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Column: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result

Unimpressed looks all around.
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So the conversation in the newsroom Wednesday went something like this:

“Boy was it raining last night when I left work.”

“The way it was hitting the house I thought something might cave in.”

Check my email.

“I got an email from Mainroad Contracting. Cowichan Bay Road is closed due to flooding.”

Unimpressed looks all around.

“Again?”

“It’s not news anymore, it does this all winter.”

A little while later: “Somebody’s posted on Facebook that there’s a car stuck in the water on Cowichan Bay Road. It doesn’t look like there’s anyone still in it.”

“Again?”

“This happens every year.”

It’s true. At this point I’m a little blasé about the news, if you can call it news, that Cowichan Bay is closed after a heavy rainstorm or snow melt. My reporters feel the same.

No matter how much work anybody claims has been done on the road, you know it will flood once again, just as it always has.

We’ve all taken the obligatory shot of the “road closed” sign with water stretching off into the distance.

But what never fails to surprise me is that someone always seems to take it into their head to drive around that sign and try to drive through the water. Do they think “road closed” is for other people? That somehow their vehicle will make it where others have failed? Some kind of off-roading delusion?

It’s not a challenge, but many seem to see it as such, rather than the warning it is.

Then, inevitably, rescue workers have to get out the boat and save them from their own overconfidence.

It seems futile at this point to think that we’ll stop having the first part of Wednesday’s conversation in the Citizen newsroom, as Cowichan Bay Road will continue to do its usual winter turn underwater.

But come on guys, we should be able to avoid the second part.

Don’t end up wet and dejected in the rescue boat.



editor@cowichanvalleycitizen.com

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Andrea Rondeau

About the Author: Andrea Rondeau

I returned to B.C. and found myself at the Cowichan Valley Citizen.
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