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More than anything, I wished to move to an English speaking country for a year, to become bilingual and work in my field, which is accounting. In France, during a job fair, I found an organization offering to their members to enroll in a paying language school in Vancouver for six months, and to be allowed to work in Canada, evenings or on weekends coupled with work experience in my field for the following six months. [Read more…]
As 2012 begins, the full scope of the realignment in Canadian politics is becoming clear. Stephen Harper, who once held fragile minorities in Parliament and a tenuous grip on his own party, is now in complete control. Harper’s hegemony seems untouchable for the time being. [Read more…]
A few months after moving back to my home country of the Philippines, I still continue to feel the effects of reverse culture shock, like unpleasant aftershocks after a big quake. Just when you think you have survived through the worst temblors, another one comes rumbling around. [Read more…]
Denis Bouvier has captured the drama evoked in this photomural in downtown Vancouver. Ecce Homo (Behold the Man) is the current installation on the west wall of the Canada Line Vancouver City Centre Station on Georgia St. This project represents a partnership between the City of Vancouver and Canada Line Public Art Programs. [Read more…]
Languages are a passion of mine. I studied English literature at university and taught it for four years in a Montreal college. I’ve also taught English as a second language, both in Montreal and in my newly adopted home of Vancouver; and if I’m not studying or teaching English, there’s a good chance I’m reading an Albert Camus novel, watching a Montreal Canadiens hockey game, or trying to chat up some francophones… [Read more…]
The year 2011 is coming to an end. It is customary for the media and perhaps for you as well, to look back at what has happened. [Read more…]
Some people – like myself – have a tendency to think of many new glass towers around our city as structures devoid of the soul, mystique or spirit that a historic building or an old house might embody. [Read more…]
In the middle of June, a time when the weather was hot, I was listening to Amy Winehouse at the corner of two Parisian avenues. I stopped in a kiosk, because in Paris, newspapers are sold in kiosks and not in big green or grey boxes. It is not often, frankly, that the French press cares about Vancouver. Since the Olympics, we had no news. But then, several weekly and daily newspapers were going over the same picture in their ‘picture of the week’ or ‘story of the week’ section: le baiser de Vancouver (the Vancouver kiss). [Read more…]
In a year’s time, the American electorate will go to the polls and vote for their next president. If nothing changes by then, they will be facing their future with a dose of pessimism they’ve hardly ever experienced. [Read more…]
Behind this facade at Bidwell and Davie, a 21 storey tower, the Alexandra, will soon be constructed. The tower greatly exceeds the usual height and density allowed in the area, but the developer has been able to circumvent the zoning by-laws due to the City of Vancouver’s STIR program – designed “to develop new rental housing stock in the short-term to assist with housing affordability.” [Read more…]
