THE QUEENS CANAL

Natsuko and I live way out in East Richmond. It's not as bad as it sounds. There is actually a lot of interesting places to explore, and the neighbourhood is full of wildlife. One of the places we like to go for walks runs along the side of a giant ditch. Richmond is sometimes reffered to as "Ditchmond" because there are so many of these. This particular ditch is HUGE. If you ever drove your car into it by accident, there is a good chance you would never be seen or heard from again.

Anyways, we like to walk along the side of this ditch because it's full of wildlife. Beavers, Muskrats, ducks (lots of varieties), turtles, and frogs, are just a few of the creatures we regularly see in the ditch. Unfortunately what you also see in the ditch is a lot of garbage. I'm not just talking about fast food containers, and plastic bags (there is lots of that though). I'm talking about big stuff.... like shopping carts, and mattresses, and the most recent addition... a @#$%ING COUCH ! Some amazing human being decided to toss their old couch into the ditch.

Now I'm ranting, but this really makes me mad. Long story short, I contacted the city of Richmond about helping to clean it up. They have been advertising an adopt-a-city-area program. So today I'm meeting with the Parks planner, and a sanitational engineer. And believe it or not, the ditch I want to adopt has a name. It's called THE QUEENS CANAL.

your pal,
Beadle