All Posts Tagged With: "victoria"
Three dead after fire at Victoria student rental
Blaze may have started on porch
Chad Hipolito/CP
This story was updated Feb. 17 at noon EST.
Horrified neighbours watched helplessly as a house fire in Victoria claimed the lives of three young adults early Saturday.
Fire Capt. Bob Jones said flames were shooting out from the back and front of the house and two vehicles in the driveway were ablaze when firefighters arrived at about 4:30 a.m.
“The house is only, literally, 50 feet away from the back of the fire hall,” Jones said.
“It really got going quickly and it was windy, and that really helped spread the fire throughout the house.”
The victims were a young man and two young women, Jones said, adding it’s believed they were all students who rented the house. The victims names have not yet been released.
Jones said there was a party at the house on Friday night and that several out-of-town guests were staying there.
“Our evacuee assistance program has relocated some of them from out of town and put them up in accommodation for the night.”
Steve Hicks, who lives next door, said he was among a group of people who stood on the street and watched firefighters carry a body out on a stretcher as the house burned down.
“My upstairs tenant’s son, I think, put in the first call to the fire department. Then my tenant banged on the door and woke me up and we got outside.”
Hicks said most of the people living in the house were in their 20s.
“There’s no official word, but the fire appears to have started on the side porch at the front of the house. It’s covered and they have a couple of couches there, where people would sit around and smoke.”
Hicks said he was watching firefighters investigating near the porch on Saturday afternoon as he tried to process what he’d witnessed just hours earlier.
“When you’re out there at four in the morning and there’s a blaze going you can’t really process it. It takes a few hours. I’m not feeling too good right now. When you know that people lost their lives right there you don’t think it’ll shake you up that much, but I think it has.”
—Camille Bains
What students are talking about today (October 22nd edition)
A pipeline protest, a really bad cartoon & black cats
Tambako the Jaguar/Flickr
1. Critics of the Northern Gateway pipline project are hoping at least a thousand people will turn up today for a protest rally at the B.C. legislature in Victoria, reports The Canadian Press. The protests have been endorsed by unions such as the the Canadian Auto Workers, the B.C. Teacher’s Federation and the Canadian Union of Public Employees, plus celebrities including actor Ellen Page and singer Dan Mangan.
2. A student newspaper cartoonist has been fired from the Arizona Daily Wildcat after an anti-gay comic strip prompted thousands of complaints. The comic shows a father telling his son that if he’s gay, he will be shot with a shotgun, rolled into a carpet and thrown off a bridge. The boy says, “Well I guess that’s what you call a ‘Fruit Roll Up.’”
3. Animal welfare advocates say they no longer ban adoption of black cats at Halloween—a practice that stemmed from fears the animals would be harmed. In fact, the Ontario SPCA is now offering a discount on the adoption of black, orange and calico cats, reports The Canadian Press. How cute.
Continue reading What students are talking about today (October 22nd edition)
BC to ease student loan repayments
Premier Christy Clark announces plan to forgive more loans, provide more help with repayment
Photo by CampusGrotto/Flikr
B.C. Premier Christy Clark announced her government’s plan to help students repay their provincial loans. Effective July 1, students with incomes above the previous limit to receive relief will qualify for reduced repayments, the Province reports.
“The new repayment assistance plan is based on the borrowers ability to pay, meaning that income, family size and student loan debt-load are all accounted for in the eligibility process,” Clark told reporters, quoted by the Province. “Our goal is to replace previous programs that were intended to help students manage their loans.”
The changes will help students in two stages, Clark explained. The first will help students pay the interest on their debt, while the second will focus on paying down the principal on their loans.
Average student debt in B.C. is more than $27,000 after the completion of a four-year program, the highest of any province west of the Maritimes, according to the Canadian Federation of Students-British Columbia. The organization says tuition fees in the province have more than doubled since 2001.
UVic winning bunny war
Nearly half of all rabbits have been relocated to sanctuaries
The University of Victoria is in the final stages of winning its war against a rabbit infestation that has famously plague the school for years. Of the 1,400 rabbits the university hopes to remove, 637 have already been trapped and relocated to animal sanctuaries approved by the government. The plan that involves the sterilization of the animals began in September after months of controversy over earlier plans that involved actively killing the bunnies. The university plans to keep 200 rabbits on campus.
Holy crap: Victoria’s pitching a loaf
A recent article in Macleans reports that Victoria is the only city in Canada that- get this- discharges its sewage “raw.” Meaning, if Victoria’s human waste was a DVD, it would be the complete and uncut edition. Victoria is Canada’s disgusting child. The one who pees all over the toilet seat. The one who, after [...]
A recent article in Macleans reports that Victoria is the only city in Canada that- get this- discharges its sewage “raw.” Meaning, if Victoria’s human waste was a DVD, it would be the complete and uncut edition.
Victoria is Canada’s disgusting child. The one who pees all over the toilet seat. The one who, after eating a Caesar salad, gets a white creamy moustache. When Victoria, Ottawa, and Toronto had a family barbecue, Victoria picked his nose and then rubbed his finger in Ottawa’s hair. Toronto, too mature and sophisticated for such childish behaviour, went indoors and watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
After Macleans finally provided proof in a previous issue that Canadians are better than Americans, I was feeling pretty smug. Superior. Arrogant (American, almost). But it doesn’t matter if we’re richer and healthier: we crap in the ocean.
Sure, if we were American, we would be nobly crapping in the ocean to provide a source of methane gas to underwater vents. We would be crapping in the name of Freedom and patriotically slow-motion rippling flags. But it’s still pretty embarrassing that Victoria clearly didn’t sign the Charter of Not Being Repulsive.
But really, why waste so much money on plumbing? It would be less expensive to set up toilet paper stations along the beach.
Yup. I would hate to be a fish in Victoria.
