Wednesday morning found me standing in line at a busy downtown cafe. The guy in front of me had a Globe and Mail tucked under his arm, and I caught a glimpse of the headline: “Parliament has the power.” That’s right! House of Commons Speaker Peter Milliken had ruled the day before on the long-simmering question [...]

I suppose it’s only fitting that one of my first forays into the world of online journalism should end by spending an afternoon with a trio of gay nuns.
Indeed, how I came to be seated in a Moxie’s on Davie Street at five o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, beside three men in whiteface, habits, and [...]

Council took another baby step towards the introduction of rapid transit down the Broadway corridor to UBC this past week, unanimously approving new guidelines for approaching the mega project.
Along with the new guidelines, council unveiled six transportation options for the public to choose from. These included combinations of above-ground SkyTrain, at-grade light rail and rapid [...]

A while ago I wrote a piece for this website about the growing popularity of homebrewing in Vancouver. What I didn’t reveal then (though you may have guessed) is that I make homebrew myself. I’ve been at it three years now. My first batch, like everyone’s first batch, was miserable stuff. I’d skim-read John Palmer’s [...]

The annual pot holiday came and went in a cloud of marijuana smoke and crumpled Doritos bags today, and once again local police showed an astounding ability to look the other way. Even though it’s illegal to have, smoke and sell weed, hundreds of people did all three, and in great quantities, on the steps [...]

For those of you in the know, my search for the best Sunday morning benny in the West End has left me a little discouraged. This week I could barely bring myself to go, and was only motivated by a Chris Richards text message threatening my loved ones if more benedicts weren’t rated.
Plus, I’d received [...]

I’m in love with the newspaper headlines for the Vancouver - L.A. series. “Royal Flush”, courtesy of Thursday’s 24 Hours has got to be my favourite so far. It was printed beneath a picture of a crown actually being flushed down the toilet.
In the same spirit, our breathless coverage of the Canucks playoff run will [...]

I don’t think the Globe is trying to downplay our role in the decline of wild pacific salmon stocks, but I can understand why a few people have read it that way:
Seals, sea lions devastating West Coast salmon runs
That it’s at all unclear demonstrates the limitations of the legacy media format. Style, structure and frequency [...]

So, for a brief time, I worked for Vancouver’s foremost Graffiti-Removal company.
It was a fascinating little place, where the pay was good, the workload was light, the bosses were incompetent, and my coworkers included a gambling addict, a holocaust denier, and an enchanting chap who once worked at a traveling carnival, getting paid good money [...]

The Georgia Straight is still the best source of alternative media in print available in Vancouver. They get the best writers (ahem, Daniel Wood), pick up the best syndicated columns (hello, Savage Love) and tackle issues that mainstream media wouldn’t touch. And it’s free. The only problem is that because it’s free, they need to sell [...]