A Great Day For a Walk!

Vancouver was surprisingly spectacular today, very rare for this time of the year. I seized the moment and met up with two friends downtown, Steve and Steve. The first I went to high-school with.

The second was visiting from Sudbury, Ontario. He still works for the huge mining company I was employed by between 1989 to 1994. In fact, we both started on the same day: September 5th, 1989! We talked about a lot of things including the fact that his company, Inco, can't find nearly enough workers. They need to hire at least 500 next year but just can't find qualified people. And this despite two interesting facts:

• The underground miners there are now making around $45 per hour just to come to work and then a HUGE bonus on top of that. Apparently Hummers are the vehicle of choice for many of these guys nowadays, as they're just rolling in the dough.
• The car industry in Southern Ontario is laying off tens of thousands of workers every year yet most of these people don't want to venture elsewhere. Crazy!

I mentioned to Steve an observation I made a while ago: Isn't it strange that Canada, a so-called "First World" advanced nation is now making most of its money from the primary industries of oil, natural gas, and mineral extraction, yet so-called "Third World" nations like India and China are making their money from secondary and tertiary type industries? I think this is a very weird paradox!

Throughout the day, I took several photos, which you can view here. But I'm posting some of my favourites as well.