The Chilliwack 23
Progress Thursday
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Pub Night
Snake
Motocross
Players’ Guild offers A Bit of the Other.
Update on python found in Chilliwack.
Heritage Park hosts outdoor race.
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News
Sports
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Sto:lo head to court over fishing rights Jennifer Feinberg The Progress
A court battle could be brewing over the Yale First Nation Treaty. Some Sto:lo members will be boarding a chartered bus Friday in Chilliwack, heading for Vancouver to show support for the filing of a statement of claim in B.C. Supreme Court to protect what Sto:lo leadership calls collective rights and title in the Five Mile Fishery. Grand Chiefs from Sto:lo Tribal Council and Sto:lo Nation will be joining Sto:lo community members at the law courts at 10 a.m. to mark National Aboriginal Day by rejecting the notion that any level of government can give a small community like Yale, with its 200 members, rights over fishing sites in the Fraser Canyon to the exclusion of the Sto:lo people, which number 6,000 to 10,000. The final agreement of the Yale treaty was signed in B.C. on April 13, marking the third treaty to emerge from the B.C. Treaty Process. Yale Chief Robert Hope told The Progress that no one will stop the Sto:lo fishermen from coming up the river to fish, but that they would have to check in upon arrival on Yale territory. That gatekeeper role the Yale will play post-treaty is the bone of contention. The ongoing political tension is the result, along with threats of violence. Sto:lo leadership has vehemently disagreed with the notion that the Yale is an independent nation, and have stressed again and again that Yale is historically a Sto:lo community. Sto:lo officials have expressed outrage over recent federal and provincial approval of the Yale First Nation treaty because it gives exclusive title in a stretch they call the Five-Mile Fishery, going from Spuzzum to Yale, to Yale First Nation. They are also concerned about losing access to burial grounds and other cultural sites. Treaties are supposed to bring
UFV ag centre will train industry leaders Greenhouses, a barn and a livestock area are coming with the first phase of construction Alina Konevski The Progress
Fraser Valley is on its way to becoming the agricultural research heartland not only of B.C., but of Canada. At a groundbreaking ceremony for the new B.C. School of Agriculture on Tuesday, the message from University of the Fraser Valley officials and local leaders was that the long-range plan is to build up an agricultural centre at UFV to rival those in Guelph, Ontario, and Olds,
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Dignitaries and guests chat after the ground breaking for UFV’s future B.C. School of Agriculture building on the Chilliwack campus in the Canada Education Park on Tuesday. JENNA HAUCK/ PROGRESS
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Alberta. “We have to get out there, and maybe become the leading school in Canada in terms of agriculture. We can do it,” said John Jansen, president of CEPCO, who has been supporting the plan for years. The first phase of construction, scheduled to be completed by this September, includes new greenhouses, a demonstration barn, test field sites, and a livestock area to take up the field south of UFV’s existing agriculture building.
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UFV’s agriculture department has been without a barn or greenhouse since moving to new facilities at Canada Education Park last year. The second phase of the B.C. School of Agriculture will expand training to agricultural equipment, and will be completed with additional fundraising. The establishment of the school is appropriate for the Fraser Valley, historically B.C.’s first agricultural region. As rain fell on newly-tilled soil on Tuesday, attention turned to
remembering the past while planning for the future. “Change is happening so rapidly. How are we going to produce food and create a vibrant industry in the future?” said local horticulture icon Brian Minter. “It comes down to training students… being able to provide the right type of education for the jobs that haven’t been invented yet.” UFV’s agriculture department has come a long way in a
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