Re:Design Rupert to get preview this Thursday

The first opportunity for residents of Prince Rupert to learn more about the City's Re:Design Rupert project comes up this Thursday.

As the City, along with Community Futures of the Pacific Northwest and UNBC's Community Development Institute hosts a Community Office Open House to debut the concept.

The event takes place from 11 until 2 PM at the Community Futures Office at 515 - 3rd Avenue West.

Re:Design Rupert follows in the footsteps of some of the other projects announced by Council in recent months, such as Re:Build Rupert and echoes themes of his election campaign and the call for residents of the city to Re:Think Rupert.

The announcement of the project also comes shortly after the City's participation in a recent conference related to urban design called Placemaking, an event which the Mayor hailed as a success at the January 12th Council session.

Mayor Brain offered up a short synopsis of the what Thursday's will provide for through his Facebook page, while the invitation to the Thursday event was also sent  out through the City's twitter Feed.

Re: Design Rupert is described as an 18 month community engagement project, that will seek the input of the community on how residents believe the community can become more resilient.

Thursday provides the first opportunity to meet the team and get a sample to what they have in mind for the next year and a half.

Key to the partnership will be the participation of the Community Development Institute from the Prince George campus of UNBC.  You can learn more about their past efforts in other communities and what the mission of the Institute is from their website here.

The planning for Re:Design Rupert was first outlined by the Mayor back in August of last year, you can review the background to the initiative here.

At that time, Mayor Brain noted that the cost to the initiative was budgeted at around the 150,000 dollar mark, with funding to be allocated through the city's funding for Major Projects. With Re:Design Rupert to feature a full time professional facilitator, as well as support staff and research people.

The Mayor also noted in August that the project would be the largest public engagement process that the community has ever seen.

While the project launches on Thursday, City Council has yet to provide a public presentation during the course of the regular public council sessions to outline the full scope of the program, or the final anticipated costs related to it and what the goals of it may be.

Introducing the concept to Council would also allow for Council members to join the discussion and provide them the opportunity to offer up their thoughts on the project and the expectations that they might anticipate from the eighteen month program.

You can find more on items related to City Council discussions from our archive page here.

Province, First Nations and Industry sign Great Bear Rainforest Agreement

6.4 million hectares will make up the
Great Bear Rainforest as part of
an agreement signed Monday

An agreement almost twenty years in development was signed on Monday, creating what is described as eco-system based management in the Great Bear Rainforest, an area which will cover 6.4 million hectares from the Central and North Coast.

Home to 26 separate First Nations, the new Great Bear Rainforest land-use order, will achieve its goal of ecological integrity by protecting 70 per cent of the old growth forest in the management areas, up from the current level of 50 percent.

Eight new special forest management areas covering almost 295,000 hectares will be completely off limits to logging, while ongoing discussions with First Nations could see an additional six areas provided with additional protection.

From these new measures, 85 per cent of the forest will now be protected, with 15 per cent to remain available for logging along the coast.  A number of protocols have also been signed with a number of First Nations to address their concerns on cultural heritage resources, freshwater ecosystems and wildlife habitat.

As part of the agreement, the commercial grizzly bear hunt will  come to an end in Coastal First Nations' traditional territories.



The Great Bear Rainforest process began with the first land and resources management planning meetings in 1997, starting what became nineteen years of conversation, public comment and land use legislation.

With the agreement in place now, the Provincial Government has announced plans to introduce supporting legislation to the agreement, a process which should be introduced in the Legislature later this spring.

The managed forest component of the Great Bear Rainforest will consist of 1.36 million acres, where the harvesting of old growth and second growth forest will using an ecosystem based management plan.


Other land use in the Great Bear Rainforest will see the following designations:

1.2 million acres protected as Parks and Protected areas, 

3.7 million acres designated as conservancies, 

764,000 acres located to Biodiversity, Mining and tourism Areas. 

While 675,000 acres will be set aside as Special Forest Management Areas, where hydroelectric generation, mining and tourism development will be allowed as long as it maintains ecological integrity.

More background on the land use aspects of the Agreement can be found here.

You can also review Monday's Agreement announcement here.

Both North Coast MLA Jennifer Rice and MP Nathan Cullen celebrated the signing of the Monday's Final Agreement to protect the Great Bear Rainforest, taking to their social media pages to share their thoughts.

More background and reaction to the Great Bear Rainforest agreement can be found below:

Great Bear Rainforest pact is  a 'jewel in the crown' of Canada's protected areas
Final agreement reached to protect B. C.'s Great Bear Rainforest
Key players in Great Bear Rainforest deal find common ground
Great Bear Rainforest agreement creates 'a gift to the world'
Logging banned in most of B. C.'s Great Bear Rainforest
Landmark deal protects huge swath of central B. C. coast from logging
Getting to know more about the Great Bear Rainforest
Most of B. C.'s Great Bear Rainforest protected
'Solutions Are Possible' : Great Bear Rainforest Land-Use Deal Reached
The Great Bear Rainforest, B.C.’s new, giant protected area is a truce between loggers, greens

SD52 Kindergarten Registration for 2016-17 now underway

Parents and Guardians of kindergarten age children have until February 12 to register for this fall's Kindergarten program through School District 52.

Registration takes place from February 1 to 12 from 9 AM to Noon and 1 to 3 PM at all elementary schools in the city,  for those in Port Edward their registration takes place from 9 AM to 11:30 AM only.

To be eligible for the 2016-17 Kindergarten year, children must be five years of age or older on, or before December 31, 2016. When registering for a kindergarten program, parents/guardians will require the following list of information:

Child's Birth Certificate (or other proof of age such as a Permanent Residence card, provincial ID card or passport)

BC Care Card

Immunization record

Proof of address

Parents have the option of deferring their child's entry to school based on readiness for one year, they are asked to contact their neighbourhood school for a consultation on any concerns related to readiness for Kindergarten.

Students who are not registered during the two week registration period are not guaranteed placement at their neighbourhood school. 

The French Immersion program registration will take place at Ecole Roosevelt School, starting February 1st and running until February 12th as well, with hours of registration from 9 AM to Noon and 1 to 3 PM.

There is no requirement for the family to speak French at home and for the most part French Immersion students typically do not speak French themselves.

Children entering Kindergarten or Grade 1 may register for the French Immersion program.

Roosevelt is a dual track school, which offers both the French Immersion program as well as the regular K-5 program from SD52.

For parents thinking of a change in their schools for their children, any requests for September 2016 must be submitted this month, however children must be registered in their catchment area first, before consideration for transfer can take place.

Cross boundary transfer forms are available at all schools in the District and should be submitted to the school in their catchment area.

Any requests received after February 29th will not be considered by the School District until September of 2016. 

Catchment areas for SD52

You can review the various catchment areas in the city from the SD52 website

Further background on the Kindergarten Registration process can be found here, if you have any questions you should contact the school in your catchment area for more information.

You can find more items related to education on the North Coast from our archive page here.

Terrace claims first game of Best of Three with 5 -2 victory over the Rampage

It was another packed house at the Jim on Saturday as over 1,000 fans celebrated the start of the CIHL playoffs for the Prince Rupert Rampage hopeful that the home side Black Out would provide the home ice advantage to claim victory in game number one of the three games series with the Terrace River Kings.

And for the first twenty five minutes of play, things looked promising for the home side, with the Rampage taking a 1 - 0 lead into the first five minutes of period number two.

The Rhinos were first to the scoreboard thanks to a power play marker by Kory Movald who converted the passing of Tyler Halliday and Tyler Ostrom into goal number one of the night at 4:10 of the opening frame, a physical twenty minutes that saw 10 minutes of penalties called, with the River Kings taking six of the ten minutes in the box.

And while the physical nature of the game continued into period two, the River Kings quickly adjusted and began to take control of the score sheet, with two goals in the first ten minutes of the second period and other two goals to book end the second half of period number two.

In between the Rampage picked up their second and final goal of the night, when Jared Meers scored at 13:19 of period number two, helped out by Tyler Halliday and Kory Movald.

Terrace put things away late in the third, taking the 5-2 score to the final
buzzer, but not before more of the rough stuff dominated the final half of play.

By games end, Jordan Aubree would be found atop the penalty totals for the night, having received 5 minutes for fighting, two minutes for instigating and a ten minute misconduct.

Terrace on the other hand was assessed but one penalty in the final period, a two minute minor for Roughing.

When the final number came in at game's end, the Rampage had more than doubled the Terrace totals, with the River Kings assessed 14 minutes on 7 penalties, while Prince Rupert sat out 31 minutes on 10 infractions.

The high scoring River Kings kept Devin Geritts busy through the sixty minutes, taking 30 shots on the night, Gerrits turning aside 25 of the total 

Patrick Leal in the Terrace end didn't have quite the same workload, with Prince Rupert firing 19 shots his way, with the Terrace keeper turning aside all but two.

You can review the summary of Saturday night's match up here.

The win puts the River Kings in the drivers seat heading into game two, with an elimination game set for Saturday night in Terrace at 8 PM.  Should the Rampage take game two, they two teams will turn around and face off again on February 7th at 4:30 PM

In other CIHL action this weekend, the Quesnel Kangaroos eliminated Lac La Hache int two games, winning the knock out game on Saturday 9-5.

In Kitimat, the Ice Demons found themselves on the wrong end of the scoresheet in their opening round matchup with the Smithers, the Steelheads left the Aluminum city up 1 game to none after a convincing 9-4 victory on Saturday night.

Notes on the run up to this Saturday's showdown in Terrace can be found on the Rampage Facebook page and twitter feed.

For more background on the CIHL playoffs see our Rampage Archive page here.

PRMBA Minor Basketball on the North Coast 2016-17

Our Archive of items related to Minor Basketball on the North and the Prince Rupert Minor Basketball Association.

PRMBA Facebook Page

2017

February

February 16 -- PRMBA to hold AGM February 20th  NCR

2016

October

October  20 -- Basketball a way for Kevin Sawka to give back
October 17 -- KidSport funding for Prince Rupert (video)
October 12 -- KidSport options for the North Coast to be revealed at information session October 17 NCR

September

October 3 -- Teamwork, not competition
September 20 -- Shawnee Harle, Rupert's Olympic coach
September 9 -- Minor Basketball Registration continues through to September 10 NCR

February

February 1 -- PRMBA to host Annual General Meeting tonight

Archives from Previous years

PRMBA to host Annual General Meeting tonight

Those interested in Minor Basketball in the Prince Rupert region will be making their way to the Raven Room at the Civic Centre this evening, as the city's Minor Basketball Association holds its annual meeting.

The meeting takes place from 7-8 PM  where a review of the year just past and a look ahead to the Fall 2016 season will take place.

The PRMBA is one of the popular fall sports programs for youth in the city, offering skill development  and a full schedule go games through the fall and early winter months.

Key to the success for the association from year to year is a core group of volunteers in a number of positions of administration and coaching, though like many groups in the city, volunteer fatigue is something that they are always concerned about.

You can learn more about their plans ahead and offer to lend a hand for the 2016 season starting with tonight's session.

If you have questions you can contact the PRMBA at prmba@hotmail.com

For more on Minor Basketball in the city see our archive page here.

Real Estate Tracker, week ending January 31, 2016

Our weekly review of the listings of the local real estate agents, tracking those properties which appear to be driving the local price structure for the North Coast.

Every Monday, we look over the listing prices of the past seven days and outline the Top 10 asking prices in the area, providing a snap shot as to where the Real Estate market may be trending on a week to week basis.

The listings below are purely for information purposes, for further background on the properties recorded, see our links page for access to the individual real estate listings.

The Archive for our weekly review can be found here.

Our list of the top ten priced homes for the week ending January 31 is below:

Prince Rupert Real Estate
West Side January 31, 2016

Prince Rupert Real Estate
East Side January 31, 2016

Once again, there was no movement to be found over the last seven days when it comes to the high end of the Prince Rupert realty market, with no additions or subtractions from our list of ten of the week just passed.

The high end overall remains marked by a 2nd Avenue West Avenue entry, with a property listing on Alpine once again holding down the final position on the week.

As for pricing, while much of the asking prices remained the same, the bottom end of our list holds at the 459,500 dollar mark once again this week.

As for the geography of the market this week, the west side of the city dominates once again this week, with seven of the ten listings found west of McBride, the majority of those in the Graham Avenue area of the city.

Below find our findings as of the Week ending January 31, 2016

1942-46 2nd Avenue W                $659,000  --  Royal Lepage
160 Van Arsdol Street                   $649,900   -- Remax
2040 Graham Avenue                   $595,000  -- Royal Lepage
333 - 11th Avenue East                 $575,000  -- Royal Lepage
1724 Graham Avenue                   $558,000  -- Royal Lepage
210 Heron Road                            $497,500  -- Royal Lepage
1253 Conrad Street                       $497,000  --  Remax
1125 Summit Avenue                   $469,900  --  Remax
1735 Graham Avenue                   $469,000  --  Remax
100 Alpine Drive                          $459,500 --  Remax


For more items related to Real Estate see our archive page here.

For background on Housing issues in the region see our past items here.