Article by Nicola Finch – Death has been a hot topic in these pandemic times. Perhaps you’ve considered your own death or worried about people you love dying. More people have been actively engaging in conversations about death and dying. More people have been getting their end-of-life planning in order. These conversations naturally include decisions about disposition—what you want done with your body when you die.Burial and cremation are the two options we currently have in BC. Our population is aging and, naturally, dying. We are also dealing with increased deaths from the opioid crisis and the pandemic. Seventy-five percent…
Author: thegreengazette
Article by LeRae Haynes – Daniella Gastaldello is a young, informed ‘hippie’ transplant from Vancouver Island who has embraced her new home in the Cariboo, bringing to life her vision, passion, and commitment to the environment, and to leaving the planet a cleaner, better place for her children.Her new business, FullFILL Williams Lake, has been open since November 2020. She offers a wide range of refill products from skin care to floor cleaners, helping to reduce plastics in landfills and taking it to the next level: reducing plastics in recycling.You can bring in your own containers and get refills on…
Article & Photo by LeRae Haynes – Beauty, history, craftsmanship, and an artist’s eye come together at Fox Mountain Urban Upcycle to create artistic furniture, furnishings and yard décor out of old items. The pieces that Sheri and Shane Marsh have refinished and refurbished from used and discarded things are charming, practical, full of character and history, and unique, and they are guaranteed to enhance your home and delight your soul.Located at the bottom of Fox Mountain Road a few minutes out of Williams Lake, the store is hard to miss with the historical building, large windows, and a beautiful…
Article by Amber Gregg – The past few months have been busy here at the Cariboo Chilcotin Conservation Society (CCCS) in Williams Lake. There is a faint light at the end of the pandemic tunnel; however, our team has become comfortable adapting to health and safety guidelines as we teach classes, plan projects, and attend small events. We have accomplished so much in the past few months, in fact, that activity around CCCS has started to feel almost normal. If I had to guess, I would say that part of that feeling is because of the partnerships we have formed…
Article by Vanessa Moberg – Do you ever feel hopeless about the future of our planet? Unfortunately, the more we immerse ourselves in the world of conservation, the easier it is to become disillusioned. Robert and I, a filmmaker and conservationist, respectively, decided a few years ago that we wanted to dedicate our lives to telling stories of hope for the Earth.It started with our sailing project where we circumnavigated Vancouver Island (with no sailing experience!) in search of stories to lift us up. The film we produced called Sailing for Good can be found on YouTube.com/RestorationPlanet.We knew we wanted…
Summer 2021 By the time you read this, the summer season will be approaching. That means passing through the brightest time of year at Solstice, June 21. The sun is 61 degrees above the horizon at solar noon at our Williams Lake latitude. Not quite overhead, but solar panel people are happy. For astronomy, it doesn’t get completely dark. There are perhaps half as many stars visible looking south and fewer in the north at the darkest time, around 1 a.m. DST. It’s in these twilight times that the Starlink satellites will have the most impact on visual astronomy. The…
Article by Sage Birchwater – In a corner of my office sits a pile of signed petitions dating back six years. Some of the signees are dead now, and some have moved away, but they represent a community voice 1,500-people-strong who said no to a proposal to burn toxic rail ties in Williams Lake to generate electricity.”After a six-year struggle, we lost the battle but won the war. Let me explain. On June 17, 2015, Boston-based Atlantic Power Corporation, owner of the 66 MW biomass-fired Williams Lake Energy Plant, hosted a public meeting and floated the idea to burn up…
Article by Shawn Lewis, President, Williams Lake Cycling Club – Fresh off the success of Williams Lake’s first machine-built trail, Foxfire, the Williams Lake Cycling Club (WLCC) sought after and received funding for another project: a machine built intermediate flow trail on the east end of the Fox Mountain network. This funding came from the provincial Community Economic Recovery Infrastructure Program (CERIP) and is one of four projects in Williams Lake that received funding. What is a flow trail you might ask? To quote Google, “Flow trails are built mountain bike (MTB) specific and go downhill. They have bermed turns,…
Article by Peter Ewart – Is it a good idea to pick and eat wild raspberries and blueberries in forest cutblocks in the Central and Northern Interior of British Columbia? Not if these lands have been sprayed with the weed killer glyphosate sometime in the last few years. And the same caution holds true for wildlife like moose and bears who, besides berries, also consume large quantities of fireweed, willow, and dogwood shoots, all of which can contain low levels of glyphosate residue for relatively long periods of time.These are the conclusions that can be drawn from a recently published…
By Alexandra MortonPublished by Penguin Random House Canada Alexandra Morton has been called “the Jane Goodall of Canada” because of her passionate 30-year fight to save British Columbia’s wild salmon. Her account of that fight is both inspiring and a roadmap of resistance.“When I went into the wilderness of the BC coast to study whales in 1984, Echo Bay was perfect,” Morton says. “It was a remote archipelago full of salmon and whales, a tiny floathouse community, and three First Nation villages. When the first salmon farm arrived, I thought the industry would bring new families and help keep our…
The Rivershed Society of BC is a non-profit dedicated to using Watershed CPR (Connect. Protect. Restore.) to transform the Fraser into a resilient watershed, with salmon, people, and economies flourishing in rivershed communities. This summer, we are inviting you to join us to Race the River. Race the River is a COVID-friendly, totally free event that will accommodate any outdoor activity and connect you virtually with a community of people working to create a resilient Fraser River.In 1995, Rivershed Founder Fin Donnelly took on the challenge of a lifetime: a three-week swim from the headwaters of the Fraser River to…
Article by Chris R. Shepherd, Executive Director, Monitor Conservation Research Society – Everyone knows what an owl is, but few people actually know very much about owls. Globally, there are 234 species of owls, with 216 of these belonging to Family Strigidae and 18 to Family Tytonidae. For centuries, people have kept owls as pets, consumed them as food, and harvested their parts in traditional medicines and forms of black magic. However, anthropomorphic pressure, including commercial trade, is threatening owls on an unprecedented scale, and as a result, many species being pushed towards the brink of extinction.Recently, the demand for…
Article by Jessica Kirby – Community-funding music video project in Williams Lake asks individuals to take action against climate change. Mother Earth stands on a frozen lake holding an hourglass. Her expression is stern, but her eyes are kind. “Hey, hey you … what the hell are you doing? … Times running out … this house is burning …” The lyrics from “The Mother’s Plea” beg us to pay attention and take action for the planet in this community-funded music video project created in Williams Lake.The video features singer-songwriter Shannon Zirnhelt, several children from the Williams Lake area, and Shannon’s…
Article by Maggie Ranger – Living in the Cariboo we are surrounded by an abundance of flora and fauna. Spring and summer are the busiest time for an herbalist, gathering, foraging, and harvesting medicinal plants.There are many medicinal plants growing in our backyards in the Cariboo, and the trick is to take note of the different microclimates in our region. You may miss an opportunity to harvest in one area but can simply travel to a higher altitude to find the same plant at an earlier growing stage. For example, wild roses bloom on the west side of the Fraser…
Article by Tera Grady – All garbage and recycling programs and services for the Cariboo Regional District and its member municipalities, Williams Lake, Quesnel, District of 100 Mile House, and District of Wells, are developed, approved, and implemented through the region’s Solid Waste Management Plan (Plan). Each Plan spans ten years. The current Plan will be updated over the next two years. The BC Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy providing principles that regional districts are encouraged to include in Plans, some of which are: minimize waste generation;prevent organics and recyclables from disposal in landfills;support user pay systems to…
Article by Jessica Kirby – Isolation is a funny thing. As children, we fear it, sure there are monsters lurking where grown-ups are not, deeply feeling being relegated to our rooms when we’ve misbehaved, left feeling like our parents’ room is an ocean away at night, in the dark, as our dreams unfold.In adolescence and adulthood, we go a few different ways. Some of us stay in the mindset that isolation is difficult, and we fill our lives with varying degrees of intentional connection with others. We might love being alone and seek it most of the time; we might…
Article by Guy Dauncey – Loneliness. At the start of the pandemic, a survey found that more than half of Canadians felt lonely and isolated. Among young people aged 18–34 the feeling rose to 68 percent. Loneliness is often accompanied by a feeling of shame, that you ought not to be feeling this way, that you ought to feel happy and connected. We feel loneliness personally, but it is not a personal problem. For millions of years, our ancestors lived in close communities where everyone knew each other and helped each other out. It is only very recently that family…
Article by Amber Gregg – I think it is safe to say that the little white and blue house in the downtown of Williams Lake, otherwise known as the Potato House, is a familiar sight in the community. This historic site has been revitalized into an abundant garden space, the only drive-through compost location in Canada, and a home for the collection of artifacts that demonstrate decades of culture in the Cariboo-Chilcotin. If you have not toured the house as a student, you have likely participated in the drive-through compost program, stood in line to get a bag of black…
Article & Photos by Jim Cooperman – The dream of “living off the land” helped influence my decision 52 years ago to move to the Shuswap and live on a rural property above the lake at Lee Creek. It was just a few years ago that significant progress was made to realize that dream, when there was just one week between consuming the last of the still-green garden produce and when the new greens were ready to eat from the greenhouse, along with the asparagus and the parsnips that overwintered in the garden.Growing our own organic food, while challenging and…