northword magazine | spring 2006 | departments

By: Larissa Ardis

Northwest Community College’s highly successful pilot program, the School of Exploration & Mining, has received a substantial boost from the provincial government. The program, which delivers basic exploration skills training programs to local and First Nations communities in the Northwest, received another $300,000 in funding in January.

Hollinger International Inc., formerly controlled by legally challenged media mogul Conrad Black, sold most of its remaining papers to Vancouver-based Glacier Venture International Corp. The sale includes northern newspapers the Prince George Citizen, the Alaska Highway News, the Peace River Block News and the Prince Rupert Daily News, among several other B.C. publications. It means Glacier will have distribution of more than a million copies in Western Canada.

First Nations from Northern B.C. are among 11 whose cultural artifacts are being featured in a high-profile exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. Cultural representatives from the Haida, Tshimshian, Gitxsan and Nisga’a are on the curatorial team for “The Art of Native Life along the North Pacific Coast,” an exhibition of 19th- and 20th-century ceremonial and everyday objects, which opened Feb. 3 and will run until Jan. 2, 2007.

A poll commissioned by the Truck Loggers Association and released in January suggests coastal British Columbians favour more local control over forest operations. The Innovative Research Group Inc. poll found that 92 per cent of British Columbians in seven coastal ridings believe it is in their communities’ best interest if forest companies and their workers are locally based, and 54 per cent believe “major forest companies” should have less influence over the way B.C.’s forests are managed. The poll surveyed 400 residents Jan. 6-11 in the TLA’s operating area.

B.C.-based Canfor Corp. announced a $205-million purchase in January of New South Companies Inc., a lumber company based in South Carolina. New South is headed up by Mack Singleton, former chair of the Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports—the powerful U.S. lobby group which has continued to dispute conclusions of international trade panels which have repeatedly ruled in Canada’s favour in the ongoing softwood lumber dispute.

The District of Houston is jockeying for its fair share of bear—dead grizzly, that is. The town has applied to B.C.’s environment ministry for the hide of a massive grizzly shot by the B.C. Cattlemen’s Association predator control officer last October. Houston is hoping to have the bear mounted and displayed at some prominent, public location—partly to redress what many locals feel was the unjust loss of the last such bear, which was killed in 2001 near Houston by conservation officers, and later awarded to the town of Smithers, which now displays the mount at its regional airport.

Kitimat’s wait for a court decision, on whether it has the legal standing to challenge Alcan’s use of the water power generated from the Nechako/Kemano river system, has been extended. Alcan has argued that Kitimat cannot challenge this, because the town was not party to a 1950 contract between the provincial government and the aluminum producer. In January, the B.C. Court of Appeals announced the postponement of its decision, which is now expected to be issued within the next two months.

The Ministry of Energy and Mines is considering a proposal to build a power plant that would be fuelled by the burning of beetle-killed trees. University of Alberta engineers, who studied the concept with support from the B.C. government and BIOCAP Canada Foundation, concluded that a wood-fired plant could provide central B.C. with 300 megawatts of power for the next 20 years, help Canada meet its Kyoto commitments and position B.C. as a world leader in biomass power generation.

The Prince Rupert port expansion received approval from the federal government to start construction immediately, despite court action threatened in mid-January by the Tshimshian, who say they have not been consulted about aboriginal title and rights issues. The coast Tsimshian say the facility will have further negative impacts on the site where former native winter villages and shellfish harvesting beds existed. They are also seeking employment and business opportunities.

Seventy-five per cent of B.C. residents favour a ban on oil tanker traffic on the West Coast, according to a poll commissioned by the Dogwood Initiative. It also found that over half of the residents oppose opening up the B.C. coast to development, and that over eight in 10 say that when it comes to energy policy, Canada’s top priority should be alternatives like solar and wind power, and energy-efficient technologies that conserve power, rather than new sources of oil.

No one has commented yet on this article.

comments are not open for this article

North Word Magazine