Construction of 19 affordable housing units are being built within the Huu-ay-aht First Nations’ and Uchucklesaht Tribe’s communities.
Around $6.92 million will be invested towards the units through the Projects Stream of the Rapid Housing Initiative (RHI).
British Columbians can anticipate returning “to normal life” by early September, after B.C. officials launched a four-step plan to ease pandemic restrictions on Tuesday.
Under the provincial restart plan, indoor dining and low-intensity indoor fitness classes can resume, a maximum of five visitors are allowed to gather indoors and 10 people are permitted for outdoor gatherings.
The province continues to be divided into three regional zones, however Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry encouraged residents to explore their designated travel zone.
Circuit Breaker COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted.
“We have been waiting for this day for a long time,” said Dr. Bonnie Henry, provincial health officer.
She laid out the four-step provincial restart plan in a televised statement today.
Now that more than 60 per cent of the province’s adult population have been immunized with at least one dose of vaccine. While COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations have stabilized, the province can move forward with the lifting of restrictions in a careful and gradual way, said Henry.
Dozens of police officers descended upon the Caycuse camp near the Fairy Creek watershed, enforcing a court injunction against blockades preventing Teal-Jones from accessing several stands of old-growth forest.
As of May 20, there have been 21 arrests made since the RCMP began enforcing the injunction on Tuesday, May 18.
The Rainforest Flying Squad, an old-growth activist group, have been stationed at the blockades near Port Renfrew since last August to protect one of B.C.’s last remaining watersheds untouched by industrial logging.
Residents of the Mowachat/Muchalaht First Nation’s community of Tsaxana are urged to be cautious while outdoors after three cougars were seen lurking on the reserve near Gold River.
Tsaxana resident Allie Amos said a mother and two babies were recently spotted in the community, making a den between two homes, an area where her eight-year-old brother plays.
“There’s a hill in between those two places and they embedded up there,” said Johnson. “My brother Darren actually plays up on that hill every day.”
On a crisp morning in early May, a group of teenagers from Port Alberni’s Eight Avenue Learning Centre were working the field in front of their school, realizing the garden they had conceived over the previous winter months.
Within a metal fence that had been erected a month prior, the Grade 8 and 9 class were measuring out where the garden beds would be made, while others carted loads of leaves to the site from a large pile that had collected behind the school.
Tenants of Port Alberni’s King George Apartments are both happy and relieved that their affordable rental rates will be unchanged after the purchase of the building by the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) Port Alberni and the Province of BC.
Located at 3131 5th Ave., the building provides 41 one and two-bedroom units that cost considerably less than average market rents in the area, ranging from approximately $500 to $633 per month. The Canadian Mental Health Association Port Alberni had leased the apartment building for the past nine years.
As Jenzen Thomas sat in a circle with nine other men from Ahousaht First Nation, he thought he was apart of just another support group.
Gathered together for the first time on May 7, the group’s facilitators explained they would be focusing on exploring pathways to stop sexualized violence in their community.
The men sat quietly, nervously looking around at each other, Thomas recalled.
But nobody walked away.
“It was very powerful,” said Thomas. “I can’t stop praying now. I can’t stop praying for no [more] sexual abuse.”
As the COVID-19 pandemic was dragging on in 2020 and the situation was looking bleak for her Indigenous tourism business, Naomi Nicholson knew one place she could count on for support.
Nicholson, who owns and operates Chims Guest House in Port Alberni with her husband Ed, was fortunate to receive a $25,000 grant last year from the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada (ITAC) to help keep her business afloat.
Because of pandemic restrictions, Chims closed in March of 2020 and did not reopen until this past September.
The RCMP moved into an area near the Fairy Creek Watershed on Monday to enforce a court injunction banning blockades from preventing old-growth logging in southern Vancouver Island, within Pacheedaht First Nation’s traditional territory.
In a statement, RCMP said that anyone who breaches the injunction, as well as those refusing to leave the access control area, will be arrested.