Page 20 - Crystal Pool News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

A group of neighbours living around a planned supportive housing project in Central Saanich briefly blocked workers from accessing the site Monday, saying they want answers on who will be living there and the services it will provide. Steve Manchur, who lives near the 39-unit development at 1909 Prosser Rd. with his wife and seven-month-old child, is concerned the province will move people directly from hotels and city parks into the new building. He fears that without proper levels of supports for addictions, the housing development will bring increased crime and drug use into the neighbourh...

What about your home insurance? Oh please! Would the wonderful residents of Victoria and subscribers of this newspaper occupy themselves with some subject other than Clover Point? Many of us in the rest of this island would be hard-pressed to point out this place on a map let alone find it on the ground. How about home insurance, for instance? We live in a single-family home in Nanaimo. Our house insurance quote has arrived, the quoted amount has increased 10 per cent since last year and is up 49.6 per cent from the past four years. We insure with a reputable company and have for many ye...

Flying in, I see it. Not the hulking green mass of Norfolk Island, which looks like a dairy farm plonked in the middle of the ocean, but its smaller sibling six kilometres to the south, a rugged, uninhabited (except by thousands of seabirds) red-earth island that's been called "the Uluru of the Pacific". It's called Phillip Island, and getting there involves a mini-expedition that starts with a short, often rough boat trip from Norfolk; you then have to leap ashore onto slippery, wave-sloshed rocks and scramble up ladders and ropes to reach the island's higher, drier slopes. See Also On my fi...

Importantly, this enjoyment can be found daily without the barrier of parking fees. Parking is free in most of our regional parks, with the exception of Sooke Potholes and Thetis Lake during the summer season when tourists (who don’t pay taxes for park use) are amongst the visitors. The CRD’s parks committee, which I do not sit on, began looking at new funding streams for parks in 2019, including potentially introducing parking fees. ­Residents already pay for our regional park system through a levy to the CRD. In Central Saanich, the oldest regional park, Island View, is mentioned in...

Simmons, the swim coach for about 60 Special Olympics athletes, used to check in with her team face-to-face in the lobby of Crystal Pool before swim practice. When sports programs ground to a halt in mid-March as B.C. declared a state of emergency, Simmons knew she needed to do something to keep the group connected. “It was something I felt they needed, to have a place to connect with each other socially and share any challenges they were having,” she said. Two weeks after the pandemic was declared, with the help of fellow Victoria-based Special Olympics coach Kyle Eriksen, Simmons lau...