This is where cold hard facts give way to the hottest of takes, mostly mine I suppose. I’m the editor, Marshall Jones.

Want to include yours? Listen, this isn’t the comment section, this isn’t social media. Discussion and debate requires context and a wee bit of bravery — we need your name and where you’re writing from. Include it in your account or email me anytime.

It was a campfire.

I expected folks to react with more exclamation points and questions marks when news broke that that’s what kicked off fire season in the Central Okanagan last week.

It was discovered around 11 a.m. on a Wednesday when the wind kicked up. Presumably sometime overnight, perhaps early in the morning, someone didn’t think twice about starting a fire in a nature park in West Kelowna surrounded by homes.

In June. In a drought.

We can all agree we got lucky, I’d argue it was even a good result to clean up some fuel in there. The next few years are going to be stunning in that park.

But we know around here that kind of luck doesn’t last. We have vast swathes of thick forest all around the Okanagan and Kamloops.

People have complained for years about campfires on riverbanks, parks and makeshift camps for years around all these areas.

It won’t be the last one. No one knows who did it. Could be homeless people, could be grad partiers. Could be a romantic date night gone wrong for all we really know.

But we aren’t curing ignorance today, so how do you even solve a problem like this?

I’d like to hear your ideas, email me any time.

Marshall Jones

Managing Editor

iN RESPONSE to Monday’s newsletter opinion-editorial on the West Kelowna wildfire

My opinion for preventing fires is bigger fines and penalties. Fines should start at $5,000 or more, there is no excuse for lighting a fire during these conditions. Bigger penalties would certainly help as of now it is a few hundred dollars, which is nothing to a lot of people.
There should also be much more advertising on prevention on TV, billboards and Facebook. Not to date myself, but I remember the Smokey the Bear commercials on TV and big billboards as a child, to deter people from throwing cigarettes from their car windows.

— Maureen Macdonald via email

To start with how about raising the fine from $1,000 to something more like a deterrent. And some mandated firefighting and clean up.

— Bonnie Derry via email

Could there be more ads aimed at city folks who go recreating in the dry Interior?
Showing how ATV and dirt bike mufflers can light up dry grasses, how any kind of steel tool can make a spark, how you can enjoy the outdoors without lighting a campfire, how easy it is for a roach you drop to start everything on fire. Maybe get the beer and pop and pot and chip companies involved advertising their product while cleverly informing people? Get the little RV boxes to have that info painted on their sides along with information on the insides about pulling over to let folks pass:).

— Jane Duber via email

iN NUMBERS: British Columbians want to bring back the death penalty for murderers

What we need is a life sentence for murder that is exactly that. Life behind bars not 25 years.

— Bonnie Derry via iNFOnews.ca

Salmon Arm dentist jailed for ‘abusive and demeaning’ social media posts

People who have known this guy for years are not at all surprised. Since childhood he’s been a Dateline episode in the making.

— Carrie Little via iNFOnews.ca

Canada looks to build up to 10 new nuclear reactors, sell more Candu reactors abroad

Of course PP has doubts about it. 😆

— Bonnie Derry via iNFOnews.ca

iN RESPONSE to Friday’s newsletter opinion-editorial on provincial government over regulation

Dear Mr. Jones,

Do you remember way back when the NDP were elected and Glen Clark was premier from 1996 to 1999? My husband and I had a mortgage broker company at that time. When the NDP came into power, within three short years they damn near bankrupted us and our business. It seems that our province will be doing well until an NDP party is elected and within a couple years even their own party wants their premier to step down. Remember Dave Barrett? Glen Clark? Of course being a business person I would never elect an NDP party. Never. Borrow and spend seems to be their ideology. A more right of left ideology is invest, attract business to our province, build cash cows (Coquihalla and Highway to Whistler, Convention centre big enough to handle big conventions, Olympics) etc.

This government has to go. As usual with ‘hoops, handouts and clawbacks’ yet again they are not only not attracting investment to this province but driving it out. I don’t know about the current conservatives but jeez anything is better than what is there now.

Your editorial was right bang on.

— Helen Price via email

Disclaimer: Any views, thoughts, and opinions expressed on this page are solely those of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of the editor, iNFOnews.ca, iNFOTEL MULTIMEDIA, its partners, principals or advertisers.