Hello there!

Welcome to the new year! We took Boxing Day off, and the New Year's Eve edition was a recap of 2024, so there is about a week of local news to catch up on today. Read it below.

— Cam

NEWS

Colwood's city clinic plan draws attention—and, it hopes, family doctors—from across country

Colwood Mayor Doug Kobayashi said last month that he’s getting calls from around the country from other municipalities “curious about what the heck we’re doing.” He spoke to Canadian Press shortly after the city announced it had found the first of a planned eight doctors for a municipally run clinic in Royal Bay. 

Under the city’s plan, some 10,000 locals would get a family doctor by 2027. The recruited doctors would be municipal employees with vacation days and pensions, but the money to pay them would come from Colwood billing the province.

The pitch to doctors: not having to oversee a small business

Cassandra Stiller-Moldovan will move here from London, Ont. this year to be the first doctor. She told CHEK that she would no longer have to come home from work, put her daughter to bed, and then do more work sorting out billing and budgeting. Kobayashi told CHEK that he's heard interest from 100+ other doctors, and from other Island municipalities interested in the model.

The model operates through the Longitudinal Family Physician Payment Program, which the province introduced in 2022 to address the loss of clinics and family practices—which was partly blamed on BC's pay model at the time, and the work and expense (especially rent) doctors take on to run practices.

A few years in the making

One of those lost clinics was the walk-in at Colwood Medical Treatment Centre, whose 2022 closure helped catalyze this push for a city-run centre. In a late 2023 resident survey, the city found that needing a family doctor was the most common top priority (69% of respondents). 

Council voted the idea forward in Sept. 2024, directing staff to partner with Aroga Lifestyle Medicine as medical director, and arrange a lease with Pure Pharmacy for an empty space on Latoria that had already been planned as a nonprofit clinic. 

How it works:

The five-year pilot aims to have doctors each take 1,250 patients by 2029, and to also employ an office manager and four assistants.

Colwood says that the clinic will get a new city department for its admin, but won't require local taxes. Reserve funds are being used for these startup costs, but the city says that those will be repaid, and operating costs taken care of, by revenues from billing the province via essentially the same process that family-practice doctors typically use.  

The intent is to have all spots go to Colwood residents who have no existing family doctor, by identifying them via postal code after they go sign up for BC's Health Connect Registry. 

Find more info at the city's clinic webpage.

NEWS

Man with gunshot wounds crashes car in Metchosin

The driver, 40, was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries after emergency services found him around 3am Monday. He had crashed his 2002 Hyundai Accent into a ditch along Kangaroo Road. West Shore RCMP believe he was shot elsewhere and drove himself away. They seek dashcam footage from the area, but believe there is no ongoing risk to the general public. 

Reminiscent of fatal 2020 incident 

It’s almost exactly five years since the January night on which a Langford couple driving home came across a crashed 4Runner on Humpback Road. Inside was Alex Knatchbell, who had been shot 12 times. Last year Damien Medwedrich was found guilty of first-degree murder for luring and shooting him, and sentenced to life.

Unrelated crash in Highlands on same night

RCMP attributed the single-vehicle rollover to weather, visibility, and the road—not speed or impairment. Millstream Lake Road was closed by emergency crews for about an hour. The driver was treated for minor injuries. 

Take time in winter conditions, and use winter tires, RCMP tell the public. 

Around the 'Shore

🚒 View Royal fire near fire hall displaces 9 & kills dog: It started around 1pm New Year's Eve and nobody but the family pet was home, View Royal Fire Chief Paul Hurst told CHEK. The house on Island Hwy near Helmcken Road is close to the fire station, and Hurst said locals were banging on the door to alert them. Colwood, Esquimalt, and Langford crews joined the response. 

👶 Island's first baby of 2025 arrives at Vic General: The View Royal hospital welcomed 8.3lb Zion Ebo Zormelo-Kika at 12:07am yesterday. Zormelo-Kika, 0, was not the first 2025 baby in BC—that distinction went to a Kamloops arrival.

🛣 Province touts addition of traffic cams between Langford & Sooke: East, west, and north camera views were installed last year at Hwy 14 / West Shore Parkway as part of highway upgrades.

🔫 Replica long gun call shuts Thetis on Xmas Eve: What looked like a rifle was just a plastic mold of one, which a jogger told police they were carrying for outdoor-activity conditioning.  

🥫 Fill A Fire Truck campaign raised $11K and filled two pickup trucks with food for the food bank. [Sooke]

🏠 BC Assessment values are now out with the start of the year. Look up addresses here.

YEAR IN REVIEW

2024 on the 'Shore

Earlier this week we recapped the Westshore’s biggest stories of 2024, from cougars to elections to a burning mammoth and a stolen dinosaur.

You can read them here, and below you can vote for what you think the biggest one was.

Community Events

📚 Sooke Library is open after holidays. Events include storytime, babytime, English conversations, crafts, and more. [Schedule]

🗓 January events at Sooke Legion include music bingo this Sat. and Texas Hold ‘Em next Tues. [Schedule / Info]

📅 This week's events at Langford Legion include fish & chips tomorrow and a meat draw and music bingo on Sat. [Schedule / info]

⛸ Teen winter ice skating for SD62 students at City Centre Park in Langford. [Saturday times]

🏛 Final days of Stonehenge at RBCM; exhibit closes Jan. 5. 

🗣 Group singing workshops in View Royal begin next Friday. [Info]

What’s Offshore?

🚢🚢 Near Colwood shore: UTE (container ship, built 2007, Liberia flag, heading from Prince Rupert to Vancouver) & GSL Effie (container ship, built 2003, Liberia flag, heading from Prince Rupert to Vancouver)

🚢🚢🚢 Further out: Seaspan Garibaldi (bunkering tanker, built 2024, Panama flag, heading from Long Beach to Vancouver), MSC Naomi (container ship, built 2015, Madeira flag, heading from San Francisco to Vancouver), Northern Jubilee (container ship, built 2009, Madeira flag, heading from Oregon to Vancouver).

Last week we looked back at what it's like for a ship crew to spend Christmas anchored in Greater Victoria.

Westshore Snaps

The sun sets on 2024. Esquimalt Lagoon photo by Gary Woodburn.

“Through the Library Window” at Hatley Castle in Colwood — Richard Steward, View Royal

 Richard was one of our winners of tickets to tour the inside of the castle during its winter openings. Send in your Westshore photos to qualify for our next photo contest.