If you find Yukon Energy’s dirty power and weekly outages annoying, you’re not looking at them from the right perspective.
You’re probably considering them from the viewpoint of a customer who is receiving substandard service at a premium price.
What else do you call it when a guy in a small, downtown Whitehorse apartment pays $170 a month to heat his pad with an electric heater that’s pulling its juice from renewable hydro power a kilometre away.
But, as a Yukoner, you should be used to that — price gouging has been a time-honoured practice since the gold rush.
So stop your whining. It’s time to start looking at the power outages for what they really are — benefits.
Here is a preliminary list:
10. Through weekly power outages, Yukon Energy is promoting an understanding of people living in countries with shoddy infrastructure, like Ghana. Now, like those folks, we know what it’s like to not have dependable power. It builds international commonality.
9. The outages force us to remember how delicious cold soup and sandwiches really are.
8. Yukon Energy is teaching us to relax in our jobs. We’ve learned that leaving work an hour early, or waking up an hour late really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
7. Related to the last item, Yukon Energy has forced us to learn to set our digital clocks and alarms. And, through the frequency of the outages, we’ve gotten really good at it.
6. It’s nice to see police and bylaw officers directing traffic in Whitehorse — visible cops give the town a 1930s-era New York feel.
5. It closes the stores, curbing needless impulse buying and runaway consumerism in the leadup to Christmas.
4. It’s weaning us off power. The outages are teaching us how to do without energy, a skill that will prove useful as the world is forced to deal with global warming.
3. Silence. Who knew how much of a hum our electrical-powered society gives off?
2. With the power off, board games are gaining new cachet in Whitehorse. Risk, anyone?
1. The sex is great. Heck, if you aren’t into board games, what else are you going to do? Related to that, maternity ward nurses at Whitehorse General Hospital had better gird themselves — a boom is coming.
Heck, there are so many benefits to these outages Yukon Energy is likely to charge us for them — Silence Rider $14.93.
Watch for a filing at the next general rate application.
If you’ve grown to like the outages, or have been inconvenienced, you should tell the Yukon Utilities Board.
You have until the end of business today to apply as an intervenor.