Kamloops This Week looks at the stories of the week — the good, the bad and all in-between:
HOT: The Fortune Drive Overpass.
Businesses on the southernmost end of the Tranquille Market are likely breathing a sigh of relief. After a closure of more than four weeks, drivers can once again use the Fortune Drive overpass to access the area easily from the Overlanders Bridge.
That’s good news for restaurants in the area in particular, which North Shore Business Improvement Association general manager Steven Puhallo told KTW have seen sales decline by 50 per cent or more as the closure chased away lunch and breakfast crowds.
NOT: Racism.
Kamloops has blazed some trails when it comes to race — we were home to both the first mayor of Chinese descent in North America and the province’s first black alderman — but this last week wasn’t the Tournament Capital’s proudest.
On Sunday, an anonymous tagger spray painted a racial slur on an Aberdeen retaining wall near the home of a young black family. And, on Facebook, a debate’s been waging as to whether a Kamloops man’s use of the term “Timmigrants” to describe employees at the North Shore Tim Hortons is funny or insensitive — with many responders chuckling over the term and a few suggesting they’ll adopt it themselves.
For future reference, here’s an easy way to tell whether your clever wordplay is all in good fun, or hurtful: check to see how those it refers to react.
In the case of the Tim Hortons employees, Ilenna Kovacs, the woman who kicked off the social media conversations, should make the answer pretty clear.
“Their faces dropped,” she told CBC Kamloops yesterday morning.
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