March 2010

Hello Everyone:

Thanks for taking the time to check out my blog and catch up on the latest happenings in and around.

Last month I posted some information about the rebuild of the dining room at Lac L'Achigan, the Salvation Army camp just north of St. Jerome, with which some of you may be familiar. For those unaware, there was a fire in February 2009 which badly damaged the dining room. There was the hope that since really only the kitchen portion was badly damaged the dining portion could be saved. Alas! such was not the case and the entire building was demolished. By the end of August the architect's drawings were accepted and the go ahead was given to get started. Oops, before you start, how much is it going to cost? The pencil pushers did their thing and the price tag is over $1,000,000.00! That's right over 1 million - for a wood structure dining room - as built! That seems to be the glitch. The insurance policy calls for ''replacement'' as it was. It seems the magnificent wooden trusses are costly to replace and also presented an engineering challenge as steel is the preferred product today, not wood.

Anyway, with a great deal of delays, discussing back and forth, construction finally started. Only to stop on February 12, 2010. To date there has been no further work. The explanation is relatively simple ''We are waiting for the city building inspector to inspect the foundation wall.'' The rebuild must be on a concrete foundation due to the new building code. The approval has been given and work is to start again on Monday, March 8, 2010. The contractor is still maintaining the completion date of April 30, 2010, will be respected! Time will tell!!

In the city we have had a rather mild winter with little snow. As a matter of fact, there has been so little snow, the driveway is clear and dry. And we are only at March 5.

I did visit the camp on Feb. 26 and I will post a few pictures of the snow covered site. The snow was about 30 cm deep. You can see my footprint!

The new metal roof on the chapel has been a real help in not having too much snow accumulation on the roof as this photo shows.

Until next time.

Take care.

Bill