By Nancy Beach
“Merry Christmas! Well, this year, Santa Loyd extended our Christmas Lighting 90 feet up into our Christmas tree. The photos don’t capture what it is like to be up close, on Squirrel Cove Road. But sometimes Rudolph shakes his head along with the neighbours, who wondered how did Santa get his lights up there?”
Continue reading Merry ChristmasNational Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Quick action by a small, remote First Nation on the West Coast appears to have smothered the spread of COVID-19 in the tiny island community.
But the next big step for the Klahoose First Nation will be to maintain the gains it’s made and continue with household bubbles over the holidays, Chief Kevin Peacey said.
The Klahoose community on Cortes Island, B.C., emerged from lockdown last Tuesday after quarantine ended for all four individuals affected by the virus and no new cases were identified, Peacey said.
Continue reading Klahoose actions halt COVID outbreakNational Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The last thing Byron Harry imagined having to stickhandle during a COVID-19 community lockdown was a cougar leaping onto his truck.
Harry was pulling a graveyard shift at the Klahoose Nation’s emergency checkpoint, which was set up to contain a cluster of cases that had broken out in the remote community on B.C.’s Cortes Island just days before.
Continue reading Update from the Klahoose Nation’s emergency checkpoint“This is black bear country. It has always been black bear country. Northern Cortes Island is likely where most of the bears live. Black bears can travel very far in one day and they are good swimmers. They do travel from island to island and there are likely year-round bears here. In the fall of 2019, there was a bear sighted at Blue Jay Lake. Then in April 2020, there was a black bear around Green Mountain. Since then, we’ve had conflicts with two bears: one in Whaletown and one in Squirrel Cove,” said Autumn Barrett-Morgan, a volunteer co-ordinator with the Friends of Cortes Island’s wildlife COEXistence program.
Continue reading Coexisting in Black Bear country
