder of the rapacious, senseless destruction that is brought on by addiction.”
4. SEWAGE SLAPSTICK
The longest running comedy in Victoria wasn’t John Cleese’s eight-show appearance at the Mac. No, it was the stumbling-through-the-cowpies farce that is the Capital Regional District’s attempt to push along a $783-million sewage-treatment system that many doubt a) is needed and b) will work.
Politics regularly trumps science when it comes to the newly branded Seaterra (which sounds more like a mini-van than a high-priced cesspool). Stunned to discover that treatment doesn’t magically turn human waste to fairy dust, politicians are now trying to figure out what to do with the leftover sludge; having rejected disposing of it on land, they are leaning toward building a $35-million incinerator and pumping it into the atmosphere instead.
Earlier, the CRD ambushed Esquimalt with plans to pipe sludge from a proposed wastewater-treatment facility at McLoughlin Point to a biosolids plant at nearby Viewfield Road. When residents balked, the politicians decided to ship it 18 kilometres uphill to the Hartland dump instead. The only way this story will get goofier is if we learn Enbridge is building the pipeline.
Meanwhile, the CRD is trying to figure out what to do with the Viewfield property, for which it (over)paid $17 million.
So far, we have paid tens of millions on this project without so much as an outhouse to show for it.
5. MADRONA AND MOLLY
When this year’s Tour de Rock team cycled down Vancouver Island this fall, attached to each bike were photos of two little Victoria girls, Molly Campbell and Madrona Fuentes.
Baby Molly and Baby Madrona, as they were known, were both two years old when they died of leukemia this summer.
The children’s struggles had been well-documented, as was the way the community rallied behind them. Madrona and her family were able to spend her final four months at home after volunteers renovated their mould-ridden house. Molly had been embraced by Victorians ever since her diagnosis on Christmas Eve, 2010, at four weeks of age.
Medicine has come a long way, but two dozen Vancouver Island children are diagnosed with cancer each year.
6. THE PIPELINES
The B.C. government’s position is perfectly clear: it will never, ever allow Alberta bitumen to be shipped from our coast unless it agrees to do so, or something like that.
Stephen Harper’s position is clearer: He wants it to happen.
The National Energy Board leans that way, too, recommending approval of the Northern Gateway pipeline linking Alberta to Kitimat; the federal cabinet is expected to bless the project in 2014. In a separate proposal, Kinder Morgan officially applied in December to expand the capacity of its line to Burnaby.
It all feels like a head-on train (or tanker) crash waiting to happen, Harper determined to see Northern Gateway built and many British Columbians reluctant to have the project jammed down their throats. (When an NEB panel brought its hearings to Victoria for eight days in January, speakers opposing Enbridge’s plan edged proponents by a score of 253-0.) Lawsuits could tie this up for years.
It didn’t help Ottawa’s cause when a Victoria-based oil-skimming vessel got hung up on a sandbar en route to a Vancouver news conference at which Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver, who hails from Toronto, tried to convince coastal British Columbians that their safety fears were unfounded.
Meanwhile, the provincial government is hanging its hat on the distant promise of liquefied natural gas, cabinet ministers uttering the words like Knights of the Round Table in quest of the Holy Grail.
7. BUMPER BOATS
It was a rough year for the ships, but an awesome one for the body shops.
HMCS Protecteur and Algonquin collided during a routine towing exercise in August. HMCS Winnipeg got shmucked by an out-of-control American trawler while tied up in Esquimalt in April, ended up shelved the rest of the year. The MV Coho splintered an Inner Harbour dock in July. Not to be outdone, the Queen of Nanaimo smacked into two Mayne Island docks in a November windstorm. Down in Seattle, someone stole the Victoria Clipper.
Hey, Joe Oliver, want to tell us again how safe our coast is?
8. PEDALS OF CLAY
When Ryder Hesjedal won the 2012 Giro d’Italia cycling race, some called it the greatest individual accomplishment in Canadian sporting history. Victoria threw him a parade. It was announced Colwood’s new Royal Bay high school would be built on Ryder Hesjedal Way.
So it was profoundly disappointing when he admitted that he had, briefly, raced dirty a decade ago. It turns out he confessed to U.S. and Canadian doping authorities last year, but his past sins only became public after Hesjedal’s name popped up in a Danish rider’s book this fall. Indications are Hesjedal was clean when he won the Giro as a member of the evangelically anti-doping Garmin team, but we’re still waiting for him to explain himself fully.
9. CHRIS HADFIELD
So, he’s not so much a favourite son as a favourite son-in-law (his mother-in-law, Gwen Walter, lives in Saanich) but he spent two years at Royal Roads when it was a military college, which is close enough for us to keep a straight face while claiming the wildly popular ex-astronaut as a Victorian.
In a year in which the planet’s best-known Canadians were Rob “smoked crack in a drunken stupour” Ford and an increasingly erratic Justin Bieber, it was good to present a face like Hadfield’s to the world: smart, humble, good-natured, witty. Not for nothing did he gain a million Twitter followers on a five-month International Space Station mission that ended in May.
In November, 1,300 people lined up when the 54-year-old came to Victoria for a book signing.
10. ALICE MUNRO
OK, we’ll claim her, too. She lived here in the 1960s and ’70s when she and ex-husband Jim opened Munro’s Books, her daughter lives in Oak Bay, and she was in Victoria when it was announced in October that the 82-year-old had won the Nobel Prize for literature.
Facebook was atwitter (and Twitter was aflutter) when photos emerged of Munro and fellow Canlit icon Margaret Atwood snuggling in the Fairmont Empress a couple of weeks later.
Munro says it’s “quite possible” she will move here permanently.
11. FATAL FIRE
Structure fires claimed some high-profile properties this year. April’s blaze at the ABC Country Restaurant next to the Accent Inn was linked to a string of arsons. Esquimalt’s 111-year-old Tudor House pub was destroyed in mid-July. Two weeks later, flames gutted four businesses in Sooke’s Evergreen Mall. Up-Island, museum experts scrambled to restore smoke- and water-damaged aboriginal artifacts after a fire at Alert Bay’s U’mista Cultural Centre.
The loss of property is nothing compared to the loss of life, though — and that loss seems particularly tragic when the victims are young and full of promise. On Feb. 16, a Johnson Street house fire killed Emily Morin, 20, Mark Mitchell, 26, and Georgia Klap, 22. All three were described as vital, idealistic, the kind who wanted to make the world a better place.
12. MONEY PIT
There’s a big hole in the ground where the $1-billion heart of Colwood is supposed to be.
The yawning Capital City Centre excavation is the most visible indication of the troubles at the League group of companies, where ongoing restructuring efforts led to the resignation of CEO Adam Gant this fall. What happens to Colwood Corners, and to the 3,000 investors who have put $360 million into League, will be one of the big stories of 2014.
The future is more certain up the road at Bear Mountain, where Ecoasis Developments LLP scooped up the 836-acre property, its two golf courses and resort hotel in October.
Bear Mountain founder Len Barrie is long gone, living in Arizona. His 12,500-square-foot luxury home, often ogled by rubber-necking golfers, was sold for $4.4 million this year after creditor HSBC foreclosed.
13. THE REAL INSANITY
Cory Barry, found guilty of killing 15-year-old Justin Wendland in an unprovoked 2010 stabbing on Douglas Street, taunts his victim’s mother in the courthouse. Barry, 42, was frequently homeless and had a history of mental illness and drug abuse.
His case is heard just down the hall from where Alex Conte, 21, was found not criminally responsible for killing and dismembering his mother in Sooke.
A revolving door continues to spin people with mental illness onto the street with little or no support. That’s crazy.
14. FAREWELL, PENNY
Penny candy, penny ante, penny loafers, penny stocks — no more. One day you’re a part of Canada’s cultural heritage, the next you’re being melted in some Asian metal works, being turned into bathroom fixtures. The mint pressed 35 billion pennies over the years, but they disappeared almost overnight in February. Was that a tear in the Queen’s copper eye?
15. WHERE THERE’S SMOKE, THERE’S A BYLAW
The CRD continued its incremental prohibition of smoking, moving to ban butts from parks, playgrounds and other public places. By the end of 2014, smokers will be restricted to the old leper colony at Bentinck Island off Metchosin.
16. THE SEQUELS, PART VIII
Reading the same, unresolved stories year after year can bring a sense of déja vu.
Reading the same, unresolved stories year after year can bring a sense of déja vu.
16A. The Malahat. The province finished its $8-million tweaking of the biggest bottleneck on Vancouver Island, extending some lane dividers. Meanwhile, in Vancouver, the $1-billion South Fraser Perimeter Road opened this month.
16B. B.C. Ferries. Here’s the province’s policy: Billions for Lower Mainland transportation projects, yes. B.C. Ferries spending, no. The Liberals scuttled thousands of sailings, cut seniors’ free rides and axed executive bonuses; so much for the end to political meddling.
16C. Deer. Seizing the bull by the antlers, Oak Bay decided to cull 25 Bambis. Quick, Jeeves, fetch my pith helmet and elephant gun.
16D. The Bridge to Nowhere. Langford’s new highway interchange opened. It still goes nowhere.
16E. Amalgamation. A new group named Amalgamation Yes was formed, but its members were shot dead when they strayed into Saanich.
17. WHAT IS THIS, 1969?
What had us freaked out this summer? The prospect of thousands of “hippies” from the World Rainbow Family descending on the north Island’s Raft Cove Provincial Park (which, c’mon, you had never heard of) compromising its sensitive environment with their Westfalias, LSD, patchouli oil, Grateful Dead albums and, presumably, the burning of draft cards.
The government closed the park and chased the hippies down the Island. Seemed like a bit of an overreaction, seeing as a) there were only 125 of them and b) their greatest impact was in picking up the garbage left by previous campers.
Being hippies, their response was to thank Vancouver Islanders for being so worried about sensitive environments — and to wonder if we had noticed the horrific deforestation they found up there.
18. MANN, OH MANN
If you want to find real Victorians, the ones whose roots go three, four generations deep, you go to the Dutch Bakery for lunch, the Craigflower Bridge for herring, or Bear Mountain Arena for a Shamrocks game.
Lacrosse might be hockey’s poor cousin, a regional passion, but for many Islanders it’s their first sporting love — meaning that when the unflinching but overmatched Shamrocks lost the Mann Cup to the Six Nations Chiefs in six games, it felt like the Canucks losing to the Bruins. A B.C. team hasn’t won the national championship since the ’Rocks last did so in 2005.
19. ROYAL BUMP
It was enough to make a wretched republican clutch his wizened little raisin of a heart in agony: Our faux-British image might be fading fast, but Victoria still went gaga for the Royal Family this year.
In May, Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, was lavished with the kind of adulation that Victorians normally reserve for aging rock stars (Prince, naturally) and celebrity-TV gardeners. The Queen’s second son pulled 25,000 people to the 150th Victoria Highland Games.
When Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, gave birth to Prince George on July 22, five of Victoria’s top six Twitter searches were related to Canada’s future king. It was enough to make a monarchist’s monocle misty.
20. THE DEATH OF SEX, PART II
Either Victoria has shunned sins of the flesh, or this Internet thing is catching on.
In 2012, we witnessed the half-burned-out neon sign above Red Hot Video flicker its last. This year saw the doors close at Monty’s Showroom Pub, the only remaining strip club in a downtown that used to feature such peeler bars as the Icehouse, the Brass Rail, the Sherwood, Oly’s and the Kings Hotel (“Home of the A-Class Dancers”). The final act of the brass pole ballet played out when dancer Natasha Wild exited the Monty’s stage in January.
The thong is over.