OCTOBER
• Rudy Berghuys, national president of the Royal Canadian Humane Association, confirmed seven people who were at the Salmon Arm Church of Christ April 14 when a shooting occurred there that killed one man and wounded another, would receive either bronze or silver medals for bravery.
• An evacuation alert for two homes along Newsome Creek in Sorrento was rescinded. The two homes on Caen Road in Sorrento were on evacuation alert since April. The alert was due to erosion of the creek banks that the homes were located on.
• Four firefighters formed the initial attack on a residential blaze in Chase on Monday, Sept. 30. Chase Fire Chief Brian Lauzon said the department received the call shortly after 3 p.m. and rushed to the scene in the 900 block of Okanagan Avenue, up the street from the fire hall.
• The man accused of setting a fire that destroyed the 7-Eleven store in Salmon Arm was ordered to stand trial. Kenneth Robert LaForge, 39, was charged with mischief of $5,000 or under, arson in relation to inhabited property and arson damaging property.
• Kamloops Symphony treated Shuswap classical music lovers to Romantic Elements, its season opener, featuring works by Mendelsshon, Tchaikovsky and Salmon Arm composer Jean Ethridge. The concert opened with the premiere of Ethridge’s Four Elements for Orchestra – Earth, Air, Fire and Water.
• Two-year-old Lilia Wiebe headed to B.C. Children’s Hospital in Vancouver for phase four of her treatment. She was treated for acute lymphoblastic leukemia. after she was diagnosed at the end of May.
• RCMP Staff Sgt. Scott West with the Salmon Arm RCMP said on Tuesday, Oct. 1, at about 5 p.m., a woman was cycling south on Balmoral Road in the South Shuswap toward the Trans-Canada Highway. The cyclist was hit by the mirror of a passing car and knocked off her bicycle. She described the vehicle as a small, older model, black car.
• The Larch Hills Trail Lighting Project was chosen as one of four national finalists in the 2019 Kraft Heinz Project Play contest. That meant the project was one of four in Canada—and the only one in B.C.— competing for a $250,000 top prize.
• In the federal election, Conservative MP Mel Arnold was re-elected in the North Okanagan-Shuswap riding with 48.8 per cent of the popular vote or 35,753 votes, compared to runner-up Liberal Cindy Derkaz with 22.7 per cent.
