With the new snow down and likely to hang around we enter into a yearly ritual of ski doos and 4 wheel traffic plus pedestrian traffic all vying for the same narrow space we call roads up here.

For this post I will just touch on the topic of (what to me is oxymoronic) silencers on ski doos.

Ski doo silencers seem to be manufactured for performance without any effort made to suppress the noise emanating out the exhaust.
Now this may be all well and good for race tracks and out of town wilderness ridding (my opinion is they should be banned from wilderness areas until noise effects on wildlife can be determined).

But for around town use, bane them all together. One small example of why; couple weeks ago after the very first snow fall that barely covered the ground someone decided to take his ski doo with silencer (or cracked muffler) for a run around town in the early hours of a Sunday.

Loud does not describe the noise that could be heard all round town no matter where this guy was on his machine. These silencers have the ability to frighten the bejasus out of anyone.

This resulted in quite a bit of chatter on social media, most condemning these silencers and some condemning the driver.

It does represent a bit of a problem for people who buy ski doos either new or second hand as some machines come with these silencers installed.
Alas I think the greater good has to take precedence and the owners of these machines have to pay due diligence about what is installed on the machines they are buying.

Any way it seems the social media chatter was enough for the local council to get back (it has been on the back burner for some years) at introducing town traffic by laws.

One of the by-laws they can and should introduce is noise pollution, others will be more problematic because of the type of roads we have and the conditions of the roads i.e. gravel and dusty in summer and snow in winter, some narrow to very narrow with nowhere for pedestrians to walk safely.


There was a short power outage around 3 this morning, apparently a longer one for part of the town. The primary school is closed with further updates at 11. The school is in the down town main business area.

Temperatures are a mild -5 or so, that should help with the pipes not freezing.

NLHydro we have a problem: After further inspection we have a serious issue with a pole partly down. Only thing that prevented it from crashing to the ground are the telephone and cable wires that run on the hydro poles at a lower level. 

Not sure if it is a lack of due diligence issue or a vehicle hit the pole, only two ways it could have happened.

Any way the main business section of town and homes along Middle Path Road are all without power. A line crew would have to be sent in from Goose Bay to deal with this.

It is now known that a vehicular accident precipitated the downing of the hydro pole. 

Early morn, straight road, bit of snow on road. There was also a medi vac (medical evacuation) flight this morning.

Update: Incident report; lots of rumors so wont get into them. What I am reasonably sure of is; three men in vehicle, vehicle runs off road, hits hydro pole and snaps it off near bottom, vehicle hits mound of dirt and rock near pole, vehicle rolls couple time, one perp ejected out but OK. Two perps trapped in vehicle, one OK one unconscious for a time, this is the guy medi vaced out.

Vehicle has front and rear glass busted out, air bag activated. 

Hydro line crew landed at noon, immediately on scene to do repairs and replacement of pole, rather a big job, power out could last until tomorrow.

Well it seems I put too much trust in some information I presumed was a good source. Funny how some people try and hide the truth based on where one is from. Any way there is official news out on the incident now.  Some folks are in serious do do I would think.