Friday - March 22, 2024 - Langley's new school projects

🌧 High 13C

Good morning!

We were scheduled to hold a special online event for members marking the first year of our Insider program. Unfortunately, my voice still isn't working. I tried reading a book to the kids last night and couldn't make it through a couple sentences without hacking, which isn't idea when you need to be able to talk for an hour. I don't want to suffer that and, trust me, neither do you. So we're going to re-schedule for next week. You should get a message in your inbox with the specific details. We'll also include the details in tomorrow's member's edition. Sorry for the inconvenience!

– Tyler

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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

Two new school projects planned for Langley.
Will they be enough?

Langley is getting another two new schools. But it might not be enough to keep up with the city’s booming population.

The province announced two more school-building projects in Langley last week. Alongside the new middle school, an addition to R.E. Mountain Secondary is in the works.

The new projects come as construction continues on existing schools and a new elementary school in Langley. But while that work is ongoing, the number of new students continues to trend upwards. And new schools take time to build. 

• Today, Grace writes about how the newest Langley school-building projects measure up to the ever-increasing demand for new student spots in the district.

• In January, Grace wrote about increasing student populations in Langley and how long it takes to build a school.

Related

Need to Know

🕳️ The Trans Mountain pipeline is nearly finished, after 12 years and $34 billion [CBC]; How did it end up costing so much money? [Global News]

🔥 A semi-truck caught fire in Aldergrove on Sunday [Langley Advance Times]

🚘️ The iconic pink car that used to mark the Chilliwack Pick-a-Part is up for auction; proceeds will benefit the Salvation Army [Fraser Valley Today]

👉️ The province has told Harrison Hot Springs’ mayor and council that they are not allowed to fire themselves [Agassiz-Harrison Observer]

🇨🇦 Ottawa will impose further limits on the number of temporary residents and temporary foreign workers [CBC]

🐶 The new Paramount affordable-housing building in Chilliwack will be pet-friendly [Chilliwack Progress]

🌊 BC has announced a province-wide flood mitigation strategy [Global]; We’ll have more on this in a coming edition

➡️ The IIO is looking for witnesses to an arrest that injured a Langley woman last January [Langley Advance Times]

📷️ CURRENT CAM: Congratulations to Holly, who was the first to correctly identify Wednesday’s Current Cam photo as a mural on First Ave. in Mission.

🏠 An upcoming Official Community Plan amendment will enable Abbotsford Tech District to build affordable housing for young people and families, with great jobs nearby.*

*Sponsored Listing

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SPONSORED BY VANCOUVER CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL

Celebrate cherry blossoms at The Big Picnic

The Big Picnic is a special event that brings people from all over Metro Vancouver together to share in the beauty of the cherry blossoms and experience why “there are no strangers under the cherry tree”. The event is inspired by the long-time Japanese cultural tradition of hanami* which literally translates to “cherry blossom (hana) viewing (mi)”.

Join other Vancouverites and visitors at The Big Picnic on March 30 at David Lam Park. You’ll be able to relax under cherry blossoms right in the heart of the city in the Yaletown neighbourhood while enjoying a superb line-up of local talent on the Cherry Jam Stage as well as a variety of interactive arts activities, workshops vendors and food trucks.

The Agenda

Black Press sale nears completion

The sale of Black Press to two creditors and a small southern US newspaper chain is nearly complete. Last week, a Canadian court ordered the proposed sale of the company and its dozens of newspapers across western Canada and the northwestern United States. The company’s publications include all the Fraser Valley’s English-language community papers. They’ll be sold to its creditors and Carpenter Media.

Although one report suggests the deal is set to close today, The Current has not been able to verify that nor find such details in court records available online. Last week’s order by the Canadian court extended the hold on the company’s debts to April 12, essentially giving the parties three more weeks to wrap up the sale. 

Last week, the parties asked a US federal judge to wrap up proceedings in that country, though no order to do so has been publicly released yet.

As its sale has been working its way toward completion, Black Press has continued to cut costs. Earlier this month it quietly laid off the editor of its weekly newspaper in Penticton and moved the base of that publication’s operations north to tiny Summerland, FVC has learned.

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💾 Flashback Friday

Chilliwack’s agriculture sector is best known today for vegetables, dairy, and chickens, but that wasn’t always the case. In the late 1800s, Chilliwack was a hotspot for cherry farming. But the growing popularity of the automobile and the increasing road quality between Chilliwack and the sunny Okanagan started to hurt Chilliwack cherry farmers. It became easier and easier for Lower Mainland residents to get their fruit by driving or by having it shipped from elsewhere in the province.

The BC Fruit Board, created in the 1930s, aimed to even out the competitive playing field for fruit-growers province wide. Restrictions were set up to try and ensure that fruit grown in one place wasn’t sold elsewhere outside the fruit board’s rules. A checkpoint was set up on Trans-Canada Highway at Hope to keep Okanagan produce out of the Fraser Valley. But so-called “fruitleggers,” often small farmers at higher elevations who’s harvests started later than the rest of the Okanagan, skirted the checkpoints somewhat regularly to peddle black-market soft fruits in the Lower Mainland.

Chilliwack’s cherry farmers would never quite recover their former glory.

🗓 Things to do

💙 Dancing blues: The LJ Mounteney Band will play dancing blues music at the Eagles Hall in Abbotsford on Saturday, March 23. Details online.

💃 Tango tunes: The Parador Tango Ensemble will play at the Chilliwack Cultural Centre on Sunday, March 24. Details online.

🩰 Modern dance: X (Dix), a modern dance performance based on the legend of Odysseus and the meaning of home, will be at the Chilliwack Cultural Centre on Monday, March 25. Details online.

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