For the first time in four years, elders from First Nations across British Columbia converged for two days celebrating the role they hold in their respective communities.

The BC Elders Gathering opened Aug. 15 at the Vancouver Convention Centre, bringing together nearly 1,800 elders and their helpers to an annual event that has been sidelined due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The last Elders Gathering was at the city’s convention centre in 2019, attracting a similar number of participants.

While Jolyn Watts was competing at the Special Olympics World Games, her father was running an excavator, building a bicycle trail alongside the highway between Tofino and Ucluelet.

“I was making a rock wall around this culvert,” recalled Lloyd Watts. “I was being real crabby.”

But Lloyd’s day changed after news came through his phone about the result Jolyn’s 1,500-metre race, a long-distance run that earned her a gold medal.

It’s a good thing that Chrissy Fred did not get cold feet once again.

That’s because the Tseshaht First Nation member now has an opportunity to win up to $25,000 to help her relaunch her business.

Fred had first heard of the Pow Wow Pitch, a national competition that awards a total of $200,000 in cash to various Indigenous entrepreneurs, a year ago.

Pow Wow Pitch is a grassroots organization that is co-presented by RBC, Mastercard and Shopify.

The Uchuck III is a beloved cargo and passenger vessel that has been serving Nootka Sound for decades bringing the Mowachaht/Muchalaht nation back to their ancestral home, Yuquot, while delivering supplies to remote First Nations and industry camps.

Each summer, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, the Uchuck III departs from the Gold River dock, travelling through the Muchalat Inlet to Nootka Sound, past Bligh Island, and arrives two hours later at Friendly Cove, also known as Yuquot.

It’s been a rough summer for the Assembly of First Nations.

On June 28 the advocacy organization’s national chief RoseAnne Archibald was ousted during a virtual assembly of delegates, amid complaints about her conduct from several senior staff.

Tseshaht First Nation is getting ready to honour some of its young athletes.

The Nuu-chah-Nulth First Nation will stage a celebratory luncheon on Saturday, Aug. 12, at the Paper Mill Dam Park in Port Alberni. Festivities begin at noon.

Those being honoured at the event will include three Tseshaht teenagers who all captured bronze medals at the recent North American Indigenous Games (NAIG) that were primarily held in the Nova Scotia capital of Halifax.

This year marks 100 years since the ancestral home of the Mowachaht/Muchalaht people was formerly identified by Canada as a national historic site, but how the location is being recognized has completely changed over the past century.

In 1923 the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada designated Nootka Sound as a national historic site. Along with Fort Langley, the location off Vancouver Island’s west coast was the first in B.C. to earn such a mark of importance.

Vince Ambrose was undoubtedly exhausted as he was nearing his home on Tuesday, Aug. 8.

Ambrose, the Hesquiaht First Nation hereditary chief, was on the final leg of his return drive home after participating in this year’s Paddle To Muckleshoot Canoe Journey.

Ambrose, who is 64 years old, paddled a total of 572 kilometres during his portion of the journey this year, which saw participants canoeing down the British Columbia coast and ending up in Auburn, a Washington state city south of Seattle.