Welcome to Spurlake – Background Reading and backstories into the characters
Why are the kids leaving Spurlake you ask? Why do so many kids up and go without even leaving a note anyway?
The Repossession is based around the mountain town of Spurlake BC. It's a town easily affected by the weather. Snow in winter and floods and storms the rest of the year around. Yet it is also very beautiful and a great place to live if you love forests or rivers or waterfalls. Here is some background reading to the weather there and how it affects B.C.
The novel begins with a flood. Floods are common enough but Spurlake like other towns in the mountain areas suffer from snow run-offs as well as heavy rain that comes off the Pacific Ocean. |
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Source: The Canadian Press
January 10, 2009 CHILLIWACK, B.C. — While forecasters hoped the worst was over, the threat of mudslides remained for the waterlogged B.C. community of Chilliwack Saturday as rains began to taper off and water levels continued to recede.
The City of Chilliwack and surrounding rural areas have been under a state of emergency for days as a deluge of rain caused flooding and mudslides, prompting several evacuations. As much as 30 millimetres of rain was expected to fall by Saturday evening. However, Mr. Chapman said that's relatively light compared with the 150 to 200 millimetres that fell within 48 hours earlier in the week, and it's not enough to cause water levels to rise again. Still, many homes and streets remained flooded, damaged from mudslides or at risk of additional slides.
“What our main concern right now, as it starts to settle, is mudslides and debris coming down,” said the emergency program manager for the Fraser Valley Regional District. “More could come down. Slides have caused damaged after hitting homes, while there have been small-scale evacuations throughout the area as a precaution.”
Parts of the region were also under a boil-water advisory.
The Mayor said the flooding and slides, which have damaged homes, made roads impassable and killed livestock at local farms, have been devastating.
“Chilliwack looks like one gigantic lake,” the Mayor said in an interview. “Everybody's tired and they just want it all to go away.”
At least 25 homes had water running through them and another 50 had flooded basements.
The mayor predicted it would take at least a month after the water recedes before some homes will be ready to live in again. The city had crews going door to door to assess damage caused by the flooding and slides. Southern regions of B.C. received record amounts of snow in December followed by torrential rain this month. The combination of the snowfall and rain have flooded homes throughout the region, although the Fraser Valley appears to be hardest hit. Environment Canada issued another heavy rainfall warning for the Vancouver-area on Saturday, with as much 60 millimetres of rain expected.
The Fraser River – A History
On June 14, 1792, the Spanish explorers Dionisio Alcala Galiano and Cayetano Valdes entered and anchored in the north arm of the Fraser River, becoming the first Europeans to find and enter it. The existence of the river, but not its location, had been deduced during the 1791 voyage of Jose Maria Narvaez, under Francisco de Eliza.
The upper reaches of the Fraser River were first explored by Sir Alexander Mackenzie in 1793, and fully traced by Simon Fraser in 1807, who confirmed that it was not connected with the Columbia River. |
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Flood Damage in
Spurlake 2012
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In 1828 George Simpson visited the river, mainly to examine Fort Langley and determine whether it would be suitable as the company's main Pacific depot. Simpson had believed the Fraser River might be navigable throughout its length, even though Simon Fraser had described it as non-navigable. Simpson journeyed down the river and through the Fraser Canyon and afterwords wrote "I should consider the passage down, to be certain Death, in nine attempts out of Ten. I shall therefore no longer talk about it as a navigable stream". His trip down the river convinced him that Fort Langley could not replace Fort Vancouver as the company's main depot on the Pacific coast. Simpson and his party were the first Europeans to cross the Coast Mountains since Simon Fraser's journey twenty years before.
Much of British Columbia's history has been bound to the Fraser, partly because it was the essential route between the Interior and the Lower Coast after the loss of the lands south of the 49th Parallel with the Oregon Treaty of 1846. It was the site of its first recorded settlements of Aboriginal people
The Fraser drains a 220,000 km (85,000 sq mi) area. Its headwaters are near Yellowhead Pass, and for the first part of its course it runs northwest, reaching past 54° north before making a sharp turn to the south. At the city of Prince George it is joined by the Nechako River, then continues south and slightly east. It is joined by the Thompson River at Lytton, where it proceeds south until it is approximately 40 km (25 mi) north of the 49th parallel, which is Canada's border with the United States. It then issues from the Coast Mountains from a deep canyon (the Fraser Canyon) about 270 km (170 mi) long. The river then turns west through a lush lowland valley, known as the Fraser Valley, past Chilliwack, Spurlake, Abbotsford, Mission and the eastern and southern suburbs of Vancouver.
After 100 kilometres (about 60 mi), it forms a delta where it empties into the Strait of Georgia between the mainland and Vancouver Island. The lands south of the City of Vancouver, including the cities of Richmond and Delta sit on the flat flood plain. The islands of the delta include Iona Island, Sea Island, Lulu Island, Annacis Island, and a number of smaller islands. While the vast majority of the river's drainage basin lies within British Columbia, a small portion in the delta area lies across the international border in Washington in the United States.
The river's volume at its mouth is 112 km (27 cu mi) each year (about 800,000 gal/s or 3550 cubic metres per second), and it dumps 20 million tons of sediment into the ocean.It is the tenth longest river in Canada.
Logjams and Clear Cutting Forests
Massive logjam puts fishing town at risk
By Shannon Moneo
Soruce: Globe and Mail, June 09, 2007
A massive logjam - at least one kilometre in length and the width of the San Juan River - is threatening the fishing and tourist community of Port Renfrew and shackling migration of the river's salmon.
A massive logjam - at least one kilometre in length and the width of the San Juan River - is threatening the fishing and tourist community of Port Renfrew and shackling migration of the river's salmon.
"It's one of the biggest jams we've had to deal with," said Mel Sheng, a Fisheries Department biologist.
Long-time residents of the town, two hours west of Victoria, said they have never seen a logjam as big, Port Renfrew fire chief Dan Tennant said. "It's mind-boggling."
A logjam that was cleaned up in April on the Koksilah River near Cowichan Bay was "like a drop in the bucket" next to the San Juan blockade, Mr. Sheng said.
Hundreds of trees have choked the river about two kilometres upstream from Port Renfrew. If a bout of heavy rains and high tides coincide, the logjam could break lose and come barrelling toward the community of about 250 people.
"It could take out a whole street. There's liable to be a loss of life," Mr. Tennant said. "It's a lot of lumber to come down the river."
A bridge could also be swept away. And a new 300-metre-long logjam on the north arm of the river has the potential to destroy the area's other bridge. If both structures were demolished, the 120 members of the Pacheedaht Reserve and another 30 people would be isolated.
About 10 years ago, a logjam destroyed one bridge and it took nearly eight months to replace it, Mr. Tennant said. The large logjam, which has existed on a smaller scale for a dozen years, has ballooned to 10 times its size since December, after the winter's extreme rain and winds.
Further reading and more pictures of Spurlake can be found here ...more |
RCMP Advice: What do I do if a child goes missing?
1. STAY CALM. Contact neighbours, friends, spouse, siblings and anyone who may know where your child may be. Invite a friend or acquaintance with a "calm" manner to be with you.
2. Conduct a telephone search. Call family, friends and relatives who may wish to help. Encourage them to use their telephones to make inquiry calls so your line will remain free for incoming calls. If you have to leave the house, have an answering machine on the line or have a friend or neighbour take incoming calls.
3. Conduct a land Search. Have friends and relatives conduct a basic land search of the neighbourhood area while you are making a police occurrence report. With family and friends, try to recall the present and past few days of family situations and activities (a recent argument or disciplinary action could be the reason for hiding).
Places to check
* your home and property, including the attic for well hidden children. Do not disturb or move anything in your child's room until police have checked it. If you do, you or your family and friends may disturb valuable evidence.
* homes of your child's friends, neighbours, and relatives
* ex-spouse's home, if you are separated
* past and present baby-sitters
* school and school yard (The child may have after school activities or detention)
* community centre
* local sports facility
* parks or play areas
* shopping centres and corner stores
* video arcades
* hobby shops
* bicycle shops
* bus terminals
For suspected runaways
* Check your teenager's room. Older children may pack a few things if they are running away or might leave a note regarding their disappearance. Be careful not to disturb items in the room such as, desk papers, waste baskets, wallet, purse, linen, makeup and cosmetic bag.
* Check for signs of possible religious or cult involvement. This may be evident by looking through the books, magazines, collections, tapes, compact discs, records and personal belongings.
* Check school locker and desk for information which may help determine your teenagers plans, friends names and addresses and possible activities.
**Do not wait too long before contacting the police if you suspect your child is missing. Although it is a good idea to go through these first three (3) steps searching for the child, spending too long may be wasting precious police search time.
4. File a missing child report
More advice here: |
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Repossession
Character Profiles |
Genie Magee profile
One evening when Genie Magee was just eleven years old she heard noises outside...
It definitely wasn’t the wind. Genie had been sure it was a tree branch or something brushing again the back window but now she looked out she realised that there wasn't any wind. In fact it was hot and humid inside and even hotter out. One of those evenings when you know it isn’t ever going to cool down and you’re never going to get to sleep ...more
Rian Tulane profile
‘Didn’t your mother know Ryan has a ‘y’ in it?’
‘Why not just call you Rain – you look miserable enough’.
‘Ree what?’
Rian pronounced Ree-an was pretty used to people never getting his name right. From the moment he hit kindergarten all the way to High School not one teacher ever got it right or even tried to say it correctly once Rian had told them how to say it ...more
Renee Profile
Testing the outer limits of the Fortress was on of the important things Renee liked to do. As if this proved she was still alive, although 99 percent of her knew she wasn’t. Being neither alive nor dead or even an apparition or ghost was deeply unsatisfactory. Sometimes she thought she’d stretch how far she could go to the limit and everything would snap and they’d lose her forever and this would be a good day ...more
Reverend Schneider Profile
It was a bright summer’s day. Genie discovered she was standing by the riverside. Beside her a rush of water cascaded over a small waterfall that flowed into the Spur River. She noticed a huge barge was docked by the old pier. An ancient steam locomotive was busy shunting wagons up and down the single track to the edge of the pier. Behind her Spurlake glistened in the sunshine and although she could see the Anglican Church spire in the distance, she noticed all kinds of buildings were missing from the town ...more
Moucher Profile
You know when someone is a dog person and you definitely know when they’re not. I admit that when I arrived at Marshall’s farm I was so scared I wet myself and pretty much everything else. It was clear from the first day that she’s changed her mind about wanting a puppy and wanted to send me back ...more
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