Exploring the heart of Canada's adaptive climbing movement →

Wayne Willoughby lives for the long days.

Spending 22 hours climbing upwards while fighting a virus that attacks muscle strength, followed by a few hours of rest hundreds of metres up in a dirt cave, is a special kind of long day.

Two decades after he made the first adaptive ascent of the Stawamus Chief, the accomplished big wall climber and polio survivor took on the first recorded one-day ascent of a hard aid-climbing route up the Sheriffs Badge last month.

“I’m so lucky I got to do these climbs — some that really inspire people,” he said.

Willoughby hopes that one day, the Chief — with easily accessible approaches and a friendly climate — could become a mecca for adaptive climbers living with disabilities.

Read the full article in the Squamish Chief

Ottawa Uncorked: Northern Wineries and Rising Temperatures

They are the daredevils of wine-growing, the headstrong pioneers of the vine, existing in a category researchers have dubbed “extreme viticulture.”

These Ottawa Valley wine sellers are dreaming big, waiting for the day when cold- climate strains break into the main stream and bring a Prince Edward County-like commercial success to the region. In the meantime rising temperatures over the next 40 years are projected to put traditional growers in Australia and Europe out of commission, opening up more markets for northern vineyards.

Wine-making grapes are among the most fragile crops to grow. An early or late frost, or erratic temperatures, can mean an expensive setback. In Ottawa, a short growing season and winter temperatures that often plummet to -30 C makes it impossible to keep most varieties alive.

Wind chill: Yukon paragliders take to the winter skies

Windchill really starts to mean something when it’s -30 C and you’re sailing through the open air at 30km/hour.

Good gloves are essential for winter paragliding, says Association of Yukon Paragliding and Hang Gliding vice-president Trevor Mead-Robins, but otherwise, the sport is just another way to get outside.

Mead-Robins said his coldest ever flight was a crisp -45 C following a hike up Mount McIntyre in Whitehorse. Considering windchill, the air temperature was likely closer to -52 C.

Read the full article in the Yukon News

How Old Crow became one of the first communities in the world to be fully vaccinated →

This is a two-part story chronicling the journey of mobile vaccine teams to the fly-in community of Old Crow. It was funded with support from the National Geographic Society.

Old Crow is not the smallest of the Yukon’s communities, but it is the most remote. Located 128 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, the village of 250 residents – almost all citizens of Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation – is fly-in only. In order to receive supplies the community relies heavily on the territorial airline, of which they own 49 per cent.

News of the pandemic reached Old Crow on the same timeline as the rest of the world.

“It was scary to see what was breaking out across the world and the implications for our community, as a First Nation community and the only fly-in community in the Yukon,” said Vuntut Gwitchin Chief Dana Tizya-Tramm.

Read the full article in the Yukon News

N.W.T. is the only place in Canada where journalists have priority access to vaccines

As vulnerable communities and the majority of the population in Canada remain underserved by the vaccine rollout, there’s been little discussion about priority designation for essential media workers.

Near the beginning of the pandemic, Yellowknife-based photographer Pat Kane began photographing residents through windows. Since then, as more information about safety measures and how to mitigate COVID-19 transmission emerged, he’s been able to travel within the territory and photograph people in person – but always with caution.

“I mean, you don’t want to be the person to bring anything into a community and impact the elderly or elders, especially within Indigenous populations. So it was always in the back of my mind and I was very cognizant of that, and very careful,” he said. “I would ask permission and maintain distance, wear masks, especially in health clinics and things like that.”

Read the original story in J-Source

Former CEO of Great Canadian Gaming, actress charged after flying to Beaver Creek for COVID-19 vaccine

Two Vancouverites have been ticketed and charged under the Yukon’s Civil Emergency Measures Act for breaking isolation requirements in order to sneak into a vaccine clinic and receive Moderna vaccine doses in Beaver Creek.

Husband and wife Rodney Baker, 55, and Ekaterina Baker, 32, were ticketed and charged in Whitehorse on Jan. 21, 2021. The couple apparently travelled from Vancouver to Whitehorse, before chartering a private plane to Beaver Creek.

It’s alleged they then went to the vaccine clinic in Beaver Creek, where the mobile vaccine team was administering Moderna doses vaccines to the isolated community of around 100 people, including members of the White River First Nation (WRFN).

Read the full story at Yukon News

Discover Squamish: First Nation Snowboard Team carves ancestral slopes

Many millennia before they were bustling ski resorts, the mountains were places of power, wisdom and refuge for the people on the Squamish Nation and Lil’wat Nation.

“Even before snowboarding was a part of the culture, it was a very common belief that the mountains were a place to send the youth, and to go ourselves, in order to gain strength and a connection to the earth,” said Court Larabee, vice-president of the First Nation Snowboard Team.

Over the past decades, the high cost of skiing and snowboarding have closed the mountains to many youth from the community. The First Nations Snowboard Team brings them up to speed.

Read the original story in Discover Squamish.