The following is a summary of events at the Committee of the Whole meeting of city council on December 16, 2013. Committee of the Whole meetings do not make decisions but hear presentations from the public and from the city’s own departments. Silver Wings Award Karen Macdonald, president of the Nelson Pilot’s Association,...

Both sides of the FortisBC lockout will be getting an early Christmas present: an end to what has been a long and bitter parting of ways. Mike Flynn, business manager of IBEW local 213, said the 225 locked out electrical workers should be looking at an immediate return to work, with some back on the job as soon as this...

Leaving no stone unturned in its 8.6 million hectare territory, the Columbia Basin Rural Development Institute (RDI) has released the 2013 State of the Basin report. In the works for several years, the 2013 report updates and builds on the work produced in the 2008 State of the Basin report. The 75-page long report and 16-page...

Businesses in Nelson can now purchase broadband capability of up more than ten times their current capacity. The city has installed a high-speed broadband fibre optic network in the downtown area in collaboration with the Nelson and Area Economic Development Partnership and the Columbia Basin Broadband Corporation, a subsidiary...

By Suzy Hamilton, The Nelson Daily You may have laughed at all the little old ladies, but they put Nelson Creston on the top of the heap in the Sensible BC campaign to decriminalize  marijuana. After a 90-day campaign that ended December 3, 20 ridings  collected more than the ten percent of  registered voters’ signatures...

Last week, we discussed the overarching goals of a specialized RCMP Crime Reduction Unit in Castlegar, as presented to city council by CRU non-commissioned officer in charge Cpl. Darryl Orr and his supervisor, Sgt. Mike Wicentowich (To read Part One, click here). Those goals/priorities include in-depth or long-term investigations,...

The Beaver Valley (BV) Recreation, Parks and Trails Committee has informed the City of Trail that BV will not be renewing, renegotiating or extending their Recreation Services Agreement with Trail. Facilities covered by the agreement include the Trail Aquatic & Leisure Centre, Leisure Programming, Field House and Haley ...

Wood smoke and the sound of chainsaws in the forest above Mountain Lakes and the 10th Street campus in the past couple of months are part of an ongoing attempt by the city to make things less risky in the event of a forest fire near Nelson. “The problem with those areas is that they would have a rapid spread of fire because...

My colleague Paul Dewar, our Foreign Affairs critic, recently wrote an article where he talks about Canada’s pattern of disengagement and withdrawal from the international community.  Paul mentions that our Minister of Foreign Affairs, John Baird likes to say that Canada will no longer “go along to get along” in reference to...

With all the reporting on the Senate scandal you might think there’s not much more to be discovered. But reading the actual documents the RCMP turned up in its Mike Duffy investigation is definitely worth the effort. The documents pull back the curtain on Harperland, a landscape so profoundly unethical Harper’s staff does not...