Famous Ucluelet radio station slogans

‘We may be local but we ain’t yokel’

 

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‘Pumpin’ the wattage to the West Coaster’s cottage’

Ukee goes invitation only

UCLUELET, BC — The entire town of Ucluelet has been declared an “invitation only” community, it was announced at a press conference held this morning.

Tho conference was called by two mysterious local eccentrics known only as The Empress and The Duke, a reclusive pair who are rarely seen in town but who have declared themselves west coast royalty.

At the conference, The Empress announced that a giant gate with a drawbridge will be erected at the top of Garbage Dump Hill — “to be known in henceforth as Mount Jack,” Her Highness decreed — and only those with a written invitation from The Empress herself will be allowed to pass.

As for residents now living in the community, The Duke said those who are invited by The Empress to remain in Ucluelet may do so, and they will receive a letter to that effect by the middle of February. Anyone who does not receive such a letter will be required to pack up and leave by the end of February, he said.

Council could not be reached for comment, as it was in an emergency meeting with a team of architects, planning the building scheme for new housing in Ukee’s most prestigious gated “community,” the Signature Circle. As per usual, residents’ only comments were along the lines of “Huh?” and “Whatever.”

Playing what we’ve got — NOT! Tattler sues Edge FM for breach

In a development that sent shockwaves through the broadcasting industry, the Ukee Tattler has launched a B.C. Supreme Court lawsuit against 99.5 FM The Edge radio station for alleged breach of public contract.

Tattler editor Hack Vertue said he filed the suit out of compassion for fading pop stars whose royalty payments are no longer keeping up with their obscenely lavish lifestyles. He claims the Edge motto “Playing What We’ve Got” is directly contradicted by all the public nuking of songs by Michael Jackson, Barbra Streisand and other lame or wimpy musicians, along with any and all rap tunes.

“They have in fact got all this great music and they’re not playing it,” said Vertue. “What’s worse, they’re mocking it. That’s not ‘playing what we’ve got.’ I call it a grave betrayal, both of their own promise and of the public trust. Who among us won’t benefit from hearing [Michael Jackson tune] Thriller one more time? Whose toes don’t start tapping when Fifty Cent comes on?”

Radio stations and other media outlets are watching developments closely. A ruling against The Edge could have massive consequences for media conglomerates country-wide. “Media might actually have to start putting meaning back into its programming,” said one industry analyst. “That would be a seismic shift in the industry, which for years has based itself on putting out increasingly meaningless product.”

In the event the Supreme Court is booked up, Ucluelet Council has agreed to fill in for them at one of the regular COW meetings.

For Granny M, success is ‘in the can’

They say necessity is the mother of invention, but in this case it’s the grandmother. Aged entrepreneur Carolina Matterson, 78, believes she has come up with the solution to Ucluelet’s perennial problem of seasonal tourism.

The idea came to her while she was reminiscing about the old days to some of her grandchildren. “Back then, dearie,” says Granny Matterson, “we made all sorts of clever preparations for the winter season. We dried berries, smoked fish, laid in potatoes and flour so we wouldn’t go hungry.

“Well,” said the doughty grandmother of five, “we did all that when we had the resource economy. I just thought, maybe the same thing would work for a tourist economy. We used to can salmon to get through the off season. Why don’t we can the tourists now?”

So began two years of experimentation. First Granny M built several tiny detention cells in her basement, which she jokingly refers to as “the cans.” Then she had to figure out how to lure tourists into the cans, and how to keep them alive for weeks or months on her slim government pension cheque. In fact, confesses Granny, she lost a few during the early days. “Not enough bread and water,” she says with a wink. “Fortunately there’s a huge supply, so the few we lost didn’t make a dent.”

There were other problems to overcome, in particular the tourists’ reluctance to spend time and money in town after their release from the can. “Most of them just wanted to go home after being locked up for so long. That was a toughie,” says Granny M, who won’t say how she solved it. “Let’s just call it my little trade secret.”

If Granny Matterson’s market tests pan out this winter, her invention has a huge potential for franchising in tourist traps world-wide. Tofino has already shown some interest, she says, but her first mission is to turn Ucluelet into a year-round orgy of tourism prosperity. “I’ve lived here 54 years,” she says. “Ukee feels sort of like home to me, and I want to see it doing well.”

Nicky T — how long? The poll pool

The writing was on the wall for this one since the day after the municipal election, in which inexperienced but persistent candidate Nick Thorp finally ousted eternal incumbent Erik Larsen in what some called the coup of the century. Unfortunately for the progressive element of town (all six of them), it was same-old same-old for the other four positions on council, which now encompass a collective pool of experience (read “fixed ideas”) extending back to the last Ice Age, which is roughly when their policy ideas were developed. Ukee is thus assured that everything will carry on in exactly the same forward-thinking fashion as before.

Some called the election result a tiny breath of fresh air. Others expressed relief that we have at least one councillor who isn’t likely to be dead in ten years. And others wonder whether this might be the harbinger of a whole new era for the town.

For the Tattler, though, there’s only one question worth pondering as Councillor Thorp takes up his thankless burden: How long can Nick last in the dinosaur pit?

So, fellow Uclueless, this is your chance. Click the comment button below and enter for posterity your guess of how long Nick is going to survive as go-boy for the machinating geriatrics. When will he run screaming from council chambers, never to return? How long before he’s carried drooling from some sub-sub-committee meeting, eyes glazed over beyond the reach of modern psychiatry? When will Ukee’s newest councillor finally snap?

Whoever guesses closest to the actual date will get front-page mention on the Ukee Tattler, bragging rights for a year, plus a special, no-charge opportunity to run for council in that very same byelection!

P.O. launches ‘work to rule’ campaign

Ucluelet residents who have grown accustomed toreceiving special favours at the post office will now have to do without, Tattler sources learned today. In a head-office crackdown, workers at the local branch will no longer be allowed to offer the little perks and courtesies they have commonly been offering.

“This is it!” said Regional Post Office Sub-Branch Oversight Specialist Thomas Frown by phone from Vancouver. “All those special favours you’ve been getting because you live in a small town … the mail redirection, the help wrapping parcels, the free-and-easy P.O. boxes, the buying of stamps when you’re a few pennies short, the looking up of postal codes, the courtesy stamp-licking … all that will be terminated as of today.”

A terse press release said, “The Ucluelet post office franchise has been getting away with murder in the customer service department, acquiring a coastwide reputation for friendliness and service beyond the call of duty. We are coming down hard on those responsible. This type of behaviour is simply not in the cards for a faceless, profit-driven private crown corporation.” The press release went on to say that, from now on, all customer transactions were to proceed “by the book” only. The picture abovet shows the current Canada Post rulebook being delivered to the Ukee post office.

Ucluelet post office personnel are being scheduled for intensive 6-week refresher courses in post office regulations, on a rotating basis over the next few months. Staff, looking grim, would only comment that according to regulation 21718.37.2(c) they were no longer allowed to comment.

Princess moo-ves on new initiative

Oak Bay Marine Group, which owns Ucluelet’s Canadian Princess resort, will launch a bold new marketing initiative when it opens for business this year at the end of April. At a press conference this week, the Victoria-based resort company announced it will be selling Canadian Princess sportfishing packages to herd animals of all species, not just homo sapiens.

Last year’s test marketing on small groups of Alberta Red Angus (pictured right, click to enlarge) indicates wide market interest, said Oak Bay director of marketing Darryl Potsdamm. “We feel this initiative meshes perfectly with the ‘pack-em-in’ ethic that is becoming the norm in West Coast tourism.”

Duke Ledbaluun, a Canadian Princess charter captain who took one herd out on an offshore halibut trip late last summer, is enthusiastic about the initiative. “Them bovines had a [expletive deleted] great time,” he said. “The people on board had tons of fun too,” he added, “once they got over the [expletive deleted] smell.”

Long known informally as the “cattle boats” of the industry, Canadian Princess charter craft will soon bear that moniker officially. And company principals are delighted with the change, said Potsdamm. “With a whole new class of customer already accustomed to being jammed into inhumanly tight spaces, the passenger count on our vessels will skyrocket — along with revenue,” he said with a grin.

Related West Coast businesses are reported to be watching the development with interest, with some tentatively adding oats and hay to their box-lunch menu options.

Although the manure problem remains to be fully worked out, Princess managers believe they should be able to simply hose it off the deck once the boats are back at their berths in the Inner Harbour. “Given the extent of our environmental impact already, this little bit extra shouldn’t be an issue,” said one manager.

Potsdamm concurs. “Barring an outbreak of Mad Cow, we expect to be driving cows, horses, and possibly bison up the loading ramps alongside the Japanese and American tourists by early summer,” he said.

More citizen deals with Amadon

In the wake of “Oyster” Jim Martin’s widely publicized deal with the Amadon Group, wannabe developers of the Weyerhaeuser lands, several new initiatives have sprung forth from Ukee citizens eager to get in on the ground floor of the planning process.

April “Hotsauce” Rodrigues was the first to go public, announcing that she had reached an agreement with Amadon representatives to construct a Mexican-themed Wild Pacific Trail, with wandering mariachi bands, authentic taco stands, and imported child pickpockets to entertain visitors and locals alike.

No sooner was the ink dry on that agreement than James Elroy Succulente, who lists his address as “George Fraser Memorial Park,” announced his agreement with Amadon on the “Wild Pacific Campground.” Preliminary architect’s drawings (done on the bottom of a scavenged pizza box) seem to indicate the trail will be, according to Succulente’s agreement, a 4-km-long free camping zone by the water’s edge, complete with Amadon-built shelters, showers and pit toilets.

Not to be left behind, Crag “Chainsaw” Cranston, president of the local chapter of Treecutters Anonymous, unveiled his own agreement with Amadon early this week. Cranston’s concept has the trail wandering through an “logging theme park,” with free chain saws for all, that will eventually evolve into an “environmentally sustainable clear-cut harvest zone” to enhance viewscapes from every single metre of the trail.

Several more citizens have indicated they are near to signing agreements with Amadon, to be unveiled in the coming weeks before the development proposal goes to public hearing.

Amadon officials have remained uncommunicative regarding how they plan to reconcile all these conflicting agreements. Spokespeople for the Wild Pacific Trail Society, wearing full-face balaclavas and body armour at a press conference, speculated that it was a cheesy attempt to placate the “six or eight” concerned citizens of Ucluelet until Amadon’s development proposal is passed by council, at which point the giant developer would do what it dang well liked, “which is what’s going to happen anyway,” the WPTS press release said.

Cops bust up CBT meeting

The Clayoquot Biosphere Trust came up for a little RCMP attention this month when their routine board meeting turned ugly. “Things seemed to be going well,” said CBT director Stanley “Kowalski” Boyhunk, when a discussion broke out over whether the caviar and champagne, routinely supplied at CBT meetings, were up to scratch. “Then they got into whether the cigars were genuine Cuban or not, and it just went downhill from there.”

“The debate was split along the usual factions,” said CBT glorified secretary Craig Passingthru. “A tom-ay-to/tom-ah-to, suspenders vs. belt, yo-mama-wears-army-boots sort of thing.”

Replacement of broken chairs, tables and state-of-the-art audiovisual equipment, along with repairs to the facility walls and bail bond expenses, are expected to cut significantly into the CBT’s trust fund revenue this year, making for cutbacks in the number of exclusive luxury retreats the board can send itself on.

Below, board members at the meeting look on as directors Tim Webfoot and Don McMilligan agree to disagree on some fine points of policy.

Ukee’s Raging Granny has knickers in twist

Ucluelet’s Granny Matterson doesn’t like what she sees, and she’s not afraid to say so.

In an interview outside Matterson House Restaurant, where she works as a street-side greeter, Granny M had nothing good to say about the direction Ucluelet seems to be taking into its future. “These people got the imagination of a gnat,” she said, of developers, residents and the town governance.

The feisty Granny M, who declined to reveal her age, is dismayed by initiatives that are turning Ucluelet into a resort town like many others, and undermining the older, friendlier Ucluelet that she herself represents. She cites as an example the district’s “resort signage” initiative, based on signs council saw while on an expensive, taxpayer-funded junket to Whistler two years ago. That process eventually resulted in Granny M being outlawed on district property and replaced by “world-class resort signage.”

“Yeah right,” said Granny M. “Like people can read those [expletive deleted] signs. Council doesn’t get out much, do they? I been working this street near fifteen years, rain or bleeping shine,” she added, “and now I’m out of a job” — a fate she shares with those forced to sell and move away because of rising real estate and cost of living. “This town’s goin’ down the toilet,” she said. “But I been there before, and I ain’t gettin’ flushed.”

Already a veteran of several confrontations with the law, Raging Granny Matterson seems to take a certain satisfaction in standing her ground and having to be physically carried off district property. “That new bylaw guy’s a horndog,” she said with a wink. “He can pick me up any day of the week, if you know what I mean.”

Granny M assured the Tattler she plans to continue her battle against the homogenization of Ucluelet. “Think they can get rid of me just like that?” she said. “Me and Betty [Krawczyk, a famous Raging Granny] been talking, we got plans. Council can kiss my wrinkled, splintery ass.”