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J.J. Wilbur’s plate has become a little less full and a place at the Fire District 13 meeting table is set for his successor. Veteran firefighter Bobbie Scopa, whose background includes roles with the U.S. Forest Service Fire Program and recently as host of a local firefighting and leadership podcast, was sworn in Friday to succeed Wilbur as a commissioner. Scopa was administered the oath of office that morning during the district’s monthly hybrid meeting. Wilbur attended remotely while in Seattle on business as a senator of the Swinomish Ind...
Harry Everett Smith was neither born nor died in Anacortes, but he did live there for about 10 years as a youth before and during the Great Depression. Salmon canneries brought his family, and his father, R.J. Smith, to Anacortes and cannery work took the Smith family to Bellingham, where Harry Smith graduated from high school. After living in Seattle, he left the Puget Sound area, never to return. As a high school student Harry Smith studied Salish Sea traditions, recording and collecting tribal songs on 78 rpm shellac records. He went on to...
Last week’s local flooding and storm conditions were bad. Still, as anyone who was here in 1990 can attest, it could have been worse. Far worse. Then, Rexville Grange was converted to an emergency staging area for National Guard members called in to provide relief on Fir Island, which witnessed mass evacuations after a 40-year-old Skagit River dike broke, inundating the area. Fast forward to last week and impacts from relentless rain and high winds in and around La Conner and Skagit County were again severe and stressful, but less so than w...
Skagit County’s new coronavirus infection rate of 611.7 per 100,000 residents in the 14 day period ending Nov. 14 is by far the highest in the state. It remains the only county with a two week infection rate of over 600 per 100,000 residents, far outpacing the next four highest counties with rates of 503.4 (Lewis County) to 551.1 (Chelan County). Whatcom County recorded 361.4 new cases per 100,000 residents in the same 14 day period and Snohomish County has climbed to 301 new infections by the same metric. Skagit County’s 7-day hos...
There wasn’t a shaky response to earthquake preparation drills here last month. Far from it, in fact, Fire District 13 Capt. Ted Taylor told fire district commissioners at their monthly hybrid meeting Friday, Nov. 11. The annual Great ShakeOut exercises Oct. 21 went according to plan and in some cases exceeded expectations. He said district personnel were able to roll emergency equipment and vehicles out of the Snee Oosh Road station in under three minutes, raising some bay doors electrically and others manually, a task that would be e...
La Conner High School students have gone on to make their marks all over the globe, attaining achievements not soon to be forgotten. Perhaps none more so than John K. Bob, a U.S. Army medic killed in action near the end of World War II while trying to remove wounded American soldiers from a German battlefield. Bob, a member of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community and a student leader, athlete and musician prior to enlisting for military service, has been memorialized locally in numerous ways,...
Few people enjoy as strong a command of language as John Stephens: In four decades of public speaking gigs representing the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Town of La Conner, La Conner schools and Skagit Valley College he has been aptly described as a walking thesaurus. Or, putting it in more modern terms, Stephens was Google before there was Google. But more recently, in the week since his retirement from Swinomish, where he filled several administrative roles, Stephens is the one who has...
Making the jump from high school sports to college athletics is a long shot at best. Good thing, then, that Charles Baker of Swinomish is often at his best when taking long shots. Which is just what the 2021 La Conner High grad, who turned 19 over the Halloween weekend, is doing these days. Baker, who was a top perimeter scorer on the Braves basketball team, is now a freshman at Northwest Indian College in Bellingham, where he has earned a spot on the men’s hoops roster. Standing 5’-10” and p...
It is often said that if you want a job done, assign it to a busy person. In that case, the Skagit County Historical Society couldn’t have found a more qualified candidate to preside over its board of trustees. Local attorney Pat Paul, known for wearing many hats – including as food editor for the La Conner Weekly News – was elected earlier in October to chair the historical society’s governing panel, which administers policies designed to preserve Skagit County’s cultural heritage. She has been a trustee for two years. Paul, an Al...
There was little earth-shattering on the Fire District 13 Commissioners meeting agenda last Friday, but the department will drill next week to prepare for a quake or tsunami. Capt. Ted Taylor told commissioners that staff will participate in the Oct. 21 Great Shake Out event to prepare the public for safe and orderly responses to major earthquakes, with La Conner area emergency sirens sounding at 10:21 a.m.. Taylor said District 13 personnel will focus on quick mobilization of emergency equipment. “Our challenge,” he said, “will be to get a...
Katherine Paul is pretty good at pulling strings. After all, she does it for a living. A very good living, at that. The local singer-songwriter, a multi-instrumentalist who is the face of rising band Black Belt Eagle Scout, was back to doing what she does best in late September, helping headline the virtual Love the Land concert that netted over $250,000 for startup Skagit farmers. Paul, who learned to play the guitar, piano and drums while growing up on Swinomish Reservation, was among top regional musicians who took part in Love the Land,...
New La Conner School Superintendent Will Nelson cannot stress enough the value of doing one’s homework. That goes for him as well as the nearly 600 students he and school district staff will greet this fall as La Conner transitions from on-line and hybrid instructional models employed last year in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. School board members chose Nelson this past spring following a rigorous selection process to succeed Rich Stewart as the district’s lead administrator. Nelson had been director of equity and student success at Arl...
After an earlier burglary, a sting was in order at Skagit County Fire District 13 Station 1 in Summit Park. Which is exactly what transpired last month – only it happened by chance. Thieves trying to break into the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) trailer were thwarted by a hornet’s nest, assistant chief Jamie Jurdi told fire commissioners during their monthly meeting last Friday. “They tried to break in,” said Jurdi, “but there was a hornet’s nest that deterred them.” Jurdi and district fire chief Wood Weiss said no entry was g...
The Blue Heron Canoe Family camped at the former Maple Avenue ballfield in La Conner last week, a stop on their Healing Waters 2021 journey to Lummi Island. The Willapa Spirit canoe accompanied it. Swinomish tribal member Eric Day joined the journey in La Conner to help skipper the second canoe. The Snohomish tribe crew and supporters totaled 65 people, Karen Condos, director of Natives United Journey, told the Weekly News Thursday. Vehicles arrived at the ballfield site late Wednesday morning...
La Conner High will remain the home of the Braves. The school district’s board of trustees on Monday formally approved a unanimous Swinomish Tribal Senate resolution supporting retention of the Braves name for La Conner athletic and academic teams. Board president Susie Deyo joined members Amanda Bourgeois, John Agen and Lynette Cram in approving the Senate measure. Board member J.J. Wilbur, who also serves on the Swinomish Senate, abstained. The joint tribal-school district action is in accordance with state legislation passed earlier this y...
As a Fulbright Scholar, La Conner alum Ryan Booth visited, toured and studied on the Indian subcontinent. Now the Washington State University Ph.D. candidate is doing the same across the United States, his summer travels including a stop at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois, a July 4 fireworks show in St. Louis and presenting a July 14 program at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico. “I had three major purposes for the t...
Monday, July 5 8:09 p.m.: Left boat behind – Ten foot boat abandoned on the rocks for the past several days. State parks will handle. Deception Pass Bridge. 9:20 p.m.: Cold shot – Report of a family member that drove by the caller’s property and fired a gun at a trail head nearby the day before. Farm to Market Rd., Bay View. 10:58 p.m.: Usual suspects – Report of fireworks in the area. The deputy sat in the area and only saw fireworks from the reservation. S. 4th St., La Conner. Tuesday, July 6 11:03 a.m.: They don’t sho...
I have known Eric Day for several years. He is humble and has a servant’s heart – working with young people, teaching cultural ways, helping to feed people in the community, standing and speaking for justice and serving as a senator of the Swinomish Tribe. I support him for commissioner, Position 2, of Fire Protection District 13. As a Swinomish Tribe senator, Eric has been part of the decision-making that has resulted in programs that are meeting the health care and housing needs of people – native and non-native – in our a...
Tuesday, June 15 2:23 a.m.: Left with chargers – Deputies responded to a report of a cold theft. The caller said a male walked into the store and stole a handful of phone chargers. La Conner Whitney Rd., Greater La Conner. 6:51 p.m.: Known knockdown – Deputies responded to a report of a person being struck by a vehicle. Deputies found the caller had been struck by the door of a car leaving the driveway and knocked to the ground. The suspect had fled the scene but is known to the victim. Bradshaw Rd., Greater La Conner. Wednesday,...
Anna Cook is getting back to her roots on many levels. The Swinomish Indian Tribal Community member, a La Conner high school alum who went on to earn a degree from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, is a vocal advocate for food sovereignty through her work with the acclaimed 13 Moons project. She was drawn to the cause in great part by her family’s involvement in hosting plant workshops. Her interest grew further after starting college. Today, as a result of her affiliation with 13 Moons a...
On Sept. 19, 2004, nearly 17 years ago, the House of Tears carvers from the Lummi Nation in Bellingham, WA delivered and dedicated “Freedom, Liberty & Sovereignty” to the Pentagon, one of three tragic targets for the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. The Lummi delegation brought three cedar totem poles nearly 5,000 miles on a cross-country road trip to Washington, D.C. This ceremony made a lasting impression on me as I watched in tears both times, as the totem poles wer...
One of the biggest local events of the year was scaled back last week due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. But despite smaller numbers, it was still a big deal. The annual Swinomish Indian Tribal Community Blessing of the Fleet ceremony, which in normal years draws 500 people or more, focused on quality rather than quantity last Wednesday. It was a relatively small – but appreciative and thankful – gathering that assembled to celebrate the first catch of the season, pray for a safe...
Swinomish Police have asked those with security cameras along Snee Oosh Road to contact the department following a rash of recent mail thefts in the area. Tribal officers began fielding reports of suspected mail theft along the heavily traveled road on Swinomish Reservation in mid-April. Officers investigating those complaints found a substantial amount of discarded mail from neighboring streets off Snee Oosh. The area in question runs from State Highway 20 to Pull-N-Be-Damned Road. The thefts have some Snee Oosh and other La Conner area rural...
Cleaning the planet can be as simple – and rewarding – as a walk on the beach. That was proved Thursday south of La Conner when Kelly Harper of Balance Point Physical Therapy led a dozen volunteers on an Earth Day clean-up project between Conner Waterfront Park and the McGlinn Island sandspit, a route that has become a favorite among local hikers. “I don’t know if we’ll get a lot of garbage,” she said as the group set off, “but we’ll have a great nature hike and it will be a perfec...
What is old is new again. John Doyle has retired as La Conner town administrator and planner, but before that, starting in 1992, he was a volunteer firefighter with the then Hope Island Fire Department on the west side of the Swinomish Reservation. In 2008 he served two months as a commissioner of that fire district, which has been subsumed into Fire District 13. Now, since April 9, he is a newly appointed commissioner of FD 13, filling the seat left vacant by Larry Kibbee’s March resignation. Doyle, age 71, stressed his long involvement, i...
