Gregor Robertson’s former chief of staff, Mike Magee, has told any number of councillors that he has no plans to do any lobbying work for developers or others as he strikes out in his new post-city hall career. But he is visiting with people in the development community and, not surprisingly, observers are unclear about […]

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There’s been vague chatter for months now indicating that the province has its eye on the profits developers are making as they build towers next to SkyTrain lines (calling Derek Corrigan at Brentwood) as a possible source of revenue for big new spends on transit. But TransLink Minister Peter Fassbender amped up the temperature on […]

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I write about, I think, some fairly weighty issues that deserve public attention. But, I have to say, nothing seems to attract attention like when I do a story about disappearing gas stations. I guess it speaks to people’s sense of how the city is changing. At any rate, I did a story a while […]

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A fun assignment recently, to take a look at the prevalance of room-mating as the housing crunch continues unabated. There’s no doubt that the phenomenon of sharing is on the upswing in many high-priced cities. I remember reading a story from London that said the big dream for young people there was not their own […]

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The first round of spending to tackle the drug-overdose crisis adds up to $2 million, mainly to staff an additional medic unit, to create a new community policing station for Strathcona, and to train more city staff in Naloxone use. The next $1.5 million available is still unallocated, although staff are looking at things like […]

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TransLink is going to be rolling out many, many announcements about improved service in the next while — all aimed at reminding people that their tax money is going to good use. They had their first on Tuesday. (My story here.) But amid the celebrations over more cars for Canada Line service, 15-minute service on […]

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I’ve been covering B.C. politics for more than 30 years. In that time, the fundraisers for various parties have been part of the scene. But none of them has achieved the high profile or hostile public reaction that Bob Rennie has. (Back in the Gordon Campbell days, Marty Zlotnik used to be the chief fundraiser. […]

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In the way that journalism works, the germ of this story sprouted at a public meeting where I was a moderator. The panel was focused on housing as a human right. But there were a lot of young people in the audience who were hungry for more — they were looking for practical solutions to […]

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Spent the day yesterday collecting stories from people about their experiences with the snow/ice situation, as well as phoning as many municipalities as I could to find out how things were going. It was interesting to hear how many city staffers talked about the big changes they made after the multiple snowfalls that turned into […]

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Through a young friend, I was alerted to the interesting photo project being done by Gu Xiong, a professor of art history at UBC. He has been shooting pictures of some little-known sites that were important to early Chinese immigrants to the province. Even though I thought I knew a lot about that history, I […]

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