Consumption of refined sugar is the most pleasant means of gradual suicide.

On Easter Monday (April 13, 2009) we finally stepped out of the house and went on an excursion. The cherry blossoms are out in Vancouver and Spring is finally in the air. We hadn’t been out in months. We decided to head down to False Creek and check out how the building of the Olympic Village was going.

Along the walk I kept getting Midnight Oil’s song Blue Sky Mine popping into my head. To be honest I am not sure if this happened before or after I took the photos of the old Canadian Sugar Refinery Building, but it probably doesn’t really matter. I found it interesting that this song kept nagging at me as it has been a very long time since I have heard music in my head like this.

Vancouver’s sugar refinery was established in 1890, by B. T. Rogers and was the beginning of Rogers Sugar. It was:

Ideally located to receive shipments of raw cane sugar from Pacific regions and to access Canada’s rapidly developing western markets.source

The refinery was Vancouver’s first major industry not based on logging or fishing. The Vancouver refinery is an efficient, productive facility to this day, and $1 million is invested annually in this plant. source

The reason that I mention the song Blue Sky Mine is because it makes me think perhaps that this is one of the ways that intuition works(?)… As it turns out on April 15th we get the news:

Lantic Inc. Accepts Monsanto’s GM Sugar Despite Consumer Concerns

GM (also called GE or genetically engineered) sugar beets have just been planted for the first time in Alberta because the sugar company Lantic Inc. has decided to accept the GM beets. Sugar beets are processed in only one place in Canada: the Rogers Sugar/Lantic plant in Taber, Alberta. (2) The sugar beet is genetically modified by Monsanto to be tolerant to the company’s brand name herbicide Roundup. source

I was one of the consumers who voiced my complaint and it sure ticked me off to hear that there were GM sugar beets already in the ground in Alberta.

It looks so beautiful, doesn’t it? And peaceful, under the snow frosted mountain. Don’t let it deceive you.

Do you know the lyrics to the song Blue Sky Mine? I have listened to them for years, they are definitely
pertinent today:

Hey, hey-hey hey
There’ll be food on the table tonight
Hey, hey, hey
There’ll be pay in your pocket tonight

My gut is wrenched out it is crunched up and broken
A life that is led is no more than a token
Who’ll strike the flint upon the stone and tell me why
If I yell out at night there’s a reply of bruised silence
The screen is no comfort I can’t speak my sentence
They blew the lights at heaven’s gate and I don’t know why

But if I work all day at the blue sky mine
(There’ll be food on the table tonight)
Still I walk up and down on the blue sky mine
(There’ll be pay in your pocket tonight)

The candy store paupers lie to the share holders
They’re crossing their fingers they pay the truth makers
The balance sheet is breaking up the sky
So I’m caught at the junction still waiting for medicine
The sweat of my brow keeps on feeding the engine
Hope the crumbs in my pocket can keep me for another night
And if the blue sky mining company won’t come to my rescue
If the sugar refining company won’t save me
Who’s gonna save me?

But if I work all day…

And some have sailed from a distant shore
And the company takes what the company wants
And nothing’s as precious, as a hole in the ground

Who’s gonna save me?
I pray that sense and reason brings us in
Who’s gonna save me?
We’ve got nothing to fear.

In the end the rain comes down
Washes clean, the streets of a blue sky town.

-Midnight Oil