Wednesday - Dec. 6 - Hail to Christine and Sophie

🌧 High 8C

Good morning!

Canada soccer greats Christine Sinclair and Sophie Schmidt played their last games for the national team last night. I was lucky enough to attend a game during the 2015 Women’s World Cup in Vancouver and the experience of seeing a massive stadium cheering the national team was something to behold. I, like many of you, probably also cheered on their Olympic gold win.

In recent years, other women’s soccer developments have occupied a lot of my thinking. I consume a lot of soccer and related media. Probably too much. More and more, I see women’s club soccer highlights and games and news stories infiltrating all the other sports news I consume. It can be hard to miss in Canada, where our women’s soccer infrastructure and supports are still lacking. (The same is true for hockey. I know a woman who is getting paid to play in Sweden’s second-tier league—such a thing would be unheard of here.) But overseas, women’s club soccer is drawing huge crowds—and those crowds are generating the money and financial incentives that will push the game to new heights into the coming years.

You’re seeing the benefits on the field, where the quality of soccer is exponentially better than just a decade ago. The results are great goals and slick passing plays that speak to the rapid development of the game at all levels. The foundation of it all was set by players like Sinclair and Schmidt who pushed their teams, their country, and world soccer to new heights. Their greatness will be felt by young soccer players, like my daughter, for generations to come. It’s not a bad legacy to have.

We have a pair of tickets to Greendale Acres to give away to an Insider member. The site is closed right now, but the tickets will be usable in the spring. If you want them, just fill out this form. We’ll pick a winner tomorrow!

– Tyler

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

Can we out-think pain?

We’re working on a bunch of new and interesting stories for newsletters to come. But writing takes time and we want to make them as good as possible. So today, we’re highlighting a recent story we published.

Pain is in your head—but that doesn’t mean it’s not real.

• Last month, we wrote about the new research changing how people view chronic pain, and how a local researcher with first-hand experience hopes to help others. Check out that story here.

Related

Need to Know

🚗 Langley Township is reconsidering the potential need for parking permits in some areas [Langley Advance Times]

📊 A poll of voters in Mike de Jong’s Abbotsford riding suggests the BC United politician could lose his seat to a BC Conservative candidate in the next election [Jas Johal/X]

🚔 Witnesses are sought after a man died in downtown Chilliwack late Monday night [Global]

👍 The level of the Nooksack River began dropping Monday afternoon with little flooding reported [Randy Small/NOAA]

🌲 Tourism Abbotsford has poached a new leader from the City of Mission [Abbotsford News] / Tourism Abbotsford’s previous manager, Craig Nichols, recently left to run his brewery on Vancouver Island [BC Ale Trail]

✅ Abbotsford council approved two large apartment buildings in its downtown [Abbotsford News]

🟢 Highway 1 was re-opened in the Fraser Canyon after a proactive closure north of Boston Bar [DriveBC]

🔥 A semi truck that caught fire on Highway 1 was extinguished with the driver uninjured [Hope Standard]

🦷 An Abbotsford dentist was suspended after admitting to improperly touching an employee [Abbotsford News]

The Agenda

Five brand new local songs, plus an album

The Current is teaming up with CIVL 101.7 FM music director Stephen Munga to showcase new songs by Fraser Valley-based artists. Here are five great local tunes to check out, plus a new album.

• Softly Jade | Missing Out (Indie/Rock) | Spotify (Softly Jade is the new solo project of Abbotsford artist Jada Klein)

• Poor Boy Rifle - Thousand (Indie/Rock) | Spotify

• Boslen - Tell Me Why (Hip Hop/Pop) | Spotify

• Rebecca Sichon - Breaking Free (R&B/Soul/Pop) | Spotify (Sichon performed the song live recently at a taping of the Bigger Than Me podcast; you can watch the performance and an interview with Sichon here)

• Cavasoul + Eric Godlow - LOVE (Hip Hop/Rap) | Spotify

• Leviticus Penner - In Translation (Album; Indie/Alternative) | Spotify

Langley looks to scrap neighbourhood plans

In the wake of new provincial housing legislation, Langley Township looks likely to repeal three neighbourhood plans they had just adopted for Brookswood-Fernridge.

Township council voted Monday to ask staff to lay the groundwork needed to undo the plans after the province confirmed that it would not make an exception to new density rules it has enacted. The public will have an opportunity to weigh in once the issue comes back to council.

The plans for Booth, Fernridge, and Rinn neighbourhoods cover a southern portion of yet-to-be developed Langley, near Brookswood and just east of the Surrey border. Approved last July, each plan designates certain blocks for apartments, townhomes, and single-family homes and outlines necessary amenities according to how many people they expect in the area.

New legislation from the province, however, could change the calculations city staff made to determine how many people to plan for. The province’s Bill 44 allows up to six homes on a traditional single-family residential lot. Plans that accounted for about five people per house may no longer be relevant when such lots may be home to four to six families, Township Mayor Eric Woodward says.

The neighbourhood plans originally expected 47,000 people in the area. The new legislation means that number could be up to 120,000 people, Woodward wrote recently on Facebook. That increase, he said, would be without consideration for schools, parks, recreation facilities, or other services.

🤝 Now hiring

• Internal medicine doctor at Langley Memorial Hospital

• Receptionist at Focus College in Abbotsford

• A&W manager in Mission

• Hay truck driver at Blackstock Hay and Transport in Chilliwack | $27.50/hour

• Food sovereignty coordinator at Seabird Island Band | $39/hour

Have you got a job after finding a notice through our job board? Please email us 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.

Think you know where this week’s Current Cam was taken? Fill out this form.

🗓 Things to do

Nutcracker: Abbotsford Children's Theatre presents two showings of The Nutcracker at Matsqui Centennial Auditorium Dec. 8 and 9. Tickets online.

Winter market: The Langley Community Farmers Market hosts its first Winter Market at the Derek Doubleday Arboretum's Rotary Interpretive Centre building Dec. 9 from 3-7pm, with the Langley Environmental Partners Society (LEPS) hosting their annual Holiday Social upstairs from 5-7pm. Details online.

Christmas concert: Joy Vox Community Choir and the Fraser Valley Community Winds present Winter Star, a Christmas concert, Saturday, Dec. 9, at Calvin Presbyterian Church in Abbotsford. The concert also features Voce Destino and the Valley Brass Quintet. Tickets online.

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

That’s it!

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