Island Insider

“It’s special, and it deserves protection," says Read Island resident Lannie Keller on how her tiny B.C. coast community rallied to save 20 acres of mature rainforest from being clear cut. And, how it now aims to save more.

Sea lice from open-net fish farms are contributing to the massive decline in wild salmon stocks, the First Nations Leadership Council stated Thursday, calling on the B.C. and federal government to immediately transition to closed-containment salmon farms.

Tim Green, Canada research chair in shellfish health and genomics at Vancouver Island University, received a $300,000 grant earlier this year to look for markers suggesting the presence of noroviruses and how they travel in the marine environment.

Not even a global pandemic is quashing Cortes Island’s Queer community and allies from celebrating Pride this year.

Q̓ʷalayu House in Campbell River will largely support expectant mothers and families, by giving them a place to stay while they, or their children, receive care at the adjacent North Island Hospital in Campbell River or from local health-care providers. It's scheduled to open next summer.

For First Nations, repatriation is not some dusty word associated with museum bureaucracy, it is fundamental to reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, says Jodi Simkin, president of the BC Museums Association (BCMA).

The We Wai Kai and Wei Wai Kum Nations want the immediate cancellation of Mowi Inc. tenure for its Shaw Point aquaculture operation and more say around salmon farm operations in their territories,, according to a statement issued by the Laich-Kwil-Tach Treaty Society Thursday.

Many communities in northern Quadra Island fall outside the fire department's protection zone. But a regional district survey on burning regulations and fire service shows there's no clear consensus about how to best safeguard residents from wildfires.

 Two Quadra Island residents are lucky they weren’t injured or killed after a high-calibre bullet tore into their home Friday night, RCMP say.

In a targeted effort to save people from dying while using alone at home, B.C. launched the Lifeguard app province-wide May 21.The free app, downloadable to any cellphone, prompts users to check in 50 seconds after dosing, Neil Lilley, senior provincial executive director of BC Emergency Health Service, said on Friday.

“Lots of small communities might not fall under the BC Transit umbrella due to a combination of politics and community priorities,” said community planner Ericka Amador. “So, alternative transit options are often born of necessity and by grassroots movements ..."

“I, too, am going to just exercise my right to say how disappointed I am with this (decision). I think we have done our constituents over on Cortes Island a disservice," Strathcona Regional District chair Michele Babchuk, after three rural directors postponed public hearings in their areas until September, putting the funding application for a 20-unit affordable rental housing project at risk.

Small communities in B.C. turned out over the weekend to protest police violence and racism against Black people, Indigenous people and people of colour locally and nationally.

B.C.'s minimum wage bump is inadequate, especially as low wage workers suffer the greatest impacts of the COVID-19 crisis, says economist Iglika Ivanova, of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. “Grocery store workers, cleaners or people working in the restaurants or food service are at increased risk when they go to work. And when they earn such low wages, it’s profoundly unfair."

The Mobile Outreach Unit for Health and Support Services (MOUHSS) is a brightly coloured RV bringing much-needed services to the community's most vulnerable. But it only has funding until August.