- Northern Capital News
- Posts
- Enjoy the free concert, everyone!
Enjoy the free concert, everyone!
Also: Feed your backyard apples to (rescue) bears and pigs, and local news disappears from Facebook
At the end of my last newsletter, I linked to this article in the Citizen: “Cariboo Rocks the North changing stage setup, tackling noise issues”:
The concert stage will be located on the south side of the Prince George Gymnastics Club, facing the CN Centre. City entertainment manager Glen Mikkelsen said the change should address two issues simultaneously: reduce noise for neighbouring residents and concert goers won’t be facing directly into the setting sun.
“I would guess 100 per cent it will dampen the noise across the entire bowl. The CN Centre will block some of the noise,” Mikkelsen said. “We did not have same number of people having issues with it (noise) in 2018 and 2019.”
In 2022, the City of Prince George received four noise complaints about Cariboo Rocks the North and eight about The Best Damn Music Festival, which used a similar stage configuration. Both events had noise permits issued by the city. The Citizen also received several letters to the editor from area residents concerned by the level of noise from the events.
In 2022 I could hear the conert clearly from inside my home which is (only?) about 4 km away from the CN Centre and this year I barely noticed it except when I really paid attention while walking my dogs, so I think it is quieter this year. However, that doesn’t mean it’s actually quiet.
Apples and bears and pigs, oh my
Last weekend I published an article about what seems to be a rise in bear sightings in Prince George this year, noting that they are being seen further away from the greenbelts and more frequently/different times of day than usual. One thing that was missing, though, was data — the conservation officer service said (fortunately) calls about problem bears were no higher than normal, while biologists I reached said they didn’t really track things like bear sightings. But a few days ago, the RCMP put out a news release saying they are getting more calls about bears than normal and also, don’t call them about bears. From the release:
Though Prince George RCMP typically sees an increase in the number of bear reports through the spring and summer months, there has been an unusually high number of calls in the first two weeks of August, prompting police to issue some helpful safety tips.
“While seeing a bear up close can be alarming to residents, it is important for everyone to understand what to do during a bear encounter,” states Cpl. Jennifer Cooper, Media Relations Officer for the Prince George RCMP.
Prince George RCMP has some helpful tips for the public if you encounter a bear:
- While the Conservation Officer Service is interested in tracking bear sightings in urban areas, the police are an emergency response agency that should only be contacted if the bear poses an immediate threat to public safety.
It goes on with the usual information about not leaving out garbage, picking your fruit, etc. But you might be wondering, “What am I supposed to do with all that fruit? I have more than 100 pounds of apples coming off of my tree!” Well, let me tell you about pigs and bears, as well as some other choices.
I’ve written about the Prince George Tickled Pig Rescue before (here and here) and it turns out, pigs love apples. You can contact them on Facebook about picking up or dropping off apples that you’ve picked and are looking to give away.
Another option is to send apples to Northern Lights Wildlife Rescue in Smithers, which rehabiliates bears and other animals. Pack them in a good box/container and drop them off with Bandstra Transportation, a trucking company that delivers them for free. 9499 Milwaukee Way.
This was just posted in the Prince George subreddit: the Gleaning Abundance Program is aiming to reduce food waste in the city by connecting surplus food — harvested, made, etc — with people who can use it. Basically, it looks like you can donate your fruit to them or even have a volunteer come harvest it. https://www.letseatlocalpg.com/gap
And Northern Lights Winery is partnering, again, with Bear Aware in Prince George to donate money for every pound of apples they receive.
Honestly, you kind of have to respect the city’s DGAF attitude on this one
So a portion of the road leading from Foothills up to UNBC was supposed to be closed for bridge repairs this summer. However, those repairs have been delayed and will now be happening at the beginning of September which just so happens to be when school starts which is going to be something of a cluster — especially for students who will now have to take a much longer bus ride to and from class. As past newsletter contributor Darrin Rigo put it:
As someone who moved here to attend UNBC from a small town, and a former full-time bus commuter student, I gotta say doing this during Orientation week while thousands of students and their parents orient themselves to the city is just a wild move.
Maintenance is an important part of infrastructure and so that comes with inconvenience but there was like literally 1 week in the year where I’d be like AH MAYBE NOT GUYS and they picked that one.
He’s not alone — many people have pointed this out (“literally worst timing, but go off” is one such comment) and the city’s response has essentially been ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and I’m not really exaggerating:
Time to build the gondola.
I recommend: Visiting local news websites
It’s happening: Meta has started blocking Canadians from seeing news on Facebook and Instagram (weirdly, not Threads, their new Twitter-like offering). We can debate the merits of this and how we got here but this newsletter is not the place for that. I only bring it up because I want to recommend: Visiting local news websites. It’s literally how I put this newsletter together most of the time, and it’s quite nice — I have a bookmarks folder called “local news” in my browser and once a day I open that folder and choose to open all the sites at once, then review them (here’s a tutorial for Chrome and Firefox). If you visit the website version of my newsletter I’ve actually put together those links for your easy finding — or here they are, right here!
A number of those sites also have their own newsletters, if you like that sort of thing.
Another thing I recommend is sharing this newsletter with other people you think might enjoy it — and then clicking through on the stories I link to so the reporters and outlets working on them get that traffic. I try to write in a way that encourages leaving this newsletter to get more information about the stories you might be interested in and I’ll be thinking about that more when we go back to the daily posting schedule in September.
That said - no quick links in this one because I wasn’t even planning on writing a newsletter in August but I mostly wanted to tell you about the apples. Have a good rest of summer!
Northern Capital News is a free, daily newsletter about life in Prince George. Please consider subscribing or, if you have, sharing with someone else.
Send feedback by replying to this email. Find me online at akurjata.ca.