Top 10 weird and/or wonderful V.I. Airbnbs
By Sean Enns Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last decade, you’ll have heard of Airbnb. For that matter, even if you have been living under a rock, you were probably charging people $200/night to share the experience. A pioneer in the sharing economy alongside Uber and Etsy, Airbnb was initially conceived […]
Wasting not
By Lys Morton Food banks in Canada find themselves playing a numbers game. In March 2019 alone, 2326 food banks across the nation recorded a total of 1,084,386 visits — down marginally from the previous year, but still a staggering statistic. Like other food banks, Nanaimo Loaves and Fishes has struggled to keep up with the demand. Founded in 1996, the organization initially used […]
Transition ambitions
By Patrick Wilson It’s 2020 and society is facing the reality of climate change. The effects can be felt daily around the world, including on Vancouver Island. Rising sea levels, heat waves, and other abnormal weather patterns are predicted by the B.C. government to continue. The outcomes feel closer than the 2050 date given. In […]
Living Green on a Budget
By Kristen Bounds It’s no secret that the planet needs and deserves our immediate attention (“climate emergency” was Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year in 2019), but it’s easy to feel helpless with the abundance of depressing information about the environment we receive every day. Many people respond by trying to adopt more sustainable habits […]
Urban Refugees
By Laurie Jones Top photo: Richard James Milne With the continuing trend of rapidly rising home prices in Canada’s major centres, particularly Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto, many hard-pressed urbanites are looking to smaller towns for affordable properties. To their delight, Vancouver Island has turned out to be a prime place to buy. “Vancouver Island will […]
Hikes to Lose Yourself On
By Anika Michaux Do you know that feeling of getting lost in nature? Losing yourself among the pine trees that coat British Columbia? I was born in Nanaimo, and grew up with mountains and forests only a short distance away. This temperate rainforest will always be a place I call home, not only because of […]
Weed Etiquette
By Zachery Cooper A plume of pungent smoke puffs out of the person walking down the street ahead of me. It makes my nose twitch, my brow furrow, and my mouth say Maui Wowie. It’s a common enough smell on Vancouver Island, which may be weed central in Canada. But with marijuana use set to […]
A Caravan on the High Seas
By Caileigh Broatch If you find yourself wandering along the northern end of the Harbourfront Walkway in downtown Nanaimo, just past the Yacht Club and before you reach Departure Bay, turn your sights offshore and you might think that Jack Sparrow has sailed into town. Thankfully, there’s a three-foot banner to correct you: The Amara Zee isn’t […]
The Hidden Waterfalls of Nanaimo
Story and photos by Spenser Smith In 2013, I moved to Nanaimo, British Columbia, a city full of winding streams and rivers. It was a big change from my home province of Saskatchewan, which has its own beauty, but not generally of the wet kind. In fact, all of Vancouver Island was a revelation. One […]
The Man in the Pictures
“Hard to look at these, I miss him still.”
My mother’s sad tone seeps through as I read these words in her e-mail, accompanied by photos of a man who wears the same smile that she often does. The build of his body is similar to that of my Aunt Joan — tall and lanky. The man sits surrounded by friends in the myriad of photos, […]