This story was in Saturday’s Globe but for some reason isn’t on the website, so I’m posting it here, rather than linking it for now. 2010 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved. Free tickets are nice, but neighbourhood hopes attention will lead to increased funding from province Rick Russell and Bill Lucas normally wouldn’t spend [...]

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I don’t do a lot of events listings on this blog, but I love Wendell Phillips’ work. He shot a beautiful set of photos in the Downtown Eastside with psychiatrist Bill McEwan and his patients last year, which won a National Magazine Award. He’s back from travels to Nepali prisons, Tibetan refugee camps and elsewhere. [...]

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In case some of you missed this in the comments, here is Wendy Pedersen’s take on her neighbourhood, which she advocates for through the Carnegie Community Action Project. FROM WENDY PEDERSEN Hello. If you want to know what low-income DTES residents think about their neighbourhood, you can read this report: http://ccapvancouver.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/ccapvisionwebsm.pdf Its called Nothing About [...]

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Robert Matas’s story in the Globe this morning gets on the record the Vision Vancouver council’s discomfort with the idea of having a czar for the Downtown Eastside, a constantly recurring idea that had been floated again recently. The Vision mayor and council didn’t criticize the idea at first, but behind the scenes, they were [...]

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Vancouver’s defining neighbourhood has been in the limelight this past month, with two media outlets (the Province and the Globe and Mail) running extensive series on how to fix the neighbourhood, while police chief Jim Chu put out his own report on what to do. The unspoken message behind all of this is, “Yikes, the [...]

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Vancouver police brought out their 2009 business plan a few weeks ago, which was unusual in the numbers it attached to some of its efforts. Among them, police set a target of increasing ticketing for bylaw infractions in the Downtown Eastside by 20 per cent, ticketing for Safe Streets Act offences by 10 per cent, [...]

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I don’t know what is going on over at the VPD, but, under new Chief Jim Chu, the department has turned into a more active social-planning agency than the city’s social-planning department. Last year, the police issued a substantive report that documented how much time the police spend dealing with mental illness. Shortly after, Premier [...]

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A few weeks ago, there was a cascade of stories about how the city had scuttled a private developer’s effort to restore the historic Pantages theatre in the Downtown Eastside. We didn’t get much information about that, except for the general impression that the city had been the bad guy squashing a feisty entrepreneur. This [...]

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Here’s my story in today’s Globe that has a succinct overview of the platforms from Vision Vancouver and the Non-Partisan Association. There’s much more to say on both of these, both of which show that we are fully in the grip of policy wonks. (Each platform contains over 50 points and refers to strategies like [...]

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Another night, another debate. This one got hot a few times, though, thanks to giving mayoral candidates Gregor Robertson and Peter Ladner a chance to argue with each other. As well, there were several good questions from the audience and moderator Gary Mason of the Globe & Mail. The most noteworthy one of the night [...]

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