Beginning at 11:30 today, the Alberni Athletic Hall opened its doors to low-income and homeless residents of Port Alberni, where Teechuktl Mental Health is hosting their first in-person Feed the People lunch since 2019. The broader Port Alberni community is also welcome.

A bus will be running, beginning at 10:30 this morning, to shuttle people to the hall from the Port Alberni Friendship Centre and Kuu-as Crisis Line, which located at 4589 Adelaide St. The bus will also shuttle people back after lunch is completed.

The provincial government announced last week that the Indigenous Forest Bioeconomy Program will be expanding, with the aim of funding projects that have yet to leave the pilot, commercialization, or scale-up phases.

Shalaya Valenzuela, 23, is a busy, young Tseshaht woman, pursuing a university degree while competing on Canada’s Women’s Rugby Sevens team in Cape Town, South Africa on the weekend of Dec 9 to 11.

She is part of an ensemble with members from across the nation representing the Canadian National Rugby Sevens senior women’s team. They first competed in Dubai early this month and wore the red and white in Cape Town, South Africa last weekend.

The mother of two former John Howitt Elementary students has lost her appeal of a January 2020 court ruling, which determined that a smudging ceremony held at the school did not infringe on her children’s right to freedom of religion.

Candice Servatius, a devout Christian and mother, took issue with Indigenous cultural demonstrations held at a public school attended by her children, claiming that the events were religious in nature and went against her own church’s teachings.

The Victoria Native Friendship Centre (VNFC) has launched an Indigenous-led learning opportunity that supports reconciliation through community-based learning. 

The Community Learning Program began in April and runs for about four weeks, starting with a week of online learning. The program includes an eight-hour session of in-person discussion each week for the remaining three weeks. It runs in cohorts of 15 to 20 people, with both Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants.

A murder in Port Alberni’s poorest neighbourhood has raised the urgency for an upcoming development that will house the city’s marginalized residents.

Just before 9 p.m. on Dec. 2 police found three people injured from knife wounds, with one person who was killed during the incident on Port Alberni’s lower 4th Avenue. Police tape was put up at a unit in the Wintergreen Apartments, a building next to an empty lot full of run-down trailers being rented for low rates.

Thirteen Level 1 Carpentry students are set to graduate on Dec. 13, leaving a legacy of their work at the upcoming Tiny Home Village on lower 4th Avenue in Port Alberni.

In a unique partnership between the Port Alberni Friendship Center, North Island College and the Nuu-chah-nulth Employment Training Program (NETP), the students were able to complete their course load by sharpening their skills at the Tiny Home Village, still under construction.

After a week and a half of closure due to an influenza outbreak, both Ahousaht schools have welcomed their students and staff back for regular classes.

During the time of the closure both schools were deeply sanitized, and they continue to clean high-touch surfaces, explained Rebecca Atleo, Ahousaht’s education director.

Dec. 7 marks the beginning of the United Nations Biodiversity Conference.

COP 15, Conference of the Parties, is being held in Montreal, the unceded territory of Kahnawake Mohawk First Nation. Governments from countries around the world will come together to negotiate and create a new framework of goals and strategies, known as the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, to minimize biodiversity loss and preserve nature. These goals will then be carried into the next decade of conservation work throughout the 196 countries involved.

Off the rugged west coast of Vancouver Island, inland from the West Coast Trail, is a quiet and remote lake brimming with vibrant ecosystems. From trumpeter swans to black bears, the Cheewaht Lake watershed provides a home for dense and rare biodiversity.

The Cheewaht Lake watershed is on the traditional territory of Ditidaht First Nation, who, for thousands of years, managed the area from villages along the coast at the mouth of the Cheewaht River.