Commuters, tourists and those traveling to and from Vancouver Island’s west coast no longer have to endure long traffic delays or schedule conflicts now that the Kennedy Hill Safety Improvement Project is substantially complete.

Improvements to the stretch of Highway 4 adjacent to Kennedy Lake and approximately 14 kilometres northeast of the Tofino/Ucluelet junction have to a large extent wrapped up after more than five years of construction.

The inability to see one another until seconds before impact is to blame for a float plane collision with an Ahousaht water taxi on Oct. 18, 2021, according to a Transportation Safety Board of Canada report released March 30.

The accident occurred in the busy Tofino Harbour in the autumn afternoon over a year ago, when a Tofino Air float plane, a de Havilland DHC-2 MK (Beaver), was coming in for a landing as an Ahousaht-based water taxi, the Rocky Pass, was also heading toward the First Street Dock.

Off the western coast of Vancouver Island, within the rocky shores of Flores Island, an inexhaustible passion for basketball has been breeding for over a generation. On any given night of the week you’ll have a hard time finding free court space in the Maaqtusiis school gym, as the Ahousaht community continues its love affair with a sport normally associated with North America’s inner cities.

“In Ahousaht basketball is a way of life,” said resident Tom Campbell. “When they’re two or three years old they start throwing a ball through a hoop.”

“He’s given so much to so many, recognition of him is long overdue,” said Shelley Harding, the Alberni Valley Museum’s coordinator and education curator, of the late cultural leader, George Clutesi.

George Clutesi, born 1905, was an artist, educator, scholar, author and actor. He was a strong proponent of teaching Nuu-chah-nulth culture to anyone that would listen, so that it may be passed on to future generations.

In her team’s final game at the Junior All Native Tournament, eight-year-old Kai Sam played two minutes. During her brief but intense time on the court Sam faced players who were as much as five years her senior, in a basketball tournament that attracted 91 Indigenous teams from all corners of British Columbia. Hosted by the Snuneymuxw First Nation, the annual event was held at multiple venues in Nanaimo this year, from March 19-24.

It was scary for Victoria Oscar and her brother to leave their family home in Kyuquot Sound and enter the foster care system.

From age two to 16 Oscar and her brother were in and out of foster care, living in Campbell River, Zeballos, Alert Bay and Kyuquot, among other places. When they entered the foster care system, they arrived with only what they could carry, said Oscar.

Over the course of a year when Oscar was a teenager, they were waiting for “approval” to live with her grandfather, though soon after they were in his care, he passed away.

In the wake of an unsuccessful legal challenge against the City of Victoria’s bylaw department – a case that a tribunal called “extraordinary” for municipal enforcement - members of the city’s unhoused community hosted a rally on March 10 to share the challenges they face.

Niki Ottosen is founder of the Backpack Project in Victoria, an organization that provides supplies like tents, sleeping bags, clothing, and food to Victoria’s homeless. 

“There’s really bad drugs out there and it’s freaking me out, our people are just dropping,” said Gail K. Gus, Tseshaht First Nation’s Crisis Care and Wellness coordinator.

She has noticed that since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, people in general have become more depressed and are turning to alcohol and/or illicit drugs to cope.

The University of Victoria has received a $1 million grant to develop a clean, renewable energy source using the power of ocean waves to supply energy to Yuquot, the ancestral home of the Mowachaht/Muchalaht people.

In a statement dated March 3, the University of Victoria said its Pacific Regional Institute for Marine Energy Discovery (PRIMED) has received a grant from the 2022 TD Ready Challenge to develop a clean energy project that captures the power of wave energy at Yuquot, BC.

A new watershed fund is being heralded as a critical shift in how the provincial government values the natural resource, with particular attention to long-held Indigenous values.

With $100-million to back up its claim, the province announced the Watershed Security Fund earlier this month, with a pledge that B.C.’s future will be different than the past century and a half of reliance on unsustainable resource extraction.