After all the sturm and drang of Friday’s Olympic village doom announcement, it was rather a relief yesterday to go to the opening of the new Kensington library branch at Kingsway and Knight yesterday. For those of you who don’t remember the history (playing my Grandma “now gather round, children, and I’ll tell you a […]

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If everyone could just PLEASE REMAIN CALM. As unpopular as this might be to say right now, I’d just like to warn everyone that there’s nothing more dangerous or potentially uninformative as a media pack in full pursuit of a crisis. Everyone scrambles to find a detail that’s worse than what the last guy/gal just […]

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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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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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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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In my end-of-year, end-of-election-season post for my CTV blog, I look at the challenges all these new councils face and my fondest hopes for what they will and won’t do as they tackle those challenges. Also, links to a couple of previous posts here and here that you may have missed.

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One of my blog readers reminded me that I forgot to link to this story I had in the Globe lately on the team behind our new mayor: Mike Magee, Bob Penner, Joel Solomon et al. Here you go, for your reading pleasure on a snowy day. Oops, realized after I posted this that the […]

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The fast agreement between Premier Campbell and Mayor Robertson that led to yesterday’s announcement of 200 new shelter beds points to a willingness between the two to work around the clock to get things done, as I found out for my Globe story today.

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I really think there should have been a sports commentator at today’s first meeting of the new Vision-controlled council. Or several really, to handle the various rounds that ensued as council proceeded through the many motions put forward to kickstart the Vision agenda. We could have started with one of those hushed-voice golf types for […]

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As I’ve written in years past, there are two big “leftie” parties in Vancouver that have a certain gravitational pull on the social scene here. The first one, usually the first weekend in December, is organized by one group and tends to bring out a few more union/standard NDP types. The other is organized by […]

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