Birds August Sayonara

Dan Kennelly – Talking business off the top with an interesting note: American companies doing business on the scale of Trans Am Pipe and/or bigger are requesting/demanding stable 4-year pricing. There’s so much happening down there, they’re trying to insulate against the sort of price overages that many have suffered on major projects. Next, they’ll be asking for equal rights for women and people of colour! Oh. Wait.

Dan also mentioned Mickelson National Golf Club ( https://www.mickelsonnational.com/ ) – 10 holes. Great fun. At the start 1-2 planes coming in right overhead (close enough to read the markings on the tires, but other than that….

Henry Heuver – A rare political moment wondering what Trudeau is thinking. Among the many, many, fiscal missteps, Henry noted the fact that the man can’t apologize for his own stupidity. Henry wished that M. Justin would just take a page from Ralph Klein, who pretty much apologized every day. For his own behaviour. Not some past misdeed he had nothing to do with. Sorry, I editorialized on the back of Henry’s comments there. Inside voice.

Another note from Henry – he’s noted how MANY trees in Calgary’s urban canopy have died this year through city neglect. He estimated 100K have died. The cost to replace them (especially the larger, mature trees) is about equal to the cost of the new sports centre. (!!?) City’s maintenance on them has been terrible. In Henry’s estimation water trucks would have saved a lot of them. Maybe if the trees had purple leaves….

Gord Forsyth – Played Silverwing Golf Course ( https://www.silverwinggolf.com/ ). A hawk came swooping down. They get a lot bigger VERY fast when they’re coming at you.

Brad Pachal – Dealing with an unfamiliar acronym in tandem with a recent death: MAID. Turns out it stands for medical assistance in dying. So, he’ll be heading to Maple Creek for a funeral.

It brought a few questions to mind though – not least of which is life insurance. Andy Lockhart contributed this note at that point: most policies have a limited time suicide-invalidation of policy clause usually lasting something like two years after acquiring the policy. Then Matt Litke chimed in with a note from his experience in the health field. There are usually multiple written diagnoses concurring on the terminal nature of the illness, and everything is cleared ahead of time.

Brad added that his sister (if memory serves) mentioned that in Kelowna they have a regular person on staff at the hospital for it

Brad also thanked Michael McLennan for the opportunity to do some reno work while Michael was away recently.

Sean Baylis – Interesting August for the markets thanks mostly to The Donald (Sean’s trying for understatement of the year). The yield curve conversation in the US continues with the inverted yield curve pointing to a downturn on the horizon in 10-18 months. From there, Sean is saying that RBC is asking their clients questions like how are you positioned in your portfolio? Sean’s/RBC’s advice: reduce risk. The thinking about the upcoming downturn is not if , but when. So, focus on companies dealing in things that people NEED rather than what they want. Defensive bets include utilities, health care, and infrastructure. Infrastructure was there because governments are running out of tools to stimulate the economy and are/will be turning to infrastructure spending.

RBC also recommends to increase exposure to fixed income (bonds) rather than equities.

Then investment tips: Again, Sean recommended Crown Castle ( https://www.crowncastle.com/ ) & American Tower ( https://www.americantower.com/ ). They’re both going to be big players in the deployment of new 5G cellular infrastructure in the US and worldwide. Verizon – one of the companies on the bleeding edge of that tech in the US is another one to watch that RBC likes.

Dave Hicks – not much other than a big upcoming blow job – meaning the bagpipes of course! What were you thinking? The Calgary and Canmore Highland Games are coming up this weekend – Calgary on Saturday and Canmore on Sunday.

Other than that, Dave echoed Henry’s malaise about vote-buying/pandering by the Federal Liberals. $600-$700 million doled out to media (CBC). Now, with the election approaching, CBC appears to be biased in favour of…shocker!…the Liberals.

Mike Mikkelson . he and Renee just took a wonderful, extended road trip through Spokane, Portland and Seattle. Of note, the vineyards south of Kennewick: stunning! Washington is now the 2nd  largest premium  wine producer  in the United  States. It was long, but a beautiful driving trip. For fun, here’s a quick Yelp listing of the 10 best wineries in the Kennewick area: https://www.yelp.com/search?cflt=wineries&find_loc=Kennewick%2C+WA.

While in Seattle – staying not far from the Seatac airport and noticed new Prime Air hangars in Seattle for Amazon. Prime Air will be Amazon’s delivery service. Mike said it was hard to take in the scale of these buildings. Roughly the size of a Walmart SuperCentre and twice the height!

Michael McLennan – Thankful to Brad for great work on renos. As mentioned – Michael and Maria were away (BEST time to have renos done!). Not sure if it was the Azores islands in this instance, but they were visiting islands off the coast of Portugal with 32 of their closest family members for a reunion event. They happened to see a big Boeing plane land so hard that it visibly creased the fuselage of the plane! The plane was grounded, and likely written off. They *did* note it was a Russian Antonov plane that flew in with spare parts. Irony much?

On the reunion event, it was fabulous and relatively inexpensive. They rented 20 rooms, which turned out to be the entire place (which was even better for the guests). As an indication of relative cost, Michael said they rented tour busses (full tour busses with bathrooms etc) for 430 Euros for the whole day.

Another amazing sight was the white festival (do NOT try this in Canada or the US). Everyone dresses in white, and in the evening with white fabric, etc. hanging everywhere, the whole place is lit up in blacklights. it’s a big deal, 55,000 people descending on this small downtown. Beautiful! I found two photos of the festival on the Azores islands – one during the day and one at night so you could see it because it’s sort of hard to visualize. Enjoy.

The last thing from Michael was a quick note on Brett: He’s doing well (more from Matt Litke shortly on that). Brett’s deck overlooks the ravine out at their place and recently Brett had a guest: a Moose peeking through the deck railing.

Ross Mikkelsen – Out east on business and he recounted that Ontario manufacturers don’t know what to do about those tariffs.

Other note: On a recent trip to Jasper they noted it was SUPER busy!

Retail news. Decathlon opening in Canada, LL Bean and few other major entrants. There’s so much new competition in such a short amount of time. If it was another industry, for example… aerospace (looking at you Bombardier!), people would be screaming that so much competition is allowed into the sector/country in a week never mind a year.

A final note from Ross was the Graffiti “festival” that Barbecues Galore had at the north location on the north wall of the warehouse. It was more of a conscious community-building event, but the energy was remarkable! 300 people showed up in the parking lot (NOT your garden variety Barbecues Galore customer) with rap music, dancing. It was a very positive thing all around. Quick video of the finished work is below thanks to Ross. It’s not a mural, more individual independent themes peppering the space.

Andy Lockhart – Priddis evaluated for national ranking by a guy who goes around and plays courses for the Canadian ranking system. “Where were THESE jobs when I was growing up!?”

They recently had their Greens Keepers Cup – which is basically an opportunity for the turf care staff to prove how evil they can be.

Examples: On one hole, they basically put a bucket on a stepped green that made it a *wee bit* more difficult to finish that hole. One guy in the group nine-putted on that one (the 16th) and gave up.

Another hole that starts you on a tee box that you can’t see the green from had an irrigation pipe strategically placed in front of the green so you had to chip your ball over it to get onto the green.

Another hole – and another one where you can’t see the entire hole – you were forced to select two clubs to use. Declare them at the outset and stick with them until you sink it, or it sinks you. Normally you’d use the driver to get to the corner….but in that case, then you’d be stuck with the driver and whatever else you choose. Hehehe.

Don Davis – was the first to elaborate on a topic quickly brought up by Mike Mikkelson . The Calgary Coop – in a major turning away from their history and their roots will now be sourcing their wholesale foods from Save On Foods. Don voiced the sentiment around the room that this *could be* a big mistake. Roots in the community and the club were very deep. If you’d missed the story, you can catch up via the Herald article here: https://calgaryherald.com/business/local-business/calgary-co-op-to-source-groceries-from-save-on-foods-analyst-calls-move-a-major-transformation.

Don’s spent some time in Canmore recently and noted the prices of real estate (not the value) are right up there with Toronto and Vancouver. He also noted that for a ‘walking town”, it’s pretty hard to find parking to start walking. It’s wall to wall people on weekends, never mind when there’s an event on like the Folk Festival or this weekend’s Highland Games.

Matt Litke – Recently suffered through stomach flu. NOT recommended. Regarding Brett Bain , Matt had talked to Brett. He hasn’t been pain-free for years, but according to Vicki he’s better than he’s been for years. He’s been re-engaging in limited ways with work to ease himself back into things.

Matt had been looking to “rehome” his big Great Pyrenees dog, and they’ve found a new home for him: a hobby farm with sheep. So far he keeps trying to play with the sheep – and they’re not having it. He easily hops over 4-foot barbed wire fences to visit with the people on their deck. So far so good though.

Matt added one note to piggyback on Sean’s insights: Canadian big banks still seeing profits- another safe investment possibility

His final note adding to today’s “Trudeaumania” was bringing up another federal payout – this time in the form of a law inviting non-status First Nations people to reapply to claim their “status”. That opens up the possibility of as many as 400,000 individuals to reclaim some “status”. This could affect people going as far back as 1965 who might have lost their status after leaving reserves, women will likely be the single largest group affected.

Bob Wiggins – First thing – (in a whisper) prices at Inglewood were supposed to go up in August…but haven’t. Shhhhhhh.

Also: Saskatchewan is NOT only FLAT! See photos here: https://www.tourismsaskatchewan.com/.

He then told a great story about a guy he used to work with in Thunder Bay who asked him why anyone would ever want to visit Banff (after Bob set the record straight on why he’d want to visit Saskatchewan). Apparently, Thunder Bay boob thought Banff was such a tourist trap. When he was there – he visited Main street.

Well, Dorothy got his name and address and then contacted everyone from Banff backward to Thunder Bay for their tourism brochures and requested they be sent to that man’s address. ????

Jim Bladon – noted the story about Kevin O’Leary admitting he was “involved” in a boating collision that left 2 people dead. All sorts of wild stories are going around about it. Ross jumped in to talk about the location – Joseph Lake – and how it’s a rich, celebrity infested lake and that they pilot expensive boats drunk on a regular basis. That story’s still developing.

Jim also talked about noticing discrepancies in gas prices all throughout the city via his Gas Buddy app ( https://www.gasbuddy.com/App ). Apparently there can be up to an 11 cent spread on regular, 28 cents on premium and 22 cents in Diesel between the highest and lowest prices. According to the app, the Centex gas station in Ogden is the best place to go generally – but ESPECIALLY Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays where they take an additional 3 cents off their already best prices.