Tuesday, August 29, 2023 - Ceremony, salmon, and reconciliation

Tuesday, August 29, 2023 | ⛈ High 19C

Good morning!

Last week, I just worked Monday and Tuesday and took the rest off for some family holidays. I’m doing the same this week. And look, any time off is great, but this two-day-a-week thing I planned out was idiotic. The entire week involves one day returning to a mountain of built-up emails and work, and another that’s a scramble to get everything done before one goes off for an extended period. Just tremendously ill-advised on my part. My salvation is that I can trust the newsletter to Joti and Grace and know it’s in more-prudent hands.

Members: At the bottom, I reflect on this story from early July about how our summers are much drier than a few days ago.

If you have recently signed up through our Paypal site but can’t see the bit at the bottom, we’ve been having some processing issues. Please get in touch and email us back, and we’ll make sure you have access to everything while we deal with the annoying tech!

Non-members: You only have a couple days left to take advantage of our August membership deal.

WORTH KNOWING

🌤 Local forecast: Langley | Chilliwack | Abbotsford | Hope

⚠️ Here’s the current smoke forecast / Check the BC Wildfire Dashboard here

🚘 Driving today? Check the current traffic situation via Google, and find DriveBC’s latest updates.

NEWS

The salmon ceremony

This is the first in a new series we’re calling the FVC Notebook, in which we give readers an unfiltered look at people, events, and places throughout the region. Our FVC Notebook pieces will contain short-form observations and insight meant to be useful if and when readers follow in our footsteps. 

• • • • •

It’s late in the year to be welcoming the salmon back.

Temperatures are pushing past the 30 C mark outside the Semá:th First Nation longhouse. And inside the building where many have assembled, it’s warm too—though the heat is mitigated by large fans circulating air, and ice cold water distributed at the entrance.

Despite the heat, a healthy crowd has gathered on this mid-August day for a sacred event: Semá:th First Nation’s annual salmon ceremony.

The ceremony is usually held in April, but a lack of fish has delayed it. Nevertheless, the salmon have returned, and so has a sacred event that harkens back beyond memory, but which has new life—and a new purpose—in the 21st Century.

• Today, Tyler takes his notepad, and readers to the Semá:th salmon ceremony. He later talks to Semá:th Chief Dalton Silver about why they have decided to welcome invited guests to the ceremony.

Need to know

⚡ The Fraser Valley was hit by intense and continuous thunder and lightning last night [Mark Madryga/Twitter]

🚬 An air quality advisory remains in place for the Fraser Valley [Metro Vancouver]

🔥 Fire danger remains high across most of BC [Fire danger map]

🚓 A 57-year-old man was killed in a home near the Surrey/Langley border; one man has been arrested [Langley Advance Times]

🗳 Harrison Hot Springs residents wanting to vote by mail in the upcoming by-election must apply for a ballot by Sept. 8 [Agassiz-Harrison Observer]

📷 A Chilliwack diver found a lost camera in Cultus Lake that depicts a cliff dive; he’s now searching for the owner [AquaticMonkey/YouTube] / We interviewed diver Clayton Helkenberg more than two years ago, when he found a gun at the bottom of Chilliwack Lake; we just posted that story online [FVC]

🚔 A man convicted of killing a Chilliwack teen in 2008 is now charged with fleeing Abbotsford police in July [Abbotsford News]

👉 Wyatt Scott, a former Mission political candidate, is now charged with human-trafficking of teens in Chilliwack [Chilliwack Progress]

❌ A prolific offender won’t be allowed to stay at a Chilliwack halfway house while he’s appealing his robbery conviction [Chilliwack Progress]

🚑 The body of a woman was found along Highway 1 in Chilliwack early Monday morning [Fraser Valley Today]

🙀 A stunning carving of a cougar won Ryan Villiers top honours at Hope’s chainsaw carving competition [Hope Standard]

🔥 Wildfire officials thanked Fraser Valley firefighters for helping battle flames west of Lillooet [BCWS/Facebook]

The Agenda

Below-market rents eyed for Abbotsford apartment building

An Abbotsford developer is hoping to build a 60-unit apartment building with below-market rents.

Triumph Pacific Properties wants to build the project on Eleanor Avenue, a small road just east of Sumas Way in east Abbotsford. The company hopes to be able to offer rents 10% below market rate through support from a Canadian Housing and Mortgage Corporation program. The building, as proposed, would have 40 one-bedroom units and 20 two-bedroom units. The market rate used to set rents would be determined by CMHC’s annual rental market survey. The last rental market survey pegged the average rent of a two-bedroom apartment in Abbotsford at $1,363. Ten per cent less than that would be $1,227.

In a letter to the city, the company noted that it had built two other Abbotsford apartment complexes that also offer affordable units.

Closed highway is closed, province says

Highway 1 remains closed. The route has been shut down since the Kookipi Creek fire swept through the canyon north of Boston Bar more than a week ago. The province had promised an update Monday about the state of Highway 1, through the Fraser Canyon, but provided little new news, only saying the route is closed and that BC Hydro is continuing to restore infrastructure along the route.

The Current has asked for information that might give an indication when the highway will be re-opened and whether the temporary one-lane bridge at Jackass Mountain has sustained damage.

Boston Bar evacuation alert lifted

The evacuation alert for Boston Bar has been lifted. The Fraser Valley Regional District made the announcement in a video posted Monday morning. The evacuation alert remains in affect for the Canyon Alpine area just north of Boston Bar. A map of the current areas under evacuation alert can be found here.

The FVRD says it has been trying to contact property owners who have lost structures due to the fire, though it has not yet said how many buildings were impacted.

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🍴 Haven Kitchen + Bar: Langley. Upscale casual restaurant with familiar entrees but diverse appetizers. Entrees like the brick half chicken and braised pork belly are between $30 and $40. Open 11:30am until late.

🍴 Maru Sushi: Chilliwack. Asian fare that combines Japanese, Chinese and Korean food, with specialties in each style. Its Japanese special is deep fried spicy tuna on a dynamite roll with cream cheese, which goes for $18.50. Typical California rolls cost $6. Open 11:30am to 9pm.

🍴 Hanky's Family Restaurant: Hope. A popular local joint, Hanky's serves diner fare like sandwiches and pastas, but also Asian dishes like wonton soup. Open 9am to 8pm Wednesday to Saturday, 9am to 3pm Sunday.

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Tyler: On July 6, we published this story about how our summers in the Fraser Valley are twice as dry as they were just three decades ago.

The odds were in our favour that the story wouldn’t proceed a rainy July and August. And unfortunately, nearly two months later, we remain stuck in a drought. But the scale is pretty incredible.

According to Environment Canada, Abbotsford has received just 2.1mm of rain in the month of August. (All these numbers are very similar for other Fraser Valley communities.) The lowest totals on record is a 3.3mm August back in 1974. July was wetter, but not nearly wet enough. 24.3mm of rain fell in Abbotsford.

But almost all that rain (23.3mm) fell on a single day (July 24). The remaining millimetre fell the next day. Not ideal.

Fortunately, it looks like there may be some showers in the forecast. But still, there are two takeaways. First, it’s been remarkably dry, in a historical context. Second, in terms of recent summers, it actually hasn’t been all that strange. Over the last decade, we’ve had six different summers with less than 50mm of rain. Last year, we got only around 12mm. The summer before? Twenty-two millimetres.

What stands out for this year, actually, is not how dry July and August were, but how little rain fell in the months proceeding it. Usually the valley’s greenery banks that rain to get through the hot, drier summer. We didn’t have that. Hence the severe drought.