Envisioning a feminist city of Surrey

In July 2021, as part of their COVID-19 recovery initiative, the Government of Canada announced 237 projects that will be receiving funding under the $100-million Feminist Response and Recovery Fund. One such project called ‘Moving towards a feminist city of Surrey’ is spearheaded by the City in Colour Cooperative, a multidisciplinary consultancy co-founded by alumni…

Middle Eastern actors face substantial barriers in the film industry

Although the North American film industry has been recently evolving toward being more inclusive, there is still a long way to go, especially for Middle Eastern actors. Vancouver-based actors Hani Mefti, Panta Mosleh and Mostafa Shaker discuss the daily challenges they face in their acting careers. The number of auditions and callbacks Middle Eastern actors…

The Buddhist New Year – A time of peace and reflection

“The Buddhist New Year is a day to remind people about gratitude and appreciation,” says Reverend Aoki, minister for the Vancouver Buddhist Temple. This year, Jan 18 marks the Buddhist New Year – Buddhists around the world come together to pray. Reverend Tatsuya Aoki emphasizes the importance and sentimental value of the Buddhist New Year…

TikTok and public health

TikTok is a rapidly growing short video-sharing social media platform that has gathered over 1 billion global users, but little is known about the potential health-related impacts on its users. According to Skye Barbic, an assistant professor in the University of British Columbia’s Department of Occupational Health and Occupational Therapy, “There are several potential issues…

Examining and regulating intentional disinformation online

“Society tolerates a lot of misinformation as we always have, but the internet and social media can act as a magnifier so that it gets blown up until it almost seems like it is true, and people believe those things that aren’t true are true,” says the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, a former Justice of…

The Charming Taste of European… Cinema !

The Charming Taste of European… Cinema!The Charming Taste of Europe is a special project that introduces exquisite items to the UnitedStates and Canada, such as Italian and French wine and fresh fruit from Greece, that showcase allof Europe’s charm, beauty, culture, history, art, heritage, and unmistakable tastes. When it comesto… charm, the European Union’s filmmakers…

New relationship stressor: fidgeting

If seeing someone fidget makes you anxious, then you might have misokinesia (hatred of movements). Sumeet Jaswal and Todd Handy, PhD want to find out why one in three people have such a profound reaction to small, repetitive movements. They are leading an extended University of British Columbia (UBC) study on the topic to find…

Indigenizing The Museum of Vancouver

The Museum of Vancouver (MOV) is one of the country’s largest and oldest civic history museums, with a long history dating back to the late nineteenth century. Today if one visits the museum, the very first thing one would encounter is a strong Indigenous presence according to University of British Columbia (UBC) anthropology professor Bruce…

Cultural Spotlight: The Indo-Fijian story in the Lower Mainland

The Indo-Fijians: Surrey’s Pocket of Paradise, the largely untold story of the Indo-Fijian community in the Lower Mainland is open to the public at the Museum of Surrey. The exhibit, created by Rizwaan Abbas, was, he says, inspired by his father and his community. “What I really wanted to do with this exhibit was to…

Racial bullying in schools – a grim picture

An estimated 58 per cent of Canadian youth (12–18 years old) declare they have seen kids bullied based on their race or ethnicity at school, according to an August 2021 survey data, in partnership with the University of British Columbia (UBC), from the Angus Reid Institute. “The reason for the survey was anti-Asian violences in…

Challenging the status quo: Inequities in a pandemic

A better world has at its foundation the return to values learned in childhood, says academic-activist Manjeet Birk, PhD. “These values are interconnected to larger issues of social justice, like the ongoing effects of colonization, the environment and racial justice,” says Birk. As an instructor of a newly developed critical race studies minor program in…