Feel-good Friday: Global BC’s highlights of the week

Here are the five stories we want to share:

Bachelor of Nsyilxcn language fluency sees first graduates cross the stage

Osoyoos Indian Band citizen Mourning Dove Hall started her Nsyilxcn language journey when she heard it spoken on the phone, in public.

“It just kind of just stopped me in my tracks,” said Hall. “I’m the first generation that never went to residential school, so in my family there are fluent speakers, but they never spoke, and when they did it was in secret.”

She said hearing her language spoken in public blew her mind and she knew she needed to learn.

“I wanted to be able to call somebody, and now I’m able to, I can call my classmates in our language.”

Hall is one of the first graduates of the bachelor of Nsyilxcn language fluency that walked across the stage Thursday; it’s Canada’s first bachelor’s degree of Indigenous language fluency.

2:30 Canada’s 1st graduates in Indigenous Language Fluency

2 winning tickets sold for Tuesday’s $70 million Lotto Max jackpot

Two lucky lottery ticket holders in British Columbia and Ontario will split the $70 million Lotto Max jackpot.

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The winning ticket in Ontario was sold somewhere in Windsor, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation said Wednesday.

The winning ticket in British Columbia was sold in Victoria, according to the B.C. Lottery Corporation.

Two tickets — one in Kitimat, B.C., and one in Quebec — also won $564,874.20 each after matching six of seven numbers.

0:30 Unclaimed $70M Lotto Max winning ticket will expire in June

Font gives fresh look to B.C. Indigenous languages while working on reconciliation

A new font to typeset Salish Indigenous languages means so much more than just the words that it will be used to write, one of the people behind its creation says.

Vanessa Campbell, a Musqueam band member and staff member in its Language and Culture Department, was part of a team from the University of British Columbia that designed a new font which allows characters from the Musqueam language to not only be easily typed on a computer, but to match the formal institutional font used on university documentation and signs.

‘One in a million’: Deer photobombs killer whale in waters near B.C.-U.S. border

Marine biologist Sam Murphy snapped the image of the Bigg’s killer whale on Sunday near a small island northwest of the San Juan Islands, by British Columbia’s border with Washington. The naturalist, who works for Island Adventures Whale Watching, didn’t even realize the deer was in the photo at the time, according to a colleague at the Pacific Whale Watch Association.

“I have definitely never seen it before. Neither had Sam, the photographer here,” executive director Erin Gless told Global News.

1:16 Photos of deer swimming with orca stuns social media users

Ryan Gauld nets winner as Vancouver Whitecaps beat Montreal to claim Canadian Championship

Ryan Gauld scored the matchwinner off a penalty in the 65th minute as Vancouver beat CF Montreal 2-1 to ensure the Canadian Championship trophy stays on the West Coast for another year.

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