Mark Nielsen
For once, crime took a back seat to civil matters at the Prince George courthouse.
Between the City of Prince George efforts to secure an injunction to clear out the Moccasin Flats homeless camp and the Coastal GasLink effort to keep protesters away from its pipeline project south of Houston, we - and by that I mostly mean my colleague Hanna Petersen - were kept busy enough.
With the matter still not settled, Moccasin Flats could also end up being the Newsmaker of the Year for 2022! The conflict over the pipeline will also continue to linger.
Either way, take your pick.
Christine Dalgleish
Ted Clarke’s story called "They did everything together" about Helen and John Eberherr, a Prince George couple who was married forever, who were lost to COVID-19 in the early days of 2021, brought us all into the reality of what it is like to lose loved ones in a close knit family. Clarke told the story beautifully, sharing the confusion and heartbreak of the family as they lost their senior members to this dreaded disease.
This is the story of the year, as it reflects the more personal side of the pandemic and its destructive path that inevitably ends with lives lost and heart broken.
Arthur Williams
The ongoing saga of the homeless camp known as Moccasin Flats is an underdog story about a group of desperate people fighting for basic human dignity and the right to be left alone.
Or, depending on your perspective, it’s about a bunch of squatters illegally occupying public land.
The issue has challenged the City of Prince George and the residents of Prince George to think about how we, as a city and society, deal with the poorest amongst us. While some have responded with compassion for the homeless, others have raised concerns about crime, drug use and loitering downtown.
Neil Godbout
My favourite story of the year was Hanna Petersen's story about the witches cauldron mushroom. It attracted a huge amount of interest as people flooded a UNBC professor's email with photos and information about where they hade seen them.
Click here to cast your vote for Prince George's story of the year in our year-end poll.
