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...

Ed note: I sent this column to many of my people and asked if I was doing wrong in publishing it. They essentially said that, if I value telling the truth, I need to publish it. But it will likely hurt my business. I decided I want to be a better person than a better reporter. So here it is. I was so touched and moved by the...

If someone is being bullied, the last thing you want to do is walk away from them. They need support, and lots of it. I do not know of anyone that would walk away, or stop being friends with someone who is being bullied. That would be shameful. We need to start treating mental illness and depression as we do with bullying. ...

Dear Editor, I read with interest the article  Mount Polley Disaster published in the The Nelson Daily on August 6, 2014.  I have been following the news on the Fraser River Imperial Mines tailing pond contamination. I see that the government treated this toxic tailings pond with the same the extreme carelessness I have...