A wildfire near Poett Nook is now considered low risk after a Western Forest Products fire watch crew responded by applying 1,200 gallons of water to the blaze yesterday, according to a release by Huu-ay-aht First Nation. 

The 10-square metre ground fire occurred on treaty settlement lands that are under a standing timber purchase agreement with Western Forest Products, near Bamfield. 

The site of the fire is still under observation. 

The wave of discoveries this summer of unmarked graves at residential schools sparked a distant memory in Bernard Jack. He recalls attending Christie Indian Residential School on Meares Island as a young child, where a gravesite could be seen outside of a church that students were taken to for services.

“All I seen was pegs at the end of a grave,” said Jack, who attended Christie from 1968-73.

Hasaatuk’s musical interest was stirred awake while attending Haahuupayak Elementary School in Port Alberni. 

Through Nuu-chah-nulth immersion classes, she learned how to sing her ancestral songs and became inspired to write music of her own. 

“It gave me a voice,” she said.

After seeking guitar lessons from her father, who is from Ahousaht First Nation, Hasaatuk wrote her first song when she was only eight years old. “ƛaqaʔas,” meaning “standing around outside,” was about the commercialization of Christmas, she said.

The most people in two years gathered at the traditional home of the Mowachaht in early August with the return of the First Nation’s Yuquot Spirit Summerfest.

A range of long-term and short-term campers, as well as seasonal workers from Tofino and Ucluelet, have been finding refuge down the Kennedy Lake logging road system for years. 

Some evenings, the line-up of vehicles along the West Main Forest Service Road runs several kilometres long, as observed by the Ha-Shilth-Sa.

“Disheartened” by the amount of pollution being left behind and the disregard of the province-wide campfire ban, Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation member Timmy Masso said he could no longer sit idly by.

Naomi and Ed Nicholson, owners of Chims Guest House on Tseshaht territory, have expanded their operations to include four new RV sites and an Indigenous Cultural Centre.

Chims Guest House, at 6890 Pacific Rim Hwy., will expand from one studio suite and a one-bedroom guest house to now include four serviced RV sites. The suites are currently being rented to longer-term tenants and the RV sites will be available for bookings in September.

An Ahousaht college student is pleased to announce that his first children’s book is off to the publisher and online book sales are taking off.

Ren Louie is about to start his fourth and final year in the Indigenous Studies Program at the University of Victoria and he already has a budding career as an author of children’s books.

Louie’s first book, Drum from the Heart, is off to the publisher and will be released in February 2022. Medicine Wheel Education is accepting preorders for the book on their website and sales are doing well, according to a relieved Louie.

Vanessa Sim, a Hesquiaht woman, wasn’t feeling well and decided to get checked at West Coast General Hospital on June 18.

“I was endlessly thirsty, needed the bathroom a lot and was feeling confused,” said Sim, a wife, mother and grandmother. She said her family was concerned because she would blurt out random things, not seeming to make sense. On top of that, her vision was going bad.

Concerned about her worsening symptoms, Sim went to visit the emergency department at West Coast General Hospital to get checked out.

A survey of residents on Vancouver Island’s northwest coast suggests most know the signs of an approaching tsunami but do not know evacuation routes, mustering points or where to turn for information if disaster strikes.

The survey is part of the Northwest Vancouver Island Tsunami Risk Project, a collaborative study involving Strathcona Regional District (SRD), Nuchatlaht and Ka:'yu:'k't'h'/Che:k'tles7et'h' First Nations along with various other stakeholders in the region.