Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023 edition - The return of the chef

Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023 | 🌧 High 16C

Good morning!

Some of my friends are already planning their Halloween costumes. Many of them work in elementary schools now, so their halloween costumes need to be the kind that can be easily explained to first graders. I think most of them will be some variation of Barbie. Do you still dress up for Halloween? Do you know what you’re going to be this year? Let me know below!

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 return of the chef

Friends hash out big problems while eating fast food in old cars. Diplomats work out delicate solutions over strange salads. Families scream at each other over pots of spaghetti.

Whether in backrooms, ballrooms or a garbage-strewn Buick, the power of food—to bring people together and to weld disparate interests—remains unmatched.

“It's what gets people sitting down at a table and having a discussion,” Gerry Brandon says. “It's the one thing that seems to draw people out.”

The celebrated chef has always sought to use food to help people gather around the same table. But when his restaurant in northern Ontario—a critic’s darling of French, Anglo, and modern Indigenous cuisine—started slipping out of his grasp, he started looking for a new way to inspire people through food.

• Today, Grace writes about a second act for an acclaimed chef.

Need to know

🚘️ Metro Vancouver will need 100,000 more EV chargers to meet demand in the next 15 years [Vancouver is Awesome]

🗳 The CEO of Abbotsford’s Chinook Helicopters will win an award honouring women in aviation [Abbotsford News]; The Current profiled Abbotsford’s ‘Paper Queen’ in 2021 [FVC]

✈️ A small plane crashed near Chilliwack airport on Friday; all three people on board were killed [Chilliwack Progress]

👉 Two of the people on board were trainee pilots from India [CTV]

🎃 BC’s biggest pumpkin was anointed at a competition in Langley [CBC] / We wrote last year about why some are so passionate about growing supersized pumpkins [FVC]

💀 A Mission funeral home is holding a ‘death café’ to give people a comfortable space to discuss the end of life [Mission Record]

☀ A solar eclipse next weekend will obscure up to 80% of the sun in the Lower Mainland (if clouds co-operate) [Global]

🐟 Volunteers in the Fraser Canyon carried stranded salmon by hand to help them overcome waterfalls made impassable by low water [Global]

⚖ A Langley homeowner is suing for more than $80,000 after buying topsoil they say was littered with debris, including condoms [Vancouver Sun]

♻ Tens of thousands of plastic bags were used for a new art piece at Sevenoaks Shopping Centre in Abbotsford [Abbotsford News]

🍴 Moxies has re-opened its Langley location after renovations [Verdict Food Service]

🚔 Abbotsford police say a fleeing driver rammed officers’ vehicles, but was caught and is now facing charges [CTV]

🔥 A Fort Langley fire was snuffed out thanks to two passersby who called in the blaze late Sunday night [Langley Advance Times]

The Agenda

New Jackass bridge gets girders

There’s finally progress on permanent repairs to the portion of Highway 1 in the Fraser Canyon that sustained the most severe damage in the 2021 atmospheric river.

Two years ago, a landslide swept away a huge portion of highway on Jackass Mountain, north of Boston Bar. After the disaster, the Ministry of Transportation installed an 80-metre-long one-lane temporary bridge over the brand-new ravine. With hazards on either side of the ravine, a four-kilometre stretch of road was designated for one-lane only. That has necessitated lengthy wait times—usually between 10 and 20 minutes—for drivers heading in each direction.

After a year of little-to-no construction, preparatory work began this summer to build a new bridge to ferry drivers in either direction over the ravine. And this month, construction crews have finally transported two massive girders to the site and installed them over the ravine.

The project isn’t expected to be completed until 2025.

Mission residents could face 9% tax increase

Mission taxpayers could be facing a major tax increase this coming year.

Just maintaining services and following-through on plans from previous years will require 9% more tax revenue, staff report. For the average Mission house with a $1.1 million assessed value (and a value change in line with the city average), such an increase would add about $224 to their tax bill.

Many of the higher costs come as a result of raises for firefighters and Mounties, along with higher RCMP administration costs. Slower development activity is expected to negatively impact city revenues.

Mission council is set to discuss the upcoming year’s budget in a series of committee meetings this week.

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🍴 An Indian Affair: Langley / Willoughyby. An Indian Affair offers (surprise!) Indian cuisine, including curry, biryanis, and much more. Most prices run between $15 and $20. Opens at 4:30pm.

🍴 Lou's Grill. Abbotsford. The rebuilt version of a local-famous pub with pub food and plenty of drinks. Happy hour from 2-6pm and after 9pm, with $4.45 beer. Opens at 11am and becomes a nightspot later, closing at 1am most days.

🍴Amble Coffee. Chilliwack. This coffee truck is parked on Petawawa Road in Chilliwack along the Vedder River. Open Monday to Sunday, 8am to 6pm

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