Tk’emlúps te SecwépemcKukpi7 First Nations reported the heartbreaking discovery of the remains of more than 200 children on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.
Curtis Lucas, a young Hesquiaht man with learning barriers, smiles proudly as his instructor guides him through proper techniques for cutting down invasive Scotch broom. Not far away, Gary Peter of Ditidaht, also with learning barriers, is operating a gas mower as he cleans up the lawn at Port Alberni’s North Island College.
In a classroom, not far away, Jerami Sam of Ahousaht is taking a class on ladder safety in a custodial training course.
As the arrest toll grows at blockades around the Fairy Creek watershed, some wonder if police enforcement in the area is going beyond stipulations of a court order, while interfering with civil liberties.
The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure announced that the once weekly 10-hour daylight closures of the Kennedy Hill construction zone are over.
In a provincial traffic advisory issued May 27, the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure introduced the new Highway 4 at Kennedy Hill spring closure schedule.
Midday four-hour closures of the highway that connects Port Alberni to west coast communities will continue as rock blasting continues.
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.