Dirk Meissner, The Canadian Press

A British Columbia community's "out-of-the-box" plan to ease its family doctor shortage by hiring physicians as city employees is sparking interest from across Canada, says Colwood Mayor Doug Kobayashi.

The mayor said the community has hired its first family doctor for a city-operated medical clinic, and the Victoria-area city is looking to hire seven more under the first-in-Canada pilot project.

The family doctors will be paid as community employees, receiving full medical benefits, vacation and a pension, he said.

Carol Love watches the tides at a Vancouver Island lagoon, and when the time is right, she starts to play her violin.

She plays for an audience of one, a killer whale calf that has been trapped alone in the lagoon for almost a month.

Preparations for more conventional efforts to save the whale continue, involving a large fishing net.

But Love, from Nanaimo, B.C., stands and plays on a bridge at high tide, hoping her music entices the young orca to swim through a narrow channel, under the bridge and into the open ocean to freedom, no net required.

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress has called on police in Victoria to investigate an arson attack on the home of a religious leader as a hate crime. 

Gasoline was poured through the mail slot of the family home of Father Yuriy Vyshnevskyy, pastor of the St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church, the congress said in a statement on Thursday. 

Five people were in the home early Wednesday when the fire broke out.

All made it out alive, although one child was injured and a woman needed to be rescued from a window ledge by fire crews, said Victoria police.