Monday - July 29, 2024 - The Fraser Valley's 2024 Olympians

🌧 High 17C

Good morning!

There was an incident last week. Blame the heat, a missed compost pickup, or a couple of promiscuous flies. We went to bed one night with a pristine garage, and woke up the following morning with the floor wriggling with maggots.

It was vile—though sadly not the most disgusting thing I have ever experienced—and both my husband and I spent the morning sweeping out every last white grub that we could find. We salted the floor, scoured the compost bin, and made plans to purchase fly tape for the maggots who bested the battle. Then, we got to watch nature do its work.

As soon as the garage door closed, birds from all around came to gorge themselves on the buffet that was our driveway. Robins, chickadees, and house sparrows all spent the afternoon happily picking the larvae off the pavement. And by the evening, every single grub was gone. It was a beautiful example of nature at work—even if I wish that nature hadn’t established itself inside our garage.

– 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

When population projections go wrong

It may be futile to try to predict the future. But that doesn’t stop local politicians and planners from trying.

Two decades ago, local planners vastly overestimated how many people would move to the Fraser Valley over the next two decades.

Now, the pendulum may have swung in the opposite direction—at least in the region’s smaller communities and rural areas. The resulting disparities, and recent population statistics, show why predicting growth is often more of a political art than a demographic science.

• Last year we reported on new efforts to predict growth in the Fraser Valley. Last month, we wrote about population growth in the Fraser Valley’s communities.

• Today, we put the two together to see how some of the projections are already badly off track.

Related

Need to Know

🚍 TransLink says it will need to cut services in half by the end of 2025 if it can’t find a new funding model; cuts could include eliminating nearly all bus trips in Langley and axing the West Coast Express [CTV] / You can see a map of the proposed cuts here [TransLink]

🚒 Three families lost their homes after an overnight townhouse fire in Chilliwack Sunday [Chilliwack Progress]

🔪 The man who designed Rambo’s knife was back in Hope for a presentation Friday [Hope Standard]

🏳‍🌈 Langley City is set to raise its Pride flag again today at 11am; it will remain up until Monday, Aug. 5 [Langley Advance Times]

👀 Langley’s community hall wasn’t the only place to host an extreme-right group’s ‘Terror Tour;’ the group booked small venues outside major cities across Canada [The Tyee]

🌽 Sparkes Corn Barn says one of its roadside locations in Chilliwack was robbed Friday [Fraser Valley Today]

🏥 Mission Hospital is still offering thousands of dollars in bonuses for doctors who cover critical shifts, but it wasn’t enough to prevent the ER closure last week [Mission Record] / CTV first reported on Mission’s shift bonuses in June [CTV]

💔 A man who went missing on the Fraser River near Island 22 last week was found dead near Mission [Chilliwack Progress]

👉 An inmate at Kent Institution who was serving 19 years for harassment, fraud, and uttering threats has died [Agassiz Harrison Observer]

🏀 Mission basketball legend Kim Smith Gaucher is at the Paris Olympics as a coach for Canada’s first ever 3×3 women’s squad [Mission Record]

📚 The Township of Langley has approved a new, bigger library for Willoughby [Langley Advance Times]

🛰 Ottawa is investing $170 million to launch a new satellite wildfire detection system which will go online in 2029 [The Tyee]

The Agenda

Five Fraser Valley athletes competing at Paris Olympics

The 2024 Summer Olympics are underway in Paris, and five Fraser Valley athletes will be competing for gold against their international competition. The Olympics officially got underway on Friday and will continue until Aug. 11.

Langley’s Brodie Hofer will be competing on Canada’s indoor volleyball team, which played its first game on Sunday. Hofer is a Trinity Western University alumni, and both his parents were head coaches for the university’s women’s volleyball team. The 24-year-old is currently a professional volleyball player in Italy. He’ll be playing for Team Canada alongside two other Trinity Western alumni: Eric Loeppky from Manitoba and Lucas Van Berkel from Alberta.

Chilliwack’s Jordyn Huitema already has one gold medal under her soccer cleats, and she’ll be competing with Team Canada again this year. The 23-year-old forward has been playing for Canada internationally for a decade, winning her first gold medal at the Concacaf Championships in 2014. At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (which took place in 2021) she hit the field as a substitute during the last four games of the competition. This year, she’s already played in Canada’s first game against New Zealand, which Canada won 2-1, and its second game against France which they also won 2-1.

Rowan Hamilton is also in Paris representing Chilliwack. He is making his Olympic debut this year in the hammer throw. He competed in the 2023 and 2022 World Championships, but didn’t advance to the finals. He is currently a student at the University of California, Berkeley, and is part of their athletics program. He will be participating in the hammer throw qualification round on Friday, Aug. 2.

Chilliwack’s Zachary Clay is one of 11 Canadian gymnasts on the Olympic team. Clay will compete both in the individual pommel horse and parallel bars competitions and in the team event. This is the first time the men’s national team has qualified for the Olympics since 2008, and the first time the team has made the finals since at least 1984. Clay, 29, suffered extensive injuries at the 2015 World Championships, and was unsure if he would ever be able to walk without a limp again. Surgery and rehab proved otherwise, and a surprise birthday party at his Abbotsford training gym celebrated his latest achievement. He competed in the pommel horse and parallel bars qualifying competitions over the weekend; Clay finished with 12.9 on the parallel bars and 13.733 on the pommel horse, but did not make it to the finals. He and the rest of the Canadian team will compete in the historic team final today at 8:30am.

Finally, Abbotsford’s Nick Taylor will be representing Canada on the course during the Paris Olympics. The 36-year-old golfer recently made history as the first Canadian in 69 years to win the Canada’s National Men’s Open Championship, thanks to a 72-foot putt. Taylor recently received an honourary degree from the University of the Fraser Valley for his dedication to charity and his connection to the community.

The schedules for men’s volleyball, women’s soccer, athletics, artistic gymnastics, and golf are available online. The closing ceremonies will take place at 11am on Aug. 11. All Olympic events can be watched for free online via CBC Gem.

Correction

In Friday’s flashback about the Mission train bridge, we incorrectly stated that David Oppenheimer was the mayor of Mission. He was actually the mayor of Vancouver at the time, and a strong supporter of rail in the region.

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🗓 Things to do

Abbotsford Agrifair: The Abbotsford Agrifair returns Friday Aug. 2 to Sunday, Aug. 4. The fair will feature an extreme dog show, 4H club competitions, pig races, a monster foam party, All-Star Wrestling, and more. Details and tickets online.

Hope help: Get help navigating health care, housing, financial challenges, and food security at the Hope Library every Thursday. A social worker will be at the library each Thursday from 10am to noon. Details online.

Farmers market: The Langley Community Farmers Market is back for the summer at the Derek Doubleday Arboretum on Wednesdays from 3pm to 7pm. Details online.

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