This site. It's coming back. I can walk well enough now to use public transit and I'm healthy enough to drink before noon so it should be easy enough to start writing about the things I see in this country of Latvia and not just what I hear or read, which has been bad enough. I suspect I'm about to become persona non grata in Russia soon so the scope of this blog may narrow somewhat.
Plus I'm supposed to be a contributing blogger to newsWave so I better get something done on that front as well before I get fired from another non-paying gig, heaven forfend.
Anyway, lets leave off with a little not so subtle message for everyone, shall we?
A cruise ship from the Baltic Sea
has sailed into B.C., on its way to being turned into a floating hotel for
construction workers in Kitimat. The Silja Festival, which once
carried passengers from Sweden to Latvia, arrived in Vancouver's harbour on
Saturday night. It will undergo an extreme makeover before it sails to northern
B.C. to house 600 people working on $3.3 billion in
upgrades to the Rio Tinto Alcan aluminum smelter. The 171-metre ship, which will be
renamed the Delta Spirit Lodge, has been leased by Bridgemans Services and the
Haisla Nation to provide housing. Rio Tinto's current work camp is already full
and there's shortage of rental homes in Kitimat. The community is booming with
growth in resource industries, and its population could explode if several proposed liquefied natural gas projects are approved. Poverty advocates say the housing demand is creating
"renovictions," when landlords evict tenants to upgrade their
units and then hike their rent, reported CBC News. A renovated rental suite in
Kitimat was advertised at $3,200 per month, compared to $425 per month more
than a year ago, said CBC. Pastor Don Read, with the Kitimat
Ministerial Association, spoke at a recent Kitimat city council meeting and suggested property developers are being greedy, reported the
Northern Sentinel. Kitimat housing worker Anne Moyles told the CBC people are being
forced to move out of the community because they can't find an affordable place
to live. The ship, which spent 40 days
travelling from the Baltic Sea, through the Panama Canal and up the West Coast,
will be cleaned and retrofitted by 150 workers in the next week or so at Seaspan's
dry dock in North Vancouver. The total cost for the voyage and
renovations to the "flotel" is forecast at more than $4 million, said
a news release on Sunday. An additional $1 million in food will be loaded onto
the ship before it heads to Kitimat.
