There was a time when I didn’t know much about Vancouver city hall except where it was on the bus route. I hadn’t even thought about becoming a journalist in 1975 and was just starting my journalism career in the 1980s. I never imagined that I would ever be interested in things like zoning, bylaws, […]

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I really related to this story, since my old clunker of a ’98 Chevy Venture did not pass its last AirCare test last year, forcing me to spend a few hundred dollars to get that dashboard light to go off. So, as the story says, (for those of you for whom clicking on a link […]

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Much hay was being made a week or so ago about the fact that NDP MLA Andrew Weaver wasn’t gung-ho supporting a Yes vote in the transit plebiscite. But the local Green Party rep, Adriane Carr, said she plans to support it in a motion coming to council next week from NPA Councillor George Affleck. […]

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Some people feel I haven’t done enough to document the personal lives of our politicians. So here is my new year effort. Green Party Councillor Adriane Carr is vacationing on the Sunshine Coast until Jan. 19, thanks to a very convenient city council schedule that has the first meeting not on the schedule until Jan. […]

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I am losing hours of my life these days, standing perplexed in front of rows of recycling bins, trying to figure out where to put the component parts of my garbage. To make it more confusing, every place I go to seems to have a slightly different system. Just dumped off a bunch of papers […]

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Why should only the paid media pundits get to do this? I’m sure this group has thoughts. So do I, actually, but my brain is far too goose-and-turkey-logged to formulate them into anything coherent. But I can tell from the sporadic comments even over Christmas that many of you are still firing on all cylinders. […]

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The housing non-profit Atira built a three-storey building out of shipping containers a couple of years ago. Now Atira is launching an even more ambitious effort, a seven-storey building composed out of 80 to 90 shipping containers. My Globe story is here, with a render. You can also look at the rezoning proposal on the […]

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For those who don’t follow me on Twitter (are there any?), I was in Los Angeles recently. Yes, one of my favourite cities, which I’ll explain another time. But while I was there, observing the anguish of house monsterization (a real word, it appears), the worry about gentrification brought on by bike lanes (a real […]

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We’ll be hearing any hour now what the final wording and funding choice is for the regional mayors, as they head into the referendum. But all indications I’ve had the past two weeks is that it’s the sales tax only, as I wrote in my Globe story. Fuel tax is seen as a losing proposition […]

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Okay, go ahead and comment. What more can we say? The new mayors’ council is about to see this Friday the proposed preamble and question that will go to the province for approval. By next Friday, they have to sent their tweaked version on to the province and cabinet. Everyone is gearing up to take […]

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