Burnaby Now May 31 2017

Page 1

CITY 5

NEWS 3

Wildlife group gets $300K

KM takes stocks public

COMMUNITY 11

Steven Page headlines concert FOR THE BEST LOCAL

COVERAGE WEDNESDAY MAY 31, 2017

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LOCAL NEWS – LOCAL MATTERS

URBAN WILDLIFE

Bear nabbed near city school

BEAR GONE:

Problem bear had to be euthanized after being captured

A black bear roamed the area of Cascade Heights Elementary near Burnaby Hospital on Monday afternoon. Police and a conservation officer chased it up a tree, and it was shot down with a tranquilizer gun. After finding it had gotten used to feeding on garbage, the conservation officer service decided to euthanize the bear Monday afternoon.

By Cornelia Naylor

cnaylor@burnabynow.com

A black bear that kept students at a Burnaby elementary school past the bell on Monday has been killed by the B.C. Conservation Officer Service because of a history of problem behaviour. The 200-pound male bear wandered to within less than half a block of Cascade Heights Elementary School, near Burnaby Hospital, sometime after 1 p.m., triggering a barrage of calls from concerned parents and eventually a shelter-in-place order. “It definitely added something to our day,” principal Anthony Yam told the NOW. Police and conservation officer

PHOTOS RYAN STELTING

Clayton Debruin treed the threeyear-old bruin at 4091 Fir St. at about 3 p.m., and Debruin shot it with a tranquilizer dart.The bear fell out of the tree after a few minutes, breaking through the roof of a shed on the way down. Before taking it away in a bear trailer, Debruin took the time to show the unconscious bear to onlookers, including some neighbourhood kids. Students at Cascade Heights never got to see the bear and had

to stay at school until about 3:20 p.m., according toYam. “They were very excited about the possibility of a bear being around,” he said. Yam, who has only been at the school for about a year, said staff told him they had never encountered a bear at the school before. “I’m thinking, where around here is there enough greenspace for a bear to live? I’m thinking, where could it have come from? I have no idea,” he said.

After looking into recent reports, Debruin said it looked like the bear had come from the Deer Lake area and had been pressing farther into Vancouver, triggering nine garbage and compost complaints in the last two weeks. It had been spotted wandering under the Grandview overpass over Boundary Road and strolling through a Chevron gas station at Grandview and Boundary in broad daylight. “Unfortunately we learned that

he’d been into quite a bit of trouble,” Debruin said. Once hooked on human food sources, bears will return to them after relocation, even if they have to travel hundreds of kilometres, Debruin said, so the conservation service had no choice but to destroy the bear. “It’s very tough, especially when we have a healthy bear,” he said.

PIPELINE PROTEST

RCMP arrest three chained to Westridge fence The protesters had been chained to the fence for 20 hours after a 75-kilometre walk that started inVictoria

By Tereza Verenca

tverenca@burnabynow.com

Four anti-pipeline activists from Vancouver Island were arrested Monday afternoon after three of them chained themselves to a fence outside Kinder Morgan’s Westridge Marine Ter-

minal. The protesters arrived on Sunday after taking part in Walk 4 the Salish Sea, a 75-kilometre walk that started in Victoria and ended in Burnaby with a festival. More than 100 people took part in the four-day march. Once Sunday’s festivi-

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ties concluded at Westridge Park, Paige Harwood, Keith Cherry and Howard Breen settled in for the night, chained to a fence. “We have no weapons.We are standing in peaceful resistance,” Harwood told the NOW the next morning, adding the group had plans

to stay “indefinitely.” One of the protesters donned a diaper, and supporters brought them coffee, blankets, snacks, water and even a portable composting toilet. Police showed up Monday afternoon and the protesters were arrested around

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4:30 p.m., according to reader Mary Lovell, who also said they were charged with mischief.The Burnaby RCMP’s media spokesperson could not be reached by press deadline to confirm this information. Construction on the company’s $7.4-billion Trans

Mountain expansion project is scheduled to start in September. Last week, Kinder Morgan offered an initial public offering in hopes of raising $1.75 billion by today (May 31). Though the pipeline has received federal approval, Continued on page 3

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