Welcome to Nanaimo This Week, your source of community news and local solutions. Did a friend forward this email to you? Subscribe to this newsletter.
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I hope everyone had a good holiday break and is ready to tackle the year ahead in whatever it is that you do.
I’m looking forward to reporting on our community in 2026. To help guide our work this year, we have a reader survey that you can respond to here with your suggestions.
I can’t wait to read your ideas and get to work investigating what’s going on in Nanaimo and highlighting the people and organizations that make our city a better place.
Happy New Year, Mick Sweetman
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| What stories should The Discourse cover in 2026?
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The Discourse team is preparing for another year of in-depth, meaningful, community journalism and we need your help!
Our award-winning reporting highlights local solutions to real-world problems, lifts up people who are making a difference in the community and holds people accountable as we dig into issues that matter to you. But we need you to help us decide which major stories we’re going to tackle this year.
Take a short survey below to let us know your thoughts.
We appreciate your input and look forward to sharing more local stories with you in 2026.
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| Tell us what you think!
| | I support The Discourse because... |
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “Most of the stories were interesting to me personally. Additionally, they seemed journalistically solid in terms of being informative and unbiased."
— Ray, from our newsletter survey.
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| | Council Corner |
On Dec. 15, Nanaimo city council passed the city’s 2026-2030 Provisional Financial Plan.
Homeowners will see a property tax increase of 6.3 per cent, including a one per cent increase for the General Asset Management Reserve fund. For the average Nanaimo home with an assessed value of $787,743, it will mean an increase of $195.
Water user fees increased by five per cent, equivalent to $26, while sewer user fees increased by four per cent, equivalent to $6, and the solid waste fee increased by five per cent, or $12.
The next regular council meeting will be held on Monday, Jan. 19 at 7 p.m. in the Vancouver Island Conference Centre’s Shaw Auditorium.
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On the Island |
| 🌊 Abey Scaglione, Salt Spring Island-based author of Radical Farm: Animals, food and Our Future, shares how she thinks communities can reconnect with food and the people who grow it. Read the Q&A with her by Cowichan Valley Reporter Eric Richards.
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| 🌊 LUSH Valley takes “a food systems approach” to nurture a resilient future for farms in the Comox Valley, reports Dave Flawse for The Discourse.
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| In other news |
👉 The City of Nanaimo unveiled the 28 artists and designers who will be making public art in the city as part of its urban design roster. The list has both local and B.C.-based artists, including Eliot White Hill (Kwulasultun), bailey macabre, Pellvetica, Amy Pye and Yvonne Vander Kooi. CHEK News has the story.
👉 Property assessments for B.C. were released on Friday showing a one per cent increase in values for properties in the City of Nanaimo, rising from an average of $760,000 to $769,000 for a single family home. CHEK News has the story and you can check the assessment for your home at https://www.bcassessment.ca/.
👉 A fire at the Value Lodge Motel on Boxing Day displaced 40 long-term residents and two people were sent to the hospital for smoke inhalation. Former residents have been living in hotels paid for by the province, with that emergency support set to expire on Jan. 14. The Times Colonist has the story. Donations can be made through the Nanaimo Family Life Association and Connective Society as well as a Go Fund Me campaign.
👉 The B.C. Supreme Court upheld a two-year suspension of a Palestinian student by Vancouver Island University for her role in pro-Palestine protests on campus. In the ruling, Justice Barbara Young found that VIU had the authority to use its student code of conduct policy to regulate student behaviour on campus without violating the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. CBC News has the story.
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| Community photo |
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A pod of hunting transient orca put on a show near Moorecroft Park in Nanoose on Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026. Photo by Mick Sweetman / The Discourse.
Do you have a great photo from the community? Share it with us for a chance to be featured in an upcoming newsletter. We’d love to see Nanaimo through your lens.
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