The Chilliwack
Progress Wednesday
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Increased demand is emptying food bank shelves.
Bus fees add to backto-school budgets.
Lion linebackers visiting valley.
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Chilliwack moves to ban outdoor smoking All parks, trails and public places included Jennifer Feinberg The Progress
A Harvard trainer from the Langley Museum of Flight flies past a B-17 bomber awaiting on the tarmac during Sunday’s Chilliwack Flight Fest. The two Second World War-era planes were joined by dramatic aerial acrobatics, and a fly past of a Canada Forces CF-18 Hornet. The event drew record crowds. For more, see page 4. GREG KNILL/ PROGRESS
Goats get home with help from friends The Progress Ria Rumph was reunited with her stolen goats on a steep hill far up Elk View Road. They were skinny from a lack of food, and scared when she found them Saturday night. The trio had been snatched in two separate thefts at Rumph’s farm at Lickman Road and South
Sumas. Two had been stolen about three weeks ago now, while the third was taken in the middle of the night, on Aug. 8. And there they were, together on the hill. The Progress had reported on the thefts last Wednesday, and soon after that, tips started coming in directly to Rumph beginning on Thursday. “I was milking and a couple
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came to my farm and said they knew where my goats were,” she said. They were in someone’s yard, but when the story was published the goats disappeared. By Saturday, there had been a few sightings up in the Ryder Lake area, so Rumph went to find them. “They told me exactly where they were,” she says, of witnesses who reported sightings on
SERIOUS PROTECTION
Facebook pages. “It was a long way up there, in the forest at the clearing all the way up Elk View.” She was thrilled to find the spot where they were. “All three were there,” Rumph said. “So they definitely had all been at the same place. I think when it was in the paper they Continued: GOATS/ p10
Continued: SMOKING/ p6
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Jessica Peters
Forget about having that cigarette break sitting on a park bench or at an outdoor event. Chilliwack is taking the next step toward becoming completely smokefree — both inside and out. They’ve just drafted a new bylaw to formally ban smoking in outdoor public spaces that packs a possible $500 fine. “Many municipalities have gone in this direction,” said Mayor Sharon Gaetz, citing the no-smoking rules adopted in Vancouver, Victoria, White Rock and Whistler as examples. Council unanimously voted to have staff draft a bylaw to prohibit smoking in outdoor public spaces, and it was expected to come before council at the Tuesday council meeting. “The (outdoor smoking ban) could be somewhat hard to enforce and it’s always difficult to ask someone to butt out,” she said. “Education and self policing are the avenues we intend to pursue with this.” The push to go smoke-free outdoors in Chilliwack addresses fire safety concerns from the spike in smoking related wild fires and bark mulch fires, most of which are caused by carelessness of smokers. With a big spike in grass fires and bark mulch fires, city officials were asking people this summer not to smoke in parks, trails and other public spaces across Chilliwack. “This year the Fire Department has seen a 200 per cent increase in such fires,” according to the city staff report in the Aug. 18 council agenda package. By this time last year there were only 45 bark mulch or grass fires reported. But there have been a whopping 134 fires in the same timeframe this year.