Here's our dilemma, folks. We're trying desperately to stay afloat. Many can't afford Christmas dinner, a solitary gift under the tree, and still afford to pay the rent and the monthly heat and electric bills. More and more of us are affected. We're not talking about the homeless and marginalized people. This is someth...

THERE IS SPECULATION from south of the border that one of the first things Donald Trump will do when he takes office is try to repeal the 22nd Amendment to the United States constitution.That's the constitutional amendment that prevents presidents from serving more than two terms.It's easy to see why Trump might want t...

MAYBE IT'S THE FACT that I spent most of this year in hospital, or maybe it's the seniors' dilemma of trying to keep the wolf away from the door, but it seems that there's a lot more on people's minds this holiday season. I've always been a 'glass half full' kind of guy, but so much is going on. From the atrocious cost...

AT EVERY LEVEL OF GOVERNMENT, female politicians are disproportionately targeted by violence and harassment. This is true regardless of party affiliation. Given the nonpartisan nature of this targeting, it's safe to assume it has little to do with policy. People say things about female politicians that they'd never dre...

THE PHRASE 'THE PERFECT STORM' is most often used to describe an atmospheric incident where major systems come together to create the conditions leading to a possible devastating event. More loosely used, it refers to a series of events which come together to create a situation that could have the same effect. Such a p...

MANY DEFINITIONS of food sovereignty emphasize the right to access culturally relevant foods, including the following from La Via Campesina: "Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define th...

THIS YEAR HAS BEEN another tough one for Kamloops.CFJC will air a 'Top 10 News Stories of 2024' special later this month that will really underline that point.Some of the biggest stories of the year involved fires and fights, despair, destruction and disorder.But those events and the feelings they elicited don't define...

Second Harvest (2024) reports that nearly 50 per cent of food in Canada is wasted, costing the country $58 billion yearly. Around 63 per cent of Canadians throw away food that could have been eaten, amounting to around 140 kilograms of wasted food yearly. The holiday season is particularly wasteful, since families ofte...

IT'S TAKEN SOME TIME AND LOTS OF HARD WORK, but the North Shore Business Improvement Association is slowly changing the face of the Tranquille Corridor. There is still a long way to go, but new additions like the Yew Street Food Hall and other specialty restaurants provide a destination for shoppers to visit and enjoy....

I HAVE BEEN RACKING MY BRAIN the past couple of weeks, trying to make sense of Donald Trump's tariff plans. Donald is trying to intimidate Mexico and Canada by threatening heavy tariffs. Ostensibly, Trump wants its two neighbours to put more effort into fighting the border war as well as making a number of other commit...

BILL SARAI MADE A MISTAKE. Actually, he made a few mistakes.Mistake #1: He shouldn't have secretly recorded a one-on-one conversation with Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson.The temptation for the mayor's critics to do so is definitely alluring. After all, you might find your smoking gun. But it was still not the right move.Mist...

MAY I NEVER AGAIN bring myself to watch a live broadcast on the city's web page. Suffering from a short attention span, I have difficulty paying attention for any length of time. I seldom watch documentaries on TV, unless I watch them in segments. I seldom watch a sports event from start to finish, preferring instead t...

IN HIS VANCOUVER SUN COLUMN this past week, Vaughn Palmer suggests that the NDP is struggling to find its footing. So far, the party seems to be lacking fresh ideas in its initial comments about what it aims to achieve. In addition to bringing new MLAs up to speed, the party now has to collaborate with newly appointed ...

I HAD A DREAM THIS WEEK that I was being taken to the hospital in an ambulance. On our way, we stopped at a downtown alley.There were several ambulances already parked there, with paramedics tending to the dozen-or-so people strung out on the ground. It was impossible to tell whether the people lying there were asleep,...

THE STRATEGIES SURROUNDING STRIKES have always fascinated me. Why was this or that item the dealbreaker? Why do some of the issues seem to be so trivial and far too minor to lead to a strike? In the case of Canada Post, the future of the entire postal system is at risk. Postal workers don't make much money and certainl...

HIDEBOUND LEADER JOHN RUSTAD has made some tough calls in the few short months since his Conservative mandate became public. He destroyed Kevin Falcon's BC United Party - although the Falcon himself played a large part in that destruction - fine-tuned his candidate list to allow a handful of United MLAs to run in some ...

YOU'VE HEARD IT SAID dozens of times in the past week - the NDP could use another John Horgan.It's not that Horgan was the second coming or the perfect politician. He surely had his faults and his legacy is peppered with both successes and failures.The tightrope he walked, though, is what helped the BC NDP to some of i...

TECK RESOURCES LIMITED, a Vancouver-based resource company, made a $2.5 million contribution to Royal Inland Hospital's new emergency department, which opened in Kamloops last month. This donation covered the installation of antimicrobial copper surfaces and equipment as part of an effort to prevent the spread of hospi...

WE'VE HEARD ABOUT the "perfect storm", the "atmospheric river", and now "the cyclone bomb". These comments either tend to be poo-pooed by skeptics or used as a warning by scientists concerned with the future of our planet. Here's the deal. If you believe that these statements are excessive...

I WILL TELL YOU WITHOUT HESITATION that I am a huge Swiftie. I have followed the career of Taylor Swift since she was a young teenager going door to door trying to get a deal so her songs would get some airplay. Since her early material was country and I am a big country music fan, I saw many of her videos many times o...

IF A PERSON IN KAMLOOPS CALLS 9-1-1 because they feel like they're having a heart attack, but it turns out to be a bad case of indigestion, they are not penalized.It could be argued that it's a waste of our emergency responders' time but that's kind of built into our system.Likewise, if someone smells smoke coming from...

PEOPLE OFTEN MISUNDERSTAND what I do for work. When I tell people I work for the Kamloops Food Policy Council (KFPC), they ask if that's a food bank. Although frontline services like the food bank have goals similar to those of the KFPC, like relieving hunger and reducing poverty, we act on these goals differently.Fron...

SOME POLITICIANS transcend the party they represent. John Horgan, who passed away this week, was such a person. I liked the way be could portray someone you could trust. I have no idea if you could trust him, but that's the feeling I got. Carole James was another leader I felt I could trust. I always enjoyed talking to...

TOURISM KAMLOOPS IS IN THE PROCESS of hiring a consultant to help develop an "iconic attraction" in Kamloops - an initiative that aims to "enhance the city's appeal as a premier tourism destination in British Columbia". The consultant will develop draft concepts for potential attractions tailored to...

GOVERNMENTS CAN EASILY MAKE MISSTEPS when they're desperate for approval. Immigration has been a significant topic of discussion for some time now. Some well-intentioned policymakers in Ottawa decided that by reducing the number of foreign students, we could create more housing spaces for 'normal' people. However, thos...

THE KAMLOOPS-THOMPSON SCHOOL DISTRICT has been working hard to try to rebalance its budget after being put in a $2 million hole earlier this year. The mistake, which originated with a line in the budget being counted twice, resulted in a $2 million shortfall that has caused the district to totally reevaluate its budget...

IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL FALL AFTERNOON, with sunlight filtering through a stained-glass window, casting a rainbow of colors on the art-covered walls at the Art We Are Cafe. With my little pot of coffee close by, I studied the tarot cards laid out on the black tablecloth in front of me. My client, seated across from me, lean...

THIS PAST THURSDAY WAS HALLOWEEN and kids young and old around the world enjoyed trick-or-treating. And while treats were most definitely enjoyed, there were also tricks - some more traumatic than others. For instance, a friend of mine in the Lower Mainland is one of the nicest people you could ever want to meet. He's ...