February 2019
• Hope’s own Stephanie Blue and Jessica Kyle competed in the Cascade Cup together with 34 other keen Nordic skiers in early February. The competition was held at Manning Park’s Lightning Lake, where the weather cooperated. Blue came second in the 15-kilometre female 18-plus category with a final time of 1:48:32, with Kyle a close third in the same group with a final time of 1:51:53.
Community members from East Gate and Hope volunteered their time to make sure skiers got through the 15- and 30- kilometre events safely.
• The Hope Bantam C1 Wildcats had an amazing early year. They won five straight games at their home tournament one weekend, extending an unbeaten streak that lasted through 24 games before being broken by a 2-1 loss late in the month, in Chilliwack. The streak included league, playoff and tournament games.
• One of Canada’s darker moments of the past was made into a Heritage Minute by Historica Canada. The segment aired on Feb. 20, and features some very familiar scenery while telling the stories of the Asahi and the Japanese internment camps of the Second World War.
READ MORE: Latest Heritage Minute episode filmed near Hope and features some dark local history
Created in 1914, the Asahi was an amateur baseball club based in Vancouver that featured an entirely Japanese Canadian roster. While racism was alive and well in and around Vancouver, but the Asahi were celebrated.
And of all internment camps in Canada, the largest was Tashme, which was located in what’s now known as Sunshine Valley. Over the course of four years, more than 2,600 Japanese were interned at Tashme, which spanned 1,200 acres of land. Most of Hope’s (current) Japanese families had members in Tashme.
• Things were improving in the Fraser-Cascade School District (SD 78) in early February, according to district information at the time. Six-year graduation rates had increased 10.7 per cent since the prior year, bringing them from 63.7 per cent to 74.4 per cent. That trend seems to be continuing. In the final school board meeting of the year, the board received a staff report that illustrated the six-year graduation rates continue to rise.• Following January’s warm start, which saw the first of spring’s flowers start sprouting, February’s weather was a bit of a surprise in Hope, as it brought freezing temperatures and a frenzy of snowflakes to the Fraser Valley. But the variance in weather wasn’t all bad — many were able to take advantage of the mercury’s sudden plummet: People scaled Flood falls, skated on Kawkawa Lake, and canines played delightfully in the snow.
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