It’s a $10 taxi ride from Vancouver’s Fairmont Waterfront to East Hastings and Main – the epicenter of Canada’s drug poisoning crisis that is disproportionally impacting Indigenous People.  

At the Aboriginal Front Door Society, kitty corner from historic Carnegie Community Centre and the heart of Downtown Eastside (DTES), hope floats as smoke from a traditional smudging lingers in the room and a team of volunteer outreach workers rallied for a weekly brown bag lunch distribution.

“Stanley gifted it to me and it’s time to go home now so his grandchildren’s grandchildren can have it,” Roy Alexander told the group of old friends over a special Aug. 20 lunch at Brown’s Socialhouse in Tofino.

Qaamina, Sam’s eldest son, accepted the chaputs (canoe) on behalf of his family in Ahousaht. 

“It’s heading to Maaqtusiis,” says Qaamina. “Stanley went to Ahousaht Residential School. He was always one to give and he always wanted his grandkids to have better.”

It will now be easier for Mowachaht/Muchalaht people to reach Yuquot and other parts of their home territory, with the First Nation’s acquisition of a large passenger boat.

Caroline Hall says her brother Shawn is an addict.

Shawn Hall, 33, has been living on the streets of Port Alberni for months now, she says.

“I really care about him. He’s a good person, he just got in a really bad place. I’m just hoping one day he’ll get better ‘cause I don’t know... He’s my baby brother,” said Hall.

“I deal with my brother a lot. I usually hold on to his paycheque and distribute it out to him throughout the month, so he doesn’t spend it all at once,” she shared.

At the height to Tofino’s tourism season, a large crowd gathered by the beach at Tin Wis on Aug. 27 to witness the raising of a totem pole. 

Standing 23 feet above the ground, the new totem accompanies another pole of equal height that was raised years ago in honour of former Indian residential school students. The Best Western Tin Wis Resort is owned by the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation, standing on the last location of the Christie Indian Residential School. 

Braving an intense August heat wave, British Columbia elders made the journey to Vancouver’s Canada Place overlooking the Burrard Inlet for the 49th Annual First Nations Elders Gathering on Aug. 26 and 27.

Spirits soared as the boom of traditional drumming filled the air for the Grand Entry, a parade of nations led by cultural hosts the Squamish Nation Elders (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw Siiyúxwa).

Carl Edgar recalls a time, at the age of 14 or 15, when an epiphany came. He was on the southwestern edge of Vancouver Island, camping at Cheewaht, when his father’s friend Rob Archer delivered words at the campfire that would remain with Edgar for the rest of his life.

“He said, ‘Carl, if you can find out what people need, what people want, if you can do it, do it’,” recalls Edgar, who is now 70. “Here I am.”

More than 30 First Nations across Vancouver Island and coastal British Columbia are calling for sweeping changes to the Island Coastal Economic Trust (“the Trust”), saying the time has come for equal decision-making power in shaping the region’s economic future. 

Nuu-chah-nulth artists Dennis Hetu and Ivy Martin teamed up with the Clayoquot Biosphere Trust (CBT) on the west coast of Vancouver Island to bring traditional teachings to new welcome signage peppered throughout the region.

Installed near the Tofino-Ucluelet Junction, Hetu’s latest carving titled Eclipse of the Hunter’s Moon – a project he worked on with his students from the Toquaht Carving School – can be viewed from the multi-use path.