Nelson  

Nelson Police continue to search for missing man

Newton search continues

Photo: Contributed

Nelson Police Department officers are making every effort to locate Christopher Newton, who remains a missing person.

Police are thankful to everyone who has shared information and possible sightings of Newton, and are following up on leads submitted by the public.

The NPD continue to ask that anyone with information on Newton to contact police by calling 250-354-3919 or emailing [email protected].

Calls for service

• Members of the Nelson Police Department responded to 282 calls for service in the City of Nelson during this reporting period (Jan. 5 to Jan. 18).

NPD report an increase in drug overdoses in Heritage city

Uptick in drug overdoses

Photo: Contributed

Over the last two weeks the Nelson Police Department officers have responded to several calls of drug overdoses.

“Fortunately, we’ve had no fatalities, but the risk is always there,” said special Const. Silk Edwards in a press release.

Cold weather can exacerbate the risk of overdose, she added, with opioids, in particular, slowing a person’s breathing rate and reducing core body temperature.

“This can lead to overdose more quickly in low temperatures,” she said.

Narcan is not always effective to treat overdose, as street drugs can be cut with unknown substances, Edwards added.

• If you suspect someone is overdosing, call 911 immediately, the NPD warned.

NPD warn of banking fraud scam happening in the area

Nelsonite bank fraud victim

Photo: Contributed

A caller impersonating a representative of a bank defrauded a Nelson resident of almost $10,000 recently, Nelson Police Department reported.

The unknown caller told the victim they were calling from the Royal Bank (RBC) and that there had been suspicious activity on their account.

They convinced the victim to share their banking details and to transfer $9,800 to a different account, which the victim believed to be their own. It was only later, when the money failed to appear in the second account, that the victim realized they had been defrauded and contacted police.

“These types of scams are unfortunately getting more common and more sophisticated,” said special Const. Silk Edwards in a press release. “It’s important to learn about them and take steps to protect yourself.”

Scammers can change caller ID to make it look like the call is coming from a legitimate source. When in doubt, hang up and call back on the phone number listed on the official website or visit the bank in person instead of doing transactions by phone.

Never transfer money without being certain of where it is going, said Edwards.

• For more information on fraud and how to avoid it, contact the Nelson Police Department.

Open house in Slocan shares plans for affordable housing development

Support for new housing

Photo: Slocan Valley Housing Society

On the evening of Dec. 11 at the Slocan Legion, the Slocan Valley Housing Society (SVHS) hosted an open house, unveiling its plans for an affordable housing development in the Village of Slocan.

It was a great turnout, SVHS chair Sally McKenzie said, with almost 40 people in attendance including village councillor Madeleine Perriere.

Boni Maddison Architects of Vancouver drafted the plans, which were exciting to share with the public, said McKenzie.

“We’ve got these great renderings, perspectives, elevations, and floor plans so people could get a sense of what it’ll look like,” she said. “[Boni Maddison] has worked on a lot of affordable housing in small communities. They’ve been quite responsive and we’ve been pleased with working with them.”

McKenzie said feedback from residents was great.

“Our priority was that it should be good looking and be something people in the Village can be proud of, but also something that would blend in with the general architecture of Slocan,” she said. “We didn’t want it to be an oddball.”

The development is slated for the lot between Hume and Harold Streets, across from WE Graham Community School and next to the tennis courts and skating rink.

It will feature 10 townhouse style units, accommodating a mix of families and seniors. One-, two-, and three-bedroom units will be available in two buildings – four in one and six in another – with rent set at a various affordability levels.

The Village began the project in 2019, conducting a feasibility study and applying for funding. It originally scouted the location at Giffin Avenue and Slocan Street but there was some community pushback at the time, said McKenzie.

“It was 2020 by that point… We couldn’t have community meetings,” she said. “[The Village] was due to rework its Official Community Plan so they put the development on the shelf for almost two years.”

This proved to be a wise move, she said. Rewriting the OCP gave the Village a chance to understand residents’ hopes and dreams for their Village.

“I think that really helped, because then people had a bigger conversation about what they wanted the Village to look like, where they wanted things to be, and how they wanted it to work,” said McKenzie. “Affordable housing was just one piece that people had considered in the overview, rather than being an isolated development.”

With the OCP reworked, the Village approached the Slocan Valley Housing Society to get the plan moving again.

“[The Village] has done a great job,” said McKenzie. “It’s just so supportive of affordable housing, really encouraging, and helpful in all that needed to be done with zoning and leasing.”

With funding from BC Housing, McKenzie said they hope to break ground in the spring and summer – but there’s still a lot of work to be done. Construction may take about two years before the units are ready for occupancy.

“Modern building is complex,” she said. “It’s a big project. It may not be big in some worlds, but compared to building a single house, it’s a big job.”

Established in 1998, this is the society’s first foray into family housing, with its usual focus on seniors. However, it recently took over management of the Osprey Residence in New Denver. The New Denver and Area Housing Society spearheaded the project, but was less keen on operating it, said McKenzie; SVHS took up the torch.

The society also manages Passmore Lodge and Slocan City Suites, both supporting aged 55+ tenancy.

Selkirk Innovates project grows knowledge of the regional cannabis sector

Help for cannabis producers

Photo: Contributed

Selkirk Innovates faculty researcher Tracey Harvey on a recent tour of the Woody Nelson vertical farming facility just east of Nelson where the local company cultivates, processes and distributes small batch cannabis. Harvey is currently leading a federally funded three-year project that aims to better understand and support the regional cannabis sector.

Digging deeper into understanding the barriers and opportunities for rural economic development, a Selkirk Innovates research team has embarked on a three-year project focused on outcomes that will help regional cannabis producers navigate a better future in the choppy waters of legalization.

The federal government passed the Cannabis Act in October 2018, making Canada the second country in the world to formally legalize the cultivation, sale and consumption of cannabis. The massive policy shift upended the decades-long prohibition era market in the Central Kootenay and Kootenay Boundary regions, resulting in significant uncertainty which has consequently destroyed many livelihoods.

Funded through a $360,000 grant from the federal government’s College & Community Social Innovation Fund (CCSIF), Exploring Progressive Solutions: Innovating within the Regional Cannabis Sector is a three-year project that will work with the cannabis sector, different levels of government and community supporting organizations to co-design, co-pilot and co-evaluate viable action plans.

“The goal of this project is not to get every single person on board around developing the regional industry because we understand cannabis is a substance and it is not benign,” says project director Tracey Harvey. “But it’s been such an essential economic driver to this region for decades. I hope we can work to reduce stigma and continue to support this industry that had such an important socio-economic impact on our communities.”

The four-person research team includes a student intern with work now started on a literature review, policy scan and landscape assessment. There are currently 19 regional project partners involved that include small commercial grow operations, Kootenay Rockies Tourism, Nelson & District Chamber of Commerce, Kootenay Association for Science & Technology, Regional District of Central Kootenay, Regional District of Kootenay Boundary, Kootenay Central MLA Brittny Anderson and the Craft Cannabis Association of BC.

Over the coming months, the project will bring divergent groups from the Central Kootenay and Kootenay Boundary regions together—who have a history of fragmented relations and a lack of trust—to inventory place-based regional strengths, clarify challenges and decide on the best ways forward. It will eventually develop tools, guide conversations, and identify and prioritize areas for investment and action.

“We are meeting the situation where it is at and taking an agile approach. It’s important to be flexible and adapt as we proceed over the next three years,” says Harvey.

Unlocking a new world of research

Harvey’s entry into cannabis sector research started pre-legalization. An instructor in Selkirk College’s Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Program, the Rossland resident was on maternity leave when she began exploring ideas for a PhD. With support of college leadership, in 2017 Harvey embarked remotely in the Rural Studies Program at the University of Guelph.

“If I was going to sink my teeth into a PhD and spend all my waking hours working on a graduate research project, I wanted to do something with regional value that was important work,” says Harvey, who was a key builder of the college’s GIS Program and continued instructing while working on her academic pursuits. “I read the federal government’s task force report on legalization that was released in 2016 where they laid out what they were going to do and how they were going to do it. It felt like a huge deal that was going to be a massive shake-up for this region.”

With an academic background and career based in applied science, Harvey was taken out of her comfort zone when she embarked on social science research. Peeling back the layers of a sector where she was an outsider during a time of intense public debate regarding a substance shrouded in stigma, Harvey’s lifelong learner instincts helped her through four years of probing into a topic that had very little academic focus to that point.

After interviews with 33 cannabis sector participants and 23 government participants, Harvey’s thesis—titled Weed, Greed and the Need for Reconciliation: Cannabis Legalization and the Case of the Rural Kootenay, BC Region—was well received by her PhD advisory committee and remains a seminal piece of academic work.

“I found a lot of support and permissiveness for the regional cannabis industry at the local government level, and a lot of tension at the federal government level,” she says of her PhD studies. “To me, one of the biggest learnings in the work that I did was that federal government really viewed the cannabis industry as criminals. Instead of saying: ‘you started something, let’s figure out how to transition you into the legal regime,’ they told them to step aside and really excluded them.”

On the heels of completing her PhD in 2021, Harvey helped lead a Selkirk Innovates rural resilience project funded by Kootenay Rockies Tourism and Mitacs that identified and explored opportunities related to the development of cannabis tourism within the region. Released in July 2022, Exploring Opportunities for Cannabis Tourism in the Kootenay Rockies helped inform decisions makers about a path forward in an area that previously had very little documentation.

Emerging as a foremost expert in the field of cannabis sector research, Harvey put together the proposal for the current project. Though cannabis has been legal in Canada for seven years, the regional sector continues to face significant challenges with hefty excise taxes and fees, prohibitive economic regulations within the Cannabis Act, stigmatization and general distrust of government. Over the next three years, Harvey and her team intend to develop refocused action plans and pilot actions that will embolden the regional cannabis producers.

“One of the most exciting aspects of this project is that receiving this prestigious federal funding implicitly acknowledges the importance of supporting small farmers in the cannabis industry, and, specifically, the rural Kootenays,” says Harvey. “I really feel like this project can make a difference for the regional sector.”

For more information on the three-year Exploring Progressive Solutions: Innovating within the Regional Cannabis Sector project go to: https://selkirk.ca/about-selkirk/selkirk-innovates/social-innovation/innovating-within-regional-cannabis-sector

Nelson museum seeks to create more 'maker-spaces' with upcoming workshop

Like Pokémon, but for art

Photo: Kalika Bowlby, NMAG.

It's almost here.

Nelson education coordinator Kalika Bowlby expanded on the upcoming artist trading card event hosted by the Nelson Museum, Archives and Gallery, describing it as more of a maker space rather than a traditional workshop.

"We're not going to provide any art instruction," said Bowlby. "But it is an opportunity to experiment and explore different materials and creative ideas. It is about moving art away from a consumption mind frame, and more about community building and the joy of creativity."

Bowlby said there will be a two-hour drop in space, attendees will be supplied with blank cards and art materials, or they can bring their own art supplies.

The concept of art trading cards came from Swiss artist Vänçi Stirnemann in the mid-nineties, who began making artwork trading cards as part of a second-hand book shop art exhibition. Similar to non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the trading cards can't be resold but rather traded or exchanged for one another.

The first class will start from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Jan. 30 at the Nelson Museum Archives and Gallery and will run on the last Thursday of each month.

Writing marathon set to run at Taghum Hall in February

Write Off the Bat!

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Dust off the Underwood. Taghum Hall is inviting writers to come out of the garret and into something more convivial on the weekend of Feb. 22-23.

Write Off the Bat! is an on-site writing marathon, a juried competition, and a chance to hang with fellow writers — and get fed.

“The weekend is about the process as much as the result,” said organizer Anne DeGrace. “So much of creative writing typically takes place in isolation. It’s fun to work amid a roomful of creative souls, where a lot of good writing tends to happen. And whether or not a writer wins, a new piece of work will be born, which is always cause for celebration.”

The weekend’s supportive environment includes morning pep-talks from celebrated local authors, a delicious lunch each day, plus snacks, coffee and tea.

At Write Off the Bat!, participants will create new writing that speaks to this year’s theme, to be revealed at the start. Writers can address the theme in any genre: fiction; creative nonfiction; poetry; playwriting; or a creative combination.

The magic happens between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. both days at the hall, and writers are free to keep writing from home between the two sessions.

There will be first, second and third-place prizes awarded. Entries will be judged based on the quality of the writing, originality and how well it responds to the theme. Judging will be blind, with nothing on the entry to identify the writer. Partners Notably Books and the Elephant Mountain Lit Fest have contributed to the prize packages, which also include a cash award.

An awards night is planned for Sunday, March 16 at 7 p.m., with remarks from the judges and readings by the winners.

This is the second Write Off the Bat! event at Taghum Hall. The first took place in September 2023, with 15 brave wordsmiths strapping in for the ride. DeGrace wanted to see even more turn out this time.

“It’s just such a great opportunity,” she said.

• Advance registration is required. More information and the registration link can be found at www.taghumhall.ca/events.

Minister of Housing prioritizes increasing Nelson's housing supply over tenancy law debate

A balancing act

Photo: Istock

Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon said that the Residential Tenancy Act (RTA) has significantly strengthened protections for renters, but suggested that solutions may not come from protecting landlords or renters more.

“The solution lies in creating housing options,” said Ravi Kahlon.”The solution is reducing barriers for the private sector to be able to build homes and having the government make investments in housing that, quite frankly, the private sector is not able to build for.”

When it comes to short term rentals, Kahlon said that the next phase of enforcements made to the RTA focuses on relieving some of the pressures that local governments are facing.

“We have a BC builds project which is targeting middle income families in the works in Nelson, and we're always looking to find more opportunities through government direct investments to build affordable housing for people,” he said.

The provincial government has introduced policies to protect both landlords and renters during the housing crisis, and while some landlords have argued that restrictive policies and tenant legislation have discouraged them from the long term rental market, tenants are calling for stronger protections.

“We're removing a lot of barriers for people who want to build homes to be able to do it in a quick way. “We’ve seen rents stabilize in some areas and new housing supply is starting to come online," said Kahlon.

Despite the government recently introducing measures that allow more density on single family homes builds as the minister pointed to places like New Zealand, who in 2020, adjusted their residential tenancy laws in hopes to rebalance landlord and tenants rights responsibilities through public surveys.

"And they've seen rents stabilized,” said Kahlon.“They've seen home ownership opportunities stabilize. Auckland and in particular.We're starting to see that that is an efficient way for more housing to be increased in our communities."

While each B.C. city's housing needs are unique, Nelson tenants and landlords have split opinions.

Trevor Jenkinson of the West Kootenay Landlord Association suggested that additional incentives for landlords to keep their house on the market could make an impact.

“Property tax reductions or deferred capital gains taxes for reinvesting in rental properties could make a big difference,” said Jenkinson. "We need to encourage the good landlords who genuinely care about providing quality housing.”

Nelson Nordic Ski Team members shine at 2025 Teck BC Cup

A win for Nelson

Photo: Samantha Holomay

Members of the Nelson Nordic Ski Team shined in the first BC Cup of the season this past weekend.

10 skiers from the Nelson Nordic Ski Team—seven youth and three adult members— competed in the 2025 Teck BC Cup, held at the Mt. Macpherson ski area in Revelstoke on Jan.11 and 12.

Aleah Smith won gold in classic and a silver in skate.

Dawson Abraham finished fourth in the same two categories.

Gabe Janz earned fifth in classic and 10th in skate.

Philémon Hetu secured fifth place in classic and seventh in skate.

The Nelson Nordic Ski Team also took time to thank and congratulate all members for their performances.

"Huge shout out to Cale Francis, Jonnie Francis, and Elliot Davina for some great racing!We're looking forward to the rest of the season. Keep pushing the limits, team."

The club will host the Teck Kootenay Cup in Nelson on Feb. 8 and 9.

Whitewater Ski Resort's 13th annual Smith Junior Freeride Open highlights self-expression

Creativity on the slopes

Photo: Steph Malette

The essence of freeriding is self-expression.

In the 13th annual Smith Junior Freeride Open last weekend at Whitewater Ski resort self-expression was on full display as athletes from Whitewater, Red Mountain, Revelstoke, Kicking Horse Mountain and SilverStar Mountain competed.

“This premier competition brought together the next generation of skiers and snowboarders from British Columbia, Alberta and the Pacific Northwest to showcase their big mountain freeride skills,” said Whitewater brand director Kyle Caçador-Florence.

The competition used Whitewater’s natural terrain, encouraging riders to choose technical lines and showcase their style and creativity. This IFSA-accredited event scored competitors based on five categories: line choice; control; technique; fluidity; and style and energy.

Building on the success of last year’s event — which introduced snowboarding — Whitewater rebranded this year’s competition as the Junior Freeride Open, he said.

“The energy from both competitors and spectators was electric, and Whitewater is proud to have witnessed such skilled and passionate athletes from both disciplines throwing down impressive jumps and tricks with style, control, and flair,” said Caçador-Florence.

The weather on Sunday for the finals was perfect for spectating, he said, and the crowd at the base of the Blast cheered each athlete on with “unmatched enthusiasm, creating an atmosphere of pure stoke that could only be found in Nelson.”

With registration growing nearly 40 per cent over the last two years, Whitewater is already looking to provide a platform for up-and-coming skiers and riders to compete at the 2026 event.

Sponsors

The event wouldn’t have been possible without the support of sponsors: Smith Optics, Forecast Media, Castanet Media, Pepsi, Ambler Mountain Works, Beauties Pizza, Nelson’s Chocofellar, Tandoori Indian Grill and Lounge, Uptown Pizza and Sports Bar, along with accommodation partners Alpine Inn and Suites, Stirling All Suites Hotel and The Adventure Hotel.

Podium results

U12 ski women

1. Amelia Weaver – RED Mountain Resort
2. Elsie Rogers – RED Mountain Resort
3. Monroe Crosland – Whitewater Ski Resort

U12 ski men

1. Trace Crowe – Whitewater Ski Resort
2. Oscar Mackenzie – Revelstoke Mountain Resort
3. Shiloh Senyk – Whitewater Ski Resort

U15 ski women

1. Bryn Eyben – Revelstoke Mountain Resort
2. Izzy Fischer – Kicking Horse Mountain Resort
3. Maggie Hood – Revelstoke Mountain Resort

U15 ski men

1. Egan Kelly – Revelstoke Mountain Resort
2. Henri Gallant – Revelstoke Mountain Resort
3. Cruz Dechka – Kicking Horse Mountain Resort

U15 snowboard men

1. Carter Holdsworth – SilverStar Mountain Resort
2. Jackson Sumner – Whitewater Ski Resort
3. River Slootweg – Whitewater Ski Resort

U19 snowboard men

1. Joshua Imada – Whitewater Ski Resort
2. Nicholas Bowen – Whitewater Ski Resort
3. Solomon Weinstein – Whitewater Ski Resort

U19 ski women

1. Freya Keyserlingk – Whitewater Ski Resort
2. Jaime Moynes – Whitewater Ski Resort
3. Cadence Schmidt – Whitewater Ski Resort

U19 ski men

1. Benson Hulbert – Whitewater Ski Resort
2. Toby Macintosh – Whitewater Ski Resort
3. Justin Birkett – Whistler Ski Resort

Dano Slater Danimal Award

• Elsie Rogers – RED Mountain Resort

For full results, visit https://skiwhitewater.com/events/jr-freeride-open/