Tuesday - Aug. 6, 2024 - The Chilcotin arrives

☀ High 27C

Good morning!

Generally, journalists aren’t allowed to accept gifts from sources. It’s ethically problematic, because how can we objectively report on people if we accept items of value from them? It can be shockingly hard to avoid in community journalism though, because people are just so darn nice.

So allow me to disclose my bias in advance. Kate Sache and her children sent me home with a bouquet of dahlias and a box of popcorn-on-the-cob after I visited their house for an interview. And Debora Soutar offered me the pie that you will read about below. Both the pie and the popcorn were delicious.

– Grace

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Traffic & Weather

🌤 Local forecast: Langley | Chilliwack | Abbotsford | Hope

🚘 Driving today? Check the current traffic situation via Google, and find DriveBC’s latest updates.

🛣 Click here for links to road cameras across the Fraser Valley, including those for the Coquihalla, Highway 7, Hope-Princeton, Fraser Canyon, and Highway 1 in Langley and Abbotsford.

NEWS

How to bake a prize-winning pie

We are baking the perfect apple pie.

At least, that’s what the New Cookbook calls it. And it likely has claim to. After all, it is the pie recipe that has won Debora Soutar five medals over the years.

“Even though I don’t consider myself the best pie maker, I do have medals,” Soutar says, taking them off a hook in the spare bedroom of her Chilliwack home. She brings them to the kitchen for me to see, five beribboned awards with the words “Apple Pie Contest” emblazoned on the front.

“They’re all from the Chilliwack Fair, over time,” she adds. “And then after a while it’s like, ‘I can’t do this anymore, you know. This is embarrassing.’”

Soutar’s mother, Iris Friesen, was the one who started the pie contest at the Chilliwack Fair in 2007, hoping to liven up the Kitchen Arts displays. She encouraged Soutar to enter, even though Iris had rarely had time for pies when her daughter was growing up.

Soutar stopped sending her pies to the judging table a decade ago. She is now in charge of the contest her mother began, and encourages others to participate in the friendly competition.

• Today, Grace spends some time in Soutar’s kitchen learning how to bake the perfect apple pie, and talks to other Chilliwack Fair devotees about the joy of Home and Garden competitions.

Related

Need to Know

🚑 Two men were shot on 202 Street in Langley early Friday morning; one man has since died and the homicide team is investigating [Langley Advance Times]

🚓 Two Abbotsford men who were charged with conspiracy to commit murder have been released on bail; police are asking anyone who sees the men breaching the conditions of their bail to call the cops [Abbotsford News]

⚖ An Abbotsford company that accidentally put detergent in Clayburn Creek should not have had to pay a fine, an appeal board has ruled [Abbotsford News]

🚧 Langley City’s one-way section of Fraser Highway will get a $19 million overhaul with underground power lines, 90 new trees, and parallel parking [Langley Advance Times]

👉 An Abbotsford woman who was murdered by her husband had gotten a protection order against him months before her death [CBC]

🔥 A wildfire sparked up on Lougheed Highway just west of Hope, but was quickly doused [Agassiz Harrison Observer]

🏗 Langley City will more than double the potential compensation for renters displaced by development [Langley Advance Times]

⛑ SAR teams were sent out three times in three hours to rescue hikers in the eastern Fraser Valley last Thursday [Agassiz Harrison Observer]

👏 Chilliwack’s Rowan Hamilton finished ninth in the hammer throw at the Olympics [Chilliwack Progress]

🏆 An Aldergrove woman has won national honours for her whippet dogs [Aldergrove Star]

💉 BC is no longer officially in public health emergency because of COVID, but experts say the virus is still a ‘major, ongoing health issue’ [The Tyee]

🚂 A looming strike by railway employees for both CN and CPKC has producers worried that freight will grind to a halt; the Canada Industrial Relations Board is deciding whether a strike would jeopardize health and safety [Global] / You can read more about how those CN and CPKC work within the Fraser Valley here [FVC]

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The Agenda

Chilcotin waters expected to hit Hope early this morning

The first pulses that had been stalled behind a natural dam blocking the Chilcotin River are expected to arrive in Hope as early as this morning.

Last Tuesday, a large landslide blocked the Chilcotin River by Farwell Canyon in the Cariboo. The landslide, located roughly 30km upstream of where the Chilcotin empties into the Fraser River, completely stopped the river. Over the next six days, a large lake formed behind the landslide, prompting flood warnings downstream.

On Monday morning, the lake finally rose above the sudden dam. Within hours, it carved a new route through the slide. The first waters arrived in the Fraser River around 2pm. Scientific models suggested they would arrive in Hope about 30 hours after the first spillover. That would put arrival sometime around 3pm today. But by last evening, the water was moving faster than anticipated.

Although the landslide breach sent a massive pulse of water down the Chilcotin, the much larger Fraser River wasn’t expected to exceed typical freshet levels. But potentially dangerous conditions are possible due to debris and high streamflows. Officials warned people to stay away from riverbanks, as the water could significantly increase landslide risks along the river’s edge.

You can find the province’s Chilcotin landslide hub here. It includes photos of current river conditions. Tyler will be on CKNW 980 this morning at 7:20am to discuss the surge. You can listen here. He will also be posting updates to his Twitter feed here.

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