Introduction: last year of our Second twenty-first-century Decade (!) Year-end and year-start reviews can be an occasion for melancholy or celebration, and yet I personally feel neither. Mostly I feel astounded to find myself 19 years into the twenty-first century, and the third millennium, when it seems not so long ago that the pregnant year […]

We’ve heard a lot in the news lately about the challenges facing the oil sector, but much less about the serious problems confronting another natural resource industry—forestry. Two years ago, the United States placed significant import tariffs on softwood lumber.  Those illegal tariffs are still in place, yet we hear almost...

In this coldest time of the year, we often think of the people in our area who are homeless.  Some have ended up on the streets and in rough camps because of mental health issues, addictions, or a combination of the two.  Some are children fleeing abusive parents or women fleeing abusive spouses; others have become disabled. ...

A large tract of protected lands stretches between Nelson and Creston, including areas managed by the Province of British Columbia and the Darkwoods Conservation Area, owned and managed by the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC). Yet one area within Darkwoods — the Next Creek watershed — remains unprotected. This is about to...

Austin Engineering Ltd. and its team of like-minded partners are constantly analyzing dams, including how they react during earthquakes. The innovative thinkers are pleased to announce that their research, recently presented at the Canadian Dam Association, has received another accolade: the Clean Energy BC ‘Operational...

So far, most of the discussion about Proportional Representation (PR) has focused on fairness. Without a proportional voting system, there’s no way to make every vote count equally. But there are other reasons to adopt it, arguably as valid: it would bring social and financial stability and cut waste. In elections using...

Japanese Knotweed is among the most feared invasive weeds, because of its effects on real estate values, taxes and infrastructure; it is unfortunately able to damage all three – it damages property values merely by being there, raises taxes by increasing municipal costs, and damages infrastructure by invading foundations,...

Editor's Note:  This letter would have been better addressed to residents of all local commuities, not just  the "Trail residents" mentioned in the last line. The spills affected vehicles from a number of communities. Dear Neighbours, International Raw Materials (IRM) is committed to safely transporting our products through...

"This is the scariest thing about the IPCC Report — it’s the watered down, consensus version." By Jon Queally, Staff Writer, Common Dreams If the latest warnings contained in Monday's report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—which included pronouncements that the world has less than twelve years to...

After months of negotiations and a seemingly endless series of false deadlines, negotiators have hammered out a new trade agreement between Canada, the USA and Mexico.  The new agreement (called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA for short) will create winners and losers, of course, and the general consensus...