Capital Daily for Sunday, July 5

A dead humpback whale turned up on the shoreline near the West Coast Trail last Sunday, 21 kilometres north of the Pachena Bay trailhead. DFO scientists ran a necropsy and are now waiting on results to determine how it died.

It's the fourth humpback reported dead in BC this year. The grey whale count is worse: ten found dead so far, nearly surpassing the 2019 record of 11 for an entire year.

Whale sightings are up too, and researchers link the surge in orcas and humpbacks to a rich food supply in the Salish Sea this year. The grey whale deaths point the other way, toward thinner feeding grounds up in Alaska.

Huu-ay-aht trail guardians, who steward the land alongside Parks Canada, were first on the scene. The nation is coordinating with DFO on what happens to the carcass once the cause of death is known. Executive chief councillor John Jack said he'd consider asking to keep the skeleton.

Rifflandia never turned a profit. Not once in 18 years. "Rifflandia Festival doesn't, and has never, sold enough tickets to cover its costs," co-founders Casey Austin and Nick Blasko wrote in their farewell. "It has operated at a loss since the very first edition in 2008."

Up until a few weeks ago, a 2026 edition was still on the table, even with a promised $90K boost from the province. Then the math stopped working. Finding a downtown venue of the right size finally became, in their word, unattainable.

A few blocks up, another loss is taking shape. Reliance Properties wants to turn the old BC Power Commission building at 780 Blanshard into a 126-room hotel. Behind every door in that yellow art-deco pile is a studio, and roughly 200 artists across four galleries and five nonprofits work there year-round.

Logan Ford, who runs the visual arts society that made the building an atelier in 2022, is hunting for a new home for the sixth time in 13 years. He's found nothing suitable yet. If the permit goes through, he figures the artists pull up stakes as early as next spring.