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Vancouver Aquarium will no longer keep whales and dolphins
Bowing to pressure from activists, and a park board that was unsupportive, the Vancouver Aquarium announced today it will end its captive cetacean program. After two beluga whales died in 2016, attendance to the aquarium dropped significantly. The non-profit marine science facility must now make difficult choices about the animals currently in captivity.
Housing crisis in BC is actually about global capitalism
Vancouver’s astronomically high housing costs are leading to all sorts of problems, from homelessness to economic stagnation. But a professor emeritus at UBC asserts that high rents aren’t necessarily a product of scarcity, but the fact that global capital is looking for “safe” investments to park its money. “It is worth noting here that there is no physical housing shortage — for example, there are 25,000 empty houses and condominiums in Vancouver.”
In related news, the Seattle Times digs deeper into recent data on homelessness in Seattle and King county, finding that the region ranks as one of the worst in the U.S.
Biologists work to protect last heard of caribou in Cascadia
OPB has a story about the last herd of caribou in the Pacific Northwest, the South Selkirk Mountain herd, a collection of about a dozen animals that inhabit the mountains of northeast Washington, the Idaho panhandle, and south-central British Columbia. Much of the scientists’ work with a captive breeding program involves harvesting hundreds of pounds of lichen to feed the caribou.
Grieving for former WA governor and WSU quarterback
Residents of Washington mourned the death of former governor John Spellman, the last Republican to hold the office. Longtime reporter Joel Connelly looks back at the affable, pipe-smoking moderate, who was definitely of a different era in politics.
Meanwhile, fans of WSU football and people across the Inland Northwest were shocked to learn of the apparent suicide of quarterback Tyler Hilinski. Sports columnist Matt Calkins takes the opportunity to talk about his own struggle with depression and the ways help and support are available.
Seattle’s Oluo: the conversation I dreaded with my white mother
Seattle writer Ijeoma Oluo, who has a new book from Seal Press, So You Want to Talk About Race, recalls a dreaded conversation with her white mother about the realities of racism in the U.S. It’s a warm but sharp piece on the necessity of talking about race and the truly awkward and bumbling ways white people often go about it.
A poem from Spokane-based poet Ellen Welcker
The American Academy of Poets’ “Poem-a-day” email featured Spokane poet Ellen Welcker’s work this week. Click this link to read the entire poem: “[the girls speak to each other via the common tongue]: Feather or a Rock.”
“to be good is to be ‘natural’
I mean to appear
you are not good
you are holding up though”
(Apologies for the bad line breaks — to see it correctly go read the whole poem!)
That’s all for today from the command bunker of Cascadia Daily. Enjoy the abundant moisture! –Andrew Engelson
Photo credit: Beluga whale at Vancouver Aquarium by Antony Stanley, CC BY-SA 2.0