Eileen Delehanty Pearkes has been researching and writing about the history and politics of water in the upper Columbia Basin since 2005.  Her book on the Columbia River Treaty, A River Captured, was released in 2016. Recently, her travelling exhibit on the Columbia River Treaty, curated for Touchstones Nelson, won a national...

Students at Selkirk College have become embroiled in a legal battle for the right to vote about their membership in a national student group, according to Selkirk College Students’ Union Director at-Large Santanna Hernandez. “Students submitted a valid petition for a referendum on membership in the Canadian Federation of...

The federal government recently created two marine protected areas in the Pacific region and has committed to increase ocean protection from one per cent to 10 by 2020. But will this be enough? Canada has the longest coastline of any nation, but our country doesn’t end at its ocean shores. With a 200-nautical-mile economic ...

What poses the greatest hazard to BC's endangered Southern Mountain Caribou -- habitat loss, wolves, or corporate donors?  Or are all three of those factors linked, and if so, how? This opinion piece is from DeSmog Canada.  Read and contemplate. The B.C. government is granting logging permits in critical caribou...

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...

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...

If you own a smartphone, you have more computing power at your fingertips than NASA scientists had when they put people on the moon in 1969! And it’s in a small device, unlike the massive hardware the space agency used. Technology moves in leaps and bounds. As someone who grew up before home computers, transoceanic phone...

As I discussed in my last column, the federal government had an opportunity in last week’s budget to finally start closing the growing income inequality gap in Canada. But, unfortunately the Liberals chose tax breaks for wealthy Canadians and giveaways to large corporations over helping the unemployed, veterans, and Indigenous...

To The Editor: More funding might help our seniors if they are in a publicly owned facility. A few more staff and maybe an extra therapist. But history shows that more funding has not improved the quality of care in "for profit" or even "non-profit" facilities. The taxpayers shelled out more money in 2010 when the client rate...

Senator Lynn Beyak's complaint that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) "didn't focus on the good" done by Canada's residential schools has provoked calls for her resignation, and some people wonder how she is qualified to sit on the Senate's Aboriginal Peoples Committee. For any who have not yet read the letter of...