Capital Daily for Tuesday, June 23

The Mount Finlayson Trail in Goldstream Park has been closed since Wednesday because of a cougar sighting, and B.C. Parks won't say when it reopens.

The wildcat is posing a risk to public safety, the agency said, and the Finlayson Arm Road trailhead to the southern base of the mountain is shut until further notice. Conservation officers are monitoring the situation.

Meanwhile, a far heavier story played out in the Interior over the weekend. The Saw Creek wildfire, burning about three kilometres south of Lytton, forced an evacuation order on 47 addressed properties in the village and closed Highway 1 for 116 kilometres between Boston Bar and Cache Creek. The fire broke out Friday, days before the fifth anniversary of the blaze that razed the town and killed two people on June 30, 2021.

Cooler nights and lighter winds helped crews gain ground. By late Sunday, officials had lifted the order for the 47 properties while keeping it in place for about a dozen others, and the Lytton First Nation downgraded part of its order to an alert. The out-of-control fire stood at roughly seven square kilometres, with more than 200 properties still on alert.

Crews tearing out what looked like a localized flooring problem near the bar at Hermann's Jazz Club instead found two original load-bearing posts rotted out at the base, after they had "likely been supporting the building for well over a century."

That's the surprise hiding under the renovation Victorians paid for. Arts on View Society, which runs Hermann's and the neighbouring View Street Social, was weeks from closing both this spring before a fundraising campaign hit $450K in about a month. The money first went somewhere far less glamorous than floors: the club hadn't filed or paid its GST since 2022, and the board chair says it "had not received financial statements for years."

Those debts are now cleared. The City of Victoria, which owns the building, has committed to covering the flooring costs and will help with the structural repairs. The historic bar back, the decorative iron gate features, and the bar top were all saved and will go back in once the work is done.

Behind the scenes, the society has moved to a new law firm and is rewriting its bylaws so it never lands here again. Next up: the wall between Hermann's kitchen and View Street Social.