Wednesday - August 30, 2023 - Changing land and changing rivers

Wednesday, August 30, 2023 | Today: 🌤️ High 20C

Good morning!

I went to the Vance Joy concert in Deer Lake Park in Burnaby last week. I don’t think I had been to an outdoor festival-style concert before, and I really loved it—especially after sweating to death in a stadium for a concert at UBC earlier this summer. I think I’m becoming a music festival convert. Let me know what your favourite kind of venue for live music is below!

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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

Two decades of change: the land

Human change is quick. Change on a geologic time scale takes much longer to realize. Except, that’s not always true. Indeed, as fast as our communities have changed, the rivers that form the heart of the Fraser Valley may have changed even more.

Even as humans have tried to contain the valley’s rivers, aerial images show how rivers have pushed back, cutting through entire islands and forests, and seeding new ones in their wake.

• Today, Tyler takes you back in time on the Fraser, Chilliwack, and Coquihalla rivers.

• This is the final story in our series using aerial imagery to track changes across the valley. See the rest of the stories here: Abbotsford | Langley | Mission | Chilliwack | Small towns

Need to know

🚘️ Highway 1 through the Fraser Canyon has re-opened [Province of BC]

🔥 A new wildfire south of Chehalis Lake and north of Chilliwack is 28 hectares in size and considered out-of-control [BCWFS]

🦠 An individual from the Fraser Health region was the first recorded case of the BA.2.86 strain of COVID-19 in BC [Province of BC]

📸 We’ve obtained and added some beautiful photos to yesterday’s story about the Sema:th salmon ceremony [FVC]

🍋 Twenty young lemonade entrepreneurs competed for prizes at a stand-off in Langley [Langley Advance Times]

🚔️ An Abbotsford man was sentenced to time served after breaking into a care home with a knife [Abbotsford News]

➡️ A teenager is dead after being hit by a train in Chilliwack early Tuesday morning [Chilliwack Progress]

😽 A cat adopt-a-thon last Saturday in Langley saw several kitties find new homes [Langley Advance Times]

🔥 Two new, small wildfires are burning near Harrison Lake, both are currently under two hectares in size [Agassiz-Harrison Observer]

🏠️ Mission firefighters extinguished a house fire on 12th Avenue on Monday night [Mission Record]

👉️ Abbotsford city council will revisit allowing an emergency shelter at the Red Lion Hotel [Abbotsford News]

🚨 A 45-year-old man is dead in what investigators believe was a targeted shooting in Mission [Mission Record]

The Agenda

Mission council rejects royal decree of “Queen” supporters

A group of Mission residents visited Mission council last week to try to persuade local politicians to follow a series of “royal decrees” laid out by their “beloved Queen Romana Didulo.”

A conspiracy theorist who has amassed a substantial following in some corners while publicly calling for the execution of health officials, Didulo has proclaimed herself to be the Queen of Canada and the world. Among other things, her supporters asked Mission council to display the “first non-corporate freedom flag.”

Following the decrees, council was told, would “publicly acknowledge the amazing work [Didulo] is doing to move us forward to the new Kingdom of Canada 2.0.” Mayor Paul Horn said Mission would continue to follow BC’s Local Government Act and Community Charter, and would not display the suggested flag.

Lower Mainland drought hits top of the scale

Administratively, at least, the Lower Mainland’s drought now can’t get any worse. The Lower Mainland was quietly moved to Drought Level 5, the highest stage of drought measured by BC’s water management branch.

The Lower Mainland joins more than a dozen other regions at the top of the drought-severity table. Some areas on Vancouver Island and in Northern BC have been at the fifth drought level since early July.

🤝 Now hiring

• Lumber yard associate at Fraser Valley Building Supplies (Rona) in Abbotsford

• Server at Farmhouse Brewing Co. in Chilliwack

• Arena and facility service worker for the Township of Langley

• Education assistant at Saint Mary’s Elementary School in Chilliwack

• Executive assistant at Fraser Valley Child Development Centre in Abbotsford

Hiring in the Fraser Valley? Reply back and let us know!

📸 Current Cam

Each week we showcase a different photo from across the valley and invite readers to share their best guesses about where it was taken.

Any guesses as to where this week’s Current Cam was taken? Fill out this form with your best guess—or with a picture we can use in a future edition.

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