Welcome to Cascadia Daily!
Thanks for signing up for the Pacific Northwest’s tastiest selection of news, culture, and thought-provoking writing. Each weekday, we hand-pick an assortment of stories relevant to life in the Cascadia region (encompassing Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and parts of Idaho, SE Alaska, and Northern California). Every day you’ll find a selection of links to news stories, essays, fiction, poetry, and art — spanning the wide diversity of cultures and people.
This newsletter is part of a larger project: a new on-line, non-profit publication called Cascadia Magazine. It’s our goal to publish high-quality writing exploring ideas and culture in the Pacific Northwest. Cascadia Magazine is a home for journalism, arts profiles, environmental reporting, fiction, poetry, essays, book reviews, and photo essays, — all focused the people and places in the bioregion.
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Cascadia Magazine poetry: “Trudeau”
At Cascadia Magazine, Bellingham, WA poet Rob Lewis takes a sharp look at Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, whose obsession with pipelines and LNG projects has stained his squeaky-clean image:
“No one noticed,
not even him, the black speck
at the corner of his smile.
It began to spread, creeping across his lips
like an oil-bled kiss….”
Read Rob’s poem online here.
And if you appreciate writing like this on issues that matter to the Cascadia bioregion, please visit our donate page and help us meet our goal of $15,000 in our fall pledge drive.
Kennedy Stewart is Vancouver’s new mayor + other BC results
Results came in yesterday for municipal elections across British Columbia, and progressive Kennedy Stewart narrowly won a tight race for mayor of Vancouver. At the Georgia Straight, Travis Lupick looks at how progressives will split the Vancouver city council with the center-right NPA. Somali refugee Sharmake Dubow, who became a Canadian citizen last year, won a seat on the Victoria city council. A New Democrat in the legislature was elected mayor of Nanaimo, and his vacant seat could potentially tip control of the legislature away from the NDP. In more analysis, Vancouver’s mayor says he wants to expand the SkyTrain transit system to the suburb of Surrey, and will support city-approved cannabis shops.
Oregon looks to boost train service
Oregon Live reports that a commission created by Oregon governor Kate Brown is investigating tripling the number of Amtrak trains running in the Willamette Valley between Portland and Eugene by 2035. Meanwhile, Seattle Weekly reports that plans for rapid-ride buses in the Seattle metro area may need to be scaled back because of higher than expected costs and little federal support.
A Bitcoin venture goes bust
The Seattle Times reports on the rapid demise of Giga Watt, a cryptocurrency “mining” company in Wenatchee, Washington that failed to build data centers and lost Seattle-area investors millions of dollars.
Inside Vancouver’s lifesaving overdose prevention sites
At The Walrus, Vancouver journalist Travis Lupick has an excellent feature on the the activist-run overdose prevention sites in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside that are helping save lives in the midst of a surging fentantyl crisis. Meanwhile at Filter, read about three underground supervised injection sites managed and run in Seattle by activists. For more on the Seattle’s slow steps toward an official safe injection site, read this recent feature at Cascadia Magazine. And in related news, as Canada considers pardoning past pot convictions it’s unclear if US border authorities will deny entry to those who apply for the pardons.
Native salmon harvest at a low
Greggory Scruggs, reporting for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, writes that salmon harvests on the Columbia River this year were at dismally low levels, affecting tribes such as the Yakama Nation. An opinion piece at the National Observer faults the US and Canada from excluding First Nations and Native American tribes from a re-negotiated Columbia River treaty. Okanagan Nation Grand Chief Stewart Philip calls it an “act of absolute treachery.”
How to deal with hungry sea lions?
Hakai magazine has a great feature on the complicated issue of dealing with hungry California sea lions in places where native salmon runs are endangered, such as the Ballard Locks in Seattle. Attempts to relocate or reduce the voracious predators have generally been unsuccessful, but the larger issue is the human impact on declining salmon. OPB reports on never-ending sea lion relocation efforts near Willamette Falls, Oregon.
A conversation with Portland’s Leni Zumas
Over at Tin House you can read the transcript of a conversation between dsytopian novelst Genevieve Hudson and Portland’s Leni Zumas, whose novel Red Clocks revolves around a society in which abortion is illegal. It’s a great, rambling conversation about writing process, gender and queer politics, and the necessity of dystopian fiction in the current moment: “Is a person free to decide what happens to her body? To shout “Yes”—[is] to assert control over the territory of oneself.” Cascadia Magazine interviewed Zumas earlier this year, read more here.
“Waiting,” poetry by Kim Kent
This month’s poet-in-residence at Seattle Review of Books is Kim Kent, and you can read her poetic reminiscence, “Waiting” online. It’s a recollection of warm beers and mescaline:
“Wayne would sit in front of the class
and tell us how it was to be afraid of death.”
Read the full poem here.
That’s today’s assortment of news, arts, and culture from across the Pacific Northwest. Have a lovely evening! –Andrew Engelson
Photo credits: Kennedy Stewart by Mark Klotz CC BY-SA 2.0