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Three key B.C. political issues to watch in 2015 Since Christy Clark took over as Premier of British Columbia, she has convened the Legislature in Victoria so seldomly that it’s easy to forget about provincial politics altogether. With a federal election looming sometime in 2015, and the next B.C. election still more than two years…
If you’re coming over the Granville Bridge into downtown, you’ll be struck with the view of life-sized orcas on the side of the Continental Hotel. This is one of 100 famous murals or “Whaling Walls” created by US environmental artist, Wyland. The Wyland project of creating 100 whale murals began in the early 1980’s and…
Cultural diversity in China, where I grew up, meant nothing to me but a staged show. The so-called minority regions in some remote areas of China thrived by showcasing their unique and colourful visual culture to tourists like me. Years later, after I was acquainted with Canadian culture, I began to understand cultural diversity in…
Canadian Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq arrives in Lima, Peru this week for the annual United Nations climate talks. Under the Harper government, Canada has been a global embarrassment on this most urgent collective problem facing humanity. Each December for the past nine years, the Harper government has been singled out by activists and civil society…
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Komagata Maru incident. The Komagata Maru was a Japanese owned freighter chartered out of Hong Kong in April of 1914 by 376 Punjabis, mostly Sikhs, bound from Kolkata (Calcutta), India to Vancouver, BC. The first Punjabi Sikhs arrived in Canada around 1903 working in industries such as…
I came into the world in Africa – the continent that gave birth to the human race. Like my father, I was born in Kenya. In 1920, my grandfather immigrated to Kenya from the Punjab in India. In 1967, we moved to Great Britain, the country that gave birth to the theory of evolution. Life…
Peter Armstrong didn’t get everything he paid for in Vancouver’s municipal election. Armstrong, President of the Non-Partisan Association and founder of the Rocky Mountaineer, poured in $470,000 of corporate and personal money for the campaign to elect Kirk LaPointe and the NPA. LaPointe fell short of defeating Vision Vancouver’s Gregor Robertson, but the NPA took…
The construction beneath the photo-mural at the Georgia and Granville Canada Line Station is a messy, complex and many-layered project which will mark the new entrance to Nordstrom’s fashion retail store. The photo-mural depicted is part of many art works honouring and celebrating the City of Vancouver’s Year of Reconciliation which acknowledges “the negative cultural…
While unpacking after my arrival in Vancouver I swore to myself when I realised that I had forgotten my neckties. What a stupid oversight I said to myself, “I’ll need those ties for the office!” Two years later I more often sport a T-shirt rather than a dress shirt, and what a relief it is…
It’s sometimes hard not to be despondent about electoral politics. In Toronto, the years-long surreality TV show known as the Ford brothers was finally defeated, only to be replaced by John Tory, an old school conservative who previously backed the Fords to the hilt. Rather than progressive ex-city councillor and Member of Parliament Olivia Chow…
Freezing Water #7 had become a familiar and loved sculpture in Vanier Park, just east of the Maritime Museum. It was an installation for Vancouver’s 2009–2011 Biennale, erected in 2009 just prior to the 2010 Winter Olympics. In September 2014, apparently eroded beyond repair, workers cut it into pieces, and loaded it on a flat…
