Frances Bula header image 4

A very Vancouver Christmas

December 27th, 2009 · 3 Comments

A lovely Christmas weekend drawing to a close, the kind that makes easterners grind their teeth. People were out running in shorts in today’s sunshine, mixing with those toting their snowboards or skis to the bus stop as they headed to the slopes. We can only hope the weather is not like this in February, […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Another fire hits Main and Broadway area

December 25th, 2009 · 9 Comments

Well, I was going to do a heart-warming Christmas post first thing, but I just got a call from someone letting me know that another fire has hit at the Main and Broadway area — this time, it’s the little block between Main and Kingsway on the south side. (A pic already in the Vancouver […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

New shelter opens in Mount Pleasant

December 23rd, 2009 · 3 Comments

The new round of shelter openings began yesterday, starting with the first one in my neighbourhood. I hope this will mean that people no longer have to sleep on the strip of grass behind my back fence — and according to Councillor Kerry Jang, that’s the response from local business people he talked to, as […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Your opinion on shaping Vancouver kindly requested

December 22nd, 2009 · 1 Comment

Being a media person, it only takes two instances of something happening for me to spot a trend. In this case, it’s activist architectural firms. Earlier this year, Bing Thom moved into the arena of hiring researcher Andy Yan to do research on city planning issues. So far, the firm has produced two interesting reports: […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Council okays tiny increase to help libraries in final budget

December 18th, 2009 · 6 Comments

I had a story in today’s Globe in advance of the final budget decision this morning, with Raymond Louie hinting that council would move a little on some of the budget numbers but not on the big-ticket item — the tax shift from business to residential. And that’s exactly what happened. The Vision councillors ended […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Mixed martial arts knocks out budget

December 17th, 2009 · 9 Comments

I thought people were riled up about the city’s impending budget. Boy, am I so last century. Apparently the real city issue these days is whether to allow mixed martial arts. See Jonathan Ross’s breathless live blogging here.

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Councillor Meggs’ new link to the NDP

December 16th, 2009 · 9 Comments

People were chattering about this at the lefty party a couple of weeks ago, but here’s the official announcement that Jan O’Brien will become the provincial secretary for the NDP. For those not in the know, O’Brien is the wife of Councillor Geoff Meggs. I’m sure those who love to believe that Meggs is the […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Council okays height increase for Ritz-Carlton

December 16th, 2009 · 12 Comments

There is literally an avalanche of news coming out of city hall these days, as staffers frantically push through reports in advance of the one-month shutdown at city hall during the Olympics so it’s hard to keep up with everything going on or pick out only one or two items. There’s the first apartment building […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Vancouver city staff gird for serious and unintentionally funny job of helping Olympics tourists.

December 11th, 2009 · 11 Comments

Okay, a frivolous story, I know, but I couldn’t resist. Word has been filtering out the last couple of week or so about the one day of training that Olympics volunteers at Vancouver city hall have been going through, which included some amusing items like memorizing the names of the mascots and learning to identify […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized

Night life in Vancouver: Budget cuts and parties and the city’s new deputy manager

December 9th, 2009 · 6 Comments

Just checking into the city hall website at close to 11, and the speakers are still lined up to protest proposed budget cuts. Doesn’t sound happy. Raymond Louie is grilling yet another hapless speaker on whether it isn’t better to save community centres rather than some of the other the services. The speaker says he’s […]

[Read more →]

Tags: Uncategorized