The VIJHL playoffs got off to a promising start for the Nanaimo Buccaneers as the team won the opening game of their series against the Comox Valley Glacier Kings. But the game one victory was all the Buccaneers could muster as they lost the first round series to Comox Valley in five games.
The Buccaneers picked up the 5-2 victory in Comox Valley in game one of the series on February 17, but the Glacier Kings took over the series after the game one victory, winning game two 4-3 in overtime in Nanaimo. Then the Glacier Kings picked up the 5-3 win on home ice in game three, and took a ...
The VIU Mariners’ men’s volleyball team captured the bronze medal at the PacWest Provincial Volleyball Championships, held February 26-28 in Victoria.
The Mariners’ opponent in the bronze medal match was the fourth-seeded Columbia Bible College Bearcats. The first set between the two teams went down to the wire as the Mariners picked up the 25-22 victory. The second set was even closer than the first, as the Mariners needed extra points to take a 2-0 lead in the match with a 28-26 second set victory. The third set was just as close as the first two, but once again the Mariners ...
It might not have been the medal they wanted, but the VIU Mariners’ women’s basketball team overcame a disappointing semi-final loss to defeat the hometown Camosun Chargers and capture the bronze medal.
The match was a tightly contested one between the two Island rivals as the Chargers came out strong early in the game, determined to capture a medal in front of their home town fans. But the Mariners did a good job of battling back as the game progressed. At halftime, the Mariners led 22-20.
By the second half, the Mariners started to pull away from the Chargers, who were ultimately ...
Photo courtesy of Nanaimo News Bulletin
On Saturday, February 28, the Mariners’ women’s volleyball team came out on top at Camosun College, taking home the provincial championship. The finals began with a nail-biting two lost sets, with the Camosun College Chargers leading 2-0. The Mariners fought back, coming together as a team to win the third set.
“Once we won the third,” Megan Roselund said, “I knew that we were gonna win.”
Luckily, the game changed when the women knew they couldn’t lose, taking over the game and winning the ...
Photo: Mike de Jong, finance minister, at swearing-in ceremony for Minister of Health in 2011
This week, the BC government proposed a law, working with ICBC to help gather outstanding student debts.
A press release on the government’s website states, “Bill 13, Finance Statutes Amendment Act, includes amendments to the Financial Administration Act that would expand the ability of ICBC to refuse to issue a driver’s licence, vehicle licence, or number plates to a person who has defaulted on debts owed to the government.”
There is $185 million ...
Tuesday March 3, VIU is providing students with an opportunity to meet and hear two Canadian authors and their works.
At 11 am in building 345, room 103, Shelley Leedahl and Michael Kenyon will be the last two writers in the Writers on Campus series. If you can make it, the authors will be reading from their works, and answering your questions.
Shelley Leedahl is new to the Island, moving to Ladysmith in 2014. Born and raised in Saskatchewan, Leedahl’s recent collection of essays I Wasn’t Always Like This is giving her the chance to share her essays with ...
By contributor Spencer Wilson
Leave it to legendary director Paul Thomas Anderson to immaculately adapt the first ever film of a Thomas Pynchon novel. Diving into the world of Inherent Vice feels like you are revisiting Boogie Nights (1977), but with a touch of oneiric reality thanks to the cast’s heavy drug use. Inherent Vice reads like the 2009 novel, but that doesn’t hold it back from using the language of film to the best of its abilities.
Oneiric filmmaking has been a long staple of multi-Oscar nominee Paul Thomas Anderson. Although his films are often rooted in reality, ...
By contributor Spencer Wilson
There is something to be said about a Stephen Hawking docudrama that moves the man himself to tears. Based on the autobiography Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen by Hawking’s ex-wife, Jane Wilde, The Theory of Everything attempts to charter the degradation of his physicality due to ALS and how he overcame it. Although Hawking’s scientific work and his life struggles are significantly underplayed in the film, Eddie Redmayne gives an extraordinary performance as Hawking, which alone makes the film worth watching once.
The film opens to ...
By contributor Spencer Wilson
When first hearing about Man on Wire, it’s hard to imagine this will be an entertaining or engaging film. And yet, the documentary about Philippe Petit’s 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers manages to not only be a great film, but one of the best documentaries of all time.
Petit begins by telling us an experience he had as a young boy while waiting to see the dentist about a toothache. While sitting in the waiting room, he sees an ad in a magazine for the building on the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Center. Overcome with the desire ...
Taxidermy
From Greek taxis ‘arrangement’ + derma ‘skin’
(Oxford Dictionary)
There was a day when Julie Dives tried to decide between becoming a vet or an artist. Although she followed the creative draw, and pursued a BFA in Visual Arts at VIU and Emily Carr, deep down, Julie stayed in love with animals. She is equally enchanted with the soft fur of a purring, living body and the macabre beauty of death, the tactile nature of animal skin and the creative possibilities it offers both as a subject and a medium, namely for printmaking and sculpture. Her upcoming solo exhibition, ...
It’s the middle of class and you’re overtaken by fatigue. Not just an uncontrollable case of the yawns, but the urge to put your head on the table and sleep. It may transcend an urge—your head may fall involuntarily and you are immediately in a deep sleep. To the untrained eye it could look like a simple lack of manners. A more compassionate eye wonders whether something is wrong, if they should be getting help. To a trained eye, this looks like a rare neurological condition, narcolepsy. To Ciro Di Ruocco, fourth-year Visual Arts Major at VIU, it looks familiar.
Worldwide, narcolepsy ...
By contributor Jennifer Cox
Tucked away on a rural property just off the highway in Fanny Bay, Karen Fouracre and Jaki Ayton raise a rambunctious and joyful group of Toggenburg goats. As small-scale farmers, they take pride in the fact that they know their goats by name. Best friends since high school, they have been raising goats since they purchased this property together 18 years ago. The resourceful pair determined that co-ownership would help them realize their dreams faster, so they pooled their finances, bought a small farm on Holiday Rd, and haven’t looked back.
“It was ...
By contributor Chantelle Spicer.
A major challenge in starting and maintaining social movements—political, environmental, humanitarian, or any combination thereof—is engaging people to get involved, as well as staying motivated. Successful social activism rests on the ability to provoke people’s perceptions, thoughts, and actions in positive and innovative ways. By joining with artistic and activist communities, social movements are able to overcome many adversities. The issue is given the ability to create a new visual landscape and language, form new collective identities, and ...
Surface feeding gray whale. Photo courtesy Jay Feaver.
By contributors James Mackinnon & Iona Kearns
Perhaps it’s the sheer size of the ocean that makes it so alluring to most people, or the fact that, while it makes up more than three quarters of the surface of our planet, we know so little about what’s living in it, and where. For as long as humans have been traveling on or around the sea, we’ve been obsessed with what it provides, and the mysteries within. Stories of Serpents and Kraken have haunted mariners for centuries. Seafarers off our coast are no different. Those ...
The Vancouver Island Amateur Hockey Association has started banning abusive spectators from minor hockey games. The banning of spectators comes as part of the association’s attempt to put a stop to verbal harassment against players and on-ice officials.
The league has already issued bans to eight parents who were involved in incidents of abusive behavior. But these initial fan ejections may be just the beginning. The association stated last month that if incidents like this didn’t come to an end they would look into holding some spectator-free weekends, allowing on-ice officials, ...
After a rough final weekend of the season, the VIU Mariners’ men’s volleyball team is looking ahead to the Provincial Championship.
The Mariners dropped their final two games of the regular season to their Island rivals, the Camosun Chargers. On Thursday, February 19 the Chargers came into the VIU gym and picked up the win in three sets: 25-19, 25-20, 25-16. A few nights later on Saturday, February 21 the Chargers once again defeated the Mariners in straight sets: 25-20, 25-22, 25-16.
The Mariners had won their last two games before playing the Chargers, as the team had picked up ...
The VIU Mariners put on a clinic during their last home games of the season, picking up dominant victories over the visiting Columbia College Bearcats and Kwantlen University Eagles. With the victories, the Mariners finished the season undefeated on home court in the PacWest this season, amassing a 10-0 record.
On Friday, February 20 the Mariners took on the Columbia Bearcats. The Mariners dominated the game early, taking a 37-7 lead after the first quarter. They expanded their lead in the second quarter, taking a 64-30 lead into halftime. The Mariners’ offense continued to roll in ...
The VIU Mariners’ women’s volleyball team ended the regular season with a loss as the team dropped their final game of the regular season against the Camosun Chargers on Saturday, February 21.
The two teams split the first four sets with the Chargers taking the first set 25-21 and the third set 25-19. The Mariners captured the second set 25-16 and forced a fifth set with a 25-21 victory in the fourth. But, ultimately, the Chargers came out victorious, dominating the final set 15-4.
The loss to Camosun snapped the Mariners’ eight-game winning streak. VIU hadn’t lost a match since ...
This is the fourth in an ongoing contributor series by Stephanie Brown. You can read the first part here. Check back next issue for the next chapter of The Long Commute.
So let’s talk about an issue that’s close to my heart: culture shock. I know you’re thinking, “That won’t happen to me.” Yeah, I thought the same thing when I was still in Canada. It’s easy to feel that way, especially when you are traveling to another English-speaking country. It’s easy to buy into the notion that the transition will be easier because you don’t have a language barrier. I can now stand back ...
By contributor Sebastian Barkovic
I don’t know my Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as I should. Yes, I study politics, but I’m nowhere near as well-read as your typical freedom-suppressing Conservative. Speaking of which, you have most likely heard about Bill C-51, the one our government put forth in Parliament a few weeks back.
For those of you that haven’t, the new anti-rights and freedoms, sorry, “anti-terror” bill will increase the power of Canada’s spy agencies such as CSIS and CSEC. Bill C-51 is mainly focused on terrorism, but its powers extend to any national ...
Sometimes projects get started but never seem to get finished. These events encourage people to complete and submit their work
From textiles and art projects to creative writing, Islanders have opportunities this spring to practice and showcase their work. The Nanaimo Arts Council is hosting an Unfinished Object (UFO) Day, as well as co-sponsoring the Islands Short Fiction Contest.
The Nanaimo Arts Council will be hosting its third UFO Day of 2015 as an opportunity for people to collaborate with their incomplete creations.
While the idea started with textile and beading ...
As the British Columbia Hockey League season is entering its final weekend, the Nanaimo Clippers still await an opponent for the first round of the playoffs.
The Clippers celebrated Family Day with a 5-2 victory over the Powell River Kings. The win clinched the BCHL’s Island Division, the team’s first division title since 2008. The division title ensures that the Clippers will open the playoffs at home on Tuesday, March 3 at Frank Crane Arena.
The Clippers will have to wait until the regular season ends to know who they will play in the opening round. Only five points separate ...
By contributor Jennifer Cox
Portal fans north of Nanaimo won’t have to travel far to attend a sneak preview of the latest edition, which is scheduled for publication in April 2015. Portal has partnered with the Laughing Oyster Bookstore to host a literary reading for the magazine’s Comox Valley fans. The event will take place at 7 pm on Thursday, March 12 at Zocalo Café, a hub of literature and culture in downtown Courtenay.
The evening will include a selection of readings that showcase the poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction of current and past Portal contributors. The ...
The Mariners’ women’s basketball team picked up the come-from-behind victory in their final home game of the season over the visiting Kwantlen University Eagles on Saturday, February 21.
The two teams ended the first quarter tied 10-10 and traded possession of the lead early in the second quarter. But as the quarter progressed, the Eagles started to pull ahead and took a 29-24 lead into halftime. In the second half, the Mariners chipped away at Kwantlen’s lead, but the Eagles still held a 41-40 advantage at the start of the fourth quarter.
In the fourth, VIU completed the comeback, ...
