Deer problem in Ottawa Carlton
steve
ottawa area.
This is what I feared would happen sooner or later.
My condolences to the family.
Missing man found dead in his car
Former furniture chain owner struck deer on dark road
Zev Singer
The Ottawa Citizen
Monday, December 02, 2002
Daniel van Leeuwen Boomkamp, 71, went missing Friday evening after
dropping off his dog at the veterinarian's office.
The news was the bad kind yesterday for friends and family of Daniel
van Leeuwen Boomkamp, a long-time furniture purveyor to Ottawa.
The 71-year-old Mr. van Leeuwen Boomkamp had gone missing Friday
evening after dropping off his dog at the veterinarian's office in
Alta Vista and setting out for his home in Dunrobin.
His body was found yesterday, in his car. Travelling in the dark on
Riddell Road, he had struck a deer and gone off the road.
A hunter found him.
The deer had gone through the windshield of his Acura sport-utility
vehicle.
While the web of saddening phone calls spread out yesterday across the
city to scores of people who knew him, they remembered the tall man
(six foot six) who didn't so much sell fine furniture as preach it,
explain it and impart its wisdom.
He was a man who taught Ottawa about the common sense of the Swedes
before anyone had heard of IKEA.
He built a chain of furniture stores, and a family.
Mr. van Leeuwen Boomkamp came to Canada at the age of 19 in 1951 from
Naarden, Holland. The first job he got was as a surveyor for a forest
lumber company in B.C.
He also put in time as a firefighter before making his way to Toronto,
where he was to meet the two people who would determine the course of
his life.
A man named Milton Kanter had a furniture store on Bloor Street and
many firm ideas about the beauty of design. He also had an assistant,
a young woman named Jeri.
Although from his weekly pay it may have appeared Mr. van Leeuwen
Boomkamp worked for next to nothing in that store, he didn't.
By the time he left, he'd taken the most valuable things in it -- the
knowledge and the girl. And he did it with Mr. Kanter's blessing.
In 1958, the young immigrant was trusted to open an Ottawa branch of
Kanter-Erickson on Bank Street at the corner of Gloucester Street.
Despite the limited English he started with, and the difficulty he had
in trying to get credit, within two years he had bought the store from
his bosses, naming it van Leeuwen Boomkamp Ltd. It was the first of a
chain which, at its height, included seven stores.
In their decades of marriage, Jeri van Leeuwen Boomkamp watched her
husband constantly design and redesign every article of furniture
around him.
"He had it at his fingertips," she said of her husband's creative
inspirations.
Always searching for the world's most intelligently put-together
pieces, he scoured France, England, Germany and Scandinavia.
"He travelled the world. He was a real Dutch trader," she said.
Then, he'd take his ideas to the Far East to have the items
manufactured just the way he wanted them.
"There were manufacturers all over the world for this little store in
Ottawa," Mrs. van Leeuwen Boomkamp said.
Although she was born in Winnipeg, Mrs. van Leeuwen Boomkamp sometimes
longed to live in Europe.
"He said 'No. This is a wonderful country.'"
Although he liked to stock the finest items, Mr. van Leeuwen Boomkamp
also wanted to make good design affordable.
In the late 1970s, he opened a new line of stores called Zip, a
precursor of IKEA, which sold assemble-it-yourself furniture.
Even before he opened Zip, his wife said, his passion for the best the
world had to offer was never a snobbery, but a genuine appreciation of
excellence.
On the floor of his stores he was not shy about handling what was
sometimes quite high-priced furniture, using it for what it was made.
"It was never his intention to have a museum store," Mrs. van Leeuwen
Boomkamp said.
While the last of his stores closed in 1994 when he retired, Philip
van Leeuwen, one of his three sons, has a self-named store in the
Byward Market which carries many of the lines his father first brought
to North America. His two other sons are twins, Robert and Matthew.
Last night, family friend Gail Schoiler said it was a sign of the man
Mr. van Leeuwen Boomkamp was, that many of the former employees she
phoned to give the sad news to cried when they heard of his death.
Part of the worry family and friends shared between Friday and
yesterday had stemmed from the fact that Mr. van Leeuwen Boomkamp had
begun to have problems with his memory.
Mrs. van Leeuwen Boomkamp said her husband "looked just like Prince
Philip, but he was much nicer."
"He was the one with the big dreams," she said. "And he was the one
who made dreams happen."
steve
Hunting boosted to curb nuisance deer
Ottawa, Lanark have Ontario's highest deer collision rates as
population soars under ideal conditions
Kelly Egan
The Ottawa Citizen
Tuesday, December 03, 2002
The Ministry of Natural Resources dramatically increased the number of
deer to be hunted in Eastern Ontario this fall, in an aggressive
attempt to curb a daily menace on the area's highways and farm fields.
The roadway hazard presented by white-tailed deer was vividly
illustrated by the discovery of the body of Daniel van Leeuwen
Boomkamp, 71, on Sunday.
Missing since Wednesday, police say the prominent retired businessman
struck a deer on Riddell Drive, not far from his Dunrobin-area home,
and veered out of sight behind a stand of trees under the cover of
night.
Not even in his Acura SUV was he safe. The animal crashed through the
windshield, probably killing him instantly.
Natural Resources Ministry biologist Christie Curley said yesterday
that the City of Ottawa and Lanark County have the highest
deer-collision rates in Ontario.
In Ottawa, the number of crashes is up 40 per cent since 1998, to
roughly two per day.
Fortunately, the crashes are rarely fatal, though vehicle damage is
usually extensive.
"You're dealing with deer that are living in a fairly urban
environment, where there are cars on roads all over the landscape, and
so they feel quite comfortable grazing in a field by the side of the
road," said Ms. Curley.
"They hear cars go by all day long."
The ministry paid particular attention to two hunting districts: the
western edges of Ottawa, in the old Kanata and West Carleton Township,
and Lanark County.
In the first, it issued an extra 1,000 "antlerless seals," adding to
the 1,100 permits already there.
In Lanark, it released an extra 2,500 seals, more than doubling the
2,400 normally given to hunters.
Using a typical success rate of 40 per cent, the additional seals mean
1,400 extra deer might have been taken from the forest during the
November hunting season.
"Regulated hunting is our No. 1 tool for controlling the population,"
said Ms. Curley. "It's the first year there have been such great
numbers available."
The results of this year's hunt have yet to be tabulated.
With the vastly expanded borders of the new Ottawa, deer nuisance
problems are now a serious concern for the municipality, which is not
sitting idly by.
For about two years now, an informal committee of municipal,
provincial and non-government agencies has been grappling with how to
reduce the threat presented by thousands of deer thriving on Ottawa's
large rural rump.
While the ministry's chief response is to change the hunting
regulations, Ottawa is experimenting with a type of reflector light
that creates a "light fence" by the road, which in theory will keep
deer away.
Two patches of roadway are under study -- a total of about four
kilometres -- at a cost of $17,000.
The first stretch was done in 1999 along March Road, near the
intersection with Dunrobin Road; the second section was just completed
in October, a stretch of Robertson Road west of Bells Corners.
The city is monitoring results before it decides whether to expand the
program.
"Our goal is to stabilize the population before we end up like a
situation they have in New York or Pennsylvania," she said.
In some jurisdictions in the U.S., hunters can take up to nine deer,
she added.
Scientists point to a couple of main reasons why the deer have
thrived.
A great deal of former farmland has fallen back to new forest, which
is ideal habitat for deer.
Coupled with nearby crops, such as soybeans and corn, the deer have a
plentiful food supply.
Secondly, the mild winters, particularly with moderate to low
snowfall, have increased survival rates.
Ms. Curley says the light reflectors show potential, but aren't the
answer for wide stretches of road because they are costly.
The ministry, in co-operation with the other agencies, is hoping
better signage and driver education will help reduce collisions.
There does not appear to be a consensus emerging on the need for a
cull, as is sometimes done in isolated pockets in Ontario.
"Logistically, it's a nightmare," said Ms. Curley.
"Deer are so widespread on the landscape, something like that would
generally only work on a specifically defined area."
Tom B
those vicious killers and their tree hugging protectors...
Tom B
KOTD(Knob of the Day) pics here !!
http://pages.sprint.ca/KNOBS
"steve" <stevew...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
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