“Like others, I was astonished by Premier Campbell’s statement that the result of the Initiative vote on September 24, 2011 will be binding on the government if a simple majority of those voting vote to get rid of the HST,” said Green Party of BC Leader Jane Sterk. “Greens want to know if the comment […]

I confess that I did not, as promised, spend the summer thinking about the new paradigm of local, national and global politics. It was the perfect summer at my log cabin in Saskatchewan and I spent most of it swimming to the end of the lake and back, picking blueberries and swinging in my Mexican hammock.  But I did spend...

I love BC politics.  It’s often more dramatic than some of the prime time offerings offered up for our entertainment on the big screen or the tube. And, whether you see him as the hero or the villain, Premier Gordon Campbell deserves an Oscar and an Emmy.He was on the canvas, bruised and beaten down; his enemies could smell his...

The current Bill C-391 to abolish the gun registry appears to be receiving a lot of media attention these days. The Conservative government is cranking up its publicity campaign to abolish the registry, pitting different regions of the country against each other. If we were to look at how this is playing out in the […]

David Suzuki will be engaging audiences in the West Kootenay this September with a thought-provoking talk about an elder’s vision for our sustainable future. The Irving K. Barber lecture featuring David Suzuki is part of Selkirk College’s Mir Centre for Peace Lecture Series. The presentation is founded on his recent book THE...

Kristopher Ede from Invermere takes the prize for the SCRATCH Writing Challenge Readers’ Choice Award. The 18-year-old won this portion of the creative writing challenge, put on by Columbia Basin Trust (CBT), with his short story “the girl with the plastic pirate hat and the boy who loved her so.” Ede’s story earned 29 per […]

Pending approval of a final permit, contractors will begin work between Sept. 13 and Sept. 20, 2010 to remove granulated slag at Black Sand Beach on the upper Columbia River. The work is being conducted to clean up polluted material on the beach from the Teck Metals Ltd. (formerly Teck Cominco) smelter in Trail. The […]

[Editor's note: Part one of Mr. Oberfeld's column should be right below this one. I decided to print the two simultaneously as this is an important issue and one that will only become more and more urgent as corporate newspapers struggle to survive in an age of declining revenues]It’s no secret that, to any branch of the news...

How do you tell the difference between journalism today and prostitution?  Hmmm...  Sorry: it’s not a joke; there is no punchline; it’s only a question I’ve been asking myself since reading the ”major”  Vancouver  newspapers last weekend.Saturday Aug. 28 on page A-16 in The Vancouver Sun there were two captivating stories: ...

It’s actually hard not to laugh! But really, we should be crying. Finance Minister Colin Hansen stood before the cameras this week and told British Columbians he had no idea his own Finance Ministry officials were holding extensive discussions with federal counterparts in Ottawa on the HST in March, 2009 … a few months before...