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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Just back from the wild scene at city hall, with all of us rabid Olympic-following media types herded into a sub-basement to get a briefing on the Olympic village from a “senior government official” we’re not allowed to name. (Not sure what the penalty is if we do — have to go help with the [...]

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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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I got a chance this week to go around the Olympic village site under construction — quite a hike, by the way. It’s hard to understand how big a project this is until you actually walk around it. You can read my Globe story on that tour here. It also has a very interesting feel [...]

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The party talk this weekend is all about the Visionista’s move to replace Judy Rogers with former deputy health minister Penny Ballem, a highly unusual move at a local government level. It’s not unusual to get rid of a city manager. It is unusual to put in someone with zero experience in city issues. Typically, [...]

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Links here to my Globe story on what’s up for the first week with the new Vision council (Olympic village and homelessness the big priorities), plus my Maureen Dowdish analysis of our desperate search for a datable mayor on my CTV blog

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It’s inauguration day for the new council and everyone’s preparing for it, including a couple of protesters outside city hall. One man has a sign proclaiming “I’m still looking for the leak … but all I see is a total lack of respect for the citizens of Vancouver.” Between the time I passed at 9, [...]

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One of my alert readers noticed this little story up on the Vancouver Sun website this afternoon, about the city suing an engineering firm connected with the Olympic village construction. I should point out that the lawsuit is over a part of the project that is the city’s responsibility, nothing to do with Millennium. The [...]

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In what seems to be a determined effort by Vision Vancouver to reprise 2002 but do it better, the team has decided to have its inaugural ceremony at Bing Thom’s beautiful new Sunset Community Centre. For those with short memories, i.e. most of us, the winning COPE crew in 2002 decided to take government out [...]

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I called up my various friends and acquaintances who work in investigative reporting across the land, as well as checking with some local media lawyers on this issue. I’ve posted the good bits from what I found on my CTV blog here.

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