The Regina Bypass - Corruption or Incompetence

Anyone who thinks that government corruption or incompetence is limited to Americans is only fooling themselves. Canadian Conservative governments are just as bad only on a smaller scale. I will ignore the Ford government in Ontario. That is their problem as an election has been called and they have a chance to get rid of him.

As I write the Premier of Alberta, a Trumpanzee at heart, and her Minister of Health are credibly accused of allegedly interfering to throw government contracts for surgical units to a much higher priced bidder, a donor to the UCP. It is being investigated.

Outline of the Regina Bypass

Last October I blogged about the Global Transportation Hub a multi-million dollar Saskatchewan Party project which has yet to be completed and will likely cost close to a half-billion dollars when all is said and done and everything is taken into account. It is Mickey Mouse compared with The Regina Bypass, with a cost of close to $2 billion and a 30-year maintenance contract with the major construction consortium. All the official press releases sound as though it were the greatest gift to Regina ever.

 The Regina Bypass is approximately 44.3 kilometers (about 27.5 miles) long [with 12 km of service roads]. This four-lane twinned highway serves as a connector between Highway 1 and Highway 11, effectively forming a partial ring road around the city of Regina, Saskatchewan. The bypass was officially opened to traffic on October 29, 2019, after being constructed as part of a larger infrastructure project that began in 2015.

One of several such interchanges on the Regina Bypass

These intersections and interchanges are designed to improve traffic flow, enhance safety, and provide better connectivity around Regina. The bypass effectively forms a partial ring road around the city, connecting major highways and improving access to key areas

It was called a P3 project, Public Private Partnership and build using DBFOM or Design, Build, Finance, Operate, Maintain. The collaborative approach facilitated the development of innovative, cost-saving solutions, such as Canada's first diverging diamond interchange in a rural area. [Is this a BFD or spin?]

It started out as a $400 million project and quickly mushroomed into a $1.88-billion-dollar project. Four companies formed a joint venture called Regina Bypass Design Builders (RBDB), which was responsible for the design and construction of the bypass infrastructure. For good reason, they downplayed the major company in the consortium Vinci Infrastructure Canada Limited. Vinci is a huge French headquartered company with over 186 divisions in Canada alone. Google Vinci and lawsuits. They are in court in a number of countries for everything from alleged price fixing to alleged use of slave labour. 

The Coquihalla Highway, built in three stages, between 1978 and 1990 in mountainous terrain that is 8 times longer (186 km) and 50 times more difficult to build, cost less than the Regina Bypass. Total cost of the three stages cost CAD $848 million, equivalent to about $1.62 billion in 2019 dollars. 

The Regina Bypass was built on flat mostly unoccupied prairie. It was supposed to draw traffic from going through Regina which has been a bottleneck for truckers, especially for years at the Victoria-Circle Drive intersection. There was sufficient space at that intersection to build a proper cloverleaf for about CAD $250 million that given traffic projections would have been good for thirty years. Since there are no services for truckers east of the bypass, they still need to come into the city to the Husky truck stop at Victoria and Prince of Wales. From there they either backtrack to the bypass or continue through the city on the old route.

Another interchange

There is so little traffic on the bypass it has been estimated that for each vehicle that the cost is about CAD $10,000. The motorcycle clubs love it as they can race on an empty highway on the weekends.  

After a two-year investigation involving thousands of documents, about 7,500 hours of work, and interviews with over 40 people, including former Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, the RCMP determined that the evidence did not support laying any charges

The provincial government acknowledged making mistakes in the land acquisition process, with Don Morgan, the minister responsible for the GTH, stating that the government "did a poor job in assembling the land" and moved too slowly, allowing speculators to buy and resell the land at much higher costs to taxpayers.

No shit, Sherlock. 

Jackiesue 1944-2025, may Freya and Dexter welcome you to Valhalla

 

Thanks, Debra

Jackiesue Roycroft Denny, long time Facebook and Blogger friend passed away this week leaving a hole in so many lives. She doted on her grandkids and greatgrand kids and often featrured them in her blogs. But blogging as Yellow Dog Granny she was famous for here collection of memes shredding the hypocritical, the corrupt, the ignorant, and the looney. She always ended with a few personal ones, making fun of human nature.

https://yellowdoggrannie.blogspot.com/

She was a blue dot in a red state, hailing from West, Texas. Yes, that West, as she always says, where a fertilizer plant blew up killing several hundred people because Texas puts profit over people always. 

No one used the F word like she did. As more stupidity would unfold her replay was ,"We are F**ked".

Debra from She Who Seeks did a heart warming eulogy for her. 

https://shewhoseeks.blogspot.com/2025/02/farewell-jackiesue.html

Freya in her chariot

She was a pagan, worshipping the goddess Freya, the goddess of love, warfare, sex, fertility, death, beauty, magic, and witchcraft. She oversees battles, can bestow or remove fertility, can be petitioned for love, and was born knowing the divine secrets of witchcraft and the Runes.

Freya's chariot was pulled by cats. I hope her beloved cat Dexter who passed some time ago and whom she greatly missed will be one of her chariot cats

That was Jackiesue. Pictures of her as a a young woman revealed stunning beauty. She was wild, first topless waitress in Oregon, said she hadn't had sex since the early 80s because once word got out she had shot her third husband, she foiund it hard to get a date.  When she had kids she moved to Texas and settled down. No more wild stuff.

She contributed to her community oin many ways besides being a pain in the butt to Republicans. She was active in Meals on Wheels and backed regularily for events. 

Jackiesue, you will be missed. I hope you are keeping Valhalla from getting too staid and boring.

The HoneyPot Trap IV The Showdown

 Back at the hotel, I spent half the night learning about flowering shrubs, and honey production. By noon, I had responses from the life insurance companies. I was ready to go.

Azalea

Doris Jenkins waved me over to the front deck. She was still wearing surgical gloves. I handed her my card, Rick O’Shea, Private Investigator, flashed my badge and pushed her into the house. “I work for insurance companies and am investigating possible fraud and possible murder”. Jenkins did not look happy (insert joke about the other 6 dwarfs here) and let me know in unladylike terms.

We went into the kitchen, and I told her to sit down and shut up. On the table was a large glass cylinder with a tap at the bottom. There was wax floating on top, then dark red honey and then light amber honey. She was scraping the wax and honey from plastic frames in the supers and using the large cylinder to separate the different honeys. They were slowly separating because of different densities, then drawn off at the bottom.

I had identified the flowering shrubs in the back yard as Yellow Azalea (Azalea pontica), a reddish Rhododendron (Rhododendron ponticum), and Oleander (Nerium oleander). Everything about the oleander is deadly poisonous except the honey which is light amber.  Azalea and Rhododendron produced a dark red honey known as Mad Honey.  

Rhododendron

Mad Honey lowers blood pressure and heart rate. It can also produce dizziness, nausea and vomiting. Some Turkish men use it in small amounts to enhance their performance. (Shaking my head at the lunacy of middle-aged males).

 “Alright, Doris, here is the deal as I see it. You came here 20 years ago with some money, I assume from your previous husband, bought this house and started your gardens front and back. Ten years ago, you remarried and made your husband take out a life insurance policy for $200,000. Four years later he dies of heart failure. Nothing suspicious and the company pays out.

“A couple years later you remarry. Your new husband has a life insurance policy for $500,000 in his niece’s name. You make him split it between you. Four years later he dies of heart failure. If the niece had not been a nurse, co-beneficiary and suspicious, you would have got away with it again.  

“You persuaded them to eat the Mad Honey, to “enhance their performance” until they consumed enough at one time for their blood pressure and heart rate to flatline. Basically, you murdered them. And just to make sure you added some “tea” made from oleander leaves to the honey. Very clever and very deadly. I’m turning you over to the police.”

Oleander

Her eyes gleamed with madness. While I was speaking, she quietly turned on the stove. There was a saucepan on the burner. Smoke started to rise and before I could stop her, she jumped up, held her face over the fumes, took several deep breaths and collapsed dead on the floor. It held oleander leaves. I held my breath and raced outside.

I called the cops and EMT, warning them to come with hazmat suits. Disposing of the shrubs in the backyard would be a problem as smoke from burning oleander leaves is poisonous. That was their problem now.

I checked out of the hotel, texted an invoice to my client and headed back to my office. I occurred to me that if she had called my bluff, she would have got away free and clear as nothing I said would have stood up in a court of law. Why I am not a cop.

The Honeypot Trap III. The Widow Jenkins

 Part I is here. Part II is here.

“Doris Jenkins moved here about 20 years ago, bought the house on the edge of town. You likely saw it; the one with all the flowers. We call her The Widow Jenkins as she was newly widowed when she moved here and has lost two husbands since. Heart failure. The last one just a month or so ago. No idea where she finds them. Must haunt the Lonely Hearts pages of The Western Seducer.

“She is now in her early 70s, lives frugally but certainly is sociable. You are always welcome for tea in her front deck. Never in the house though and she keeps people away from the backyard because of the bees. Comes to church in the hall every two weeks when the preacher is here. She and her husbands attended the dances and drove to the next town to theatre and so forth. Very outgoing, very energetic. Spends all her spare time working with her flowers and her bees. Her husbands must have died smiling. Best tell your client to avoid her”, she laughed. I didn’t.

I stirred my coffee thoughtfully and tried to pull together what my client had told me and what I had learned since. My client was a nurse. Her uncle had been Jenkins’ last husband. She was suspicious and asked for a coroner’s report. Her uncle’s heart was fine on his last medical, taken a few months prior to his marriage and no one in the extended family had ever had any heart trouble.  He was a spry old dude which is why he went looking for a wife in his old age.

He had an insurance policy worth half a million with Imprudent Life. It had been in the niece’s name, but he made the niece and his new wife joint beneficiaries. Did the previous husband have life insurance? I sent texts to three or four of the more popular companies with the name of the previous deceased husband, date of death, and an explanation that I suspected insurance fraud. They know me and I have worked for them before.

While I waited for replies, I decided to walk over from the hotel to check out the Jenkins residence and especially her flowers. I could take pictures and use them to identify the plants or shrubs. For some strange reason I bought three bottles of carbonated water from the locked hotel cooler.

The front flower bed was the usual pansies and petunias, begonias and not begonias. The backyard was a different matter. Shrubs 6 to 10 feet high covered in flowers. Yellow, red and all colours. I was taking pictures when the back door opened, and Doris Jenkins hollered at me. “What are you doing? Be careful you don’t touch any of those shrubs. They are lovely but will kill you if they get the chance.” Sounded like my Ex.

She was wearing surgical gloves, “Come around front and have some tea”. Yeah, right, I thought. We sat on the front deck. “I’m Mike Malone. I was passing through, stopped for coffee at the hotel and tried some wonderful honey that they said you had supplied. It was so good I decided to follow up. Sorry, no tea. Carbonated water for my upset tummy.”

We visited for half an hour, about life in general and honey in particular. She was not very forthcoming about her honey production. I went back to the hotel. Tomorrow would finish the job.

The Honeypot Trap II The Village

 Chapter I is here. 

The sign said Pilsudski’s hotel, bar and café. Mrs. Pidsulski met me at the door, She was about 5 ft in any direction you wanted to measure her, with a friendly but no-nonsense smile. She sat me at a table in the middle of the room, no booths, poured me a cup of coffee and then said hello. She’d take me order after the morning coffee rush.  The coffee was as it should be, as my Peruvian friend once said, “Hot as hell, black as pitch, and bitter as marriage”.

By 9:45 the morning coffee crowd was gathering. Several men, with white, grey, or no hair, piled in and sat at their habitual places. I worried I was in someone’s spot, but no one made a fuss. They were pleasant enough, said hello, and three sat at my table, making no effort to include or exclude me from the conversation. I listened.

Nothing new or exciting, farm prices, weather forecasts, sports scores, the usual. No one asked my business, just assuming I was passing through. Then one of them ordered toast, “And bring some of that good honey from the Widow Jenkins”. I’d hit the pay dirt. The only beehive I’d seen was behind the house with all the flowers.

The honey was light caramel and flowed easily from the container. “What’s so special about this honey?” I asked. “Oh”, the man exclaimed, “the Widow Jenkins has all these flowering trees in her backyard, and a beehive. Occasionally she will sell a pail of honey to the café. It tastes different from canola or buckwheat honey. It is sort of a seasonal treat for us old timers”.

I drank my coffee. In 20 minutes, the men had all cleared out and I caught Mrs. Pilsudski’s eye for another cup. She poured the mug full to the brim, “Breakfast?” “Please.” And off she went. . . OoooKay?. In 10 minutes, she was back, two eggs over easy, four slices of bacon, hash browns, brown toast, and a side of cold beans. Poured herself a coffee and sat.

I introduced myself, “Hi, I’m Mike Malone, insurance, property and life”, one name being as good as another.  “Uh Huh, I saw you come off the rim this morning. And my rooms are clean”, she looked at me in disgust, “You needn’t have slept in your car. Who or what are you looking for?”.

I handed her my business car. “Rick O’Shea, Private Investigator. . . I thought you were a cop”.  “No, Ma’am, cops have to follow the law”, I smiled. She smiled back, “I hear ya.”

“I’m sort of scouting this community for a client who is looking for a nice place to settle down. He doesn’t trust real estate agents to give him an honest answer.” She nodded, “Smart move. Lost my husband in the war and been here 30 years. I know most everyone here and can give you a run down if it will help”.  She laughed, “How old’s your client?. . . Never mind, I ‘m too old to start that again”.

“My client is early 70s, just retired, comfortable but not rich by any stretch. So tell me about Lakeview.”

“Quiet, mostly retired, several younger couples with families that work here. Husband runs my bar, wife teaches at the school. Family runs the service station-confectionary. Two families own the grocery store and wife/husband teach at the school.”

“Tell me about the honey from The Widow Jenkins that one of your customers raved about.”

To be continued.

The Honeypot Trap I. The Valley

 The road my client told me to take was more of a dirt trail. Winter or rain would make it impassable. And the country was flat. Pee on a plate flat. Watch your dog run away for two days flat. I was almost at the edge of the valley before I saw it coming.

I stopped at the brow of the slope, backed up so I wouldn’t be readily visible, dug out my field glasses and looked down and across. The valley, about a mile wide, ran east and west. Cattle grazed the far side. A small stream or river ran along the far side, crossed here and there by single span, narrow bridges, flowed into a series of small lakes, giving the valley and the village below its name, Lakeview.

The village, directly below me, looked like about 45 houses. A gas station/confectionary stood beside the two-lane blacktop that ran the length of the valley. Outlines of a long-abandoned railway showed vaguely. On what passed for main street was a small grocery store, a two-story hotel/bar, and a small school.

In two hours, one car went east on the highway and two went west. A cube van from the west made stops at the confectionary, grocery store and hotel. So the hotel had a restaurant as well as a bar.

The houses all had gardens. Flowers and grass in front and vegetables and fruit trees in back. By fruit, I meant likely saskatoons, chokecherries, or crabapples. All but one house, near the edge of town. It was a blaze of colour front and back. Field glasses revealed a beehive in the back yard. This was the house I was sent to investigate.

Suddenly I wished I’d spent more time on botany than bugs. But bugs are usually more use in solving murder cases. If indeed this was murder or simply the hazards of growing old. Fortunately Gooble was there to ask about the vegetation. IF there was Wi-Fi service.

Speaking of bugs, not knowing who or what had slept in the hotel’s rooms before me or if they might still be there, I stretched out in the car to spend the night. I’d packed a blanket just in case.

In the morning, I watched the town slowly come alive. At 8:30 a small school bus pulled up to the school, a few little kids got off and a few larger kids got on. The bus headed east. So, there were families scattered up and down the valley. The school was likely K-6 and a larger school in the next town that was 7-12. Interesting little community. Didn’t look like it would house a murderer but what rural community does?

By 9:30 breakfast sounded good so I stuck it in 3^rd gear and started down the hill into the valley. I sure hoped I could drive out on the highway as climbing back up was out of the question.

To be continued

Left Knee Replacement

 Last Wednesday Jan 22nd, I had my left knee replaced. I do not recommend it. I was doing fine on pain killers and using an elastice knee support. Now I am crippled untill likely April. No dog walking for sometime after that. And I am on Hydromorphone. A walker gets me around. 

Do your exercises they said. So I did and now my leg is swollen and inflamed. Cold packs every few hours help bring the swelling down. 

My right knee is also arthritic. I'll deal with it when I am in a wheelchair. 

When I have energy, I will catch up on reading all your blogs. 

The disaster that is America is in danger of spreading North and I can't even run. People with disabilities will be first into the ovens