Bigpacific.com's Sunshine Coast

It's like Whistler, before it was Whistler. It's small-town, in a good way. It's artsy, and sometimes fartsy, and can be charming, but not always. It's a REAL place, where REAL people live and come to visit. The Sunshine Coast's got sturgeon, and kayaks, and snowshoes, and crutches that summit Killimanjaro. You'll hear people saying 'Holy Crap!' quite regularly (find the pun, for extra Coastie points). There's businesses going gangbuster that you rarely hear about, cause some like living on the quiet. There are ideological battles, and spirited disagreements, and some of the highest voter turnouts in the province. You gotta take a big ferry boat or a plane to get here (and leave the city behind). There's huge involvement in volunteering for causes that matter. There's hippies, and bankers, and Brits, and First Nations, and suburbs and farms, and more than our share of activists, old folks with a lot of kick, and young people with a lot of heart, and the biggest golf hazard you ever saw (Roosevelt Elk). There's waterfalls, and backcountry, and beaches where you're the only one there. And contrary to our name, it rains. A lot sometimes. Someone from Texas once said: It's so damned green I can't stand it. Once you've been here, you'll know why most of us never leave. If modern life has you glum, come and visit us... you belong here. Oh yeah, and we're Canadian, eh!

[sunshinecoastbc]

Dogz & Katz on the Sunshine Coast: Alpha Dog

Gobby kisses and much expectations of higher-than-average quality treats! I have sourced your Fitting Feline - because as you know, the dog is the human's best friend - i.e. we actually have friends, unlike some cats I know. 

Also, I'd like to add that while I lounge like a pasha atop the pillows at the head of my master's bed, looking like a playdog centrefold because I am so devastatingly handsome, what with my one floppy ear cueing a debonair appeal in anyone who gazes upon me, That Cat That Lives Down the Hall is often shunted out the bedroom window in the middle of the night and left to make his own way to the frigid aluminum ladder placed there for that purpose. I find this exquisitely apropos, especially when I get to go in and out of any door I please, as many times as I like. 

I even have a JOB, and frankly, am actually able to keep it. The only thing consistent about That Cat is his inconsistency. It is my job to chase squirrels when my master is mushrooming and I must say I am barking-well good at it. I might add that it is not the point to catch them, lest there be any misunderstandings. Of course, Master would prefer I find stinky mushrooms, but I can't see what's in it for me. She may say they smell like cinnamon candy, but I beg to differ. Mold is mold!! And mold is only good on REAL food. 

Oh, and by the way, I don't beg. I have a superpower called the Good Dog Head Tilt, and since trying it out the first time, I've never had to beg again. I'm told I'm cuter than babies, but then again that's not saying much. When That Cat tries the Head Tilt he just looks stupid.

I'm happy to play alpha-dog to your Puter Puddy. Oh, and the other human with the Fitting Feline is called J.J. He is almost as funny as you, but not nearly as cute. He lives in Sechelt, with his wife and what else, A Dumb Cat.

This dog is needing his dinner, plus that pound of butter I'm hoping they'll leave on the kitchen table when they exit the room after dinner. Last night it was fish tacos, and though I heard them say the fish wasn't their favourite it tasted fine to me - though I have GOT to finish licking my lips before going out to sit with them. Duh.

- Mr. Muttonchop

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Dogz & Katz on the Sunshine Coast - Three Cat Night

Salivations!

I am a fellow feline writing to you from my foodbowl-top computer. Don't worry, there won't be bits of yummy Tuna Alpo Made Specially for Cats stuck to this email. My foodbowl is empty. Unfortunately, it's never full for very long. Don't you just hate that? I haven't had much luck convincing the humans to give me second helpings. Do you get seconds? What has been your strategy? I've tried showing them a lot more attention than I usually do. I already show them a lot of attention when they present all the usual snack opportunities - you know, like when they stand up, or sit down, or turn over in bed, or snore, or head to the kitchen, or head to the bathroom, or come home, or leave the house, or make a phone call, or look something up online, or look in my direction, or breathe, or tell me to go sit down.

To that, I have added coming when called (I'm sometimes distracted with my sniffing and I don't hear them calling), and accommodating all their requests to do all those stupid tricks they like us to do. I realize those tricks are somewhat humiliating for us cats, but actually, I'm quite good at giving a paw, rolling over, fetching a stick, and my begging skills are biscuit-worthy. None of this has resulted in second helpings let alone many snacks. I keep at it doggedly - um, as it were, of course. Not that I would know anything about being a dog.

I'm a full-blooded dyed-in-the-snout Who would want to be one of those big noisy smelly uncouth brutes anyway? How are your begging skills, by the way? 

I understand you are in a ruff ruff situation. I will take a sniff and a drool around both fellow felines and fellow OS X Feline users. Maybe we can find you your Fitting Feline.

Speaking of Fitting Felines, I don't mean to hound you or anything, but maybe we could get together sometime? I know this secluded spot by the ocean where there's a nicely rotting fish. Do you have a friend? We could have a Three Cat Night.

By the way, it's a really bad photo of me. The lighting makes me look like a barracuda or some kind of junkyard cat. I'm actually a shorthaired well-built and well-hung tom of mixed heritage, and I've begun orthodentics to correct my underbite. 

I hope I don't come across as opportunistic or  too alpha. My meow is worse than my mastication. Let's take a break together from this cat-eat-cat world.

Wishing you all the best in hot-dog snacks and smelly chew toys,

Ralph (Formerly Pedigreed, but mistook it for the short human's homework)

"Who needs television when you have cats?"

[sunshinecoastbc]

Well, it wouldn't be fall without Thanksgiving ferry lineups! At least we can be grateful it wasn't chucking down rain, giving us sturm & drang or fogging us in at Langdale, right? Gorgeous traveling. It's also harvest & foraging season on the Coast - from shrooms to apples to salmon the woods and streams are THE place to be if you can unchain from your desk to appreciate the plentitude Mother Nature lays before us at this special time of year. No? Well, stick to your store-boughts then if you can stand it. More for me. I just love the pic of the two bullies (bulldogs) running in the forest. Olivia on the left belongs to my pal Delaina-Lu Gamblin, and Maggie on the right to Kim Barsanti. Or should I say my gal friends are willingly enslaved? I think the latter. There is nothing like two dogs pounding on a wooded trail behind you to wake up the brain's blood vessels... and you can't help being as deliriously happy as they are, it's that contagious. 

My friend Gigi Butterfly is in the bottom picture, with her gallery in Halfmoon Bay (look for the sign on the highway and in the SC Art Crawl Map). Gigi is larger than life and beloved for her wide-openness, humour, call-it-like-it-is honesty, and love of COLOUR. That and her lusciously, slavishly adored Saint Bernards, Oreo and Orion.

So this weekend, be sure to head out to the Sunshine Coast Mushroom Festival, Halfmoon Bay Apple Festival, Sechelt Arts Festival and the 4th Annual Sunshine Coast Art Crawl. There's 'plenty' indeed.

[sunshinecoastbc]

Gettin bizzy wid it at the #robertscreek #mandala #sunshinecoastbc #realsunshinecoast

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Photographer's light (Taken with Instagram at Davis Bay Seawall)

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What do these geese know that I don't? (Taken with Instagram at Davis Bay BC)

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I just filmed a video "Like Paying Taxes" on #viddy http://viddy.it/OSH7Xr

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I just filmed a video "Fun With Fidos" on #viddy http://viddy.it/P5IaGR

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I just filmed a video "Mr. Bubbles" on #viddy http://viddy.it/NSpzt8

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Show's over for the night (Taken with Instagram)

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I just filmed a video "Billy Hillpicker Band" on #viddy http://viddy.it/OxlC1s

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Psychadelic Patriotism! Well, my kind, anyway.

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I just filmed a video "Canada Day Hackett Park" on #viddy http://viddy.it/Nlg0mc

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Western flat-topped or felt-ringed agaricus - either way poisonous, drat the luck.

[sunshinecoastbc]

I 'seeyou' all right, and this is what boat ownership looks like to me: ass-up in repairs every time the rain stops! Beautiful boat though, hope it runs as well as it looks.

[sunshinecoastbc]

Deer get moody in the spring

Coast Reporter headline, June 25th. Maybe we could put out Prozac salt licks?

[sunshinecoastbc]

One seriously expensive salmon... but the outlaws were visiting so no expense spared, and this sockeye was scrumptious all the way through, even into Diane's miso soup. On the docks in Gibsons Landing.