Editorials

Terror attacks in France. A major earthquake in Mexico City. Trudeau occupying the office of Canada’s Prime Minister. While these may seem like some of today’s top news-making items, they are actually ripped from headlines printed in 1982.

Nearly a century ago, a forward-looking group of pioneers recognized the Parksville beachfront was an asset worth protecting for future generations, and put their money and labour into securing and preserving it as a community park.

We have nothing but the utmost respect for our first responders here in the Parksville-Qualicum Beach region.

It’s been a mostly invisible problem in the the Parksville-Qualicum Beach region for years, but fentanyl has dragged the issue of illicit drug use kicking and screaming for attention into the light.

Before there was a Tour de Rock, there was young Lyle Jorgenson of Alberta, who was being picked on after radiation treatment for cancer left him bald. And a single Edmonton police sergeant, Gary Goulet, who already had a shaved head but who rounded up a handful of other officers from his detachment to shave their heads in solidarity with the youth.

Attend almost any public hearing for a development proposal in Parksville, and you’re likely to hear criticism that the city’s headlong rush to grow and build comes at the cost of its green spaces and natural buffers.

As our online followers will attest to, there have been a lot of changes to the Parksville Qualicum Beach News online.

Nearly four decades after his death, Terry Fox’s Marathon of Hope is still an inspiration, not just in Canada but around the world, with millions participating in the annual run that bears his name.

When Parksville council voted last week to request city memorabilia be included for budget consideration in 2018, the “debate” was accompanied by a bit of tittering and self-deprecation.

Assuming they could see through the thick haze of wildfire smoke, British Columbians might well cast their gaze to the southern and gulf coasts of the United States and think, “Well, at least we’re not being blasted by 200-mile-per-hour winds.”