PAUL WALDIE AND JANE GADD
Other

A battle is brewing behind the scenes of Canada’s booming real estate market that could change the way homes are sold in this country and hike fees consumers pay for some real estate agent services.

The dispute centres around the use of the Multiple Listing Service and it pits so-called full-service realtors against discount brokers who operate largely on-line and charge far lower commissions.

Full-service brokers want to tighten the rules governing how agents list homes on MLS. They say the system has been flooded with properties from discount brokers who provide few real estate services and simply list houses on MLS for a fee. They argue that has diluted the effectiveness of MLS and led to inaccurate information for buyers.

Discount brokers counter by saying their rivals are trying to change the rules in order to protect their lucrative commissions, typically 5 per cent of the sale price of a house. The discount agents argue they offer consumers an important choice about how to sell their home.

“The changes [to the MLS] will definitely hinder our business,” said Ian Martin, chief executive officer of Vancouver’s Erealty.ca, which charges a commission of 0.5 per cent on a sale. “But also it’s going to end up costing the consumer, our clients, more money.”

While the debate had raged largely among real estate agents, the Competition Bureau has entered the fray by expressing concern about the proposed changes, saying they could be anti-competitive.

The MLS system has been around for more than 50 years. It started as a way for agents to share information about homes for sale and it has become a key resource for realtors, buyers and sellers. Only real estate agents can list properties on MLS and local real estate boards operate the service in their market.

The debate about changing MLS access started in July when the Canadian Real Estate Association’s board of directors proposed amendments to the rules governing listings. The 86,000-member group, which is dominated by full-service realtors, owns the MLS trademark.

At the time, the board said it was acting to protect the MLS trademark, which it said had become undermined by listings that “did not require sufficient realtor involvement in the transaction.” Under the board’s proposals, agents would have to inspect a home before it could be listed and agree to work with other realtors throughout the sale process, including arranging compensation. The proposals will be voted on by delegates to a special assembly this week in Halifax.

The Competition Bureau has reviewed the proposals and in a letter to the CREA last month, the bureau said it had trouble understanding why they were needed given that the MLS trademark did not appear to be under threat. The bureau added that it has concerns about rules “that serve to exclude entry-only and limited-service listing from MLS or otherwise restrict the ability of consumers to obtain the variety of relationships that they want with a broker.”

Many realtors say the proposed changes were aimed largely at companies such as Realtysellers, which operates mainly in Ontario and specializes in helping people sell their home themselves. For a fee of $695, Realtysellers will list a home for sale on MLS and direct inquiries to the seller. The seller then handles the sale and decides how much of a commission, if any, to pay the buyer’s broker.David Pearce, a former long-time director of the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB), says putting restrictions on MLS isn’t good for competition. Mr. Pearce, who runs Re/Max Rouge River Realty, doesn’t like flat-fee services that dump properties on to MLS, but he said consumers have a right to decide. “Just because I think it’s a dumb business plan, why should I care?” he said. “Let [other realtors] do it.”

Last month, the directors of the TREB voted to reject the CREA’s proposed changes. In a letter to the association, TREB president Dorothy Mason said the proposals raise serious concerns and require more consultation. Directors of the Greater Montreal Real Estate Board have also asked to have the proposals withdrawn. However, many agents and real estate boards in Western Canada, where the market has been extremely strong, favour the proposed changes.

Bob Linney, a spokesman for the CREA, said the proposals are designed to protect the trademark. “It’s entirely a trademark issue. It is not aimed at any one particular business model,” he said. “Fees are always negotiable.”

As for the Competition Bureau, Mr. Linney said the association has “an ongoing dialogue” with the bureau about a range of issues. It also has a legal opinion that says its proposed changes will not restrict competition.

Mr. Linney added that delegates will have the final say at the meeting in Halifax. “Nothing has been decided and we don’t want to comment until it has been decided.”

 Globe and Mail

Kathleen Fackelmann
USA Today

When Ethan Meeder doesn’t follow directions at school, it’s not because he’s stubborn.

The 13-year-old seventh-grader from the Pittsburgh area has a brain that shuts down when he has to process too much at one time. For example, last spring Meeder’s teacher gave him four commands, one right after the other. “He just melted down,” says his mother, Cindy Meeder.

Ethan has an average I.Q., yet he has trouble with things that most people take for granted, such as following directions. “He tests like he should be able to do these things, but he can’t,” Cindy Meeder says.

Ethan has autism, an incurable brain disorder that afflicts about 300,000 school-age children in the USA, according to Los Angeles-based Cure Autism Now.

Studies released in July and August have helped increase scientists’ understanding of how autism affects the brain. The studies fit with other research that suggests that autism is not limited to a few brain regions as once thought, but instead is a global disorder that affects reasoning, memory, balance, multitasking and other skills.

Simple instructions

In the past, scientists believed autism was confined to the brain areas that controlled social interaction, language and behavior. But the new findings indicate that autism affects many parts of the brain and possibly the wiring that connects one brain region to another.

Though some children with autism are mentally retarded, University of Pittsburgh researcher Nancy Minshew and colleagues studied 56 children with autism who had an I.Q. of at least 80, close to the average I.Q. of 100.

The Pittsburgh team gave the children a battery of tests that assessed memory, attention and other skills. The team found that those with autism had no trouble with basic tasks. Many of these children were proficient at spelling and had a good command of grammar, says co-author Diane Williams, also of the University of Pittsburgh.

But the study did find that children with autism faltered when asked to do more complex tasks. While they’re good at details, such children have trouble piecing words together to get the meaning of an entire paragraph or story. They also had difficulty understanding complex figures of speech such as idioms and metaphors. If you tell a child with autism to “hop to it,” he might literally start to hop around the room, Minshew says.

The study, which appears in the August issue of Child Neuropsychology, suggests that children with autism have trouble processing complex information. When a teacher or parent gives a series of rapid-fire commands, the child with autism might get confused and then freeze, Minshew says.

The research suggests kids such as Ethan do better in school with simple instructions given one at a time. “If you give them more detail, they tune it out or they freak out,” Minshew says.

Abnormal wiring?

A second study suggests a biological explanation for the difficulty: A study published online in the journal Cerebral Cortex indicates that the corpus callosum, which connects one part of the brain to another, may be abnormal in autistic people. In this study, people with autism were asked to complete a computer task that requires two parts of the brain to work together.

Brain scans showed that people with autism relied mostly on one brain area to solve the computer puzzle, says Marcel Just, lead author of the study and director of the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon University. The findings suggest that people with autism don’t have an efficient way to transfer information from one brain region to another, he says.

The findings add to the emerging picture of autism, but researchers have yet to pinpoint the basic flaws in the brain, says Alice Kau, an autism expert at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

“We still have a lot to learn when it comes to autism,” Kau says.

While everyone waits for the answers that may one day lead to better treatments, Just says parents can take steps now to help their children.

Cindy Meeder is doing just that: With the help of the Pittsburgh research staff, she’s working with Ethan to better negotiate his world.

Every day after school, Cindy Meeder tells Ethan to check his agenda book. She tells him to open his textbook to the right page and then has him go through his homework step by step.

That will help get Ethan through middle school, but Cindy Meeder sometimes wonders about what lies ahead: “We just have to figure out how to get Ethan to do as well as he can.”

Greg Toppo
USA Today

When the fed-up young teacher decided to quit her job in rural North Carolina in June, her resignation letter was brief — three lines. But she had more to say.

So she spoke her mind online, in an anonymous, 1,000-word Internet posting to her principal that recounted in grim detail racist teachers, obligatory prayers at faculty meetings, “What would Jesus do?” lectures and a “terrible” vice principal who “tries to sleep with the coaches.”

Although all names, including those of the school and city, were withheld, the letter was widely read. For three years, the thirtysomething teacher had been writing a popular Internet weblog, or blog, under the pseudonym First Year Teacher.

She’s one of hundreds of teachers who blog these days, uploading details from their daily lives for a firsthand look at the maddening, exhilarating, often heartbreaking world of the modern public school.

Perhaps because they are so raw and unscripted, teacher blogs — often written anonymously for fear of reprisal — are finding an audience.

Blog tracking website Technorati.com lists 848 teacher blogs; a few boast thousands of hits a week. Bloggers say readers include state or local education officials — even gubernatorial and congressional aides. College education professors have added blogs to aspiring teachers’ reading lists. And, when a school is identified or otherwise known, parents, students and colleagues read them to find out what’s really going on.

“It’s the equivalent of a dispatch from the front lines or a letter written in a foxhole,” says Alexander Russo, a former teacher and congressional education adviser who tracks the trend in his own blog, This Week in Education.

But free speech can get messy. In Winona, Minn., in March, school administrators blocked in-school access to a blog that let teachers and administrators criticize, among others, their superintendent.

A young teacher in Arkansas lost his job after blogging about having to teach wood shop without any equipment.

Another, at Chicago’s Fenger High School, began posting an anonymous blog with unflattering details about the school, including accounts of chaos after kids pulled fire alarms. The pandemonium included vandalism, fistfights, “textbooks, chalk, erasers and people being thrown out of windows” and students smoking pot while leaning against the assistant principal’s car.

Over spring break, students figured out who he was and, fearing for his own safety, he resigned.

But most other blogs are less corrosive affairs.

Lisa Cooper, 44, a teacher in Atlanta who blogs under “elementaryhistoryteacher,” says her blog helps her gather her thoughts and speak for herself.

“As a teacher, I feel like people don’t listen to me. Parents don’t listen to me, politicians don’t listen to me, the media doesn’t listen to me — but everybody tries to tell me how to do my job.”

Like hers, most teacher blogs are little more than personal journals, written as reflections on a tough day, a difficult student or parent or, perchance, a thrilling lesson.

Bloggers post ideas and inspirations — and commiserate when good lessons go bad.

“I read some of these blog posts and I feel like this sort of opens a door for me that would otherwise be shut,” says blogger Joanne Jacobs, author of the 2005 book Our School. She likens bloggers to embedded war correspondents: “They don’t see the whole war, but they see one part very intensely.”

Most blithely mix the personal with the professional. One Tuesday in July, Cooper celebrated her 100th posting — and her husband’s birthday. Her next posting carried a brief tribute to her mother, who had died the previous morning after a lengthy illness.

In that sense, teacher blogs are not unique. A study in July by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 77% of bloggers keep blogs to express themselves creatively, with 37% citing their lives and experiences as their primary topic. An estimated 8% of Internet users, or 12 million U.S. adults, keep a blog, the study said; 55% blog under a pseudonym.

First Year Teacher, who has since moved to Oregon and who still blogs anonymously, says she started her blog to keep up with friends from Teach For America, the elite program that places college graduates in teaching jobs.

First Year Teacher’s blog soon grew into a way to respond to people who had simplistic views about teaching — she says she was disappointed that parents expected, in her words, “the Michelle Pfeiffer version” of a teacher: perky, tenacious, happy-go-lucky.

“You do have moments of wonderful things happening, but it’s a difficult job,” she says.

Her blog is generally cranky, but with moments of humor: “I am on a million committees because that is what English teachers do.”

Jay Bullock, 31, an English teacher in Milwaukee who writes rambles and rants at folkbum.blogspot.com, blogged anonymously for six months beginning in 2003 but ended up going public. “I have a pretty strong union, so I’m not worried about reprisal,” he says.

He blogs to defend public education in general and teachers specifically. “So much of the criticism of education that I read is from people who don’t actually have a good sense of what goes on day-to-day in the classroom,” he says.

Joe Thomas, 37, a high school history teacher in Mesa, Ariz., writes Shut Up and Teach. He calls it “therapeutic” and rarely writes about his classroom. He often writes simply to defend teachers. “Public education does a really good job,” he says. “Warts and all, it’s one of the best things government has ever done.”

But a few teachers write “warts and all” accounts of what goes on in schools — and it isn’t pretty.

In Get Lost, Mr. Chips, Matt Lotti, 25, a substitute teacher in Lehigh Valley, Pa., visits a new school each day and writes about out-of-control teachers and military recruiters following high schoolers through lunch lines. “I feel like I’m in Alice in Wonderland,” he says. “Nobody uses their heads.”

But that approach is dangerous, says blogger Dennis Fermoyle, 55, a Warroad, Minn., history teacher who writes the blog From the Trenches of Public Ed.

“I think sometimes we shoot ourselves in the foot. If you’re in public education, you’ve got to understand that when you do things like that you’re really adding to the load against us. Bad things happen, there’s no question, but a lot of good things happen, too.”

They may make good reading, but do blogs make schools better?

The blogosphere split over that question last spring, when the anonymous teacher-blogger at Chicago’s Fenger High posted a series of rambling, caustic narratives titled Fast Times at Regnef (Fenger spelled backward). He painted a picture of a dangerous, chaotic school where students showed up stoned, skipped class to sell drugs, trashed teachers’ cars and had sex in the hallways.

As it turned out, the blogger, who quit after students learned his identity, was a history teacher who had helped a group of students make it to the county finals of a mock trial competition.

“A lot of kids liked him,” Fenger principal William Johnson says. “He was a popular guy. “

Johnson says that about a third of what was said was true but that he “just tore down a lot of bridges and embarrassed a lot of people.”

In the end, though, the attention “forced us all to take a look at ourselves.” Fenger’s student council started a peer jury for discipline proceedings, and students voted to adopt uniforms for fall semester.

Although Johnson says he doesn’t agree with what the teacher did, “he got the attention of the school community.”

 

Tony Gioventu
Province

Dear Condo Smarts: We live in an older apartment (now condo) building in Nanaimo. There has always been a central laundry facility on the first floor that served all of the owners. Now two owners on the third floor have installed washers/dryers and installed venting without permission. This strangely seems to coincide with owners on the first floor complaining about soap suds in their toilets. Can owners alter their own plumbing and electrical without the permission of the strata corporation?

— John & Lilly

Dear John & Lilly: Owners may make alterations to their strata lots without the permission of the corporation that do not change the structure of the strata lot, or affect the common facilities, as permitted in the bylaws.

Basically this means decorating, no more.

Critical in your case is your third- floor owners altered and damaged the building exterior by coring vents through the building exterior systems, which are common property, as well as part of their strata lots. All these actions required the written permission of the strata corporation and building permits.

So in this case the strata council needs to proceed with bylaw enforcement.

Options include fining the third-floor owners in accordance with your bylaws and requiring the strata-lot owner to restore the unit and common property to the same condition as it was prior to the alteration. Many older buildings have shared laundry facilities. While they are not always convenient, they are economical both for the strata and the residents, and they greatly reduce the risk of dryer-related fires in strata lots and washing-machine flooding over multiple floors. [email protected]

© The Vancouver Province 2006

 

CONSTRUCTION I Special partnerships designed to ease financial burden of project

Bruce Constantineau
Sun

Cost-conscious Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre officials — worried about potential overruns at the $615-million expansion project — will sign creative partnerships that will see suppliers pay some of the expenses to complete the new building, VCEC president Barbara Maple said Friday.

She noted VCEC recently signed a deal with food and beverage supplier Centerplate Catering that has Centerplate providing the kitchens and cooking equipment in the expanded convention centre due for completion in late 2008. Similar arrangements with other suppliers are currently being considered.

“There are some really good partnerships we can have that will alleviate some of those costs,” Maple said, following a speech to the Vancouver Board of Trade.

Rising labour and materials costs in B.C.’s booming construction sector have created major concerns among convention centre officials with a mandate to keep the expansion project on time and on budget. The federal government last week rejected a B.C. bid for more money to cover cost overruns.

Russ Anthony, president of the Vancouver Convention Centre Expansion Project, said about 80 per cent of the project has been tendered now with firm prices in place.

“Once we get the rest of our tenders in place, we’ll have a lot more confidence that we can meet our objectives and our budget,” he said in an interview.

He said workers will begin erecting steel on the expansion project site this fall while glazing work starts early next year. Contracts are in place to have the work done but labour shortages can create issues around safety and productivity, Anthony said, as workers deal with overtime and extended hours.

He said at this stage of the project, the options to cut costs are limited because the scope and design of the new facility have been set.

“The thing to remember about our project is that we are a revenue-generating asset so we have to meet certain requirements, with respect to the quality and size of the building, to satisfy the demands of the market,” Anthony said.

The project will more than triple the size of the existing convention centre to 472,140 square feet of total function space.

Maple said the new facility will generate an annual economic impact of $650 million, more than three times what the current centre brings in. She said a recent study found that out-of-town delegates generate $553 in daily spending — four times the average daily spending of other visitors.

“We have solid revenue targets for the building but, having said that, convention centres are loss leaders in almost every market,” Maple said. “They’re designed for their economic impact.”

She said the expanded convention centre has already attracted major events like the MPI World Education Conference, with 3,500 delegates in July 2010, and the American College of Chest Physicians Conference, with 6,000 delegates in October 2010. Maple said they are among more than 70 “expansion-size” events in various stages of the booking process.

The new facility is expected to host its first convention around January 2009 and will continue to host events until September of that year, when it is turned over for use as a broadcast and media centre for the 2010 Olympics until March of 2010.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

A review of the CMHC’s role and culpability has been shelved

Peter O’Neil
Sun

Beer still king of brew, but B.C. wine sales jump 12.2%

Lena Sin
Province

The noble grape is winning the battle for drinking palettes in British Columbia.

Growth in sales of wine in B.C. was up 12.2 per cent in 2004/2005 from the previous year, according to a new Statistics Canada survey on the sale of alcohol.

“What’s happening is you’ll find more and more people are into wine,” said Tony Stewart, a director of the B.C. Wine Authority and co-owner of Quails’ Gate Estate Winery in the Okanagan. “More people will bring a bottle of wine to a dinner party instead of other beverages and they’re way more wine knowledgeable.”

Nationally, the growth rate for wine was up by 6.5 per cent.

For the first time since statistics have been kept, wine is outselling spirits across the country.

Figures show Canadians spent $4.23 billion on wine for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2005, compared to $4.08 billion on spirits.

Beer remains the undisputed king of alcohol, racking in national sales of $8.45 billion.

Stewart attributed the renaissance of wine in part to a greater awareness of its health benefits. Recent studies show that drinking one glass of red wine a day may help protect against certain cancers and heart disease and can have a positive effect on cholesterol levels and blood pressure.

Stewart said he’s also seeing more and more baby boomers move away from cocktail hour to drinking a glass of wine over dinner.

Dalip Sharma, general manager of the Copper Chimney restaurant and bar in downtown Vancouver, said his customers are increasingly choosing wine over other drinks.

“With the publicity that red wine has received about its health benefits, people are choosing that over hard liquor,” said Sharma. “The low end of bottles — about $24, $28 — used to be the thing. But now, $45 is no problem. People readily buy $150, $250 dollar wines.”

Even his most expensive bottle of red at $900 will sell, he said.

On a per-capita basis, every Canadian aged 15 and over spent on average $161.10 on wine in 2004/2005.

Red wines accounted for 54 per cent of all sales of wines in Canada, while white wines had 32 per cent of the market.

Kevin McKinnon, manager of the Marquis Wine Cellar in Vancouver, said the rising popularity of red over white may have to do with price.

“I hate to say it, but there are more good red wines at a lower price point than whites,” he said. “I’d say around 15 years ago, you’d have two-thirds [of customers] into white, and one-third red. But it’s now about 50-50.”

While B.C.’s wineries remain a bit player in a competitive global market, sales figures have risen a dramatic 63 per cent in just three years.

Sales for B.C. Vinters Quality Alliance (VQA) wines in December 2005 topped $131 million, up from $109 million the previous year and $80 million in 2002.

© The Vancouver Province 2006

After the success of Eaglecam, Arthur Griffiths’ firm is broadcasting from a watering hole at Kruger National Park

Nicholas Read
Sun

VANCOUVER – For everyone who sat up night and day watching two bald eagles live out their wild lives atop a tree on Vancouver Island, there is now a sequel, much bigger and grander in scope.

Download www.wavelit.com, click on Africam Wildlife Channel, and there it is, life at an African watering hole, complete with lions, elephants, zebras and hyenas.

And once again, it’s being brought to you by former hockey mogul-turned-Internet CEO, Arthur Griffiths.

It was Griffiths’ company, Infotec Business Systems, that made it possible for millions of people around the world to follow the heartbreak of two eagle eggs breaking apart last spring.

Eaglecam was a surprise success for Infotec, but one Griffiths and his company paid close attention to.

“I’ve travelled the world on business related to this company, and people from every walk of life said they were watching it and their kids were watching it. Everyone was watching it,” Griffiths said in an interview Monday.

Thus, his thinking goes, if people were that turned on by just two animals, think how excited they’ll get by hundreds, which is what wavelit promises.

A camera has been placed at the Nkorho Bush Lodge near a watering hole in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. Manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the camera, which began broadcasting live on Saturday, will simply record and transmit whatever’s there, live and in colour.

Giraffes, water buffaloes, springboks, impalas, wild boar, you name it, says Griffiths. Just as with Eaglecam, nature is the director.

Even at night when comparatively little is going on — remember that Kruger is nine hours ahead of Vancouver, so the best time to watch here is in the evening, he says — viewers can still hear a cacophony of night sounds.

The basic site is free, although on Monday it was difficult to access with a Mac system. Griffiths said he was looking into that.

However, later in the month, a subscriber site will be introduced with more features, including different camera views and perhaps interviews with wildlife experts.

The site also pays for itself through advertising, Griffiths says.

He is also planning to hook up a similar system at the top of Grouse Mountain so viewers can watch the daily goings-on of Coola and Grinder, the two grizzlies that live at the mountain’s refuge for endangered wildlife.

That should be available in one to two weeks, he said. “I feel confident,” Griffiths said, “that this will surpass anything we’ve seen yet.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

 

TOM UHLENBROCK
Province

SANTA BARBARA, Calif.
   For my money, Santa Barbara is the quintessential town for California dreaming. Nestled on the beach with the Santa Ynez Mountains forming a protective barrier around it, Santa Barbara has perfect weather, gorgeous adobe-andtile buildings reflecting its Spanish heritage and a legacy of zoning laws so strict that strip malls, multistorey condos and view-hogging trophy mansions need not apply.
   The result is a town that has not gone sprawl happy during the past three decades, has reasonable traffic even down the trendy shopping area along State Street and has property values so high that the least desirable dwellings still start at seven figures.
   I had four days for a visit and was glad to be travelling solo. This is one place where you’ll surely leave with surly relatives asking, “Why can’t we live here?”
   I had spent many summers visiting Santa Barbara when friends lived in the college community of Isla Vista as on-again, off-again students. The area has two schools, City College and the University of California-Santa Barbara, which provide a steady supply of young people to keep Santa Barbara from having a retirement-community feel.
   Returning to a favourite spot after too many years of absence often is a sorrowful experience because inevitable growth has stolen much of the charm. Not so with Santa Barbara. The small airport still looked like a hacienda. Walkers, joggers, in-line skaters and cyclists still flowed happily on the recreational path that lined the wide expanse of beach. The wharf had added some new attractions, but who can complain about a wine bar with a deck looking out over the harbour?
   The five-storey Hotel Andalucia in the historic downtown was new, but built to look like it was old as the hills. Spanish tile, wrought-iron accents, blooming flowers and a rooftop pool and hot tub that offered views of the ocean, islands and mountains made it fit right in on the self-proclaimed American Riviera.
   On a clear day, you can see misty mountains 30 km out in the Santa Barbara Channel. Those are the five islands that make up Channel Islands National Park. The largest is Santa Cruz Island, now uninhabited but once the home of thousands of Chumash Indians. Legend says the Chumash hiked over a rainbow to the mainland, where Spanish Franciscans showed up in 1786 to convert them.
   That story is told in art, artifacts and architecture at Mission Santa Barbara, where 4,000 Chumash are buried in the cemetery, and the adjacent Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, which has the largest collection of the beautiful baskets for which the tribe was known.
   The Santa Barbara Botanic Garden is just up Mission Canyon Road and has a nice walk along a creek, through a grove of giant redwoods. Take the scenic loop drive around Santa Barbara, through the posh residential area of Montecito and the landscaping of the gated mansions is a botanic garden of its own.
   The Ty Warner Sea Center is a new attraction on Stearns Wharf and has tanks full of sea creatures such as a two-spot octopus, eccentric sand dollars, sunflower stars and sea cucumbers, which you can pick up to examine.
   I went to Santa Barbara Harbor and found the Maritime Museum, which told the history of seafaring in the area. My favourite display was a hands-on virtual-fishing demonstration, in which I hooked a marlin and tried to land it.
   “Better luck next time,” said the video.
   Upstairs from the museum was the Endless Summer bar and restaurant, which had surfboards hanging from the ceiling, surfing movies on the television and a view of the action in the harbour from the deck.
   State Street was blocked off for a farmers market, where vendors peddled fruits, flowers and vegetables. The street is sort of a mix between Rodeo Drive and Haight Ashbury, with women in designer clothes searching the boutiques and college students searching through the Hawaiian shirts in the vintage clothing shops. Skateboarding through were sun-kissed kids with the perfectly unkept look of an Abercrombie poster.
   Joe’s Café, with its wonderful neon sign, is still the place to go. And there’s a multiple choice of other bars and restaurants. Café Nirvana, which serves fusion Indian food, was next to Galanga, a Thai restaurant, which was next to Taiko, a sushi bar, which was next to the James Joyce, an Irish pub. The seared tuna at Restaurant Nu was fabulous.
   One other thing hasn’t changed in SB. The town has more than its share of homeless people, who sun on the benches of State Street or stroll with their shopping carts down the beachside recreational trail. But then, if you had to spend the winter on the streets, where would you rather be — Detroit, Chicago, Fargo, or Santa Barbara?
   I heard the butterflies before I saw them. Actually, I heard a field trip of kindergartners screaming, “Butterflies, butterflies!” as the kids beat me to the prime viewing spot at the Coronado Butterfly Preserve.
   The preserve is amid suburbia in Goleta, to the west of downtown Santa Barbara. You park on the street and follow the dirt path into a ravine filled with tall eucalyptus trees, with a boardwalk over a boggy area at the bottom. Eucalyptus trees bloom in the winter, and monarch butterflies gather here to feed.
   A rope barrier keeps visitors out of the main Ellwood Butterfly Grove, which is marked with small signs that identify it as “one of the largest monarch sites in the U.S. Monarchs arrive in the fall and stay until spring. They need the shelter of these trees to survive the winter.”
   I joined the kids, who had calmed down and were eating their snacks. One curly-haired boy had his nose to the crotch of a tree where a single butterfly rested. A tiny white tag on its wing said: “Museum of Natural History, Los Angeles.”
   Butterflies flitted through the canopy above, or gathered together on the drooping branches, making them look like orange icicles. Occasionally, the wind or some other disturbance would cause an orange explosion.
   Mary Carroll, a botanist, told the children what they were seeing: “When they cluster together, it’s just like us huddling together for warmth. Before Europeans came and changed the landscape, there used to be more eucalyptus groves. There’s some debate whether this is a recent phenomena in California.”
   The kids took off, leaving me alone with hundreds of thousands of butterflies.
   In the silence, the surreal setting was magical, like a Disney movie.
   If you go
   Solvang Gardens Lodge: At 293 Alisal Road in Solvang, the boutique-style lodge has 24 rooms, most with stone fireplaces, marble bathrooms and antique furnishings. A beautiful garden and new spa cottage are out back. Visit www.solvanggardens.com
   Hotel Andalucia: At 31 West Carrillo St. in the downtown historic district of Santa Barbara. A luxury hotel with a fine restaurant. Visit www.andaluciasb.com
   Santa Barbara Adventure Co.: Kayak trips are $85 to $105 US per person. A mountain bike and kayaking combo is $150. Surfing lessons are $105 and guided rock climbing is $115. Wine country tours are available by van and bicycle. www.sbadventureco.com
   Condor Express Whale Watching: Trips run year-round and are guaranteed or you get a “whale cheque.” A half-day cruise to Santa Cruz Island is $75 for adults and $40 for children. A 2.5-hour cruise is $35 and $18. www.condorcruises.com
   Cloud Climbers Wine and Mountain Jeep Tours: The winetasting tour is $99, the mountain tour is $69. Visit www.ccjeeps. com. Guide Lee Tomkow has a history of Santa Barbara winemaking at www.sbwinemakers.com
   Sideways: Visit the Sideways Wine Club at www.sidewayswine club.com; Vintners’Association at www.sbcountywines.com. A map is available showing the Sideways movie route through the county.
   Hitching Post II: The “world’s best BBQ steaks” is not false advertising and the grilled artichoke, seasoned with “Magic Dust,” is a wonderful appetizer. The address is 406 East Highway 246 in Buellton, www.hitchingpost2.com
   Coronado Butterfly Preserve: Visit www.sblandtrust.org/ coronado.html
   Channel Islands National Park: Visitors may swim, snorkel, hike, camp and kayak on and around the islands. The islands are home to more than 2,000 species of animals and plants, 145 of which are found nowhere else. Visit www.nps.gov/chis. There is a visitors centre in Santa Barbara.
   For more information: For wine packages, accommodations and visitor information, call the Santa Barbara Conference & Visitors Bureau at 1-800-676-1266 or visit www.santabarbaraca.com
   Inside the Santa Ynez Valley magazine is available at www. insidesyv.com. A free map is available for a “red-tile tour” of the historic buildings in Santa Barbara.
   Reading: Santa Barbara,by Barnaby Conrad and Mark Meunch (Thomas Guides); and
Santa Barbara and the Central Coast: California’s Riviera, by Kathleen Thomson Hill and Gertald Hill (Glove Pequot).

Michael Martinez
Province

Q: What do you recommend people put on their luggage tags? I put only a phone number because I had heard that thieves will know your home is vacant if you put your address on tags.

A: You’re wise not to put too much personal information on luggage ID tags, says Anne McAlpin, author of Pack It Up, a book-DVD set that offers advice about packing smart.

“Only put contact information that will be helpful to your airline” if your bags are lost, McAlpin says. “Writing down your home number if you’re not there to answer the phone doesn’t do any good.”

Instead, print only pertinent contact information: your name, your cell phone number (if you’re taking it with you), your e-mail address (if you’re bringing along your laptop or plan to check e-mail) or the number of someone back home who has your itinerary, including the hotels where you’ll be staying. If you’re staying in only one hotel during your trip, include its address and phone number.

More advice from McAlpin: Put two ID tags on the outside of your suitcase in case one is torn off; put contact information inside your luggage for the same reason; use tags that cover your information so it can’t be read by someone standing near you. And never put your home address on your tags for the reason you mentioned.

Q: I’m looking for a city in Europe that I can use as a base for a couple of weeks to visit other cities. Can you recommend one?

A: If you’re thinking of one city that puts you within reach of others by rail, consider Vienna, Austria; Brussels, Belgium; or any of several in Switzerland — Bern, Lucerne or Zurich.

From Vienna, you’re close enough to central and eastern European countries such as the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. Brussels puts you within reach of Antwerp, Belgium; Amsterdam, the Netherlands; and Paris. From the Swiss cities, you can visit Basel, Geneva and many of the country’s scenic mountain and lake areas. And if you’re interested in overnight trips, Munich, Germany; Milan, Italy; and Lyon, France, are possibilities.

© The Vancouver Province 2006