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youth

Kamloops court held up after youth collapses during sentencing

KAMLOOPS - A court hearing for a Kamloops youth ended with a 9-1-1 call today, Jan. 14, after she passed out as a judge handed her a jail sentence. The youth, who was already in custody and cannot be named due to a publication ban, was being sentenced for uttering threats and breaching probation. The...

Province to fund new complex care facility for youth in Vernon

VERNON - The province has picked Vernon as one of the early implementation sites for a new residential service for youth with complex care needs. The Ministry of Children recently signed off on a five-bed complex care facility for youth aged seven to 18 in Vernon. The province isn’t saying much about the facility because...

HELSTON: Learning to vote is like learning to drive, we all need a little practice

In Canada, you might be born with the democratic right to vote, but you’re not born with a magical gene that makes you a natural voter. That’s a skill that takes time and patience to cultivate. And, no, I’m not talking about the basic hand-eye coordination required to draw an ‘X’ on a piece of...

Two teens, ages 14 and 18, arrested for murder in Vernon death

VERNON - Police have arrested two teenagers for second degree murder in the death of Jason Hardy, whose body was found in Polson Park last week. One of the teens is a 14 year old male. He and 18-year-old Brandon Wellington were arrested Aug. 31. Both are residents of the Greater Vernon area, RCMP Const....

Coffee, creativity and a cause come together at Vernon coffee shop

VERNON - Maybe you come for the coffee. Maybe the atmosphere. Maybe the constantly changing art. And this month, you might come to Vernon’s Bean Scene Coffee House to show your community spirit. Every month, the Bean Scene strips the art on its walls and puts up a new show. It’s a fun change of...

New North Okanagan child and youth advocacy centre gets federal backing

VERNON - A cutting-edge pilot project in Vernon will help make things a little easier for young victims of crime. The much needed North Okanagan child and youth advocacy centre will streamline the process for young victims who have been sexually abused or assaulted, or who have witnessed crime, and will be made up of...

Vernon RCMP academy instills teens with life skills

VERNON - Not every teen who enrolls in the week-long, Depot-like RCMP Youth Academy in Vernon becomes a police officer. For some, the early mornings, mandatory exercise, daily chore of making their bed, and getting woken up in the middle of the night for mock disturbance calls is not for them. But for 2002 Charles...

HELSTON: What a young Vernon artist showed us all this week

Marie-Anna Michaud didn’t start rinsing paint off a vandalized mural because she was disturbed by the obscenities scrawled there. She didn’t do it to right a wrong, and she didn’t do it out of anger for the perpetrators. No one asked or paid her to do it. Her act of kindness came as a surprise...

A famous Vernon mural was vandalized, then this happened

"IT WAS AN INCREDIBLE ACT OF YOUTH EMPOWERMENT TO DISCOVER HER CLEANING THE MURAL" VERNON - Without being asked or paid, a young artist took it upon herself to undo the damage a vandal did to one of Vernon’s heritage murals. Marie-Anna Michaud, 19, saw a post by muralist Michelle Loughery on Facebook Monday morning....

Self harm among Okanagan youth higher than rest of province

OKANAGAN – The results of a province-wide survey on the health of B.C. adolescents shows that young people in the Okanagan are more likely to participate in activities that risk their health than teens in the rest of the province. The study was conducted by the McCreary Centre Society and looked at survey responses from...

Kamloops teens who shared nude photos of classmates get probation

KAMLOOPS – The three 15-year-old students who pleaded guilty to criminal harassment charges for coaxing nude photos from female classmates and sharing them with others will likely escape criminal sanction.  At a sentencing hearing in Kamloops Youth Court today, they were handed a conditional discharge, meaning the criminal charges will be expunged if they successfully...

What would happen if the Vernon vote was left up to high school students

VERNON - Vernon’s newly elected council would look a bit different if left up to a group of high school students. According to Student Vote—a province-wide program giving youth under the voting age a chance to learn about democracy and voting—Vernon Secondary School students had some different ideas about who should sit on council. The...

New home for valued youth program thanks to community support

VERNON - A former Lutheran Church destined for demolition is instead being reinvented as a residential facility for youth.  Dean Francks, with the North Okanagan Youth and Family Services Society, says the youth program is currently housed in the old pastor's house next to the church. Both buildings were beginning to show their age and...

Why you’ve seen so many missing person reports on your news feed this summer

THOMPSON-OKANAGAN - The faces of missing people from the Thompson-Okanagan have poured into news feeds over the last few months, but police say it’s nothing out of the ordinary for this time of year. Spokesperson for the RCMP Const. Kris Clark says the summer months typically see more reports of missing people. “You’ve got the...

ARCHER: This one goes out to all the young people

Looking around the city council table, there are a lot of, how do I put this gently, wise faces, especially now that the youngest member, Wes Hopkin left for law school in Toronto. The 25-year-old councillor, who 22 when elected, brought a youthful spirit and fresh outlook to city governance. At his last council meeting...