Some of you have full, rich lives that aren’t routinely punctuated by tweets from the three main parties competing for seats on Vancouver city council. In others words, you’re not me. I am getting these tweets. Vision, in particular, started running them in the last week like crawlers at the bottom of the news, occasionally […]

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Thanksgiving weekend is traditionally the time when civic election campaigns in Vancouver really get underway. This year, things got rolling a little earlier, with the NPA starting its campaign in early September, and Vision and COPE upping their activity level last weekend. My colleague Ian Bailey and I took a look at what both campaigns […]

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Martin Crilly’s report analyzing TransLink’s plan — being voted on this Friday — for what to add to the system and how to pay for it is fascinating reading. Better than the average airport novel, if you ask me. Mr. Crilly, for those who don’t know, is the regional transportation commissioner who weighs in with […]

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Vancouver is the best of cities for artists, with a thriving arts scene that combines the world-famous (Jeff Wall, Rodney Graham, Stan Douglas), the new-pop (New Pornographers, Destroyer, and Said the Whale), the experimental (Boca del Lupo, Ballet BC recently). And it’s the worst of cities for artists trying to find spaces to actually live, […]

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Just had to mark this important day, when the Supreme Court ruled that Vancouver’s supervised-injection site will stay open and the federal government should be prepared to issue permits in other cities. (Stories here, here and here, from across the land.) What a long road it’s been for those fighting for this. (And those fighting […]

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A Gordon Campbell lovefest — that’s what the annual convention of civic politicians often was. The former premier had been a councillor, a mayor, the head of Metro Vancouver, and the president of the Union of B.C. Municipalities, so people knew he understood what the job was like. Thankless, gruelling hours, by and large crummy […]

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Latest announcement from the NPA didn’t get much media play Tuesday because media were running around dealing with BC Ferries CEO resignation, shooting near a school, and the Municipal Convention That Ate Vancouver (UBCM). So I’ve attached the news release in full, plus my thoughts here, which are: Sigh. I don’t like being the wet […]

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The news exploded late Tuesday afternoon as AG Shirley Bond announced to a crowd of civic politicians at the Union of BC Municipalities that contract talks have stalled and that the feds are saying, “Sign the deal as is or we pull officers out.” (Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts was probably first with the news. She […]

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So many things happening in the farmers market world these days as they go beyond just trying to convince people to do their grocery shopping in parking lots and move on to the next phase of growth. They’re booming everywhere, but that’s produced a new set of problems. I’ve been reading for a while that […]

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New towers don’t fill up with new clients. They fill up with existing big players who are looking to move up a notch. That’s why all these new towers are competing to be green, to be beautiful, to be close to what downtown has to offer. Here’s my appendix story about all of this, to […]

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