This is the scene today at Prospect Point in Vancouver's Stanley Park. Looks like an industrial clearcut, doesn't it? A ferocious windstorm buffeted the park in December 2006. Here's a January 2007 feature I wrote for CTV.ca: After the windstorm: Restoring Stanley Park.

While buying a salt-water fishing licence in the Charlottes, I made small talk with a woman who clearly wasn't a local. She spoke English with accent tinted by Parisian French.

Actually, it turns out she's from Lyon, France, has an art teaching background and was hoping to move to Kamloops and perhaps land a teaching gig.

She described her hometown as very snobby, then added, "But here, I am the snob."

My guess is that asking people in her current community what they think about a Claude Monet painting selling for $80 million wouldn't be as effective a conversation-starter as saying, "I just put a new sparkplug in my Husqvarna." :)

I'd like to know more about how urbanites would handle the transition to a very small community where everyone else is the same, and if you aren't like them, you might have your problems socially bonding with them (although I candidly admit the reverse could also apply). Part of the reason for leaving forestry behind is I didn't want to spend my life around people whose idea of a good time is driving a snowmobile through a fence (not that I didn't have my own yahoo moments in those days).

However, while she might not have many buddies to chat about art with, at least she could go for one of those coffees that mix steamed milk and espresso. What are they called again?

Ah yes! That's it! A laitte!

Wait a minute:

I suspect that would be more correct. :)

Finally, while at Tow Hill, I yakked with one local couple out with their kids. They were fishing off the rocks for halibut. The woman asked me, "Is Toronto elitist?"

Oh yes. :) I certainly wouldn't count myself among that rarified group, and certainly a wide swath of Torontonians would count as ordinary people, but it also has me wondering what an elitist is, and why it would be a pejorative in certain circles?

Does liking art, ideas or decent food make you a snob or an elitist? If so, I guess you'd have to mark me as one. Conversely, is it reverse snobbism to deride someone as "elitist" if they get art-house films and you don't? You tell me.

I rented a car in the Queen Charlottes (more on that here).

I had to pick it up from a home near the Skidegate ferry dock.

While there, a girl, whom I estimate to be about four years old, comes out. She walks over, pokes me in the sternum and asks, "Who made your shirt?"

"An artist lady," I said. "She tie-dyed it."

"Well it's messy," the kid said with remarkable bluntness. "It's a messy tie-dye."

Allow me to excuse myself for offending your already-well-developed fashion sense!

A week later, I drop off the car relatively late. The lady was nice enough to run me back to the motel.

We got to chatting about my little buddy. Apparently the kid never talked to any stranger for the longest time, but is now, er, overcompensating. :)

At a local hospital fundraiser, the kid went to some woman who was smoking and told her: "You shouldn't do that, you know. You're going to die."

While the mother wondered how to teach the lessons of socially appropriate interaction, my feeling was that perhaps she'll be an acerbic American Idol-style judge for her generation. But perhaps she's more Mr. Blackwell than Simon Cowell. :)

And if you're wondering, the physical resemblance of the fashion critic to this pop culture figure is striking: :)

The fashion critic is a cool kid, and her mom's a very nice person. I wish the two of them well.

While in Vancouver last week, almost every cab I saw was a hybrid.

Here are the rates for Yellow Cab in Vancouver:

• Flag (Includes first 1/13th KM) - $2.70
• Per Kilometer - $1.58

Here are the rates in Toronto:

• Pickup rate - $4
• Per kilometre - $1.62

That is the rate as of June 25, when the city approved a hike.

The rate hike went through in part because cabbies are screaming they can't make money in today's high-gas-cost environment.

In Vancouver, one hybrid-driving cabbie told me the vehicle is paying for itself, he's very happy with it and he's not going back to a conventional vehicle.

It left me wondering why no hybrids are showing up in Toronto's cab fleets, considering the gas-guzzling nature of the existing cabs.