Thursday - March 6, 2025 - UFV student housing delayed

☀ High 12C

Good morning!

Did you see the sun yesterday? I sure hope so.

This is my favourite time of year to be outside. The weather is often lovely and I can begin work planting seeds in my garden. (On the schedule for this year is spinach, because I can’t seem to find any at the store that isn’t grown in the US.) But the absolute best part about early March is that almost nothing is growing. There is no pollen. My eyes do not itch. My skin does not sting. I can touch a plant without recoiling.

Such bliss. I hope you get a chance to enjoy it too!

– 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

Compassion and aid in an angry world

It is a troubling, disorienting time for all international aid organizations—including those built on a foundation of faith.

Faith-based charities founded on Christian principles provide huge amounts of aid to people in crises around the world. At the same time, North American political parties with significant bases of support in Christian communities have endorsed or, in the case of the United States, enacted massive cuts to foreign aid.

Chilliwack resident Andy Harrington, the executive director of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, says political rhetoric around foreign aid cuts is “disturbing” on a practical, moral level. And he said the idea that some people are deserving of help and others are not also runs contrary to fundamental Christian beliefs about who deserves help and compassion. Which, for Harrington, is everyone who needs it.

“Every human being is a human being, and we are called on to be compassionate and care for them,” Harrington said.

Although Harrington’s organization doesn’t directly rely on foreign aid, many of the people it helps also depend on programs funded from western governments. And Harrington said cuts in aid will end up leading to the deaths of many of those men, women, and children.

Harrington is set to fly to South Sudan today to visit one of the aid projects run by Canadian Foodgrains Bank. Before he left, Tyler talked to him about calls for foreign aid cuts in the United States and Canada.

• You can read the conversation here.

Related

Need to Know

💔 A three-year-old child died after being hit by a car in Chilliwack yesterday [CityNews]

💸 Trump has paused tariffs on the ‘Big Three’ car manufacturers for one month [Global News] / Canada’s finance minister said the country is ‘not interested in meeting in the middle’ and that all tariffs should be repealed [CBC]

🔎 The owners of a Langley home that exploded last week have the same name as a couple convicted in connection with a Burnaby grow-op; police believe the Langley explosion was sparked by an illegal drug lab [Global News]

🚔 Two drivers were given tickets and had their cars impounded after driving 192km/h on Highway 1 near Popkum [Agassiz Harrison Observer]

🎉 The Fraser Canyon Hospice Society is celebrating its 30th anniversary in Hope [Hope Standard]

🚓 An SUV crashed into an apartment building on Mary Street in Chilliwack Tuesday [Chilliwack Progress]

⚖ A Langley man who sold fentanyl to undercover cops has been sentenced to six years in prison [Langley Advance Times]

❔ What is potash anyway? The Narwhal shares a guide to a mineral at the centre of the Canada-US trade war [The Narwhal]

🎬 Highway Thru Hell is celebrating its 200th episode [Hope Standard]

👉 BC has pledged to expand a two-year-old homelessness program that advocates in Abbotsford say has made little change on the ground so far [Vancouver Sun]

🩺 Want to advance your nursing career in Canada? Discover how KPU’s specialized program prepares you to work in Canadian healthcare. Join a free info session!*

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The Agenda

Abbotsford student housing delayed, UFV budget says

Abbotsford university students will not get the new student housing they were promised until at least January, UFV’s new budget says.

The draft budget, which you can view here, reveals that the university doesn’t expect its new 398-student housing building in Abbotsford to be ready by the start of the next school year. When construction began, officials had hoped to have the building completed by this summer, with occupancy possible in the fall of 2025. But the new budget documents say the housing building is expected to open next January.

When complete, the building will triple the amount of student housing available on the campus.

The budget also notes that officials are spending $1 million to create a business plan for a new building at the university’s Chilliwack campus. The building would align with UFV’s new Chilliwack Campus Plan, which The Current wrote about last year. You can read that story here.

Yesterday, we looked at how international student enrolment will effect UFV’s budget. You can read that story here.

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🗓 Things to do

Health talk: The Fraser Valley Health Care Foundation hosts Health Talks 101: A Day of Medical Enlightenment in Abbotsford on Saturday. The free community-focused event begins at 8am. Details and registration online.

Farm play: The Langley Environmental Protection Society hosts She Won't Come in from the Fields, a 30-minute one-woman show about regenerative food growing, on Saturday at the Derek Doubleday Arboretum. The free performance begins at 4pm. Details online.

Social work: The Mission Library offers help with health care, financial challenges, and food security through its social work outreach event today at 9am. Details online.

Have an event to tell us about? Fill out this form to have it highlighted here.

Catch up

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