I love numbers. I remember my waitress number from my university days, “8,” because it was my favourite. I wasn’t surprised to hear later in life that it’s considered lucky to the Chinese. One of my favourite memories of high school is my math teacher, Mr. Ryan (who encouraged me in math at a time [...]

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Happy camping, all you municipal councillors who are fleeing this weekend for your annual break after having waded through an unusually large dumpster-load of city business. I couldn’t keep up. For those of you trying to so, a brief summary. – Councillors voted 6-4 to approve the Wall company’s plans for Shannon Mews on the [...]

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Lots on the table this week, as Vision Vancouver moves to put forward big policy papers and get moving on various hot-spot issues. Pedestrian safety was one of them yesterday, with a raft of new initiatives as a result. This move to pay attention to pedestrians was kicked off last November (seems to me, partly [...]

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Four weeks away reminds me, when I return, of the essential fact about Vancouver — that, like a river, it’s a city where it’s impossible to experience it as the same place twice because it keeps changing. When I was in Paris a few years ago, I was agog as a Vancouverite to see how [...]

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Premier Christy Clark’s government has so far avoided taking stands on controversial issues unless pushed, so I was surprised to see Environment Minister Terry Lake come out yesterday with an approval for Metro Vancouver’s garbage plan. That plan includes a commitment to explore incineration as a big component of the plan, which has provoked a [...]

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Toronto has decided to pull up its bike lane and move it over one street. I thought perhaps the same might happen here if results showed that business losses on Hornby and Dunsmuir were severe enough. Looks like that won’t be the case. The reports out yesterday (which I summarize here) get business losses at [...]

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The latest scuffle is over the naming of deputy city clerk Janice MacKenzie to be Chief Elections Officer, instead of having the City Clerk (in this case, Marg Coulson) as Chief Elections Officer, as is the tradition. NPA and candidate Mike Klassen setting out their case in news releases here and there this morning; Jeff Lee’s [...]

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The civic election is less than six months away, which means no hiring or appointment or purchase of paper clips goes unscrutinized these days as the Non-Partisan Association fights to get back some ground in this election and Vision Vancouver fights to keep them at bay. At school board, much kerfuffle about the hiring of [...]

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Someone’s ready for a fight to the death here, it sounds like. This just out from the mayor’s office. Do We Want our Region to Become Los Angeles? Let’s make one thing clear:  Metro Vancouver Mayors approved a two cent per litre gas tax increase and the money will not be used solely to pay [...]

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I read dozens of riot stories in Europe, but when I came back, one of the impacts I heard about — which I hadn’t read — was the effect on employees who had been in the stores invaded and wrecked. Not surprisingly, when I called WorkSafeBC later to find out more about that, that agency [...]

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