IT HAD RAINED ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT and the woods were alive with bird songs in early morning when dog and I headed out for a hike in our beloved Peterson Creek Park. The rain made the forest look alive, eager to turn greener yet. The creek rushed in loudly churning foamy dollops and we breathed in the fresh, after-rain a...

DEPENDING ON WHO YOU ASK, you'll hear from some people that they are making the best of their time and days in general, restrictions notwithstanding. Others will explicitly express their frustrations at the new restrictions. The thing is, the new travel restrictions, in effect until May 25, were expected to be ever so ...

HAVE YOU FOUND yourself ordering more take-out food lately? Or heading out to one of the many patios that have sprouted all over town on short notice in an effort to help local food business owners weather the current restrictions? Many have and that's as amazing as can be. We can call it a Kamloops thing and we would ...

WE'RE FINALLY MOVING INTO SPRING. It's been a tug-of-war as of late, with snowy mornings and frosty windshields yet again - some strong and cold winds, too - but the days are getting brilliantly sunny and long enough to be able to fit enough in one with time to spare. The sun is coaxing out more people, and there seem ...

I AM NOT MUCH FOR VIRAL NEWS but every now and then I wish some stories I come across get shared far and wide because of how significant they are. The one I came across on social media a couple of days ago was COVID-19-related and, as much as I wanted to distance myself from it all during the long weekend, this one got...

The news that the Provincial Court of B.C. handed Teck Coal Limited a $60 million fine , the largest penalty yet for Fisheries Act offenses, sounded like great news and appropriately so. The coal company has been polluting the waterways of Elk Valley, home of the Ktunaxa Nation, for a long time and the dire effects are...

DO YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST couple of months into the pandemic when social media was inundated with images of wild critters strolling through cities and other areas usually frequented by humans that were suddenly empty due to people staying home? Photoshop tricks notwithstanding, we were indeed witnessing a different lev...

A CURIOUS THING HAPPENS every time a long weekend or school break comes about: the fleet of neighbourhood cars changes. Some of the usual vehicles are gone, and there are new ones, including a few from other provinces. The latter is not unlike what's happening on the city streets too. I get it, people long to travel, a...

One of the good things about an overcast morning is that, should you decide to take the dog to the beach, you'll have the place to yourselves for the most part. Though we're in a pandemic and many of us miss hanging out with friends and family the way we used to, solitude is good for us when we need to get away from al...

WHEN I STUMBLED UPON the news of a NorKam student being removed from class because of what her teacher perceived to be inappropriate attire, I did what every other person did when reading the said news story. I looked at the photo and shrugged. There was nothing inappropriate about the student's clothing. Different, ye...

You may have peeked at the news of the new variants appearing in some schools in the Lower Mainland. As I started writing, two more schools have been added to the exposure list for the U.K. variant, bringing the total number to five. We are told there are ways to reduce the risk and generally improve our state of healt...

I WAS ABOUT TO TELL YOU about this awe-inspiring documentary called 'Wild Canadian Weather' you can find on CBC. It's a perfect reminder of beauty and wonder and why we need to care for nature. My youngest used to watch the Planet Earth series when he was in early elementary school, and he would talk about it for hours...

SOME OF MY DEAREST early childhood memories have to do with my maternal grandparents who lived in a separate suite in the home I grew up in. My grandmother passed away when I was six and my grandfather three years later. I missed them terribly since. There were other multigenerational families living in the neighbourho...

IF YOU HAVE KIDS, you've likely been through a case or two of ,'are we there yet?' and like all parents who are presented with the question, you probably answered, 'almost there,' knowing that it'll be a while yet. Somehow it feels that way with the ongoing pandemic. Last week alone, we saw multiple cases show up in ou...

YOU'D THINK WE'VE HEARD IT ENOUGH to not see it happen again. Speeding in school zones, that is. Going over 30km/h in a school zone can have awful consequences. Like I said in a previous column on the same topic, while the most awful are of course the deadly crashes, they are all horrendous. Living near two schools, I ...

IF THIS FEELS LIKE déjà vu... well, it is. Part of it anyway. The part about people choosing to gather in large numbers in the streets to protest, yet again, masks and other COVID restrictions. Never mind that the health authority has restricted public gatherings and never mind that we're still very much ...

WE ENDED THE PREVIOUS YEAR with a big sigh and dutifully wished each other a better 2021. Life coaches out there will tell you that positive thinking will get things done, yet sometimes it becomes evident that there's more to it than just well-wishing. It's merely been 11 days and we've been seeing some wild things unf...

I saw a funny tweet a couple of days ago. It went something like this, 'Canadians are urged not to travel overseas during the pandemic. They'd risk running into some of their elected officials...' Except it was funny only for a bit. There is a 2020 Christmas holiday wall of shame related to the tweet and it is reserved...