In North America (New Westminster included), we have innovated physical activity out of our lives. This is trouble for our bodies that require physical activity to function properly. You only have to look at the health section of the news to see the health issues caused by physical inactivity.

People in New Westminster love Markets. You can see it today in the popularity of The Royal City Farmer’s Market and the anticipation about the long-awaited reopening of River Market. But the same has been true for many years. People bartered and sold their goods on the streets right from New Westminster’s beginning.

This Saturday, members of the New Westminster Community Gardening Society will harvest the first crop of corn, beans and squash from Mary Mount Community Garden in Sapperton.

In this city of hills, you really can travel uphill both ways. So it’s perhaps surprising that New Westminster has such a strong, passionate cycling community. While it is hilly, our city is both compact and central – features that lend themselves to bike commuting. Now City Hall too is sharing the velolove.

Translink recently announce a new bridge will be built in the next 5 years between New Westminster and Surrey, the third bridge across in the past 106 years.

New West has always remained somewhat of a hidden gem, until lately. Seems the word has gotten out to those interested in building new homes, and the word is that New West has reasonably priced lots (relative to other areas) and their building codes are far more lax than anywhere else. There are some absolutely beautiful homes being built, in keeping with the style of the neighbourhood. My problem is with the character destroyers or ‘urban monsters’ that are being erected.

Until now, we haven’t had a formal comment policy at Tenth to the Fraser. While I do moderate comments as they come in, so far there have been only a handful of comments I’ve had to block. Our commenters have, for the most part, been passionate community boosters. When they’ve disagreed, they’ve done so respectfully. Criticism has, for the most part, been of the constructive sort. But our readership is growing. And with it, so are the numbers of commenters I’d call trolls.

Warning: this is a bit of a rant. I was recently warned by an anonymous commenter here that they’re “on to me,” that I was “under the microscope” along with senior city staff. He capped it off with a warning that I have had almost verbatim a few times on this blog, “This is a small town. Be careful.” The ridiculous part is that it was on a “good news” post. In New Westminster, as far as this blog’s comment trolls are concerned, if it looks like good news, something evil is afoot.

Almost a decade ago, youth in New Westminster said they wanted a dedicated space of their own. The city had programs and special spaces for children and seniors, but little for teens. Middle schoolers and high schoolers said they felt out of place in public but adult-oriented spaces. They needed a place they could just hang out.

New Westminster writer Sheila Keenan is committing to do all her shopping locally for the next year – and will blog about it to boot.