While lineups appear to have virtually disappeared since Island Nagalis took over the BC Ferries Cortes–Quadra run, there are often three-ferry waits at midday for people sailing between Quadra Island and Campbell River.
My personal experience of this comes from a trip to Campbell River on Monday, June 28. The lineup to leave Whaletown Terminal at 9:55 AM seemed normal, but we only filled half the ferry.
“We’re living through a time of great disruption. The global trading system, in which we’ve long relied as a country, is being dramatically restructured. Global conflicts have sharpely increased gas and food prices around the world and right here at home. The rapid rise of artifical intelligence is beginning to transform how we live and how we work. Climate change is worsening, with bigger storms, heavier flooding, more devastating wildfires. Canadians are feeling the impacts at their kitchen tables, at the pimps and on their factory floors. The good news is that unlike many countries, we can control our future, but that will require doing things differently – movng faster, building bigger and working together. And nowhere is that more the case than energy.” – Mark Carney
The new West Coast Pipeline will closely follow the existing Trans Mountain Pipeline (TMX) route. BC has been promised billions of dollars through a new prosperity agreement, and Prime Minister Mark Carney has stepped back from Canada’s emissions targets because they are too divisive.
In this morning’s broadcast, two experts provide their insights into these matters. Jennifer Lash is a former senior analyst with Environment and Climate Change Canada and ran as a Liberal candidate in the 2025 election. She endorses the Prime Minister’s actions. Ian Sanderson, a senior analyst in the oil and gas division at the Pembina Institute, explains his reservations.
A First Nation chief says a major landowner waited too long to challenge the Cowichan Aboriginal title case after a BC court rejected the company’s bid to reopen the trial this week. BC Supreme Court Justice Barbara Young rejected Montrose Properties’ attempt to reopen the case, calling it an “abuse of process” after a 513-day trial over Cowichan title in part of Richmond, a Metro Vancouver city where homes, businesses and public land already exist.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope precisely measured the mass of the oldest known planet in our Milky Way galaxy. At an estimated age of 13 billion years, the planet is more than twice as old as Earth’s 4.5 billion years. It’s about as old as a planet can be. It formed around a young, sun-like star barely 1 billion years after our universe’s birth in the Big Bang.
About 4.5 billion years ago, the miscellaneous material orbiting a star at the edge of the Milky Way coalesced into a planet that we call Earth. It took another billion years—a thousand million years—before it cooled enough for life’s self-replicating biochemical processes would flourish in the primeval stew of the oceans. Another billion years was required before multicellular organisms would evolve. Not until about 500 million years ago did fungi and plants appear on the land that had risen out of the oceans. Insects evolved in this terrestrial ecology. Then 100 million years was required for some marine animals to transition to the continents on their long and convoluted journey from simplicity to complexity. Thus began the magic of life and death that has alternated between the prolific and the extinct throughout the subsequent eons of history. We, as a distinct species, evolved as Homo sapiens only about 200,000 years ago.
