3 YEARS AGO (2021): In an e-mail sent to residents, CRD director Margo Wagner stated that she had met with forestry officials and mitigation along the steep hillside above South Canim Lake Road had been a priority within the South Cariboo fire centre. Tsq̓éscen̓ First Nation members would be clearing the logs that were cut to make a firebreak during the 2021 wildfires in order to give access for further mitigation work. The aim was to get the work finished prior to the 2022 spring freshet. Wagner had said that the work included creating 65 water bars to allow water to flow across the guards, six cross-ditches on the north and west flanks and to repair two stream crossings.
9 YEARS AGO (2015): Local athlete Paulo Valenciano was profiled in the simplymastery having originally come to the South Cariboo all the way from the Phillippines. He had been sponsored by Elizabeth Hesse, who had sponsored him as an orphan and brought him to 100 Mile House in July 2015, who spoke Tagalog like Paulo. Hesse estimated that around 15 Filipino families resided in the 100 Mile House area. He also had been playing basketball - which was incredibly popular back home, and Valenciano was one of the best players at Peter Skene Ogden Secondary School's men's basketball program.
12 YEARS AGO (2012): Axel Matfin, an author from the South Cariboo, published his first novel - Bartender, Darkness on the Edge of Town - which aimed to be the first book in his The Bartender mystery trilogy. He launched it on Nov. 26 in Calabash, a trendy restaurant in Vancouver's Gastown. Matfin revealed that he had a lot of optimism when he left his home in Lone Butte for Vancouver - but was humbled and realized he did not have what it took to compete as an author in the big city - in contrast to 100 Mile House which he stated that anything written was good enough. He was an avid reader, having snuck books out of the library to not hit his quota, and had already written two books by the time he was 15.
25 YEARS AGO (1999): B.C. Hydro tackled a pair of power outages in 100 Mile House, where around 1,500 customers were left without power for more than an hour. Line Manager Barry Urquhart said around 3 p.m. on Friday, insulators on a 25,000-volt line at the corner of Horse Lake Road and Highway 97 blew up. Ceramic insulators can blow up when they get dirty or cracked and if power flows through the weakness - a common occurrence during wet weather. Urquhart said that the crews did a good job - having replaced the insulators and a neutral conductor blown down by the explosion in just over one hour.
