Friday - Dec. 1, 2023 - The nicest person

🌦️ High 6C

Good morning!

I went to a really wonderful bookstore (MacLeods Books) in Vancouver last weekend. And when I say wonderful, I mean that you couldn’t see any tables or desks for the books piled on top of everything. You could barely see the floor. But I found the coolest copy of Anne of Green Gables (A big illustrated hardcover from 1994) with a stamp on the inside from the Green Gables museum in PEI. Someone had inscribed the first page with a note thanking the original recipient for visiting. They also explained that L.M. Montgomery was their grandfather’s first cousin and, also, their grandmother’s second cousin. Small island, I guess.

– 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

‘The world’s nicest person’

Christine is the nicest person in the world.

Don’t take our word for it.

Just before Thanksgiving, when we asked readers what—or who—they were thankful for, one reader singled out the “blonde lady at the Chilliwack Bottle Depot [who] has to be the world’s nicest person.”

• So we had to meet Christine and talk to her about working in and running a bottle depot—and being nice while doing so.

Related

Need to Know

🚨 A man is dead after a shooting involving police near Abbotsford’s hospital [CBC] / This is the second time this year that an incident in a Fraser Valley hospital has ended in police firing shots and a person dead; there are still few answers about a police shooting in Hope earlier this year [CBC]

👩‍🌾 Kathy Cooper’s famous red barn in Abbotsford was torn down on Wednesday [Abbotsford News]; We wrote about the farm’s history—and its imminent redevelopment—last year [FVC]

🎄 A list of the best Christmas light displays in Chilliwack will be compiled again this year—a working draft is already available online [Chilliwack Progress]

➡️ BC CSIS officers allege harassment and rape at Canada’s spy agency [Canadian Press/CTV]

🛩️ A plane crash in Langley last May was due to a low approach [Langley Advance Times]

🚓 Three suspects have been arrested after a string of robberies in Langley, Mission, and Surrey [CTV]

🌲 A Christmas tree lighting ceremony drew crowds in Aldergrove [Langley Advance Times]

🚘️ Downtown Mission doesn’t have enough long and medium-term parking spots, staff say [Mission Record]

➡️ A 62-year-old Abbotsford man was charged with 11 sexual offences involving children [Abbotsford News]

🚒 A house fire in Abbotsford closed a portion of Marshall Road on Wednesday [Abbotsford News]

🥘 Registration for a popular, free multicultural Christmas dinner has opened [Chilliwack Progress]

🕯️ A candlelight vigil to remember victims of violence against women is planned in Chilliwack [Chilliwack progress]

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The Agenda

Public input opens for New South Asian Canadian Museum 

Planners working on a new museum focusing on South Asian heritage and history in Canada will look to the public for ideas on what the project should include and where it should go.

A website has been set up for members of South Asian communities in Canada to participate and share the stories, information, and perspectives they want to see involved in the museum’s creation. A ministerial advisory committee, made up of leaders in diverse South Asian communities, will inform the public process.

The museum is intended to highlight the contributions, vibrant cultures, and living history of diverse South Asian communities to Canada over the decades, committee co-chair Haroon Khan said. 

South Asian Canadian organizations will be a part of the process as well, including groups of youth, elders, artists, scholars, and entrepreneurs, among others. 

The museum is in its early stages yet. A name and, importantly, a location, have yet to be selected. Public input will also be important in determining these factors, the province said. Last year, The Current wrote about another project hoping to document the stories of BC's South Asian communities.

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💾 Flashback Friday

Two men and two horses hauled a single massive log past the Royal Bank of Canada in the heart of downtown Chilliwack over a century ago. Logging on the west coast in the 1910s, when this photo was taken, remained difficult work. Manual logging techniques would slowly be phased out in the next decade. Innovations like steam engines and skid roads would be adopted faster in the tangled temperate rainforest of the west coast than they would be in eastern Canada.

While logging operations churned through forests on the west coast, homesteaders—which the men pictured may have been—cleared new patches in the hills of the Fraser Valley and hauled away the wood they didn’t need.

🗓 Things to do

🎅 Christmas parade: The Chilliwack Rotary Club’s Christmas parade will happen on Saturday, Dec. 2 in downtown Chilliwack. Details online.

🎄 Christmas market: The Lepp Farm Market in Abbotsford will host a Christmas market for food lovers on Saturday, Dec. 2 and Sunday, Dec. 3. Details online.

🎭️ Play: The Mission Overdose Community Action Team is premiering Precarious: A Transformative Musical Tale on Friday, Dec. 1 at the Clarke Theatre. The play explores stories from the toxic drug supply crisis. Details online.

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Catch up

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