THURSDAY, june 14, 2018 Vol. 75, No. 24
Serving Fort St. John, B.C. and Surrounding Communities
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The 2018 Spirit of the Peace Powwow filled the Taylor Arena with colour, dance, and the smell of sage June 8 to 10.
City’s top cop retires this week
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Insp. Mike Kurvers, detachment commander for the Fort St. John RCMP, ends his 28year career with the Mounties this week. “It’s been a good career,” Kurvers said. “I’ve done my part for Canada and the RCMP. It’s time for a change, and to try something different for awhile and experience new things.” Kurvers was hired to take command of the detachment in 2014, replacing Pat Egan after he was transferred to Ottawa. Born in the Netherlands, Kurvers started his career in a Saskatchewan town in 1990, and worked in a number of roles for the RCMP, from being a uniformed police officer to investigating economic crime and homicides. He came to Fort
Insp. Mike Kurvers
St. John from Victoria, and will return there with his wife Shelley in retirement. Council has been aware of the pending retirement for awhile, Mayor Lori Ackerman said. “The process for replacing the Officer in Charge is one we have seen a few times,” Ackerman said. “The City will work
with the RCMP to find his replacement. In the meantime an acting Officer in Charge will be named.” Council had quite the mix of police matters on its agenda for June 11, including Kurver’s retirement. Last week, four Fort St. John Mounties were called to help with security for the international G7 Leaders Summit in Charlevoix, Quebec. Council also received a report from protective services manager Jim Rogers, and approved his recommendation to request one additional officer for the detachment for 2019-20 year. Read an extended interviw with Kurvers by logging on to alaskahighwaynews.ca
Rutledge barn opens with Grand Slam tom summer Alaska Highway News
The Rutledge Heritage Building opened its doors to the public in Hudson’s Hope on June 9, with a crowd of 100 coming out to see the refurbished barn and more than 60 taxidermy animals and the stories of their hunt, donated by retired guide outfitter Olive Powell. “It’s a beautiful building, they’ve done a really nice job,” said Powell, who ran an outfitting business with her late-husband Gary, from Fort Nelson to the Peace River for more than 30 years.
tom summer Photo
Olive and Valerie Powell cut the ribbon at the Rutledge Heritage Building grand opening with curator Elinor Morrissey, June 9, 2018.
Powell also donated her Grand Slam, an achievement that took many years to complete — a four species collec-
tion of Dall, Desert Bighorn, Rocky Mountain Bighorn, and Stone Sheep. See RUTLEDGE on A5
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Plastic bags will soon be outlawed from curbside recycling bins in Fort St. John. Victor Shopland, the city’s general manager of integrated services, informed council Monday of the coming change to the rules, as contamination problems continue to mount in the city’s recycling program. The city’s local recycling processor will no longer accept plastic film from city carts starting July 1, including things like grocery bags, garbage bags, and bread bags, Shopland said. Plastic bags are still recyclable, but will need to be collected and taken directly to a recycling depot, the same as glass, styrofoam, and electronics. “You might as well start doing that today,” Shopland said. Plastic bags, and things in plastics bags, are among the top contaminants in the recycling stream alongside glass, Shopland said. Plastic bags in particular can gum up processing equipment, he said, while workers have to stop and separate, by hand, the materials in the bags into the appropriate product stream. All of it adds to sorting and processing times. “Bags are bad,” Shopland said. The city will contract the Northern Environmental Action Team as part of a pilot project to conduct random cart inspections and flag those bins that are too contaminated to collect this summer. Residents will have to clean their carts of the contamination before the carts are collected. NEAT will also be applying new stickers to all city recycling carts that will list the recyclables that will be accepted at the curb. Since curbside recycling was rolled out in November 2015, two million kilograms of recycled materials have been collected and shipped out of the city. D&T Disposals Ltd. collects the city’s curbside recycling and now brings it to the Peace River Regional District’s contractor, Recycle It Resource Recovery Ltd. for initial processing. (It used to go to the Eco-Depot.) Much of the city’s recycled material was shipped to Washington State for processing and then shipped to China for further refinement and reuse. But China has implemented strict contamination limits of 0.5 per cent that “are almost impossible to meet,” Shopland said, and has forced recyclers to search for new markets to send their materials. The city’s recycled materials are currently going to a processor in Alberta.
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