Government

As you might have guessed from an earlier post, I have acquired a minor obsession with the colours of fire hydrants. You can bet I had my eyes peeled in Japan to see how hydrants look there — and the answer was fascinating!

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The first things I noticed in Tōkyō were the round red signs everywhere indicating the presence of a fire hydrant (消火栓)… and a distinct lack of fire hydrants.

It turns out that hydrants in Japan are generally installed underground except in particularly snow-prone areas. The signs point to the plate on the road or sidewalk that covers the hydrant cap.

Many parks and private property also have fire cisterns (防火水槽) and other water conservancies (消防水利) that store water to fight fires after a major earthquake, when the main water network may be damaged.

Hoses, pumps, and other fire suppression equipment are scattered throughout the city so that trained residents and disaster volunteers can use them to suppress fires during a major disaster.1

Footnotes

The British Foreign Secretary recently announced an agreement that will restore sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelagoto Mauritius. I don’t have enough context to understand what this means to the Chagossians in exile, but I can say this has huge implications for geography trivia — the sun will finally set on the British Empire for the first time in over four centuries!

This news may also have a big impact on the internet. Up until now, the Chagos Islands were part of an entity called the British Indian Ocean Territory, which was assigned the country code IO and the top-level domain .io. Domains ending in .io have become popular in the tech world: high-profile examples include CodePen, Swagger and Jenkins, the official Rust package repository, the Azure Container Registry, and lots of GitHub Pages sites.

When the British Indian Ocean Territory ceases to exist, IANA policy says that all .io domains should also be eventually extinguished, as happened with .yu and .cs. However, the .su top-level domain still exists for the Soviet Union, so it would not be unprecedented for IANA to make an exception and keep .io around.

Today is National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada. With the day off comes an opportunity (and responsibility) to learn about residential schools, through which the federal government and Canadian churches separated children from their families and subjected them to abuse and neglect in loco parentis.

[R]econciliation, in the context of Indian residential schools, is similar to dealing with a situation of family violence.

Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

Although the first residential schools were first established pre-Confederation, their story is shockingly and depressingly recent: residential school populations were at their highest from the 1920s to the 1960s, and some continued to operate well into my own childhood.

You know what a fire hydrant looks like. You pass by them every day, and they’re all painted to be a highly visible red. Or is it yellow? Wait, maybe they have other colours on them too?

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If the subject of fire hydrant colours has ever crossed your mind, you might have assumed (as I did) that they’d be covered somewhere in the Fire Code. In fact, the code is completely silent on hydrant colours, and it’s up to individual municipalities and their fire departments to decide how hydrants should be painted. This leaves a lot of room for variation!

Even setting aside exceptional cases — like downtown Quesnel’s artistic hydrants, or that time an Abbotsford neighbourhood got gold-plated hydrants — there’s a wide variety in the colour schemes used across municipalities in BC.

The non-standard standard

A document called NFPA 291, published by the US-based National Fire Protection Association, is the closest thing there is to a standard fire hydrant colour scheme. It recommends that:

[P]ublic hydrant barrels are to be colored their characteristic chrome yellow. … The tops and nozzle caps are also painted under a capacity-indicating color scheme to provide simplicity and consistency. This scheme consists of Light Blue [for hydrants that can pump 1500 gallons per minute], Green [1000-1499 gpm], Orange [500-999 gpm], and Red [less than 500 gpm].

ANSI, describing NFPA 291

Although many NFPA standards are incorporated into the Canadian Fire Code, the NFPA 291 colour scheme is purely voluntary.

Many municipalities incorporate the recommended flow rate colours into their hydrant designs, but only a few — notably Kelowna, Chilliwack, and Merritt — implement the full standard including the chrome yellow body.

Vancouver

In the city of Vancouver, most fire hydrants are painted entirely red. Each hydrant has a label indicating the flow rate (as per the NFPA 291 colour code) and an alphanumeric identifier that can be looked up on the on the city website to find the make, model, and installation date.

Downtown, you’ll also see fire hydrants of a different colour. These large blue hydrants are part of the Dedicated Fire Protection System, an auxiliary network that can supply enough water pressure to reach the tops of high-rise buildings. The network was built to withstand magnitude 8 earthquakes after the successful use of a similar system in San Francisco.

Fire hydrants on Vancouver’s Dedicated Fire Protection System are blue with white trim.

Burnaby

The city of Burnaby might have a claim to the province’s most distinctive fire hydrants. Their red, white, and green colour scheme isn’t found anywhere else in BC.

The Burnaby tricolour apparently only applies to public hydrants. The shopping centres at Market Crossing, for example, installed boring red fire hydrants on their parking lots.

Kamloops

My hometown of Kamloops paints its hydrants yellow with a white bonnet.

The largest port of a Kamloops hydrant exhibits another colour code that can be found across the province. The main cap can either be yellow or black depending on whether it is threaded or uses a Storz connection.

Hope

Downtown Hope’s red hydrants have little antennae attached to make them more visible, especially in cases of heavy snow.

Across BC

As much as I’d like to travel around the province taking pictures of fire hydrants, this post needs to be published at some point. I therefore took to Google Street View to survey fire hydrants in each of the 75 most populous BC municipalities.

Municipality	Body	Cap	Bonnet
Abbotsford1	⚪ White	🔵 Blue	🔵 Blue
Armstrong	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Burnaby	⚪ White	🔴 Red	🟢 Green
Campbell River	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Castlegar	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Central Sannich	⚪ White	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Chilliwack	🟡 Yellow	NFPA2	NFPA
Coldstream	🟡 Yellow	⚫ Black	🟡 Yellow
Colwood	⚪ White	🔴 Red	⚪ White
Comox	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Coquitlam	🔴 Red	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Courtenay	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Cranbrook	🔴 Red	🔵 Blue	🔵 Blue
Creston	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Dawson Creek	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Delta	⚪ White	⚪ White	NFPA
Esquimalt	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔵 Blue
Fernie	🔴 Red	Silver	Silver
Fort St John	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Hope	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Kamloops3	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	⚪ White
Kelowna	🟡 Yellow	NFPA	NFPA
Kent	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Kimberley	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Kitimat	🟡 Yellow	NFPA	NFPA
Ladysmith	🔴 Red	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Lake Country	🟡 Yellow	NFPA	NFPA
Langford	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Langley	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Maple Ridge	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Merritt	🟡 Yellow	NFPA	NFPA
Mission	🟡 Yellow	🔵 Blue	🔵 Blue
Nanaimo	🔴 Red	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Nelson	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
New Westminister	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
North Cowichan	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
North Sannich	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
North Vancouver	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Oak Bay	🔴 Red	⚪ White	🔴 Red
Osoyoos	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Parksville	🔴 Red	⚪ White	🔴 Red
Peachland	🔴 Red	NFPA	NFPA
Penticton	🟡 Yellow	NFPA	NFPA
Pitt Meadows	⚪ White	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Port Alberni	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	⚪ White
Port Coquitlam	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Port Moody	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Powell River	🟡 Yellow	NFPA	NFPA
Prince George	🟡 Yellow	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Prince Rupert	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Qualicum Beach	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Quesnel	Decorated	Decorated	Decorated
Revelstoke	🟡 Yellow	🟢 Green	🟢 Green
Richmond	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Saanich	🔴 Red	⚪ White	🔴 Red
Salmon Arm	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	🟢 Green
Sechelt	🔴 Red	⚪ White	🟢 Green
Sidney	🔴 Red	⚪ White	⚪ White
Smithers	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Sooke	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Squamish	🔴 Red	⚫ Black	🔵 Blue
Summerland	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	⚪ White
Surrey4	🔴 Red	⚪ White	🔴 Red
Terrace	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow	🟡 Yellow
Trail	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Vancouver	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Vernon	🟡 Yellow	NFPA	⚪ White
Victoria	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
View Royal	🔴 Red	🟡 Yellow	🔴 Red
West Kelowna	🔴 Red	🔵 Blue	🔵 Blue
West Vancouver	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
Whistler	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	🔴 Red
White Rock	🔴 Red	🔴 Red	⚪ White
Williams Lake	🟡 Yellow	🟢 Green	🟢 Green

The above table is not foolproof. It is hard to tell, for example, whether Williams Lake has adopted a uniform yellow-and-green colour scheme for aesthetic reasons or it just happens to have a lot of 1000 gpm hydrants painted according to NFPA 291.

I also saw one instance of a hydrant in Comox that appears either yellow or red in Street View depending on the angle; one image was taken in 2012 and the other in 2022, and the hydrant had apparently been repainted in the interim.

Conclusion

Fire hydrant colours are left to each municipality, and frequently lack public documentation. I’ve done a quick survey of what’s out there, but I’ve surely missed many exceptions, oddities, and quirks in each municipality. Pay attention to the hydrants in your neighbourhood and you’ll surely notice something interesting!

Footnotes

Highway exits in Canada are generally numbered based on the distance (in km) from the beginning of the highway. But what about before Canada went metric? Did all the exits have to be renumbered?

As it turns out, my assumption that distance-based exit numbering is not as widespread or as recent as I thought.

• Ontario and Québec have exit numbering systems that predate metrication, but only barely, so the switch wasn’t too hard.
• Newfoundland and Nova Scotia have sequential exit numbers, not distance-based ones.
• Alberta didn’t post exit numbers at all until 2004!

This picture illustrates the danger of poorly-designed streets, which the Swedish government set out to improve in the 1990s. It was originally created by Swedish artist Karl Jilg, who was commissioned by the Swedish Road Administration to explain new Vision Zero initiatives.

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The ideas behind the initiatives were that

1. The responsibility for preventing deaths and injuries on the road transportation system partly rests with the people who design that infrastructure, and
2. Deaths and injuries on the road ultimately come down to kinetic energy.

The picture is intended to turn the kinetic energy of a moving car into a height to show the consequences of simple human mistakes in the road system. Research shows that the highest acceptable speed on a street with active users like this is 30km/h.

The image has been widely shared, thanks in part to a 2014 Vox article that used it to call attention to other pedestrian-hostile aspects about many cities’ street designs:

Most roads in the US are built for cars, not for pedestrians. This brilliant illustration shows just how lopsided the the proportions of a normal urban street corner really are.

The city sidewalk picture is just one of a series of four that Jilg illustrated for the Swedish government. The other one I found is set on a highway.

I’m not sure whether Jilg did any calculations to create these, but a head-on collision between two cars at highway speed is approximately equivalent to a single car being dropped from a height of 200m. Sweden added median barriers to many highways in the late ’90s, which reduced the incidence of head-on collisions and the risk of fatalities by 80%.

I have unfortunately not been able to find the other two illustrations in the set. Jilg has, however, done other work for the Swedish government.

Here in Vancouver, the parking bylaw requires one 14m² parking space for every 20m² of supermarket floor space. Adding the necessary lanes to allow cars to get in and out, this law practically guarantees that grocery stores will be more parking lot than store.

Since the ’50s, Alberta has engaged in a deliberate effort to prevent rats from entering the province. Fortunately, rats can’t survive in the wild in Alberta, so they have pest inspectors regularly check every premise within a 29 x 600 km control zone from Montana to Cold Lake. Pet rats are illegal.

The rat-free status of Alberta led to a Wikipedia edit war over whether the province should appear on a map of the brown rat’s habitat. At some point it was decided to remove the map entirely from the English-language entry for Rattus norvegicus, but its presence on other Wikimedia projects means the edit war still rages on to this day.

The official title of Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office is held by a cat in charge of keeping mice under control at the UK Prime Minister’s office at 10 Downing Street. The current incumbent is Larry.

It was once commonplace to employ cats as mousers, so Larry is not unique; the UK Post Office employed a cat named Tibs the Great for many years and Canada’s Parliament had its own cat colony.

“General particulars” is an excellent phrase that deserves to catch on more widely than its current context of legally-mandated notices on boats.

(Boats are required by international law to have a wheelhouse poster listing their “general particulars”, i.e., a list of statistics, properties, and other bits of information necessary to get a basic view of the vessel.)

Not all 26 letters of the alphabet appear on BC license plates. Six are missing — and the reason goes all the way back to 1970, when BC switched from issuing sequential plate numbers to an alphanumeric system.

One [story] is that the stamps used by employees of the MVB for compiling licensing documents in 1960s only had enough space for ten (10) characters.

The other is that when the province upgraded the machinery at the Oakalla Plate Shop in the mid-1950s, it was designed to accommodate a maximum row of ten (10) different dies for each of the six columns that might be used in the license plate’s serial.

Regardless of which, if any of these stories is the correct one, the alphabet was broken into two blocks of ten letters with the first block comprising A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, J, and K with “I” excluded as it too closely resembled the number one.

Christopher Garrish

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The second block of letters used on BC passenger license plates was L, M, N, P, R, S, T, V, W, and X. The letters I and O were obviously too similar to 1 and 0, and Q was apparently also skipped due to its resemblance to zero.1 I imagine U was excluded instead of X to minimize the number of unusable plate numbers containing rude words. Y and Z missed out just because they’re at the end of the alphabet.

BC has issued several different plate series since the ’70s and the manufacturing process has presumably changed since then, but I believe the letters have remained the same. To this day, I have still never seen an I, O, Q, U, Y, or Z on a BC passenger car.

Keep an eye out for other types of vehicles, though. Motorcycle plates starting with U, Y, and Z were issued in 2012–14, 2017–18, and 2019–20 respectively, and the letters can also be spotted on plates assigned to commercial trucks.

Footnotes

Jens von Bergmann has run the numbers on land use in various municipalities in Metro Vancouver. The City of Vancouver in particular has lot of land tied up in streets and detached housing.

Use	CoV land
single-family detached houses and duplexes	34.0%
roads and right-of-way	28.1%
recreation, open space, and natural areas	15.2%
commercial	3.9%
low-rise apartments (residential or mixed-use)	4.1%
high-rise apartments (residential or mixed-use)	1.9%

Because the City of Vancouver has so little area left undeveloped, any proposals for new housing, schools, parks, stores, and so forth will displace some existing use of the land.

When the Ontario cities of Fort William and Port Arthur amalgamated in 1970, residents voted for a new name for their new city.

Candidate name	Votes
Thunder Bay	15,870
Lakehead	15,302
The Lakehead	8,377

The result deserves a place of honour in voting theory textbooks.