• Local snowmobile clubs had a chance to get a birds-eye view of the areas they manage to see if sledders are entering prohibited areas. Gord Bushell and Teena Rumak, the general managers of the Eagle Valley and Revelstoke snowmobile clubs, rode along with the Conservation Officer’s Service on a helicopter enforcement patrol. A flyover of Queest Mountain, where there had been non-compliance within a closed area in the past, turned up no sign of sleds or caribou. A flight over the Bourne Glacier, also managed by the Eagle Valley Snowmobile Club and closed to sledders except for a 20-metre wide trail to the top of the glacier, turned up some evidence of sleds straying into prohibited areas.
• The Sicamous RCMP arrested a man who was supposed to be nowhere near the community as a condition of his probation. The 53-year-old was located by officers inside a shed in a mobile home park on Kappel Street. According to the RCMP, his probation order mandates he not be within 50 kilometres of Sicamous. He was kept in custody ahead of an April 1 court date in Salmon Arm.
• The Eagle Valley Arts Council launched a project to create “barn quilts” to be auctioned off or given away. The barn quilts are large pieces of sign board with artworks painted on them in exterior acrylic paint with a clear coat over top. The outdoor artworks were intended to be placed on the outside of barns and other large buildings.
• A driver for the Rider Express bus service that had previously been running only one day a week stated it’s launching a three-day-a-week schedule for both its westbound and eastbound Trans-Canada Highway routes on April 1. Wayne Farrell, who drove the leg of the bus journey between Kamloops and Calgary, said the bus would travel west on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and east on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
• On April 29, Sicamous firefighters Dan Roddick and Jessy Horsfield will be in Calgary to take part in the Firefighter Stairclimb Challenge.The challenge involves ascending 1,204 stairs (775-vertical feet) in the Bow Building, as fast as they can, while dressed in full firefighter turnout gear. The goal is to raise funds for Wellspring Calgary, an organization that provides programs, resources and support to people living with cancer along with their caregivers. “The stairclimb is to help raise money and awareness for firefighters and all people who are battling cancer, to help show them there are resources available and that they’re not alone in it,” said Roddick.
• A fundraising effort was initiated to honour the late Rene St. Onge with a picnic table along Shuswap River in Enderby. St. Onge died in a snowmobile accident in Dec. 2018. “We would like to place a picnic table in his memory at the south end of the river walk in Enderby beside the Shuswap River he loved so much,” a GoFundMe page for the project read.
• Groundwater near the landfill in Sicamous showed levels of various substances exceeding provincial standards. According to a report provided to the CSRD by Western Water Associates Ltd. (WWAL), levels of dissolved cobalt, lithium and manganese in samples taken from monitoring wells all exceeded a water quality standard or guideline.
• Columbia Shuswap Regional District joined other Southern Interior governments in calling for more thorough consultation on mountain caribou recovery programs that could result in backcountry closures.
• A 53-year-old Shuswap woman was killed in a single-vehicle collision on the Trans-Canada Highway on April 30. Police determined that an eastbound motorcycle with a single rider crossed the centre line and collided head-on with a westbound transport truck. The motorcycle rider, a 53-year-old woman from the local area, died at the scene from her injuries.
jim.elliot@saobserver.net
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