Wildfires

Let’s take a moment to pause for all the wildfires that are happening up north. There are so much destruction and people are having to flee and live in their cars.

As of June 5th, there were 25 active wildfires in Saskatchewan. Last Friday the province issued a public alert ordering the residents of La Ronge and Eagle Point out of town and the wildfires breached the town’s industrial park in the north east. The pictures online look like the apocalypse.

The Shoe Fire remains the largest blaze, covering 471,000 hectares and is responsible for closing down three highways. THREE. Highways 912, 913, and 165.

This website is a site that has Saskatchewan’s active wildfire map.

The Saskatchewan RCMP officers have remained in the communities, as they are the final people to leave along with the firefighters. I think that they are staying to patrol and respond to calls for service in places like La Ronge and Creighton. Hopefully there will not be any more heartache by people committing crime in these areas, but I’m not even sure about that percentage of people left behind. Surely no one is thinking, wow… there’s a massive fire. Let’s go and wreck some havoc!

The amount of wildfires is so much that the smoke is filtering down even to the US. And last Friday Toronto’s air quality was among the worst in the world. And now (Monday) the smoke is traveling to the UK and turning the skies orange. That’s over 6,400 KM away from central Canada. I didn’t know what the sky turned orange where there is smoke haze, but apparently its because the smoke particles in the atmosphere scatter the blue wavelengths of light more, which allows the orange and red hues to reach our eyes more easily. I mean it is pretty, but when you think about the devastation, I think I would never see a red sunset again.

Home Inspection

As a life-long Saskaton resident, I’m finally starting to consider buying a home here. But things have changed so drastically and I’ve never done it before so the whole process seems a bit scary. That being said, my mother bought a house about ten years ago and she didn’t even use a realtor. She just found one on a real estate website and bought it. Or at least that’s how she recounts it. But I’m not quite sure so I did what most millennials would do and consult reddit.

So it looks like I should:

Get my mortgage pre-approved, aka have my financing in order.

Find a house inspector

Maybe hire a plumber?

Use a realtor

Make a list of my wants/needs

Okay so that’s no small feat. But I’m pretty scared of finding a good realtor, it seems like they are a dime a dozen around here and it’s hard to find a good one. So again, I acted my age and went checking online and checking reddit again. That and I needed a good objective house inspector too.

Reddit had an awesome thread and recommended a fellow named Allan Brezinski. Multiple people recommended him from far back as a couple years ago. Which is crazy because he wasn’t in the listed results of my google search.

I think I like this guy. We had a brief conversation and I told him about the reddit thread.  I mentioned that he did such a great service that he needs his webpage to be higher up in the rankings because if I didn’t consult Reddit, there’s no way I would have ever found him. He’s an old school guy and doesn’t like to spend a lot of time online, so he was a bit hesitant. But I mentioned that he should check out this site, which does affordable SEO in Toronto to help him out. Long story short he didn’t know anything about Seo or websites in general so I think this would be a good idea for him.

It’s such an emotional journey finding and buying a home that I really wanted to find people I could trust in the process and Allan really listened to all my fears. Also turns out that he’s a carpenter too? Though I think I saw that online somewhere and didn’t verify that with him.

So I have a home inspector. Now I just need about one thousand other things. This is scary and the fact is that I’ll have to spend what feels like a bazillion dollars really puts me off to buying a home. But ever since my mother retired and then paid off her mortgage I know finally understand the importance of having a place paid off when you reach retirement age and your finances decrease. Okay…. Wish me luck.

How do you spell summer in the prairies? C-O-N-S-T-R-U-C-T-I-O-N.

Road construction is the killjoy of getting around once the weather rolls around, but it’s not like we have the weather to support it at any other times. Also, with our weather that essentially promotes the development of potholes, it’s clear why we have so much road construction going on in the summer.

Let’s get into the science of potholes, they form primarily dur to a combination of factors: water, traffic, and the changing temperatures. With use asphalt develops tiny crack where then water seeps in and undergoes a cycle of freezing and expanding over time. This process gradually breaks down the road surfaces and we need to repair it.

Now if only housing construction could be so simple.

Welcome to my blog, where a local Saskatonian rants about all things construction. And building, and cost of living, etc. Things have changed a lot here in the Paris of the Prairies from when I was a kiddo. Population growth, immigration (which I’m in favor for!), rising cost of living all have made this city a bit unrecognizable to me when I’m driving around

Granted now-a-days there are lots of awesome things to do here in the summer: music festivals, food & drink events, lots of lakes for outdoor activity. And our restaurant and brewery scene is top notch. Me and my cohorts tend to be a bit left politically, which is hard when you travel to the rest of Saskatchewan (it being more conservative). Granted in the last federal election the NDP had a hard time and bled a lot of votes to the liberals. But I think it was strategic voting, and who would be the best person to deal with the orange turd of a president south of us. In my riding (University) it still went conservative with Corey Tochor by about four thousand votes. I was bummed because that’s just about the number of people who voted for the NDP. Come on people! But I will say that there was a very high voter turn out this time. The number of electors on list in my riding is about 65 thousand and we had over 47 thousand people go out and vote. That’s about 72% of us. Amazing.

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

 Some people say that the city is too sketchy but if you stay out of Pleasant Hill and Meadow Green, you’ll be fine. Also, our public transit leaves a lot to be desired but if you’re happy with a slower pace of life and our yearly season of construction, the grids could use some work eh! Also beware of the Saskatoon special… which is a plastic surgery related to the large amount of lower jaw fractures that happen around here…. It’s not our best side.

There’ll be plenty of more ranting and ravings here, the next one will probably be about the cost of constructing new homes and how hard it’s been to buy a place. TTYL