The City of Trail is pleased to announce that Chris McIsaac, the City’s Utilities Superintendent, has been appointed the new Director of Public Works.  Chris will assume his role new immediately and will work directly with the current Manager of Public Works, Larry Abenante, until Larry retires in May after 21 years of service with the City.

While it still may not look very much like it in some corners, winter is releasing its grip on the West Kootenay. Snowfalls turning to rain showers, songbirds returning to the trees, and creeks swollen with runoff signal the return of spring to the region. And, along with the seasonal turns, every four years also brings with...

Elections BC is doing its best to reach out to potential voters for the past two months with staff going door-to-door, sending out cars through the mail along with flooding the public with advertising to build up numbers for the upcoming provincial election May 9. The deadline to pre-register of Tuesday, April 11, is slowly...

Over the past month I have visited most of the RCMP detachments in South Okanagan-West Kootenay.  While the conversations covered some of the obvious law and order issues such as marijuana legalization, rising levels of property crime and staffing levels for highway patrol, I was surprised that one issue dominated most of my...

The chair of the local board of education is going to be suggesting, at the SD 20 board’s next meeting, that school-related trips to the US be disallowed due to the trump administration’s travel bans. Teri Ferworn, chair of the SD 20 board, said such a policy may not even be the purview of individual school districts. “There...

The City of Trail announced last week that it has launched a call for tenders inviting eligible contractors to bid on the civil works and construction of the Trail Regional Airport Terminal Building. The tender, released March 8, closes March 28, at 3 p.m. PST and will require the successful contractor to start construction...

The Castlegar community has the opportunity this week to view the eye-opening and entertaining documentary film Merchants of Doubt. The film will be shown on March 16 at 7 p.m. at the Castlegar United Church (809 Merry Creek Rd.). Admission is by donation. Merchants of Doubt exposes the campaign to confuse the public and discredit climate science.

Castlegar’s Columbia Avenue Complete Streets program got a major boost over the weekend, when two higher levels of government announced more than $3 million in grant funding toward the project. The federal and provincial governments have committed $1, 607,421 each to the project, with the City of Castlegar paying the remaining...

Teck Trail Operations has completed construction of the Groundwater Treatment Plant, a $46-million investment to address groundwater affected by the site’s historical activities. Commissioning of the plant is currently under way, and the plant is expected to be fully operational by summer 2017. “The Groundwater Treatment Plant...

This past weekend the Globe and Mail reported that lobbyists in the province have been making political donations on behalf of their clients, effectively camouflaging the identity of the real donors and breaking B.C.'s Elections Act in the process. On Sunday, Elections B.C. announced it was conducting an investigation into the Globe's findings. Five days later, the entire matter was referred to the RCMP.