Letter to the Editor: The continuing battle between the BCTF and the Provincial Ministry of Education should be of grave concern to families across B.C., and should be incredibly frightening to parents and caregivers in the Boundary and West Kootenay Region. Most conversations are about laying blame: “It’s the teacher’s fault”;...

Two members of my family are teachers; I will therefore limit my comments on the dispute between the teachers and the government to its constitutional aspect. Through the Health and Social Services Delivery Improvement Act of 2002 the government had attempted to curtail the B.C. health workers’ rights to collective bargaining....

Taken aback by complete strangers walking up to you this summer to shake hands? Well, that's because they're back. Candidates on the hustings for a city hall near you. And despite their enthusiasm, it's not a passion shared by most voters if past elections are any indication. Even though local governments in B.C. oversee more...

It appears that in the recent referendum about 27% of Trail’s eligible voters voted in favour of a combined pedestrian / pipe-bridge. It also appears that 64% didn’t bother to vote at all, maybe because they had been told by their Council that it would not cost them anything in additional taxes… so why bother. But what about...

The buzz in the media is that because of a rapidly increasing cougar population 117 cougar were killed by the conservation service last year. The reality is that the cougar population is not increasing, a fact every veteran cougar hunter will quickly validate. Cougar sightings and complaints have increased dramatically because...

I confess. I have been binge-watching TV series. Lately I have narrowed my watching mostly to The West Wing an old favourite about a Democratic president, Jed Bartlet, portraying the manic, day-to-day crisis management of the White House. But in my defence I am doing so in part as an antidote to another series which I quit ...

Since 2005, Eileen Delehanty Pearkes has researched and explored the natural and human history of the rivers of the upper Columbia River Basin.  She speaks frequently at conferences and symposia throughout the Basin on the history of the Columbia River Treaty and its effects on Basin residents.  She has recently completed a...

The Lower Columbia Region is thriving! The most recent economic statistic in a series of published metrics highlighting our thriving economy is the number of non Canadian visitors entering the Lower Columbia region via our local, Paterson and Waneta, borders. From January through May 2014, a whopping 11,800 non Canadian...

B.C.'s economy – already facing what seems like the perfect economic storm of stagnant job growth, an acute skills shortage and the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision on First Nation land title claims – can now add one more low pressure system into that mix: the Mount Polley Mine disaster. In its wake to date: government...

Spell lots of words wrong! Use apostrophes when you have no earthly reason to do so! Confuse ‘C’, ‘see’, and ‘sea’! Me saying this may seem dissonant to many who know me. I am a well-recognized grammar Nazi. I once got a death threat beginning with, “To the heretic hoar and her bastard son … ”. I was less offended by the death...