“Maim”isn’t a word we often hear these days, but it’s what fireworks too often do – cause blindness, blow people’s hands off, or maybe just a finger or two … add “maim” to your vocabulary, kids, especially if you like playing with fireworks.  They can maim you. On ...

This month, Mrs. Barrie’s Grade 5 Class at Webster Elementary School completed a field guide on a local Warfield trail system, through a Wildsight EcoStewards project. The field guide is helping students, teachers and the community to get outside and learn. Behind Webster Elementary is an amazing trail system but it...

Do you love (or fear) bears and want to know more about them? Did you know we share this area with wolves and cougars? And what do you know about the elusive Mountain Caribou? Join Touchstones Museum Indigenous Educator and Wildlife Technician Toni Appleby as she shares stories from years studying, tracking, and reporting on...

Neighbourhood book exchanges have been a feature of some European cities for years.  These are small collections of donated books, free for anyone to take or trade, that have been established by a book-loving resident and are available for needy readers 24/7.  (A “needy reader” is anyone who needs something...

Claire Dibble has a passion for people and places and it comes through in two projects that she is undertaking that will be exhibited in the Kootenay Gallery of Art from June 20 to Aug. 29. The first is the Hidden Hero Project and the second is Watershed Moments: From Source to Sea. The Hidden Hero Projectgot underway in the...

By Daniel Callcut, for Aeon Imagine you work at a latex glove factory. One night, you type ‘latex’ into Google: you’re searching for competitors’ products, but you find other things too. Some of what you find turns you on. But some of it you wish you could unsee: prior to the search, it was morally unthinkable.  It’s easy to...

By George Estreich, for Aeon Most people remember the emperor: a vain ruler, swindled into paying for a nonexistent magical garment, parades in public, only to be embarrassed by a little boy. To me, the story is really about the swindling tailors. Audacious, imaginative, their true product is a persuasive illusion, one keyed...

Singer/artist River Arnott of Grand Forks received two significant achievements —Top Junior Voice Award' and a Certificate of Merit for 'Outstanding Performance' — during the recent Kootenay Festival of the Arts competition. The 12-year-old Boundary City performer now advances to the Provincials in Chilliwack at the end of ...

By  David V. Johnson, from Aeon When false and malicious speech roils the body politic, when racism and violence surge, the right and role of freedom of speech in society comes into crisis. People rightly begin to wonder what are the limits, what should be the rules. It is a complicated issue, and resolving it requires care...

Besides being our Member of Parliament, Richard Cannings is a biologist and a birder – and he’ll be talking about birds at the Museum on April 17th, at 6:30.  Here’s what the notice from the good people at the Rossland Museum and Discovery Centre says: Join us to hear Richard Cannings, our South Okanagan-West Kootenay MP,...