by Darren Davidson
As is the annual tradition, The Buzz takes a big ol’ A-through-Z look back at the last 12 months, and a peek into the annum ahead.
Here are items H through N. For A through G, click here.
H — Hello again to winter’s return. While the Kootenays’ prized peaks and other parched portions of North America have received an urgently needed few storms this past week, the headlines from less than a month ago say it all. From The New York Times, in late December: “Snow shortages are plaguing the West’s mountains: Some ski areas remain closed. But an even greater concern amid a changing climate is whether enough snow will fall to meet water needs for the summer.” In The Globe and Mail, this equally spooky ink: “Is winter, as we know it, dead? Canadians adapt to a mild December.”
All sadly said, if anyone’s going to get snow in the disruptive meteorological years ahead, leading climate change experts like Nelson’s Mel Reasoner says we’re living in the right place. In 2017, a year of major snowfall in B.C., Reasoner told CBC that a warming climate will bring warmer air, which in turn can hold more moisture year round. But as Reasoner told Kootenay Rockies Tourism stakeholders in a seminar provided by his company Climatic Resources Consulting, the flakes won’t be the deep ’n light variety like those that fell en masse this past week. The Selkirks and Purcells will see more coastal pug. But it’ll be white and, important for sizzling springs, summers and autumns to come, wet.
I — Investing. In the community and ourselves. Having taken over Stephen Fowler’s Booksmyth location in the Nelson Trading Centre, MJ Armstrong is turning up the volume at Intuit Movement. The dance and yoga studio has added a second studio, showers, infrared sauna, retail space for fitness and movement labels, plus treatment rooms offering massage, reiki, Ayurvedic treatments, somatic therapy and over 50 movement classes per week.
On the other end of town veteran Nelson businessman Glenn Sutherland along with Saint Performance owners Joey St. Onge and Arthur Andrews have been sweating it out on a visionary overhaul to the former museum on Nelson Ave. Built in 1972, the old building now has 5,000 square feet of space featuring The Sport Lab downstairs and The Health Lab upstairs. Offering training facilities and “sports science capacity found in major centres” according to St. Onge, The Sports Lab caters to everyone from Olympians and pros to aging athletes looking to keep their tips up and pounds down. Upstairs, The Health Lab is home to Nelson Physiotherapy, Active Balance Therapeutics, OK Clinical Group, registered massage therapist Alexandra Forsythe, Cara Lot Massage and Rejuvenation and Quantum Intuitive Healing.
Back near Baker, long-time Nelsonite Nature Coyle has opened one, and soon two, new clothing shops. Nature’s Clothing Company, located in the home of Nelson Becker’s legendary Express newspaper on Ward Street, has racked a heap of curated uni-sex vintage clothing for all ages. The mainstream labels don’t make ‘em like they used to, so Nature’s aim is to curate practical clothing with classic styles that won’t end up in the trash bin any time soon. Zaelove, Nature’s second shop two doors up Ward, will offer vintage and era women’s clothing.
J — Jobs. According to Nelson and District Chamber of Commerce boss Tom Thomson, lots of folks looking for work are finding it. Especially if they’re in the hunt for a front-line position in retail, hospitality or the tourism sector. Mid-level managers and supervisors are proving a little tougher to come by. The Kootenay unemployment rate last January was 2.9 per cent. It was 6.9 per cent in November — the highest in B.C.
K — Kootenay Co-op Radio. The little station that could continues to get ‘er done. Located in the former carpentry shop once belonging to recent B.C. Good Citizenship award-winning super-senior Jim Sawada, with this year marking KCR’s 25th year, the Hall Street broadcaster is considered a standout amongst Canada’s community and campus radio stations. Now that KCR’s new transmitter is pumping even more wattage to the cottage, the station’s signal reaches Castlegar, Trail, Salmo, Ymir, the Slocan Valley and even Whitewater’s lodge.
L — Land. Back in 2019 Nelson city council approved zoning for 300 homes along some of the fairways and hazards at Granite Pointe golf course, to be built over 15 years. At the end of the 2023 season, without sharing details just yet, the 103-year-old course announced it was “financially locked in for generations to come and debt free for the first time in years.” (Granite lost about $113,000 in 2018, and $258,000 the year before.) But with developable land in pocket, Granite’s making moves — and preserving a gem in the Queen City’s recreation crown. Keep an ear open for details from the Granite board.
The 210-home Nelson Landing project remain on hold. The plan includes a 78-slip marina, commercial spaces and public foreshore on the Kootenay Forest Product property. Vancouver’s Pacific Swell Developments still plans to buy the 12-acre parcel from Calgarian Keith Prosser, once the development seas calm and work on the $63-million Kootenay Lake Ferry is completed, by the sounds of it next year.
Pacific Swell boss Rick Browning says it’s a tough row out there for developers as of late, with the cost of borrowing high, and materials even higher. The veteran Vancouver developer was a founding partner of Red Robin Restaurants, Rocky Mountain Rail Tour Company and Whistler Premier Resort Accommodation.
After the Maglio family’s Railtown holdings were taken off the market a year-and-a-half ago while a Vancouver group crunched numbers, a few developers with other West Kootenay shovels in the ground have been kicking tires. The five-acre parcel needs to clear a services hurdle with the city before it moves forward. The two parties are in negotiations.
M — Media. “This country should no longer tolerate a situation where the public interest, in so vital a field as information, is dependent on the greed or goodwill of an extremely privileged group of businessmen.” That’s a quote from a Canadian senate report about the state of journalism in Canada — and it was written 50 years ago.
The local media soundscape said so-long to veteran newsman Greg Nesteroff a few months ago. The historian, author and co-founder of the always-engaging Kutne Reader website left Vista Radio’s Bridge FM and My Nelson Now. (So too did Vista’s national news director.) But newcomers Storrm Lennie (Bridge FM) and Scott Onyschuk (KCR) have stepped in with strong rookie reporting years.
N — Neighbourhood Network and Nelson CARES. The first is an upstart volunteer organization borne from urgency; the second is a community pillar that’s helped those who need it for half a century as of this year. Together, the tandem trenched-in and stepped-up during these lean 21st century times and our increasingly mean streets. The business sector’s dilemma with Nelson’s local crime took a turn for the better thanks to the highly organized advocacy that started with the May 2023 release of N2’s document Nelson at The Tipping Point.
Under the guidance of executive director Jac Nobiss — who arrived here in April 2022 from Winnipeg to take over from Jenny Robinson — Nelson CARES continues to rise to frightening challenges seen in municipalities and rural reaches all across the continent. Roofs over heads, jobs when there’s no paycheque, help for seniors with no one else around, emergency shelter in times when the mercury plummets or boils, legal advice for everyday people caught in bureaucratic back-eddies. That’s what Nobiss and her crew of nearly 150 staff provide.