Slocan Valley Business Connect
Slocan Valley Business Connect is a new weekend-long event bringing together businesses, entrepreneurs, community organizations, and residents from across the region to connect, learn, collaborate, and celebrate the Slocan Valley’s vibrant business community.
Join us October 23–25, 2026, at Lucerne School in New Denver for a weekend of networking, learning opportunities, community connection, and more.
More details and registration information will be announced soon. To receive event news and previews, contact the Slocan Valley Chamber of Commerce at info@slocanvalleychamber.com or 250-733-1172.
Proudly funded by ETSI-BC and supported by the Slocan Valley Economic Development Partnership.
The realities of addiction treatment in Nelson and beyond - Part 3 of 3
Heather Austin, Local Journalism Initiative
Dr. Kora DeBeck of the BC Centre on Substance Use says B.C.'s voluntary addiction treatment system still has a lot of gaps.
“...Within the voluntary addiction treatment system, there are still lots of waits. It's not very accessible and also something that the head BC coroner and our provincial health officer have highlighted multiple times is that addiction treatment is not currently regulated. We don't know what outcomes are for folks who go into addiction treatment in BC. And so in terms of there being a robust addiction treatment system, that's just not there…”
There are many factors that affect someone's ability to access treatment - and what happens afterwards.
Joanne Motta, housing director at Stepping Stones in Nelson, describes what happens when people at the shelter are referred to treatment.
“We have supported quite a lot of people to go to treatment…The challenge is that sometimes what happens once they go to treatment is that we lose touch with them, so we never know if they even make it…We kind of hear, but…there is no treatment center here, so they're going out of community, so they might be going to Kamloops, Vancouver, the Island.”
So what exactly happens when someone experiencing homelessness in Nelson wants addiction treatment?
Treatment options are varied, and scattered
Most bed-based treatment options require leaving the community.
AXIS in Castlegar offers three to five days of medically supported withdrawal management, or “detox.” Trail hospital also has inpatient withdrawal-management beds.
Nelson does have a bed-based supportive-recovery program, but Interior Health says clients must already be abstaining from illicit substances upon arrival.
Chris McSpadden, Supportive Housing and Emergency Housing Manager at Stepping Stones, says that for people who need longer-term residential treatment, the options are generally outside the community. He also cites wait times as a significant obstacle. He says readiness for treatment can be highly time-sensitive, and lengthy waits can result in missed opportunities for engagement.
Lack of social supports when people return to Nelson can also complicate recovery.
Housing is part of the picture, but not the whole picture
Motta describes people at Stepping Stones being referred to treatment while simultaneously trying to obtain identification, submit BC Housing applications and secure longer-term housing.
She says the shelter works from a Housing First approach.
Research on Housing First has found general improvements in quality of life and functioning, but Housing First by itself isn’t addiction-treatment. The At Home/Chez Soi project did not show that housing alone reduces substance use.
That said, Interior Health observes it is difficult for people to consistently attend appointments and treatment when they're unhoused.
So we shouldn't assume that housing someone will automatically make them stop using drugs or seek treatment. But if someone does want treatment, stable housing may be an important part of helping them stay connected to care.
So what, in addition to housing, needs to happen after treatment to improve the chances of success?
After Treatment
McSpadden says that from what he has observed at Stepping Stones, supportive and recovery-oriented housing, ongoing counselling, peer support and community-based services can all influence what happens after someone goes through treatment.
Expanding on that, Dr. DeBeck says treatment can't be viewed in isolation from other social factors.
“We need to look at treatment much more broadly in terms of how do we support someone in all aspects of their life and really often the actual substance use isn't their key challenge. Their key challenge is how to have hope and opportunity and how to manage trauma and build connections with people.”
A look at involuntary care
Another response to the crisis has gained popularity in public discussion about street disorder in B.C.
For communities frustrated by homelessness and visible drug use, involuntary care can sound like a clear way to intervene when someone is too unwell — or unwilling — to seek treatment on their own.
In this 2025 Union of B.C. Municipalities convention interview, Mayor Leonard Krog of Nanaimo, for example, supports expanding involuntary care in his community.
“It's very clear that there are a number of people in our streets now who need it, who should have it. Or we're going to leave them there to die in the streets, which is what's been happening for several years now. If a violation of rights means that it keeps you from killing yourself or perhaps killing others or hurting yourself, I'd say it's a reasonable compromise.”
Local business owner Tanya Finley says Nelson's Neighbourhood Network has advocated for involuntary care, although she says there need to be safeguards around who is admitted.
In a 2024 interview with Kootenay Co-op Radio, she described people she had encountered in Nelson whom she believed were clearly unwell but didn't want treatment.
“They don't want to go to care. We had one woman on our streets right now who is 67 years old who is kicked out of the shelter, living behind the old BC Tel building and I ask her every day can I take you? ‘No, I don't want to go. I don't like it there. I don't want to be there’.”
What involuntary care actually means
In September 2025 Premier David Eby spoke at the same Union of B.C. Municipalities convention. He said the province is hearing calls from communities for more involuntary-care beds.
He pointed to two facilities already operating inside correctional institutions.
“People are getting treatment while they're in custody and it's working, but we need to do more.”
But what exactly is involuntary care treating?
Dr. Daniel Vigo, B.C.'s Chief Scientific Advisor for Psychiatry, Toxic Drugs and Concurrent Disorders, explains that under B.C.'s Mental Health Act substance-use disorder alone cannot be used to admit someone to involuntary care.
“Involuntary care can be different things, but what we're doing here in BC, is medically indicated involuntary care. It's very strict criteria in section 22 of the Mental Health Act…”
B.C. is expanding involuntary psychiatric care for a particular group of people with severe mental-health disorders. Those people might also have a substance-use disorder or an acquired brain injury. But Dr Vigo is very clear about the fact that the Mental Health Act does not allow doctors to force someone into addiction treatment unless they have an additional mental health disorder or acquired brain injury from using drugs.
Does involuntary treatment work?
Even under these strict criteria, the results of coercing someone into addiction treatment are highly contested.
An observational study was conducted in Vancouver in 2019 around the outcomes of coerced addiction treatment. The study observed over 3,000 people who use drugs, finding no significant difference in substance-use outcomes between people who reported coerced treatment, voluntary treatment or no treatment.
Much of the broader research around involuntary care concerns involuntary psychiatric treatment rather than involuntary treatment specifically for substance-use disorder.
Dr. DeBeck says the evidence supporting involuntary treatment remains weak.
“Ultimately, this is not an approach that is supported by research evidence.”
And she says there is a particular risk for people who use opioids.
“It's not a risk-free type of intervention, in particular in the context of opioid dependence because when people are not using opioids, their tolerance for opioids goes way down. And so if they do have a relapse they are much more likely overdose and die”
Dr DeBeck says there can also be significant trauma involved in the process of being coerced into treatment. The experience can leave some people reluctant to seek medical care afterwards due to a break in trust with the medical system.
There are also ethical questions to consider around personal autonomy. Safeguards to protect people who are involuntarily detained haven’t been applied consistently.
A 2019 investigation by B.C.'s Ombudsperson found that many forms that are essential for protecting the rights of those admitted to involuntary psychiatric care were not being completed.
A 2026 follow-up found health authorities had made improvements, but said several health authorities were still failing to include all required forms in over 50 per cent of their patients’ files.
Very recently, In July of 2026 the BC Supreme Court found that some aspects of involuntary treatment are unconstitutional. Hospital directors, it said, were given blanket authority to make all treatment decisions on behalf of patients without first assessing whether the patient had the capacity to make those choices themselves. The province was given six months to bring the legislation into compliance.
So involuntary care is one tool that can be used in extreme examples. But it comes with considerable challenges.
“...we need to implement the scale-up of voluntary options that would allow us to use involuntary as last resource.”
Dr Vigo sees involuntary care as a last resort option, but not as a replacement for voluntary care and harm reduction. He also advocates for broader access to buprenorphine, a prescribed alternative that helps with withdrawal symptoms and pain as well as lowering overdose risk.
These are all important factors to consider in the continuum of caring for those harmed by the toxic drug supply. But what about addressing the drug supply itself?
I spoke with Garth Mullins, a Canadian author, activist, and methadone user at an event discussing the toxic drug crisis in Trail. He says when criminalization drives safer drugs out of the market, overdose rates increase.
“Well I think there's places in Europe where fentanyl has not yet reached. Places that still have heroin, that still have opium, places where the overdose rate is much lower…In places where they crack down on heroin, and crack down on opium, driven those things right out of the market and they've been replaced with fentanyl and tranquilizers and benzodiazepines and stuff, those are the really dangerous places for drug users.”
DeBeck also points to the role criminalization plays in the crisis.
“...Criminalization and drug prohibition has been a very large failure...The kind of idea that we can (with) more law enforcement we can somehow suppress the drug supply... And not only has it not worked, but it's actually created a lot of harms and very much the situation that we're in right now with fentanyl…”
She says prohibition means the drugs people are consuming aren't subject to the kind of quality controls that the law applies to legal substances.
And because people are still using drugs despite those policies, DeBeck argues that another response needs to address the immediate risk of the supply itself.
“And so I do think in order to address the crisis that we're in right now, that we should have regulated alternatives for people from the toxic drug supply. So whether this looks like something like heroin prescription kinds of programs, they've had these in Europe for many decades…”
She says the goal isn't to encourage drug use, but to reduce the immediate risk.
What does "success" mean?
There is no single measure of success when it comes to addiction treatment.
Mullins offers this perspective.
“I mean the most important thing is to not die…So we have a toxic drug supply…So the very thing we need to do is to separate people from the toxic drug supply, give them a pharmaceutical alternative. That's what we've been asking for for 10 years.”
Recovery can mean different things to different people.
Some treatments — including opioid agonist therapies such as methadone and buprenorphine — have strong evidence behind them.
Dr. DeBeck says addressing addiction also means addressing the conditions in which people live.
“Addressing the social determinants and the structural determinants of health is absolutely critical. Ensuring that we have healthy communities that people feel connected, that people have opportunities… hey have some level of economic security, that they have help and support if they have trauma, that there's opportunities for them to be connected with community. Those are all critical to drug prevention. I like the idea that drug prevention has very little to do with drugs. Drug prevention has to do with connection and with community and with opportunity and making sure that people have the options for a healthy life.”
Public discourse around addiction often uses the word “treatment” as a catch-all term. It's easy to say someone should “go to treatment.” But as we've seen, there are multiple pathways, and none of them guarantees a particular outcome.
DeBeck argues that despite these treatment options, criminalization remains BC and Canada’s dominant response to the opioid crisis.
“...We've had harm reduction programs on the side here and there, but our dominant response to substance use has been criminalization and drug prohibition. And so under that context, there's really few ways that we can address and really respond to the level of death and harm.”
The question then becomes, can any treatment system we create, voluntary or involuntary, keep up with the harms of toxic drugs while the supply remains unregulated?
Stepping Stones shelter is true to its name - Part 2 of 3
Heather Austin, Local Journalism Initiative
Neighbours living near Stepping Stones say the shelter has brought ongoing noise, drug activity and disruption to the area. In a letter to provincial officials, they called for the overdose prevention site to be removed, the shelter's operations to be reviewed and the suitability of the site to be reassessed.
Residents had been meeting with Nelson CARES for two years to discuss concerns including shelter rules, perimeter monitoring and safety. In 2025, they ended those meetings, saying they were frustrated by what they saw as broken commitments and a lack of meaningful change.
Stepping Stones on Vernon Street is Nelson’s only emergency shelter. Their website states that the shelter is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week to support people and make referrals to access social services, find stable housing and employment.
Joanne Motta, housing director with Nelson CARES, gave me a tour of the premises.
“This is a really well run operation. It's very accessible, it's right downtown, it’s close to services. I think it's a really important service for people who are oftentimes at the worst moment of their lives. I would love for people to see what that looks like once they kind of cross the barrier of the threshold. And you know, we’re able to provide food, a bed, and some resources to hopefully get them back on track.”
There are lots of rules and protocols in place for organization and safety. There are designated spaces for different activities — some for meeting with social workers and completing applications for housing, employment and essential documents. Others are for spending quiet time, watching TV or eating.
The fenced backyard contains three areas for shelter guests. One is for talking quietly and drinking coffee. Another is a smoking area for cigarettes and cannabis. The third is an overdose prevention site where shelter guests can use illicit substances.
The risk of overdose can increase when people use drugs in unfamiliar spaces — a phenomenon known as situational tolerance.
The OPS area is monitored by a camera and is easily accessible to emergency services by way of a door in the fence.
Motta says staff have been intentional about keeping the OPS area as strictly functional. That is, it is clearly not intended as an area for hanging out for long periods of time. It contains two basic fold out chairs and some overdose prevention supplies.
The OPS in Stepping Stones is a simple setup. Dr Kora DeBeck, a research scientist for the BC Centre on Substance Use, explains how this simple approach is effective.
“There’s sort of two main branches of supervised consumption sites, so there are federally sanctioned sites, so a place like Insite (Vancouver) and there's nurses and the regulatory processes are really high barrier, so they're quite medicalized facilities. And then there's overdose prevention sites, which really came online during the pandemic, which are much more community driven, much more accessible. And (OPS sites) have a huge amount of benefits in terms of many of the sanctioned sites can't accommodate smoking, which is what most people or how most people are using fentanyl. So the overdose prevention sites are much more tailored to what the reality is for the folks who need them.”
Skye Spears is currently the day-to-day coordinator at Stepping Stones. His job includes meeting the immediate needs of guests. He also provides harm reduction supplies and other resources as needed or requested.
Spears explains why Nelson CARES created the OPS. He says that when people were not allowed to use drugs in the shelter, they would end up using close to the shelter after leaving.
“In the past, we used to just ask folks to not use on-site, and so we found a couple different things were happening. One they would either sneakily use inside, like in the washrooms, in their rooms, and that would create both unsafeness for themselves and for others. Or they would use in community - and so often in front of the building or on the block, and so just mainly for safety purposes, but then also to create a positive relationship with the neighbourhood.”
Dr DeBeck says studies in Vancouver show less visible drug use in areas with supervised consumption or overdose prevention sites.
“There's been peer reviewed, scientific studies documenting that street disorder in the direct vicinity of the facility, so this would be things like discarded needles and syringes and drug paraphernalia and those types of things, went down when the site opened, by a significant amount.”
She also speaks to the perception that the OPS site increases neighbourhood disruption.
“I think there's a perception that supervised consumption facilities cause street disorder and attract homelessness in a sense. But y’know, those are the things that were already in the community…They're a place where people are using outside of the public and not on the street.”
Secondary benefits of the OPS
Stepping Stones exists to provide basic necessities. The OPS helps prevent overdose. Staff also refer people to outside resources.
“We have supported quite a lot of people to go to treatment.”
Motta says Stepping Stones has referred many people to treatment, but getting people into treatment and keeping them there can be challenging. Some people make it to detox or travel to another city for treatment, she says, but may lose their treatment bed or take a break from services before returning to the community.
Dr DeBeck explains some secondary benefits of connecting with an organization like Stepping Stones.
“And the kinds of connections that people make…even if it's a peer worker who can then maybe connect them with some counseling or other kinds of services in community, those can be very important connections and opportunities for people to improve their health and their longer term trajectory. So there's certainly lots of other kinds of benefits that happen, not just for the individuals who use them, but for the surrounding communities and the public.”
She also explains why OPS sites make drug use safer in general.
“They're more likely, for instance, if they're injecting to use clean equipment. They also can do things like go slow instead of feeling like they're in a high pressured environment out in public, and they just use all their drugs at once, which can be quite risky…So there's lots of sort of secondary benefits, not just to reversing an overdose.”
Lack of proper housing, she says, is central to the issue of unsafe drug use.
“What we know is underlying that is a lack of services, a lack of alternative places for people to go. Insufficient housing, insufficient support… We’ve done many studies in Vancouver that repeatedly show that people who are homeless and have a lack of access to a private space are the ones who spend the most amount of time on the street and who use drugs in public. And then we've also found when we've asked them ‘would you be willing to relocate if you had more access to private space’? The vast majority of them say they would. So, what this really underscores for me is that, you know, people are using drugs in public, they're out in public because they don't have other options. Oftentimes even if someone is housed, they're not able to have guests over or the size of their accommodation is very small, so they can't be around other people, which from a public health perspective when someone's using drugs we say, ‘don't use alone use with other people’. So essentially, if you're following public health advice, you're going to be out where other people are. So, if we're not creating spaces for people to go, they're going to be on the street.”
Emergency housing
Motta says Stepping Stones were able to secure housing for 32 people who accessed emergency shelter services during the last fiscal year. That said, the process comes with challenges.
“Emergency housing has unfortunately become sometimes long-term housing, so people are here for 30 days or more…We are very housing-focused and trying to align people as quickly and limit the time that they spend here as much as possible. And hopefully find the supports so that if they do find tenancy/vacancy that they can be matched with it quickly and maintain the tenancy success.”
Neighbourhood concerns / dry shelter
The Neighbourhood Network want the site either removed or changed:
“Well, the one on Vernon Street, I think it should be sold just like we did the Interior Health building, and if not, then we've requested to turn it back to a dry shelter, which is what it was in the original state.”
“We would love to have a dry site. Right now the funding structure is low barrier, which means that we take people where they're at, and accept people in a non-judgmental, trauma-informed, and person-centered way. If we were to move to a dry site, that would exclude a whole lot of people…There, in my mind, will always be a place for emergency housing…Things happen. Emergencies happen, fires happen, family breakdown happens.”
Next week, we'll look at another part of the debate: the challenges of accessing addiction treatment, what's available locally, and what the evidence tells us about what works.
DeBeck says the evidence on overdose prevention sites is extensive.
“Decades of research, hundreds of studies, almost an embarrassing amount of studies that have been done around these facilities. I say that because when we think of other public health interventions, once we see strong signals that they're effective and they work, we don't study them in the same way, but because it's been so controversial these have been very rigorously studied, and time and time again they're shown to have benefit. Not just for the individuals who use them, but also for surrounding communities.”
Pan Canadian artists seek community in the Kootenays
Heather Austin, Local Journalism Initiative
Oxygen Art Centre is hosting a triad of artists from across Canada. The artists are inviting the public to some open studio events to experience how they work.
“Well, because it’s a creation residency, the work will be in process throughout the five weeks that we're here. So we wanted to just invite the community into that process to see the work in progress.”
The collective, who call themselves Three Way Mirror, are hosting free open studio events this and next Saturday.
The artists are creating both solo and collective pieces in what they call a craft triangle. Working in a variety of mediums from paper to textiles, their concepts connect through a sense of social identity and justice.
“We just saw a lot of synchronicities in our working practices because we're all filmmakers and interested in working with different crafts.”
Daniel Barrow is a multi-media artist based in Montreal. Barrow is creating “paper doll poems” in the form of collage.
Paige Gratland who is visiting from Vancouver, will be working with colour theory in weaving.
“Part of what has also brought us together is creating space for non-competitive studio production. So ways artists can be together, support each other, share ideas, bounce ideas off each other...”
Glenn Gear is a multidisciplinary artist originally from Newfoundland.
“Through a lot of craft practices, there's the idea of a circle. I think about beading circles or sewing circles. And I think all of us have a kind of craftiness about our own practice that really comes out of an exploration of materials and forms…I’m from the East Coast and my dad is Inuk from Labrador.”
Gear is exploring wet felting techniques in symbolism and form tied to Inuit heritage.
The artists not only share the same artistic practices, but also common elements of identity. The overarching residency considers how traditional crafts can convey queer stories and community.
“After the pandemic descended, we started thinking about the way community is created through craft. How important that is, especially for queer people where these ideas of craft are usually transmitted through families. And so for queer people who may or may not be estranged from families, it's like this way of building community that could be really important.”
“Meet and share with other queer, trans and Indigiqueer people…I think one of the things that we offer younger artists and artists of our generation and older, is that we come together in a way of belonging that I think is kind of important for right now. So I'm hoping people will come…”
“It's very much about chosen family.”
Open studio events are taking place this and next Saturday from 1 to 3 p.m. Admission is free and all community members are welcome to attend.
Community conversation in Trail tackles harm reduction challenges
What are the biggest barriers to drug safety in the West Kootenays?
Garth Mullins is a Vancouver-based activist who produces Crackdown - A podcast about drug user activism.
On Tuesday, Mullins was a guest speaker at “Community Conversation on the Toxic Drug Crisis,” a sold-out event in Trail that attracted 150 people.
Garth says a big barrier to help is a lack of access to pharmaceutical alternatives.
“So, we have a toxic drug supply. It'll kill you in the afternoon, it’ll kill you in the morning. So the very thing we need to do is to separate people from the toxic drug supply. Give them a pharmaceutical alternative. That’s what we’ve been asking for for ten years.”
Interior Health also reports that drug deaths remain high. They say that street drugs in the region are increasingly toxic.
BC Coroners Service data shows the Kootenay Boundary remains one of the hardest-hit regions in the province for toxic drug deaths.
But harm reduction strategies like pharmaceutical alternatives remain controversial.
Organizers say the event aimed to address what they described as misinformation and disinformation around harm reduction strategies. Organizers included community action teams in Nelson, Castlegar, Grand Forks, and Trail in partnership with ANKORS West.
Rising toxic drug poisonings are putting more pressure on service providers. Organizers say space in overdose prevention and shelters is already limited.
Another guest speaker, Corey Ranger is president of the Harm Reduction Nurses Association. Ranger feels drug policy is moving backward in Canada.
He explains that an unregulated drug supply is an unpredictable one. Ranger, like Interior Health, says opioid agonist therapy along with treatment and harm reduction are among the best ways to prevent toxic drug deaths.
Mullins says pharmaceutical alternatives to street drugs are needed to reduce risk. He argues restricting access to traditional street drugs forces people to find more dangerous alternatives.
“...In places where there's been a furious drug war with lots and lots of police action, drug seizures, interdictions, border controls, all that stuff, those places are more dangerous. The places where they crack down on heroin and crack down on opium, driven those things right out of the market, and they've been replaced with fentanyl and you know, tranquilizers and benzodiazepines and stuff. Those are the really dangerous places for drug users.”
Ranger pointed to research showing an association between drug seizures and increased drug poisoning rates. Researchers say overdose rates can rise following enforcement actions by police, possibly because disruptions in the drug supply push people toward more dangerous alternatives.
Cheryl Dowden is Executive Director of ANKORS and an organizer of the event. ANKORS provides essential, harm reduction services to vulnerable populations in both Nelson and Cranbrook.
Cheryl said it’s hard to narrow down which issue is the biggest barrier to people who use drugs getting the help they need. Stigma is the first one that came to her mind. Cheryl says we should seek to understand rather than dismiss those with lived expertise.
“I would say that obviously stigma, and the way that society you know, treats people who use drugs. I mean, that's something that we've been talking about this entire conference is how we remove that barrier. And I think that that just really involves us, opening our hearts and minds.”
Nelson bear death prompts reminders about spring attractants
Bear killed after accessing garbage
Conservation officers have killed the first black bear of the year in Nelson after it accessed garbage behind an unlatched door near View Street.
Why bears return to human food
I spoke with Grant MacHutchon, a wildlife biologist specializing in bears. He has been conducting research on bear behaviour for nearly 45 years.
Grant says that once a bear becomes conditioned to calorie-rich human food, conservation officers are often left with limited options.
“You know if a bear's got a lot of experience and is well food-conditioned then it's pretty hard for them to do much with that animal”.
However, he says it takes more than a few incidents of poorly managed attractants to condition a bear.
“It usually takes some time, some number of incidents for a bear to get bolder and more assertive in its behaviour when it’s seeking out food.”
Preventing future conflicts
Katie Graves is the founder and director of the Ursa Project, a non-profit in Nelson that advocates and educates to decrease preventable bear deaths in the city. She is urging people to take precautions around their homes. The first step is making your residence less accessible in general.
“Please be careful with your doors and lower windows as well”
Katie also recommends using the original scent Pine-Sol to deter bears from accessing garbage cans or sheds.
People can freeze smellier garbage so that storing it indoors doesn’t create unpleasant odours.
Grant says it’s important not to put garbage out for collection the night before. Bears will learn when garbage days are and seek it out in those areas. He says secure storage can make a difference.
“They’re less motivated to try if it’s well stored”
He also says that bird feeders can be an issue.
“If they see a big ball of fatty sunflower seeds hanging from a rope or a branch and somebody's yard they'd be pretty motivated to get it”
With spring underway, Katie offered a useful step people can take with fruit trees to prevent attractants later in the season.
“You can use a very strong hose and sprayer or a power washer if you can just blast off some of those blossoms; the fruits at that part of the tree will not set fruit.”
She believes that with a little foresight and some practical considerations humans and bears can live harmoniously.
Grant leaves us with this overarching message.
“Takes each citizen of Nelson to take responsibility and say, this isn't somebody else's problem - this is my problem I need to do something about it, and the best thing you can do is just not make those attractants available.”