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COLUMNS: Going with the status quo

What was the biggest news story for locals last week?
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What was the biggest news story for locals last week?

Was it the Supreme Court of Canada’s long overdue ruling that the Crown has a fiduciary duty to compensate the Williams Indian Band for the wrongful displacement of their village lands in the 1860s?

Or was it the BC Liberal Party’s choice of Andrew Wilkinson as their leader? What about the announcement of improvements to Cariboo Memorial Hospital, or maybe city council’s plan to make Williams Lake one of B.C.’s major marijuana centres was the big one. The snowfall certainly got our attention, and last, but not least, the death of former Premier Dave Barrett hit the headlines. These events pushed #MeToo to the sidelines for an hour or so.

The band won’t get the land back, it will get money.

As for Mr. Wilkinson, the Liberals opted to go with the status quo. There have been plans/hopes for a number of years to have greenhouses in the city to help us become more self-sufficient in food as climate change and loss of farmland threatens our reliance on outside sources.

With pot as the main crop we might be hungry but happy. And don’t knock the snow, we need it.

The Barrett government’s speed in passing new laws — one every three days for 37 months — has yet to be matched. Most of them survived, although the Campbell/Clark outfit left a few battered, like ICBC and the Agricultural Land Reserve. One less known accomplishment of Mr. Barrett’s: he won the Bull Throwing contest at Stampede one year.

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Last week I mistakenly named Elizabeth Cull instead of Elizabeth May as Green Party leader. As it apparently isn’t done these days to accept personal responsibility for any wrongdoing, I’ll blame my arthritic fingers for the boo boo. OK?

Diana French is a freelance columnist for the Tribune. She is a former Tribune editor, retired teacher, historian and book author.