SUNDAY MARCH 20 2016
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Oasis car wash
Sudsy North Shore business maintains its retro vibe BRIGHT LIGHTS 10
Leprechaun’s Tea Party
North Shore Connexions Society celebrates St. Patrick’s Day SPORTS 20
Senior boys basketball Collingwood Cavaliers claim first provincial crown
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Balmier than usual spring temps expected JANE SEYD jseyd@nsnews.com
The pink clouds of cherry blossoms and magnolia buds that signal spring are already out in North Shore gardens and along city streets.
Officially, the spring equinox arrives this weekend at 9:30 p.m. Saturday night (most calendars list it as arriving shortly after midnight Sunday, but that’s 12:30 a.m. EDT.) But both gardeners and meteorologists have noted an earlier start to warm temperatures this year. Flowering trees are in blossom about two weeks ahead of schedule, said Ineke Milligan, manager of Dykhof Nurseries in North Vancouver. For that, we can probably thank El Nino. This winter tied for the strongest El Nino year on record, said Lisa Coldwells, meteorologist at Environment Canada. That resulted in
See Snowpack page 7
SHAMROCK SHAKE Megan Sutherland, Thea Medland, Camryn Cross and Sophie Cummings are among 18 members of the Nora Pickett Irish Dance Academy who leave for Glasgow, Scotland today to compete in the World Irish Dancing Championships. PHOTO MIKE WAKEFIELD
Woodfibre LNG gets federal approval JEREMY SHEPHERD jshepherd@nsnews.com
In a decision certain to fuel the ire of environmentalists, the federal government gave its stamp of approval to the $1.6-billion Woodfibre liquefied natural gas project Friday.
Exporting and processing 2.1 million tonnes of LNG each year from the former pulp mill site southwest of Squamish is unlikely to hurt the environment, according to a release from Catherine McKenna, Minister of Environment and Climate Change. McKenna’s assessment doesn’t account for the plant’s
Last major regulatory hurdle cleared for Howe Sound project
“incredibly environmentally destructive” cooling system, argued West Vancouver lawyer Tom Rafael. “I’m extremely disappointed and very sorry the minister did not thoroughly use a sciencebased environmental assessment,” he said. Winning environmental approval from the federal government was the last major hurdle to clear for the polarizing project, which can start launching 40 double-hulled LNG-bearing tankers
to Asia each year, beginning as early as 2017. Rather than uniform opposition, there was “a variety of different opinions” on the project, according to Jonathan Wilkinson, MP for North Vancouver and parliamentary secretary to the minister of environment and climate change. Because the plant will be powered by Hydro, not natural gas, its level of greenhouse gas emissions will be comparatively low, according to Wilkinson. The MP said he personally stands by the decision, which he added is “based on science and it’s based on data.”
See Project page 6