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Hamilton Spectator
27-05-2025
- Hamilton Spectator
Venturing into Khutzeymateen: Canada's only grizzly bear sanctuary
Hidden deep in northwest B.C.'s coast lies the lush inlet of the Khutzeymateen, bustling with grizzly bears and other rich fauna. Created in 1994 as the first specially protected area for grizzly bears and their habitat in Canada, it is widely regarded as the densest natural grizzly bear habitat in North America. The sanctuary is located about 45 kilometres northeast of Prince Rupert and only is accessible by boat or plane. The Gits'iis tribe of the Lax Kw'alaams Band has been the steward of this region for thousands of years. The area became protected through an agreement with the B.C. Government and the Tsimshian First Nation three decades ago, and has helped conserve the grizzly bear population that calls the Khutzeymateen their home, as well as preserve the social, ceremonial, and cultural uses of the Coast Tsimshian who depend on the area. Two rangers from the Tsimshian Gits'iis tribe are situated at the K'tzim-a-deen Ranger Station at Khutzeymateen Inlet — K'tzim-a-deen translates to 'valley at the head of the inlet' in the Tsimshian language of the Gits'iis people. They keep track of bear sightings and any commercial activity, monitoring people's behaviours around the bears and staying involved in the ecology of the area. Each year from May to the end of July, Prince Rupert Adventure Tours takes passengers on their yellow catamaran to one of the only places on the planet where grizzly bears can be observed in their natural habitat, living freely in the wilderness. Khutzeymateen is also a vibrant haven for bald eagles, seals, sea lions, orcas, humpback whales and mountain goats, while coastal wolves also roam the rugged landscape. Nearby waters invite glimpses of majestic whales and playful dolphins, showcasing the area's rich biodiversity. The bears of Khutzeymateen Jasmine Newton, a tour guide with Prince Rupert Adventure Tours, mentioned that between the 40 to 50 bears that roam the 45,000 hectare sanctuary, some of them can be territorial. 'We've seen that happen with some of the females that we know really well. Hot Chocolate is a bear [and] she's got a son named Marshmallow who we watched almost every day last year, and so we've noticed kind of fluctuations with them. 'Usually grizzly bears will kick out their young at about two to three years, but she kicked him out a little bit early, and so we kind of saw them moving between different territories. Last year. He kept trying to follow her and get back on her good side and spend time with mom again, but she wouldn't let him.' The sanctuary mainly has grizzlies, but there have been sightings of black bears before, However, grizzlies do not like to associate with black bears, so when their paths do cross — typically at the beginning of the season right when grizzlies come out of hibernation — it can be fatal for black bears. 'Some of the bears are transitory, so they'll move in and out. Most of them are resident bears, we think so. They'll have their dens up in the alpine habitats, and they'll stay there for five months out of the year. The rest of the time, they're down along the shorelines hunting for salmon. 'From July onwards, they're looking for berries around this time of year, in the very beginning of the season. They like things like skunk cabbages and bulbous roots, and sedge grass is a really important part of their diet.' They forage for shellfish and clams and consume about 40 to 60 pounds of protein-rich sedge grass each day. Salmon is the most important part of their diet, while the other things they eat help sustain them. Newton shared that without salmon, the bears would not be able to build enough body fat to last through hibernation. Threats to the sanctuary's bears 'Grizzly bear habitat used to be all over North America, specifically in B.C. It used to go all the way down to Vancouver. But they've been pushed out of their territory by human encroachment, building cities and especially extractive industries like pipelines. This is one of the last intact grizzly bear habitats in North America,' said Newton. Overfishing in northern coastal waters also poses a significant threat to the grizzlies, the salmon populations and the sanctuary itself. 'Something that has been on my mind recently is that we have lots of bottom trawler licenses in the Chatham Sound. If you look at bottom trawling, it's a really unsustainable practice of fishing that contributes to a lot of the overfishing we see here, specifically for salmon,' said Newton. Bottom trawling was banned in all new Canadian Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) established after April 25, 2018. However, the ban does not apply retroactively to MPAs established before that date. 'Without the healthy salmon populations, the bears would not survive here. The reason the bears do so well here and on a broader level, in northern B.C., is because we have some of the largest intact rivers here, like the Skeena and the Nass.' Newton is also an Environmental Studies and Indigenous Studies double-major at the University of Victoria. She stressed the present threat of climate change that will impact the sanctuary in the future. 'With climate change comes a lot of animals and tons of wildlife that are going to be forced from down south to up north, to a sanctuary such as this, so we might not have enough intact ecosystems to support that, as well as, connectability, so there might not be safe passages for these wildlife to come up from down south.' She also brought up how the bears are not hibernating as long as they should in the winter due to winters being warmer in recent years. 'They're generally not going to go out and kill a moose, so they're not going to have a major food source through the wintertime. They could dig for grass or roots underneath the snow, but then they'd have to waste energy going down the mountainside. So it's better for them to just go through hibernation, but they have to have enough salmon in order to do that.' Eco-tourism BC Parks, Lax Kw'alaams and Commercial Bear Viewing Guides work in collaboration to ensure the Khutzeymateen Protected Areas are managed proactively and public access be monitored conservatively to ensure the grizzly bears and their habitats are the first priority. In 1994, Captain Doug Davis founded, Prince Rupert Adventure Tours, a marine ecotourism business to showcase the amazing wildlife and scenery of the Pacific Northwest. Bear viewing guides, like Captain Davis', contribute a per person donation to the Khutzeymateen Park Enhancement Fund (KPEF), which supports shared stewardship initiatives for the area. 'Any tourism business at its core is a little bit extractive. There is always going to be some impact, whether that be from our fuel emissions or our presence itself. But, I think our impact is very minimal,' said Newton. 'It's all on a sliding scale in my brain for tourism, because if you look down south in the Victoria and Vancouver area, whale watching has been detrimental, especially to the southern resident killer whales,' she said. 'Up here, it's not exactly the same because we're the only tourist boat of this scale for hundreds of kilometres.' She added, 'The boat was custom-made to minimize sound disturbance underwater and above water for the bears, and to prioritize fuel efficiency.' The captain says bear sightings have been fairly steady throughout his 30-year career. The month of May also witnesses the mating season. The tour typically sees between five and 10 bear sightings each trip. However, every day is different with no guarantees. The tour boat observes precautions to minimally disturb the environment around it. Its primary goal was to leave the grizzly bears and the inlet in the same natural state they found it. Note: This article is co-written with Harvin Bhathal of the Terrace Standard.
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Yahoo
Coast Guard looking for information on missing sailboat that left CT headed for North Carolina
A sailboat headed from Connecticut to North Carolina has gone missing. The overdue sailboat had three people on board when it left New Haven, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. The boat, named 'Hot Chocolate,' was believed to be operating off the continental shelf as it headed to Ocracoke, North Carolina, the Coast Guard said. Officials are looking for information on the boat after it did not arrive at its destination. Anyone with information has been asked to call the Coast Guard at 866-842-1560.
Los Angeles Times
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Meet the Jumbo's Clown Room dancer whose sexy, effortless cookbook is ‘for the girls'
In another life, before she was a beloved veteran dancer at Jumbo's Clown Room, Scarlett Kapella picked up a day shift at a sleazy yet notorious strip club in the Valley called the Candy Cat — well, notorious because it was once the strip club where Charles Manson's girlfriends danced for wads of cash before being convicted for murder. Decades later, on a Saturday afternoon, Kapella danced onstage to a song now tinged with irony: 'Every1's a Winner' by Hot Chocolate. Men — 'old perverts,' as Kapella muses — approached the stage to tip her, or at least so she thought. Instead, they served themselves hot dogs from a Crock-Pot strategically placed at her feet — a scene so surreal and unsettling that it could have been dreamed up by David Lynch. Kapella recounts standing there topless, 'completely engulfed in pungent steam of hot dog water, canned chili and nacho cheese.' The hot dog incident was a low point in her career. Still, it serves as a charming origin story of the stripper turned chef and now cookbook author. 'From that moment, I felt I had to reevaluate my life, and I vowed to combine stripping and food in only the sexiest, most elevated way possible,' she says. In that spirit, Kapella is releasing her first cookbook, 'Wine Me, Dine Me, 69 Me,' featuring flirtatious recipes and sultry photographs of Jumbo's Clown Room dancers. For years, Kapella's ongoing photography project documenting sex workers' lives called 'B—! You Strippin'' organically led to her shooting with food as a prop. From there, she was inspired to create an updated version of a 1970s-era aphrodisiac-themed cookbook with the help of her fellow dancers. 'My Freak in the Sheets Cake is directly inspired by Lola, a veteran dancer and my best friend,' she says. 'She can sit on a cake and make it high art.' The resulting book is a spunky, sultry twist on a classic homemaker's cookbook with some bite. Kapella isn't interested in cooking for an exhausted husband after a day at the office — what's fun about that? Instead, she's serving dinner for the girls counting bills under the neon lights in strip clubs. 'I am truly blessed to have access to these unique beauties willing to spend an afternoon splooshing in my apartment.' The cookbook, which includes sexy and fun recipes for Key lime pie, matcha pancakes and cocktails, is dedicated to Kapella's grandmother, Joann, who owned a catering company in Kapella's hometown of Palm Springs. As a child, Kapella had insomnia and passed the nights by watching Food Network. The erotic recipes in her cookbook are perfectly suited for the aftermath of a one-night stand or to impress a date. 'I wanted to keep the recipes effortless since dating, love and relationships are hard enough,' Kapella says. The cookbook also serves as a love letter to her mischievous mother, who 'lined medicine cabinets with obscene pages from adult magazines to deter snoops.' Kapella hails from a 'long line of party houses' — a California family well-versed in party tricks that didn't shy away from a good time. It's no surprise, then, that Kapella ended up at Jumbo's Clown Room on her 21st birthday and was smitten with the divey bikini bar in East Hollywood. 'I fell in love with the girls. They danced to Nine Inch Nails — all different shapes and sizes.' At the time, Kapella was pursuing modeling, where suffocating beauty standards of thinness were the norm. The bizarre mirrored world of the strip club felt like a reprieve from a culture that worshiped size zero. Kapella auditioned, and 16 years later, her tenure as a favorite dancer has become synonymous with what makes Jumbo's Clown Room so endearing. The mention of her stage name — Pantera — elicits cheers and adoration from Jumbo's regulars. She jokes that she is the 'Carrot Top of Jumbo's Clown Room,' known for her props, from phallic balloons to a briefcase full of photocopies of her breasts, a bit that once earned her a satisfied handshake from Laurence Fishburne. The cookbook contains the same whimsy and playfulness Kapella is known for on the pole. Like many dancers, Kapella can recount the lore of her workplace at her acrylic-nailed fingertips. For one, David Lynch wrote 'Blue Velvet' from the far corner of the bar. Anthony Bourdain — a hero of Kapella's — was a champion of the joint and featured it in his show 'No Reservations.' He understood it. No rendering of the club since can quite compare. Like Kapella, he approached food without pretension, or as she describes it: 'chain-smoking, trash-talking, and could make a bomb risotto.' He had a practicality that cut through the 'gatekept boys club' of the culinary world that once felt hostile to Kapella. 'Cooking is like a performance — it can go very wrong, but when it's good, it's so good,' she explains. Kapella is known to host elaborate dinner parties. These days, cooking for her female friends is more enjoyable than cooking for a love interest. ('Speaking as someone who has battled flames from a vintage stove trying to bake the perfect pie, I can say with confidence: No one is worth flambéing yourself for,' she says.) At a Thanksgiving dinner that Kapella hosted, she encouraged guests to cut out photos from pornographic magazines and paste them into what she joked was a 'porn-ucopia.' Martha Stewart is her idol, she notes. Speaking of dinner parties, Kapella remembers an elaborate 'dinner party from hell' hosted by a Jumbo's Clown Room dancer who was, at the time, also a drug dealer. Her famed dinner party guests were an eclectic mix of renowned musicians, strippers and, expectedly, guests with nagging drug habits. 'This one guy laughed so hard that his tooth flew out and landed on a plate in front of him,' she says. Kapella makes a compelling dinner party guest — for stories like this that she has accumulated from over a decade as one of Los Angeles' most adored strippers, observing the city from a mirrored stage in platform heels. 'Wine Me, Dine Me, 69 Me' is not Kapella's first foray into the Los Angeles culinary scene. She invented Topless Tapas, a culinary experience where strippers serve a curated menu of small plates and cocktails. 'Topless Tapas had been scribbled on a Post-It on my wall for years,' she says. For the event, Kapella collaborated with her friends, Izzie Pop and chef Jonathan Whitener, who co-founded local restaurants such as All Day Baby and Here's Looking at You. Whitener died in 2024 but was an advocate for Kapella's culinary ventures and consulted her on early drafts of her cookbook. 'There is a lot of interest in doing another, but it feels sacrilegious after Jonathan's untimely passing,' she says. Until the next time she burns a Key lime pie, Kapella can be found bathed in red light on the Jumbo's Clown Room stage, where she has amassed a cult following of eager patrons. 'People have always said it's like the show 'Cheers.' I don't know what's so comforting about it, but it's magic,' Kapella says of her iconic workplace. 'It's cheesy, but I discovered myself there.'
FACT
06-02-2025
- Entertainment
- FACT
Fred's Coffee Party: The daytime rave revolution brewing in Dubai
Caffeine is in the air. At Fred's Coffee Party, you can dance and drink like you're at a nightclub. The only difference is that it takes place during the day, with no alcohol and in a café. If you want to join the guestlist, here's what you need to know. Fred's Coffee Party has been crafted with community in mind. The team describe the event as a private experience only for community members. On Instagram it states: 'We love you and want you at the party. However, Fred's will forever be an exclusive invite-only event. Always sober. We see you and we see your inbox messages. The invites are rolled out via DMs itself, so make sure you're texting us. The next coffee party is going to be bonkers, you don't want to miss it'. At each Fred's Coffee Party, there has been a DJ spinning tunes, and lots and lots of coffee to fuel the afternoon away. Previous menus have included hot and cold drinks. Hot drinks have included an Americano, Espresso, Hot Chocolate, Latte and Spanish Latte. Cold drinks have included Iced Americano, Cold Brew, Cold Brew Tonic, Iced Latte and Iced Spanish Latte. Specials include Honey Cinnamon Oat Latte and Vanilla Bean Latte. Plus, when you get the munchies, there are cookies available. Fred's Coffee Party has been held at various locations throughout the city, including Intellect Coffee, where beans are sourced directly from farms around the world and roasted in the UAE. The weekly raves have also happened at Artisan Bakers and, most recently, at Chrono Hub. To join the fun, send a direct message to the official Fred's Coffee Party Instagram account and wait for a response (and hopefully, the location). Check in with FACT for the latest things to do in Dubai. GO: Follow @fredscoffeeparty on Instagram for more information.
