The Province of B.C. is making systemic changes to improve outcomes for Indigenous students from kindergarten to Grade 12.
Indigenous people will soon have more input into the decisions and processes affecting the education of Aboriginal children and youth in B.C. public schools.
The newly expanded WCGH emergency department, complete with its own entrance, is now complete.
While the renovated department has been operating for several months, the $6.95 million expansion completion was celebrated by Island Health at a ribbon cutting ceremony held Nov. 10, 2023, at the main hospital entrance.
The latest WCGH opened in 2001 with 52 in-patient beds. According to Island Health, the emergency department saw 25, 715 patient visits in 2022. WCGH serves Port Alberni and surrounding west coast communities from Hot Springs Cove, Ahousaht, Tofino and Ucluelet.
In the wake of a silver medal win at the 2023 Pan American Games, Tseshaht member Shalaya Valenzuela and the rest of the Canadian women’s rugby sevens team is gearing up for another elite competition in Dubai and Cape Town this December.
Valenzuela, who grew up in Abbotsford and has family in Port Alberni, said that although her team didn’t take top spot at the Pan Am games, held in Santiago, Chile on Nov. 3 and 4, they were more than happy with making the podium with a second-place win.
From 1988 to 1992, Lorraine Mundy of Yuułuʔiłʔatḥ served in the U.S. navy as an electrician.
It was after high school when she went to visit her aunt in Los Angeles who was married to a U.S. navy sailor and who was neighbors with a naval recruiter. Mundy’s aunt told the recruiter of the young woman's interest in joining the navy.
“Ever since I was 16 I just wanted to get off the reserve and go do something,” she said, adding that at the time she didn’t feel like college was for her.
On Oct. 30 Canada’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change sent a letter to Eric Angel, project manager for the Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation’s Salmon Parks initiative. This confirmed over $15 million in funding for the project, payable up to March 31, 2026.
Nine Nuu-chah-nulth people were joined by family and friends as they celebrated the completion of their Heavy Equipment Operator Program. The celebration was held at Port Alberni’s Lawn Bowling Club on November 9, 2023.
On the morning of Oct. 2, a trawler fishing boat was reported to be sunken in Port Alberni’s Fisherman Wharf, near Tseshaht’s traditional winter village, ƛukʷatkʷuuʔis.
Western Canada Marine Response Corporation (WCMRC) was contracted by the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) to respond to the incident, where booms were placed to contain any potential pollutants from the vessel, CCG wrote in an email to Ha-Shilth-Sa. The vessel was constantly monitored, and no oil sheen was reported outside of the boom.
Leading up to Remembrance Day on Nov. 11, Canada officially recognizes the role Indigenous veterans have held in international conflicts, an occasion that is about “honouring our ancestors,” says a Tseshaht member.
Today is Indigenous Veterans Day, when the country acknowledges the Aboriginal people who fought for Canada. According to Veterans Affairs Canada, this totaled over 12,000 in the 20th century’s conflicts, with at least 500 losing their lives.
Island Health is apologizing to a Hesquiaht family for an elder’s treatment at West Coast General over the last two months of his life.
On Friday afternoon Alberni District Secondary School filled with students from local elementary schools and their families for their final wrestling tournament of the season.
Match after match, students shook hands and then took to their wrestling stance. As the whistle blew they tried out the offensive and defensive skills they had been working on at practice against their opponents.
For Liam Horbatch of Ahousaht, a Grade 6 student at EJ Dunn, he was in Grade 4 or 5 when he first tried wrestling and thoroughly enjoyed it.