Carols light spirit
“Settle down and stop squirming in your seat. This is a choir. We sit still to listen to choirs.”
This I have been told since I was a child. At Carols by Candlelight in the evening of Saturday, December 11, I dashed that anachronistic advice to the floor and tapped it to death under my toe [“Carols by Candlelight,” December 22].
Twisting and squirming in my seat was mandatory behaviour to follow the dynamic performance orchestrated by the magical impresario Don James. Choirs, accompanied by Ay-Luang Wang (organ) and Walter Martella (conductor, trumpet, piano), appeared from every door of Dwight Hall—materialized as barely discernible voices of small children, magical a cappella rising from the floor and surrounding us, processions of skilled men and women, crowned by lit candles, holding burning embers, and swinging bells. A Cirque du Soleil of sound.
You think I speak too generously? Then you have neither seen the real Cirque du Soleil nor heard the Powell River Academy of Music’s Carols by Candlelight.
Roger Whittaker
Nelson Avenue
Green energy growth
Despite an uncertain and pessimistic start, 2010 has turned out to be a banner year for green energy development in BC [“Wind power,” November 26].
Perhaps the most significant event this past year was passage of the long-anticipated Clean Energy Act in the BC legislature. The new act brought regulatory certainty to the green energy sector, for energy producers and consumers alike. Among the act’s various clean technology, environmental and economic growth objectives, it also created a solid foundation for exporting renewable green energy to places like Alberta and the US and moved BC a step closer to becoming a renewable green energy powerhouse.
2010 also saw wind energy become a solid part of BC’s clean energy mix. In November, BC’s largest wind farm, the Dokie Ridge wind project near Chetwynd, began supplying clean energy to the BC electrical grid joining Bear Mountain wind park which became operational late in 2009.
Wind energy projects accounted for about half of the electricity supply contracts awarded by BC Hydro to clean energy producers this past spring. Wind energy is a fabulous and long overdue addition to BC’s extraordinary hydroelectric and run-of-river resources, which are second to none.
2010 saw a high level delegation of California legislators and environmentalists visiting BC on a fact-finding mission. The delegation toured the Ashlu run-of-river facility near Squamish, and afterward the head of the delegation, Patrick Mason, president of the California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy, remarked that the group was amazed by the project’s small footprint and impressed by BC’s regulations relating to run-of-the-river projects. He added that he would be telling the environmental groups on his board that they really should take a look at them before they make up their minds.
Things are definitely looking very positive and the stage is set for 2011 to be another banner year for green energy in BC. As the new year unfolds we will be following developments very closely and it is our sincere hope that the new year brings green energy and prosperity for all British Columbians.
Bruce Sanderson, Co-spokesperson
