Saturday, February 15, 2014

Weeping Cedar Woman Update

I haven't got the actual wording of the motion regarding the Weeper but from what I can gather council has voted (not Garth ) to direct staff into looking at alternative funding possibilities for the statue that aren't from local taxation .I hope council realizes that all RMI and grant money is from taxpayers somewhere.There seems to be an attitude that RMI or grant money is more freely spent than money from local taxation.Every minute of staff time that is spent on this ridiculous pursuit costs the taxpayer !!
  What will happen when a group of citizens want council to erect a statue to Beef (Terry Johnson) or Epor (Derek Russel) or Ratso (Randy Steenhill) ? Will all council business be put on hold while hours of discussion are spent on these proposals ?
  Maybe council should consider a statue of Bob Wingen ,Hilmar Wingen and Tom Wingen by Wingen Lane ?
A statue of Katie Monks across from the Hippie Bakery might be nice.......Maybe a tribute to Dennis Singleton at the corner of First and Main ?? How about a replica of the Stubbs Isle at the Village Green ?
I'm sure everyone would like to see something.....maybe we should all write to council with our ideas and present as delegations until we get our way or this whole nonsense stops !!!

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

web.uvic.ca/clayoquot/files/appedix/Appendix2.pdf‎

Anonymous said...

The Friends of Clayoquot Sound (FOCS) started as a radical group of various and sundry American draft-dodger hippies, traditional Nuu-Chah-Nuulth natives, tree spikers, and other dissident voices against the clearcut logging of the largest remaining lowland coastal temperate rainforest (280,000 ha.) [located on BC's Vancouver Island]. In fact, one of the former directors of FOCS started the Society for the Protection of Intact Kinetic Ecosystems (SPIKE), which openly advocated spiking and claimed to have put nails into 20,000 trees.

Another director was convicted of burning a bridge to a logging site. Yet, by the summer of 1993, the campaign to save Clayoquot had evolved into one of massive civil disobedience; all summer long, every single day, one of the main logging roads was blockaded by crowds varying from perhaps 5,000 on the first day when the band Midnight Oil played, to just a handful of folks. Over 1,000 people were arrested that summer for criminal contempt of court by defying a court injunction to stay off the road. An extraordinary diversity of people came out and got involved: from raging grannies to loggers, peaceheads to saboteurs (more on that in a moment), New Agers to Anglican clerics, people came from all walks to take part. Hell, even a dozen Basques showed up who spoke no English but said in Spanish, “clearcutting kills men and the beasts.” Unfortunately, the campaign was to a certain extent controlled by the “peace nazis,” who were afflicted with a bad case of tunnel vision. Even though there were often hundreds of people around, the only form of protest allowed by FOCS was the stand-in-the-road-while-they-read-you-the-injunction-and-then-cart-you-off demonstration; consequently, there were only a few days all year that the logging was actually stopped. Usually, it was only a matter of a few minutes for the police to remove the demonstrators and then the trucks rolled on by.

Rainbow Warrior said...

Maureen and her neighbours - by then they called themselves the Friends of Clayoquot Sound - needed outside help. So in April 1983, they invited press, public and the local native communities to an Easter Festival in Clayoquot. To their surprise, several hundred people came and along with them, a CBC TV crew. To their even greater surprise, Chief Moses Martin told the crowd in the school gym that the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations had declared Meares Island Island a "tribal park"; the island that white people call "Meares", he said, is the garden of the Nuu-chah-nulth peoples; visitors are welcome, but they must leave their chainsaws behind. The school gym was stone silent. B.C. politics had just taken a sharp left turn.

Or so it seemed to Adriane Carr, a young geography teacher and new mother out from Vancouver for the festival. The next day, she watched the raising of Weeping Cedar Woman. The 6-metre high carving shows Cedar Woman crying long streams of tears as she points to the earth. Her other hand is raised, palm out, to say, "Stop."

"It was a typical West Coast spring day," Carr remembers, "rainy and miserable. But just when they got the pole upright, the sun broke through and a rainbow formed around Cedar Woman's head. That was it for me."

Anonymous said...

Anyone care to guess who the bridge burning eco terrorist is that 10:22 refers to? Could it be someone council is bowing to? Come on council, walk away from it!

Anonymous said...

Many of the Clayoquot protestors like Berman have become quite wealthy. They could easily pay cash for the Weeping Woman but they want to burden the taxpayer of Tofino. Langers sold their property at a large profit.If the Friends want it they should pay for it.

Raul Estate said...

No Woman, No Cry as Bob Marley put it! No thanks.

Anonymous said...

This is getting to the point where this work of art in question should be called "the weeping woman of Babel" for all the differing and opposing opinions that are coming forth some of which are true, some wrong, some wrongheaded, and those which are partly true and partly wrong.
how is a city Council to figure out this issue before it considers spending public money or staff time on something as unclear as this?
the problem for us taxpayers sitting in the bleachers is that so far it appears that to someone this issue is clear. or one version of the weeping woman is the one that's believed.
if this procedure so far reflects the future of public art procurement policies as well as amenity policies and any other policies, it appears the taxpayer is doomed if they care about how informed their elected representatives are about the legitimacy of projects their tax dollars/time are spent fooling around with. doomed i tell ya.

Anonymous said...

of course, a replica of the fishing vessel " stubbs Isle" in front of the fire hall would get the message across to anybody that dares to vote against something that the directors of the FOCS are for.
with a plaque commemorating the deliberate burning of the stubbs isle almost immediately after the vessel's owner cast the deciding vote in a Council meeting supporting an issue which the FOCS was against.
where was Adriane carr and her kids to watch the miracle of someone's method of earning a living go up in smoke.
it was an act cod.
it was magic.
and yes, down by the Eik st. Cedar, a heroic monument immortalizing "SPIKE" a former director of FOCS who unfortunately, met a sad end in Australia where, at last report, he was doing hard time for getting caught importing a few million hits of ecstasy.
tsk tsk.
a bronze commemorative plaque will tell everyone that Spike, during the Meares Island protests in the 80s, was the Johnny Appleseed of spiking trees on Meares Island to prevent the logging companies from cutting them down.
during the harrowing siege M & B laid down on tofino, Spike sent Adam Zimmerman, a director of both M & B and CIBC, a Christmas card including an invoice from Ackland's in port alberni for 200 ardox 8" spiral nails(spikes).
however, in good Christmas cheer, Spike added a comma and 2 0s to this number making it 20,000.
Meares Island was spared.
I am thankful for this and think Spike would be a much more meaningful piece of public art about the effectiveness of civil disobedience than a crying person carved out of a log to commemorate logging protests.
after all, Spike was, in one way or the other, martyred.

Anonymous said...

Spike drinks not trees

Anonymous said...

The bridge burners paid their dues to society and should now enjoy the rights and freedoms enjoyed by the rest of society.

Anonymous said...

Why can't we get a council that will simply run the town ? Look after the sewer and water and basic infrastructure.Never mind electric trucks and eco everything.
We don't need monuments to conflict.We need responsible government.

Ralph Tieleman said...

Tofino council could have simply acknowledged receipt of the request regarding the Weeping Cedar Woman.No action had to be taken at this time.It would seem prudent to deal with the budget before discussing frivolous proposals.

Anonymous said...

No one was ever charged with the burning of the MB crew boat or the Stubbs Isle.These unfortunate incidents were probably the result of faulty wiring or operator carelessness.They were fully investigated and not deemed suspicious.

Anonymous said...

eggzellent point!
deal with reality - infrastructure, budgets - instead of wooly ideological projects

Anonymous said...

m & b crew boat?
as we know, just ask the fire dept., boats burn a lot here.
especially on purpose accidentally.
and without explanation.

Anonymous said...


Pathetic! ... this System.

5 days later... the Community is still touching in the Dark about what happened on Tuesday in the Council Chambers. (They might have bought this Weeper already, who know's)
What are you all waiting for?? The 2nd Hand reporting of the Newspaper with their interpretation of what happened on Tuesday...?

Ralph Tieleman said...

I checked the District of Tofino website for news on this issue but there is nothing posted in the meeting highlights section.

Anonymous said...


How is it possible that on February 9th one of the Environmentalist from the interest group is already announcing on the Facebook page from Westerly News (2 days before the February 11th Council Meeting)
"DONATIONS ARE BEING ACCEPTED AT THE DISTRICT OF TOFINO, FOR WHICH DONORS WILL RECEIVE A TAX RECEIPT"
https://www.facebook.com/WesterlyNews? (See right column)

This same person wrote on "February 4th" on the "Personal" Facebook page of a "Government Official".....
"THANK YOU TO THE DISTRICT OF TOFINO FOR BEING ABLE TO SUPPORT US IN PROVIDING TAX RECEIPTS FOR DONATIONS"

(The Facebook page of this "Official" was removed immediately after Tuesday's meeting.)

Anonymous said...

if 11:52 is correct, this is a disgraceful use of staff time and a perversion of the goodwill, if any, of the elected officials.
i would suggest this type of crap illustrates clearly just how narcissism behaves in environmental politics.
eco-business crony capitalism at work.
meanwhile raw doodoo continues to puke into the otherwise pristine waters of clayoquot sound

Anonymous said...

doo doo in the water, do you have 8 million