Last spring I wrote a column called “Is this what a police state looks like” in response to the dangerous police actions surrounding the G20 Summit in Toronto.  I argued–as many have–that police states don’t pop up full blown over night. They develop slowly in direct proportion to people’s willingness to accept new definitions...

Leo Gerard, the international president of the United Steelworkers is coming to the Kootenays on October 2. He will be speaking at a fundraising dinner for the Kootenay West NDP at the Labour Centre in Trail. “It’s a great honour for us to get such a distinguished labour leader to speak at our dinner in […]

NDP leader Carole James was so quiet for so long, many of her own supporters wondered where she was all summer.  With the HST and the Liberals imploding, it would have been a great time for the wanna-be Premier to show her stuff, to take the lead, to convince British Columbians she’s no wasteful socialist extremist. Then she...

Thanks to their commitments to volunteering, 22 Basin residents have received money to pursue post-secondary education or training through the 2010 College Community Service Awards (CCSA), funded by Columbia Basin Trust (CBT). The $2,000 awards are available to Basin residents who have taken a hiatus of at least one year after completing high school and wish to continue their […]

 “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 […]