July 3 - 9, 2025
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Community Newspaper of Blaine and Birch Bay HHHECRWSSHHH Postal Customer
IN THIS
ISSUE
Arrests made for Blaine assaults, page 3
No ‘murder hornet’ hunt this summer
Plan for the Fourth of July, pages 5 and 8
Artist Point reopens for summer, page 6
PRSRT STD U. S. Postage PAID Permit NO. 87 Blaine, WA 98230
The Way Cafe celebrates grand opening
By Grace McCarthy
(See Hornet, page 6)
s Lee Connors, director of The Bridge Community Hope Center, officially opened The Way Cafe by cutting the celebratory grand opening ribbon on June 28 at 4823 Alderson Road. The cafe is a new venture for The Bridge, with proceeds funding the nonprofit’s services to the Birch Bay community. The cafe is open from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday, serving coffee, pastries, sandwiches and other bites. Photo courtesy of Birch Bay Chamber of Commerce
Blaine Harbor Music Festival returns July 6-12 By Julia Hawkins Blaine Harbor Music Festival is making its jazzy return to downtown Blaine, giving the community a chance to listen to and learn from award-winning artists, both local and from all over the world. The festival will run from Sunday, July 6 through Saturday, July 12. “The unique thing about this is the kids get to work with professional musicians,” said DeeDee Marshall, board president of Blaine Harbor Music Festival. “Then, the musicians watch the kids perform and perform with them. It’s really unique, so it’s exciting for the kids and the community.” Musicians and composers will teach youth ages 12-20 of various skill levels in
WECU’s Old Fashioned
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a camp throughout the week of the festival. The classes include music theory, jazz and improvisation building skills and ensemble practice. This year’s returning camp faculty includes artistic director Nick Biello, Berklee College of Music professor Greg Hopkins and Grammy winner Charlie Porter. Mark Ivester and three-time Latin Grammy-nominated pianist and composer Jovino Santos Neto will also be teaching. “It feels like a family reunion,” Marshall said. “They get here and everybody hugs. It’s an exciting catchup time. They’ve been coming here for so long that it feels like their second home for the summer.” (See Festival, page 7)
Downtown Blaine
INSIDE
Blaine area residents may notice something missing from the trees this summer: jugs with orange juice and rice cooking wine. That’s because northern giant hornets, also known as ‘murder hornets,’ were declared eradicated from east Blaine, and effectively, all of the U.S. late last fall. As a result, Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) spokesperson Karla Salp wrote in an email to The Northern Light that the state agency will not be deploying any traps to Whatcom County this summer, a tactic that typically ramps up near the beginning of July. The state agency is also not asking county residents to make homemade traps made from orange juice and rice cooking wine, Salp said. However, people are still welcome to make the traps if they want, she added. WSDA is still encouraging people to submit reports of suspected northern giant hornets. “While they have been declared eradicated and we don’t have any evidence that they are still here, the hornets got here once and could again, so we should remain aware and report suspected sightings,” Salp said. State entomologists are setting a few traps near Burley, outside of Port Orchard, where a suspected hornet was found dead last October. WSDA received a photo of the hornet, but was never able to confirm that it was a northern giant hornet because the state agency didn’t obtain the specimen. State and federal agriculture officials declared the invasive species eradicated after three years without any evidence of nests or other signs of life. The hornet was introduced to Washington state and B.C. in 2019. After the hornet was discovered in Blaine in December 2019, state entomologists eradicated the first northern giant hornet nest found in east Blaine in October 2020. In 2021, three nests related to “nest zero” were eradicated in east Blaine. No hornets have been confirmed in Whatcom County since. The last confirmed hornet found in B.C. was in 2021, when one decayed hornet was discovered just north of east Blaine. The hunt for the ‘murder hornet’
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