A Columbia Valley teacher has been arrested following alleged dealings with a student at a high school in Invermere. RCMP said in January of 2024, Columbia Valley RCMP initiated an investigation involving allegations that a teacher at Invermere’s David Thompson Secondary School located had engaged in inappropriate communication with a student. Police said that based […]

The city’s street police presence will employ a new integrated crisis response model to help improve responses to mental health calls. The new initiative — between  Interior Health (IH), rural Nelson RCMP and the Nelson Police Department (NPD) — has only been established for a few weeks, but it is expected to deliver a “high-level […]

A full environmental impact assessment of the proposed Zincton all-season resort is being called for by the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation and the Sinixt Confederacy. Currently before the Mountain Resorts Branch of the B.C. Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development, the back country ski development proposed for the Selkirk […]

The recovery of an important First Nation fishery in Kootenay Lake is on. With a population that was near extinction in the mid-1990s in the lower reaches of Kootenay Lake and the Kootenay River system, burbot — a species of cold water, ray-finned fish — is the subject of an egg collecting effort on now […]

Entry into an exciting and rewarding career in the industrial sector is only a short program away at Selkirk College. Teck Trail Operations is one of the world’s largest fully integrated zinc/lead smelting and refining complexes. To make it function on a daily basis, the intricate operation requires a community of dedicated employees with a […]

Cranbrook resident T. Senetza won the grand prize in the 2023 B.C. Wildlife Federation Conservation Lottery, a 2024 GMC Sierra 1500 Pro Double Cab pickup truck supplied by Wood Wheaton Supercentre. The main jackpot for the 50/50 portion of the draw totaled $408,530. Winner W. Andersen of Hagensborg, B.C. walks away with half the pot, $204,265. Proceeds […]

Warm winter weather isn’t exclusive to the West Kootenay. One of the warmest periods on record for part of January has not only touched the region, but it was also the warmest January on record across the world, according to Reuters. The warm winter in the West Kootenay has also crimped Whitewater Ski Resort’s snow […]

One of the core service locations for the city’s street community is closing the doors at its current location after the stream of federal funding has dried up. The coordinated access HUB is closing on March 31 — terminating its lease at 521 Vernon St. — after the Nelson Committee on Homelessness (NCOH) found its […]

I’ve written in a previous column about the exciting developments in battery recycling in Trail. There, KC Recycling is one of western North America’s largest lead-acid battery recyclers and Cirba Solutions (formerly Retriev) is a major recycler of literally every other kind of battery. Both these businesses are important components of the circular economy we […]

Not only do Kootenay communities have street problems but there are also forest problems. The Kootenay region is the site of the first cases of chronic wasting disease in B.C., found in two deer samples recently. Although the disease is considered an infectious and fatal disease affecting species in the cervid family — deer, elk, […]