The city of Vancouver has called a “technical briefing” for media on the Olympic village for 2 p.m., followed by a statement from Mayor Gregor Robertson at 3:30 p.m. This hastily organized conference is apparently in response to Miro Cernetig’s anonymously sourced story in The Vancouver Sun today, where the key piece of new information […]

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I got a chance this week to go around the Olympic village site under construction — quite a hike, by the way. It’s hard to understand how big a project this is until you actually walk around it. You can read my Globe story on that tour here. It also has a very interesting feel […]

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One of the interesting quirks of city life is watching people emerge from the woodwork when some new gathering point entices them out. I drive up and down Cambie a lot, what with city hall being there and all. For most of my life, it’s been pretty much a dead zone from Broadway to the […]

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It was quite the party scene in the Downtown Eastside today, as the Who’s Who of the neighbourhood and the province’s social-housing mafia gathered on Carrall Street to celebrate the opening of the new Pennsylvania Hotel with 44 housing units. Much oohing and ahing over the lovely new rooms, refurbished lobby and the restored ancient […]

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Hi Frances, Thanks for your response to my pre-Christmas post on homelessness. It’s important there be a real debate about these issues, and it seems to have started. So let me respond to some of what you have written. 1. You write, “ … Housing Minister Rich Coleman announced he had bought 10 Downtown Eastside […]

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This bulletin just out from the mayor’s office. Mayor announces HEAT shelter numbers from December “No barrier” facilities provide shelter for almost 300 a night Almost 300 homeless people found shelter every night over the past three weeks in emergency facilities opened by the Homeless Emergency Action Team (HEAT), Mayor Gregor Robertson said today. More […]

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The raging debates over the snow and city responses to it continue. I’m finding it fascinating how much of the attention is focused on Vancouver, where the whole issue has turned into a debate along political party lines. I guess the snow in Surrey, Coquitlam, North Van and so on is truly non-partisan. I heard […]

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Just before Christmas, MLA David Chudnovsky sent a little missile in my direction, saying that I had been suckered by government propaganda (yet again, I think was the implication) when I put up a blog item about the provincial government delaying the bid process on some of its 12 social housing projects to try to […]

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I’ve profiled Mayor Dianne Watts before, but I did something more in-depth and personal for my column this month in Vancouver magazine here on the mayor who has charmed Surrey and many in the media.

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I noticed this article in the New York Times on the weekend, suggesting that San Francisco is considering a congestion tax (in the first part of the story) but then (in the second part of the story) hinting that there’s less enthusiasm for it in these economically troubled times. Nothing like a recession to work […]

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