The 2021 Port Alberni point-in-time homeless count will begin on April 7 and will run for five days this year.

The last homeless count to take place in the Alberni Valley was in 2018, which recorded 147 individuals experiencing homelessness, 43 per cent of which were sheltered and 57 per cent unsheltered. The Covid-19 Pandemic caused a planned 2020 count to be post-poned.

Huu-ay-aht First Nations will be receiving more than half a million dollars to expand its Pachena Bay Campground.

But what is not known yet is whether the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nation will indeed be opening its campground in 2021 or if the COVID-19 pandemic will result in a second consecutive year of its closure.

It was announced earlier this month that Huu-ay-aht First Nations would receive a grant worth $510,340 through the province’s Community Economic Recovery Infrastructure Program.

These funds will be utilized to upgrade the existing campground.

Island Health is about to roll out COVID-19 vaccine to senior citizens in the province’s general population as part of Phase 2 of the immunization plan. Included in this round are Indigenous seniors ages 65 and older living in urban areas.

Seniors aged 90-plus and Indigenous people 65 and older who don’t currently receive home support services or live in a seniors’ supportive housing facility will be able to book their vaccination appointment with Island Health.

Immunization appointments begin on Monday, March 15 in community centres throughout the island.

Opponents of old growth logging in the Ada'itsx/Fairy Creek watershed near Port Renfrew are demanding provincial government intervention, worried that dwindling stands will be lost before Pacheedaht First Nation concludes treaty negotiations.

Protest camps have blockaded logging activity in the area — part of TFL 46 in Pacheedaht First Nation traditional territory — since August 2020, preventing Teal Cedar Products from building a road into the upper Ada’itsx watershed.

For the majority of Steve Howard’s life, he lived by the phrase, “real men don’t cry.”

“Back in my day we were always taught not to cry,” he said. “We were always taught not to feel. So, we grew up kind of tough. Whatever we held in, we kept in.”

It’s a mindset that the Tla-o-qui-aht man is trying to shift by encouraging his four sons to openly share their feelings. And yet, his past traumas of physical, mental and sexual abuse continue to hold him back. 

Ehatis is looking beyond the days of a strict pandemic lockdown with plans to build a central gathering place in the village next to Zeballos.

Work will soon begin on major infrastructure upgrades as Ka:'yu:'k't'h'/Che:k'tles7et'h' First Nations (KCFN) prepare to replace their aging water and sewer systems.

The village of Houpsitas began filling with homes in the early 1970s when the First Nation moved from its island home of Aktis. According to KCFN CAO Cynthia Blackstone, some of the water and sewer pipes in the older parts of the village date back to that time.

Fifty years later, the village has grown to a population of about 200 with approximately 50 family homes, according to Blackstone.

As B.C. moved to Phase 2 of its immunization plan on Monday, the Nuu-chah-nulth nations of Tseshaht and Hupacasath remained unsure when COVID-19 vaccines would reach their communities.

The province’s shift in approach, which prioritizes age groups, prompted confusion from community leaders who said that it deviated from the community-wide vaccination plan that was promised.

Today members of the Tseshaht First Nation got their first chance to be vaccinated for COVID-19.

This morning hundreds of doses of the Moderna vaccine arrived at the First Nation’s reserve next to Port Alberni. A clinic of was set up at Maht Mahs gym, where at 8:30 a.m. Tseshaht Chief Councillor Ken Watts and a group of volunteers led by Holly Mclaughlin welcomed the inoculation process with an outdoor ceremony. After the welcoming Watts thanked all the volunteers and said that this vaccine will ease the anxieties with in their nation.

Parks Canada is continuing to make progress on building ʔapsčiik t̓ašii (pronounced ups-cheek ta-shee), the 25-kilometer multi-use pathway that extends along Long Beach, in the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. 

Although around 95 per cent of the pathway has been paved, it remains an active construction zone and is not yet officially open.