It’s hard to know where to begin to pick up all the pieces following revelations that Karl Ward, one of our town’s most honored citizens, sexually abused young people, perhaps for years. Certainly our town failed to protect some of its most innocent and vulnerable members, who paid a terrible price for our lack of vigilance. That hurts, but it…
Registration continues this Saturday, April 7, for little league baseball in Haines. Sign your child up. Little league builds character, and the worse player you are, the more character you build. When it comes to little league, it’s all good, and I don’t say that lightly. “It’s all good” is an expression I can’t stand. In the annals of little…
The proposed University of Alaska timber sale is so big, so far-reaching and so sudden, a person can’t help but wonder where it came from and why. For about 70 years, the university has held 13,000 acres of forest in the Chilkat Valley, property it received around the time of Alaska statehood to develop or exploit as a source of…
The Chilkat Indian Village of Klukwan rankled some people in Haines in November when it joined a lawsuit against the federal Bureau of Land Management, saying the agency should consider effects of a mine’s development now, not later. Constantine Metal Resources, the Canadian firm that’s exploring an ore deposit near the Canada border, has said it’s still a distance from…
We need to rally to save the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program, or some version of it, here in the Chilkat Valley. The Bigs are just the most recent victim of state budget cuts and the Alaska Legislature’s inability to maintain what makes Alaska great, but let’s save that for another day. Due to funding cuts, the Anchorage-based organization is laying…
While composing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson did a radical thing. In defining what rights men possessed by virtue of birth, he added “pursuit of happiness” along with “life” and “liberty.” Previous to the Declaration, Englishmen believed they were naturally entitled to “life, liberty and property.” Jefferson’s editing represented a tectonic shift in the world’s view of a person’s…
Alaskans emerge from winter on their hands and knees. The dark, cold, wind, rain and snow beat down on us until, by spring, we squeeze out from under them and can start to walk upright again. In varying degrees, winter freaks us out. Under its weight, we say and do crazy things we would never say or do in July.…
We’re in a bind at the Lutak Dock. Let’s take action now so that we’re never in a bind like this again. Here’s the story. About 50 years ago, the U.S. Army gave Haines the Lutak Dock. The Army had built the earthen embankment dock in the mid-1950s, to build and supply a military tank farm located near the present-day…
“How many people do you want at this event? We could bring lots of friends. We have ski races in the Yukon, but nothing like this.” These words, spoken to a local volunteer by a Canadian competitor in Saturday’s Kat to Koot Alpine Adventure Race, should be music to the ears of Haines tourism officials. For decades they’ve bandied…
Before any more lawsuits between neighbors, the Haines Borough needs to identify and acquire access to popular public beaches and waterways. In the past three years, longtime users of Chilkoot River and Viking Cove have faced off in court against property owners and the results have been disastrous. They’ve been disastrous to residents’ pocketbooks, to neighborhood relationships, and to our…