Dressed in a cedar cap and a black gown, Alden Campbell furiously perfected his valedictorian speech in a quiet corner inside Maaqtusiis Secondary School on June 22.

He had been working on it for two days hoping to get it just right in preparation for his high school graduation ceremony.

Campbell was one of five high school graduates from Ahousaht First Nation being celebrated by family and friends who had gathered inside the school’s gymnasium on the remote Flores Island. 

Working toward the goal of zero plastic waste by 2030, the Canadian government announced they’re banning six categories of the most commonly found plastics polluting the country’s shorelines and oceans, but some groups are saying this is far from enough to protect ecosystems and eliminate plastic pollution.

The ban will gradually eliminate the Canadian production and export of plastic bags, cutlery, stir sticks, six-pack rings, straws and some takeout containers.

It’s been 20 years since Tla-o-qui-aht woman Lisa Marie Young went missing from Nanaimo, and family, friends and supporters still walk in her memory each year hoping that someday justice will be served.

Ditidaht First Nation delivered a message to protestors manning an encampment on a forestry road just outside of the Nitinaht Lake community: “Clean up your mess and go back to where you came from.”

Days before nearly all of B.C.’s salmon farm licences were due to expire, the DFO has granted them licence to operate for another two years, as Canada pushes through on a promise to phase out the industry’s standard open net pen practice by 2025.

Ditidaht Community School students have created a hard-cover book filled with illustrations, photography, poetry and musings about their home and their elders. Copies of the 25-page book, called Letters to Our Elders, were distributed to Ditidaht elders at a community lunch served in the school gym on June 22.

Hundreds, if not a thousand or more people, gathered at Harbour Quay this morning to take part in a large-scale celebration hosted by Tseshaht First Nation and the City of Port Alberni. The National Indigenous People’s Day celebration in Port Alberni featured the re-awakening of Tseshaht’s Wolf Ritual Beach, something the First Nation says they were prevented from doing for more than a century.

As rain poured down on hup̓icatḥ hitinquis (Opitsaht Beach), Leah Morgan lifted her arms to the sky and looked up. Unfazed by the cold, damp air, she inhaled deeply with her eyes closed. A gentle smile emerged across her face.

Led by Coastal Bliss Studio Manager Heidi McPherson, Morgan participated in a Summer Solstice National Indigenous Peoples Day yoga class on Meares Island.

Deep under the ocean’s surface off the west coast of Vancouver Island lies a mountain range of around 50 underwater volcanoes – measuring from 1,000 to 3,000 metres high. 

These seamounts, as they’re more accurately named, are here for the same reasons there are earthquakes and tsunamis along British Columbia’s coast, said Cherisse Du Preez, head of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s (DFO) deep-sea ecology program.

“We have tectonic activity that is very active and very close to shore,” she said. “It’s like the Rocky Mountains down there.”