The Exploration Place has heard your complaints and is adding a kid's area

And a cool animation workshop and a complaint about the Hart bridge being out

You’re going to get a bonus newsletter, either later today or tomorrow, on the election and local candidates. Just a heads up so you have your inboxes ready. There’s also a story about the election in Prince George I collaborated with Radio-Canada on going up on cbc.ca/bc at some point today, so yeeah (they did the interviews, I helped provide the local context).

Here’s today’s regular newsletter.

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I’ve had in my drafts for a while now a post wanting to take note of the multiple complaints I have seen about the Exploration Place museum’s renovation doing away with the kid’s play area, and how that is translating to families being less likely to buy passes/do repeat visits. Its new executive director, Alyssa Leier, brought up in her welcome interview on CBC, saying:

“I have two toddlers at home so I know the importance of getting them into, you know, the Exploration Place, somewhere inside and having them do fun things, I know that’s kind of hard in Prince George, especially during the winter months.

“I definitely am aware of that and I’m aware of where we’re lacking in our galleries and maybe in our programming and just know that our curatorial team and our programming team is working towards that.”

And now we are hearing about some concrete plans. In a release from yesterday:

The Exploration Place is excited to announce the development of a new permanent STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) interactive gallery for young children, made possible in large part by generous support from the Y.P. Heung Foundation. This project marks a step forward in the museum’s commitment to providing engaging, educational experiences for residents of all ages of Northern BC.

The new STEAM interactives will feature hands-on fixtures and activities designed to get the museum’s youngest visitors excited about learning. These child-friendly components will blend education with play and encourage family exploration together, helping to fill a gap in indoor, family-friendly activities in Prince George. Since The Exploration Place’s recent renovation, the museum has received feedback that has consistently pointed to the fact that the community wants to see more hands-on things for young children to do. The introduction of these new components is a direct response to this feedback. Executive Director Alyssa Leier is confident that these new installations will contribute to the joy, excitement, and learning that young families have come to expect from their visits to The Exploration Place.

Work is supposed to begin in Janaury 2025.

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Here’s a rainbow I saw the other day:

Here’s a workshop a reader asked if I could help promote:

Here’s Wall of Fames Thanksgiving poutine:

(It was delicious)

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The Hart commute

I’m joining the great tradition of online news publications and lifting a Reddit post wholesale. This one is titled Hart folks - how we feeling about the morning traffic with no bridge route? and as I am writing this I notice it’s from friend of the newletter Darrin Rigo who has already promised to write a new post raging at me on his letter, North of Somewhere, so perhaps this will be more fuel for the fire.

Anyways, he writes:

Highland dweller here.

I've had the unfortunately pleasure to having to be downtown at 8:30am for the last two days with the bridge completely shut down and I have to say, as someone with a high tolerance for traffic, I'm pretty shocked at the lack of traffic planning with this closure.

We live up near The Alpine and the traffic trying to turn left on to Foothills is so backed up, I couldn't even turn onto Highland this morning. When I finally got down Highland and on to Foothills, it was backed all the way up to North Nechako. My 13 minute commute took 50 minutes this morning.

A funny meta game I've noticed is people are trying to get onto Foothills higher up (rather than turn off Highland) so they go up to Vellencher or all the way up to Chief Lake and it's actually just shot everyone in the foot because it locks down ALL streets now.

AND THEN, you get to the roundabout where the North Nechako folks connect with the highway folks and it's completely gridlocked.

Anyways - just wondering how we're all doing? Anyone else planning on chartering a helicopter tomorrow? Jokes aside, it's genuinely hard to imagine they can keep this going for the whole month.

I’m pretty happy to be a bowl dweller right now.

News roundup:

• Mother-son Mounties pair up for bucket-list shift.

• Council approves tax levy for Downtown Business Improvement Area.

• Tax exemption bylaw passed.

• Unattended candles causes residential blaze in College Heights.

• UNBC places second in annual Maclean's rankings.

• Preliminary feedback on cellphone restrictions very positive, SD57 Superintendent tells Board.

• Downtown Fallfest ready to celebrate the season in Prince George.

• Blackwater Mine on track for first gold pour this year.

• Grants 'trade show' brings Prince George providers and applicants together.

• What goes on behind the scenes of preparing for an election?

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Send feedback by emailing northerncapitalnews@gmail.com. Find me online at akurjata.ca.