Friday - Nov. 10, 2023 - Renting to refugees

🌧 High 10C

Good morning!

I don’t have a favourite mug. Instead, I have a collection of favourites that I drink tea and coffee from throughout the day (it includes two Denby mugs I stole from my sister, a few colourful cups, and some clear glass numbers). I’ve been told my refusal to play favourites with my dishware is an unusual way to live. What do you think?

– 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

Renting to refugees

Digging through Facebook Marketplace listings and Craigslist posts for a new place to call home isn’t easy for anyone.

But it’s particularly tricky when you don’t speak the language. And when you don’t have a credit score for landlords to check. Or when all your references live on the other side of the world. 

Those are just some of the challenges that newcomers to Canada face trying to find long-term housing in the Fraser Valley. But some new arrivals have help in their hunt for housing.

• Today, Grace writes about how a local non-profit is helping refugees and displaced people find new homes.

Related

Need to Know

👉 How military vehicles became part of Aldergrove’s Remembrance Day parade [Langley Advance Times]

🚨 Two weeks of ‘hell’ at an Agassiz prison have concluded with the seizure of a huge amount of drugs [Vancouver Sun]

👉️ Housing for women fleeing domestic abuse is in short supply in Mission and Abbotsford [Mission Record]

➡️ A business luncheon in Chilliwack featured a discussion on Indigenous issues [Chilliwack Progress]

🚓 Abbotsford police made several arrests while patrolling railways [Abbotsford News]

💵 A Cultus Lake banker was named the new president of Envision Financial [Chilliwack Progress]

🎺 A Remembrance Day celebration at a Langley cemetery is growing larger every year [Langley Advance Times]

🏗️ Several new apartments have been planned for land near Abbotsford’s old hospital [Abbotsford News]

👉️ A Fraser Valley woman is now working for the same non-profit that once housed her when she fled domestic abuse [Mission Record]

🚎 Langley businesses are voicing frustration over an industrial area with no transit service [Langley Advance Times]

🚨 A warrant has been issued for a man charged with child pornography who failed to appear in court [Abbotsford News]

👮‍♀️ RCMP and conservation officers teamed up for an enforcement blitz in the Boston Bar area [Hope Standard]

☺ CURRENT CAM: Congratulations to Casey, who was the first to correctly guess the location of Wednesday’s Current Cam as a bridge in Campbell Valley Regional Park.

The Agenda

Fraser Valley ambulance stations get staffing-model fix

Changes aimed at retaining more paramedics in rural communities will alter how the Fraser Canyon’s ambulance stations are staffed.

The changes involve the creation of new staffing models and were agreed upon by Emergency Health Services and the union representing paramedics and ambulance dispatchers.

The province has created three different models that will impact ambulance stations in 60 different communities—among them Boston Bar and Lytton. BC EHS is phasing out its scheduled on-call model, which requires paramedics to be on call for up to 72 hours at a time, while making very little money unless they are called upon.

Now, Boston Bar will move to a model with eight full-time paramedics who each will be on duty (rather than on-call) for 24 hours. Lytton, meanwhile, will have eight “regular part time staff,” with paramedics on duty for 16 hours a day and on-call for eight hours. 

The province will hire more than 200 additional paramedics to support the upgrades. 

“This is a fundamental change in how we provide paramedic services in these communities and will address how we respond to 911 calls, how we recruit and retain paramedics to work in smaller communities, and most importantly, how we can provide better care to our patients,“ Jason Jackson, the head of the paramedics’ union, said in a press release.

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💾 Flashback Friday

The Canadian Forces Base in Chilliwack began as Military Camp Chilliwack (shortened, often, to Camp Chilliwack) in February, 1942. Previously, the Canadian military’s presence in BC had been limited to the Royal Canadian Navy Base at Esquimalt and several land- and boat-based RCAF stations. Pearl Harbour, two months prior to the base’s opening, had spurred fast military expansion on both Canadian and American coasts.

Soon after it opened, Camp Chilliwack became a training base. It remained as such (renamed CFB Chilliwack in 1968) until its eventual closure in 1997.

Celebrating Remembrance Day

Every year, on Nov. 11, Canadians gather to honour and remember the sacrifices and contributions of those who served their country in war, conflict, and peacekeeping efforts. Each community in the Fraser Valley has a ceremony marking the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, or the armistice at the end of World War 1. 

Many of the ceremonies are outdoors at a city’s cenotaph. Community members lay wreaths for veterans and crowds stand for a moment of silence. Some ceremonies, like Abbotsford’s, include a fly-past by small planes. Aldergrove's Remembrance Day parade and ceremony will include military vehicles from the Museum of the Armed Forces.

Find the details of a ceremony near you, including start times and parking information, here: Langley | Fort Langley | Aldergrove | Abbotsford | Chilliwack | Mission | Hope | Agassiz 

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

Catch up

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