The BC Coroners Service has release preliminary information that shows 1,826 lost their lives to unregulated drug toxicity in 2025, compared to 2,315 deaths in 2024. That represents an approximate 21 per cent decrease – a significant improvement, if the numbers hold.

While the news is indeed positive, the reasons for the downward trend are not clear. Are harm reduction measures working? If so, which ones? Are illicit drugs less toxic in 2025 than in previous years? Are fewer people using illicit drugs?

With a loss to the Laxgalts'ap Aces (Greenville) in game two of a grueling All Native Basketball Tournament, it could have easily gone sideways for the Hesquiaht Descendants. 

The Melawmen Collective has released their first album and will be coming to town to play for local audiences.

Based in Ashcroft, B.C., the Melawmen Collective describes their music as contemporary Indigenous fusion “woven together with elements of hip hop, rock/blues, country, global beats, righteous rhymes and rich harmonies, carried through with experience, manifestation and visions of intergenerational stories of pain and healing”.

A B.C. Supreme Court justice in Cranbrook has chosen the low end of the sentencing range for a 23-year-old woman who pled guilty to impaired driving causing death, weighing the extent of the tragedy against Indigenous-specific considerations and the convicted person’s hope for rehabilitation.

Twenty-five-year-olds Brady Tardif and Jackson Freeman, and 21-year-old Gavin Murray lost their lives as a result of the offence. They were passengers in the crash, which happened on July 9, 2024, near Wilmer, B.C., a small semi-rural community just a few minutes south of Invermere. 

Artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly popular on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tok, but what impacts are AI generated videos and images having in the environment?

AI requires massive, specialized data centers, often called ‘AI factories’, to train and run complex models. This brings a surge in demand for power and infrastructure dependent on fossil fuels, resulting in a high production of greenhouse gas emissions.

Entrepreneurs who come from a long line of commercial fishers are capitalizing on an ocean harvest that has nothing to do with catching fish.

Kelp is presenting growing possibilities on international markets, contributing a valuable, self-regenerating ingredient to agriculture, food products and even the skin care industry.

Yuułuʔiłʔatḥ Government’s education department held an uplifting professional development day on Feb. 13 at the Cixʷatin Centre in Hitacu. 

Manager of education services Jennifer Touchie said about 90 West Coasters from Ahousaht, Tla-o-qui-aht, Huu-ay-aht, School District 70 and Pacific Rim Hospice attended the full-day event, which centered around ‘Moving through trauma by connecting to culture, language and traditional foods’. 

Port Alberni has a shortage or health care workers, and as doctors retire more people are going without family physicians, adding to the strain at walk-in clinics and the emergency department at the West Coast General Hospital.

A Vancouver-based dance group is working to ensure that one of B.C.’s largest First Nation cultural events happens this year, but Hoobiyee will not be held at the end of February as was previously announced.

A celebration of the Nisga’a New Year, Hoobiyee is usually held annually at the end of February or beginning of March. Besides Nisga’a participants, the event attracts thousands from across B.C. to Vancouver’s PNE Forum, and has drawn a heavy Nuu-chah-nulth presence with several performances each year from multiple nations from Vancouver Island’s west coast.

Hundreds dressed in red gathered in downtown Victoria on Feb. 14 to participate in the 17th annual Stolen Sisters Memorial March to honour missing and murdered Indigenous Peoples. 

The W̱SÁNEĆ Wolf Pack led the march from Centennial Square through Government Street towards the legislature. The march formed a large circle at each intersection along Government Street for song and dance performed by the Wolf Pack, each a tribute to the disproportionate number of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG).