A relatively new industry is taking off in British Columbia, as forestry companies set their sights on logging burn zones after wildfires.

It’s called salvage logging — and it may disrupt forests’ abilities to naturally recover from fires.

B.C. rules allow companies to remove the last remaining living trees from burn zones. Those trees can offer critical support for healing ecosystems. Now some experts and affected communities, including First Nations, are raising the alarm and calling for more selective logging practices.

The governments of former Alberta premier Jason Kenney and now Premier Danielle Smith have been vigorously lobbied to support a private company’s high-stakes gamble on a rail line from Calgary to Banff.

With potentially hundreds of millions of dollars of public money at stake, internal government documents obtained by The Tyee raise a question.

Why did Smith personally arrange for her husband to be granted extraordinary access to confidential internal government discussions about the proposed project?

The internal documents, obtained through freedom of information, show Smith’s husband, David Moretta, attended an hour-long confidential government meeting at McDougall Centre, the provincial government’s Calgary office, on Sept. 26, 2023.

The government redacted any information that would show who else attended the meeting and what was discussed.

Max Paulhus says he could hear wood breaking and a roaring sound before an approaching surge of water raced down the Fraser River after breaking free from a landslide upstream.

Paulhus lives in Lillooet, B.C., and is one of several Fraser River community residents and business operators who described watching the power of water and debris churning from the Chilcotin River landslide towards British Columbia's Lower Mainland.

"You could hear an abnormal sound coming from the river," said Paulhus, the Lillooet and District Rescue Society chief. "You could hear that noise. You could hear branches breaking. It was almost like a roar."

Others downstream at Lytton and at the Hell's Gate Airtram said they could also hear the river's flow as the water and debris passed through Tuesday afternoon and evening.

Thousands of people with disabilities could end up stranded in the coming weeks across Metro Vancouver as strike action by ATU Local 1724 ramps up.

The union represents HandyDart drivers, maintenance workers, road supervisors, trainers and office workers in Metro Vancouver and has been on strike since July 3 when an overwhelming majority of members voted in favour of taking action, said union president Joe McCann.

This does not impact HandyDart services outside of Metro Vancouver.

HandyDart offers a “paratransit” service for people who can’t take conventional public transit without assistance due to physical, sensory or cognitive disabilities. Drivers offers passengers door-to-door service and are trained to work with people with a range of disabilities and mobility aides, McCann said. Passengers can book a ride up to a week in advance and pay the same fare as conventional public transit users. They will often ride the bus with several other passengers.

Leo Yu, a HandyDart bus operator and member of Local 1724, says working conditions have been deteriorating over the past decade. More recently, “completely chaotic” workdays have been negatively impacting drivers, dispatchers, passengers and their caregivers, he says.

On the night of July 17, a massive lightning storm rolled across the Kootenay region of B.C.’s southeast Interior, lighting up the darkness and setting dry hillsides ablaze. In my small, end-of-the-road community of Argenta, home to approximately 150 people, we awoke to at least four fires burning on the mountain directly above our homes.

It’s something many of us have been waiting for, recognizing it as an inevitable reality of living so intimately with the forests we love so dearly. It’s also something we prepared for.

With over 200 strikes reported and little rain to accompany them, mountain sides were set on fire near villages and cities that included Nelson, Silverton, Meadow Creek and New Denver.

There’s another shoe that needs to drop before the United Conservative Party’s embarrassing skybox scandal goes quiet and Alberta can go back to sleep as Premier Danielle Smith and her political advisors doubtless profoundly wish we would.

To wit: Did UCP ministers or political staffers avail themselves of corporate flights to NHL playoff games in Vancouver and perhaps in Sunrise, Florida? And if so, who paid?

Thanks to the reporting of the Globe and Mail’s Carrie Tait, we already know who bought skybox tickets — at least some of them — for well-connected members and employees of Smith’s government.

Tait’s July 18 report confirmed some of the rumours heard on social media and in political circles about cabinet members and senior staffers accepting corporate skybox tickets during the playoffs.

But if the Calgary Stampede rumour mill, at least, had it right, the skies over B.C.’s Lower Mainland and perhaps around Miami International Airport too were a free-flight zone during the Stanley Cup finals.

So inquiring minds want to know: Who was on those corporate jets? What did they pay, if anything? And if passengers didn’t pay, who did?

Smith, it would seem, is just as determined that it’s none of our business. Which, naturally, raises suspicions that some well-connected folk didn’t take WestJet and pay for their flight themselves, as Smith told reporters she did.

The Township of Langley will investigate how an extreme-right group was able to book a community hall jointly managed by the township and a local Lions Club.

“We’ll have to be reviewing that in the future, especially with this particular hall,” Langley Mayor Eric Woodward told The Tyee. “And seeing if there’s any assistance the township can provide and any policy updates to help these groups ensure that they don’t mistakenly book something like this in the future.”

Diagolon is led by several livestreamers who spend hours online spouting racism against Jewish and South Asian people and other minorities, dwelling on violent fantasies of fighting against invading immigrants.

The RCMP has described Diagolon as a “militia-like network with supporters who subscribe to accelerationist ideologies — the idea that a civil war or collapse of western governments is inevitable and ought to be sped up.”

This June, the group started advertising for an in-person “Terror Tour” across Canada during the summer, promising stops in major Canadian cities from Halifax to Vancouver.

In reality, the meetings have been held in small venues in smaller communities. The Ottawa gathering happened in an agricultural hall in the village of Carp.

For the Kamloops stop, the group apparently met at a skating rink owned by the Falkland and District Community Association. The small community is about 70 kilometres east of Kamloops.

When Diagolon members showed up at the community centre venue they had rented in Sudbury, they found the doors locked.

In Kelowna, Diagolon held an informal gathering in a park rather than booking an event venue. A warning about the event was posted on a Kelowna Reddit group.

British Columbians will no longer get plastic and Styrofoam takeout containers and will be charged fees for new shopping bags, as part of single-use plastic regulations rolling out Monday.

It's the latest part of the province's regulations on plastics, which started rolling out last December to align with federal regulations that are going into effect across the country.

B.C., however, had delayed some aspects of the federal single-use plastics regulations, saying that producers and businesses needed more time to adapt.

The province says the bans will help divert plastic waste from landfills, where an estimated 340,000 tonnes of plastic items and packaging were disposed of in the province in 2019.

A lesbian couple in Halifax, Canada was assaulted by a group of men who were shouting homophobic slurs at them.

Emma MacLean and her girlfriend, Tori, were walking down the street celebrating one of their birthdays when a group of men made a rude comment at MacLean, CTV News reports.

“A group of men walking in the other direction and they made a comment to me,” said Emma MacLean. “My girlfriend, Tori, said, ‘Hey that’s my girlfriend.’”

This response led to the men making explicitly homophobic remarks at the two, taunting them both.

“They continued walking and then Tori followed them to basically verbally be like, ‘That is not okay,’” MacLean said.

That’s when the men started attacking Tori.

“I see Tori being pushed on the stairs right in front of the BMO Centre and they are cement stairs and she’s on her back, that’s when all the men started punching and kicking her,” she continued.

MacLean said that she yelled for them to stop before she got involved in the fight to protect her girlfriend.

“The fight or flight came in. Basically jumped on one of their backs and put them in a chokehold, trying to restrain them.”

A bystander alerted police shortly after the fight ended. They spoke with one of the men involved in the incident, and he told them that it was the two women who had initiated the fight. The rest of the men refused to cooperate and give IDs, however.

There are currently no charges as police are investigating the situation.

Both MacLean and Tori suffered injuries. Tori had bruises covering her body, while MacLean had a chipped tooth, a broken nose, and many bruises as well.

MacLean said, “I felt punches and kicks and then I felt it on my nose and there was blood. I just thought this needs to stop now. I went to emerge the night of and they basically said it was too swollen for surgery.”

“I’m terrified to go downtown again in Halifax. I just feel like it’s so out of your control on what could happen. It’s overwhelming. I didn’t expect something like this to happen, especially with it happening during Pride Month as well.”

Youth players on a Nelson soccer team were allegedly threatened with racial slurs during a May tournament in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

Nelson Soccer Association (NSA) says a person in a truck shouted racist threats at a team with players of colour during a game May 12. Multiple Nelson teams were visiting Coeur d'Alene at the time for an annual tournament.

A detective with Coeur d'Alene Police Department told the Nelson Star that it had opened an investigation and has since sent the case to a local prosecutor for review, but did not offer any further details.

It's the second time this year athletes have faced racial abuse in Coeur d'Alene. In March, a Utah women's NCAA basketball team said its players were twice threatened by people in a vehicle who shouted racial epithets.

NSA board chair Goran Denkovski said NSA was not previously aware of the March incident involving the basketball team. The organization hasn't made a decision on its future participation in Idaho tournaments, but Denkovski said NSA will begin assessing regional safety prior to making tournament commitments.

“We do all recognize that Idaho specifically, that state is a state of concern that we should acknowledge.”

What could be more idyllic than watching the sunset at the beach while being serenaded by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra? On July 6, grab your blankets and head to the beach for a performance that only comes once a year in Vancouver.

The VSO is taking to the shoreline at Sunset Beach for a special 90-minute sunset concert. Led by Maestro Otto Tausk, the Symphony at Sunset program will feature both classical and contemporary music.

The complete set list is:

• Coast Salish Anthem
• Star Wars: Suite for Orchestra I. Main Title
• Slavonic Dances, Op. 46, No. 1
• Élan: Sesquie for Canada’s 150th
• Concerto, Piccolo, C Major, RV443 III. Allegro molto
• Samson and Delila: Danse Bacchanle
• Lawerence of Arabia Overture
• Godfather: Love Theme
• Hook: The Flight to Neverland
• Star Trek
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
• E.T.: Adventures on Earth
• Superman March

Hurried pursuit of a liquefied natural gas windfall in B.C. and Alberta will squander a key component of Canada’s long-term energy security while causing environmental devastation, according to a new report.

Scaling up LNG exports from fracking in the Montney basin that straddles the two provinces almost certainly will jeopardize local water resources, species habitat and the country’s struggling effort to meet climate targets.

And there could be another cost down the road: “The current policy of exploiting the Montney as fast as possible for LNG exports may create risks that gas will be unavailable for other uses in the future.”

This, according to energy analyst David Hughes, author of a comprehensive report called “Drilling into the Montney,” released June 24 by the David Suzuki Foundation.

“The Montney represents Canada’s largest remaining accessible gas resource and is forecast to provide a significant portion of future gas production with or without LNG,” Hughes told The Tyee. “Conventional production from mature gas fields in Canada has declined sharply over the past couple of decades.”

“Production has been made up by unconventional plays like the Montney which can only be accessed with the technology of hydraulic fracking and horizontal drilling. And those technologies come with significant environmental impacts in terms of climate change, water consumption, biodiversity loss and land disturbance.”

The Montney basin is an oval-shaped, 96,000-square-kilometre geological formation that stretches on a southeast diagonal from Fort Nelson, B.C., at its top and includes the territories of Treaty 8 First Nations. The Montney currently produces 10 billion cubic feet of methane per day or roughly half of Canada’s total.