Country meets city. Vancouver councillor and UBCM director Pete Fry shares his side project with us.

Thanks to digiboy, Hollywood or punk rock, Pete Fry for being our 16th featured guest on this, the Green Antler's 33rd waterfowl #podcast. I learned about how this is Pete's 3rd year as an appointee on the UBCM executive, which is how I have had the chance to make his acquaintance. He shines some light on what life is like with 700 000 people and a collective city budget of 1.5 billion. It all seems pretty abstract to me but then he shares a story of our other UBCM colleague Laurey-Anne of Quesnel trying to finance a new bridge in her community. We talk about our roots in climate activism, acid rain, nuclear waste, mines, weapons or power. Then he told me about a German company making a kind of plug in, to retrofit lamp posts for hybrid cars that can use the electrical from street lamps to charge batteries at parking spots that automatically bills your Hydro account. This company was then bought by shell oil. We talk about how the pandemic has lasting effects for the hotel industry, explosions of short term rentals, vacancy rates and negative behavior like graffiti on the street level. My favorite part is when he says luddite stuff like paradoxes of growth driven capitalism but it's also so interesting to hear about how even Vancouver is having to increase taxes to make long overdue infrastructure improvements on storm and sanitary sewers. It was news to me that investments on replacement should be at 1% a year but often get under sexier side projects. As the provinces systems come back online and as we elected governments start to imagine a post covid recovery we can focus on policy choices like cruise ships scrubber, ballast condensate, marine gasoline and the effects on shellfish or salmon in the straight of Georgia. Lastly he shares his personal project, that he's working off the side of his desk that has roots with the PNE, the provincial fair. From 4H agricultural exhibits to carnival rides he most remembers the Challenger Relief map which was made by George Challenger, a surveyor, with his children as a family project cut out of jigsaw Douglas fir plywood. It has been in storage since 1997 in a hanger but Pete has hopes for a unveiling. He is buliding a website to fundraise to revive this bit of history that, as a child made an impact on him, really helping teach about Vancouver and other places in the greater British Columbia landscape.