Cheers to sunny, winter days.

-Liam

The infamous McBarge – the derelict relic from Expo ’86 that’s been floating idle in Burrard Inlet for decades – has been given new life, with Mission city council approving a $10-million waterfront restaurant project with the floating eyesore as the centrepiece.

The B.C. job market shrunk by 2,200 positions in January, The Sun reports, but the impact on unemployment was nullified by a decline of 3,400 in the provincial workforce.

BORED AT WORK BONUS: Anonymous Eavesdrops on FBI, Scotland Yard Call, Posts Audio

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Citizens and developers abruptly find themselves seeing eye-to-eye, as Marathon Realty’s Phil Boname speaks out on the latest issue to arouse civic outrage: the proposal to build a tunnel under the First Narrows.

The proposed $177 million crossing, the latest civic undertaking from rabidly pro-development Mayor Tom Campbell (others include the Pacific Centre project, turning the entrance to Stanley Park into a Four Seasons Hotel and bulldozing large portions of Chinatown for an expressway), has been poorly received by the public, business owners and the media, who accuse the N.P.A council of being out-of-touch with public opinion. The crossing has already gained  high-profile opponents such as Sun columnist Allan Fotheringham, U.B.C Planning Professor Robert Collier and Federal Urban Affairs Minister Ron Brasford.

“Frankly, I’m surprised there may even be an opportunity for a plebiscite on the question,” Collier says, in an address sponsored by the Citizens Council on Civic Development. “So what if we don’t build it all at once? We need some dialogues about what it means to build a better city.”

“The city survey (they just got around to it now, after we’ve been told the third crossing is all set),” writes Fotheringham, “shows that only one fifth of downtown workers live on the North Shore. That’s on the whole North Shore – how many use the spacious Second Narrows Bridge? By contrast, just about a third — 32 per cent — of the downtown employees come from Burnaby or Richmond[...] The city survey confirms what we were talking about last week: 40 per cent of downtown executives live on the North Shore. Those are the people who wield influence, and know where to make the noises. Executives don’t live beyond Boundary Road or in Richmond.”

“If we (Marathon) are to make money over the long run, as opposed to the quick buck tomorrow, then I can’t see any advantage in providing greater access to the downtown by the private automobile,” Boname complains. “To turn over substantial acres of land for parking and roads and other automobile-related services is not good for the big developers, and it’s not good for the taxpayers.”

In the days to come, city council will announce that no plebiscite will be conducted on the crossing (likely a tunnel connecting the North Shore with Brockton Point) and in response, critics will step up their efforts, circulating petitions against the development. However, neither Campbell nor Port Authority Chairman Bill Rathie will be able to drum up sufficient civic or financial support for the project, and, with Campbell’s retirement from office in late 1972, the project will languish.

“Mayor Tom Campbell, the Pushmi-Pullyu of local politics, puffed up his pigeon breast and announced that there would be no plebiscite held on the question of the third crossing,” Fotheringham will write, in the Sun, several days later. “’Those who want to oppose it, ignore them’ he advised, in a memorable statement that will be well remembered when the N.P.A. asks for endorsement in the December elections. The pertinent fact is that the N.P.A is no longer representative of the feeling of this city. The people who live in this city know it and the N.P.A, within itself, knows it.”

IMAGE: The Dunsmuir Tunnel (later part of the Skytrain line) circa 1930. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Archives.

According to TransLink spokesperson Drew Snider, a standard 40-foot city bus costs the company $140 per hour to operate. Assuming all passengers are traveling one zone and paying the full $2.50 fare, nearly one passenger per minute is required to cover the cost of operating a city bus.

A new Angus Reid Public Opinion poll shows the NDP in front of the B.C. Liberals for the first time, with 26 per cent of decided voters saying they favour NDP leader Adrian Dix for premier, while 22 per cent indicate they would vote for Christy Clark. John Cummins, meanwhile, leader of the B.C. Conservatives, trails at a distant 8 per cent.

The VPD has released a sexy photojournal of female suspects alleged to have participated in the purported Stanley Cup riots.

And, according to the Pagan groundhog ritual, we’ve got an early spring coming. Well, I’ll be darned: sun for the next five days.

BORED AT WORK BONUS:

As a way to promote Engineering Week, and to raise money for the BC Children’s Hospital, UBC Engineering students kidnap Stanley Park’s famous Nine O’Clock Gun.

The following day, a ransom note arrives at City Hall that reads:

“Dear Sir: As you are probably aware, the nine o’clock gun has been kidnapped. If the city of Vancouver wants it back, a photo of our mayor Tom Campbell or a reasonable substitute should appear in the Vancouver Sun on Tuesday, donating $100 to the Children’s Hospital.”

However, Campbell, a public figure despised by the city’s youth, is in the hospital for stomach surgery, and his replacement, acting Mayor Hugh Bird, is not in a charitable mood.

“The city certainly is not going to start to pay ransoms to people who carry out irresponsible actions,” says Bird. “It’s not the policy of the city to make grants to worthwhile causes because of a ransom note.”

City police are unable to say whether charges will be laid.

“But,” says Inspector Victor Lake, “a pretty dim view will be taken of the incident.”

Image: Nine O’Clock Gun, circa 1943. Don Coltman, Photographer.

The firing of chief planner Brent Toderian this week was in anticipation of improved community consultation required as the freshly-elected council moves on affordable housing initiatives, The Globe reports. Toderian, by all accounts, was strong on policy and design, but not so skilled in the delicate politics and diplomacy required of the Director of Planning. Frances Bula offers up some great insight for those interested in the details.

Following eight ecstasy-related deaths in the last few months, Calgary police are considering an amnesty for anyone turning in the drug, the Calgary Herald reports. Meanwhile, 60 kilograms of khat, a popular stimulant chewed in Africa, has been seized at the Calgary airport. It’s the second largest shipment of the plant intercepted this month, the Herald reports.

And data nerds rejoice: Statistics Canada is making a whole lot of data available online, for free.

BORED AT WORK BONUS: War No More Trouble

Maclean’s magazine gives the entire nation its first look at Vancouver’s seedy underbelly as it publishes a revealing feature on the Downtown Eastside drug trade entitled “The Dope Craze That’s Terrorizing Vancouver”.

“Since the end of the Second World War the number of known drug addicts in Canada has risen from two thousand to five thousand,” the article declares. “Of these, three thousand live in British Columbia, and two thousand of them inhabit or frequent a down-at-the-heel business section in Vancouver’s east end near the waterfront, bordered by Chinatown, and crisscrossed by such streets as Hastings, Main, Pender, Powell, and Cordova.”

The piece, written by journalist and war hero Mackenzie Porter (who will later work for the Sun, writing controversial editorials calling for, among other things, an end to workplace bathroom usage, and for the resignation of all gay politicians), explores the intricacies of the area known as “Skid Row”, and the crime and vice which have “set new records for lawbreaking in varieties ranging all the way from the ‘one-way ride’ of gangsterdrom to ordinary brutal murder.”

According to the article, Vancouver has the highest rate of drug addiction in the Western Hemisphere, at one in every 250 citizens, thanks in large part to a climate that allows addicts to survive on a minimal amount of money. And, as the article goes on to state (a claim backed up by Transition, a newspaper published from the New Westminster Penitentiary), dealers have followed the migration of their clients, and there is now widespread “gangsterism” in the local drug trade.

The characters in the east, especially in Montreal and New York, have lately shown a keen interest in Vancouver’s large drug population,” Transition alleges. “Profits from illegal drugs have for the past few years been divided between about a dozen local men who have operated without molestation from the big operators in the east. Now these big operators in the east have decided they want to move in and reap all the profit so they have sent their gunmen to take over a la Prohibition [sic].”

Porter’s article also contains helpful descriptions of cocaine and heroin, as well as the practices of addicts determined to score “a fix”. It goes on to detail the recent spike in violent crime in the Downtown Eastside, pointing to recent sensational drug-related murders, including that of nightclub waiter Danny Brent, whose bullet-riddled body was found the previous September, and whose safety-deposit box contained close to $200,000 worth of heroin. In addition, it explains the increasingly elaborate practices used by addicts and “pedlars” in exchanging drugs.

“The capsules are wrapped in silver foil,” the article continues. “This is always contained in a small rubber balloon. Whenever they venture out to meet an addict they carry the separate capsules or bargain balloons in their mouths. If they are approached by police they immediately swallow the capsules and balloons and recover them later. When addicts have made a purchase they too pop the drugs into their mouths. Police who nab addicts or peddlers always thrust their fingers into the suspect’s mouth to try and grab the drugs before they are swallowed.”

Additional methods include the caching of drugs under loose stones, fire hydrants, or flagpoles, with the addict purchasing a slip of paper from dealers detailing the location of their fix.

“Addiction nearly always begins in a criminal environment,” says Detective Mead of the VPD Drug Squad. “The youngsters get to know thieves and prostitutes and begin to regard them as heroes and heroines. Then they start imitating them. When they first take drugs it’s rather like a boy taking his first cigarette. They do it to show off.”

IMAGE: Two men by a campfire, on the edge of the road, in the Downtown Eastside, circa 1957. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Public Library.

Fantasy Gardens may finally be gone, but, the scandal over Bill Vander Zalm’s resignation still isn’t over – the former premier is in court this week, after being sued for defamation over passages in his autobiography by the man who headed the conflict-of-interest commission that ended his career. Ted Hughes, whose report forced Vander Zalm’s resignation, alleges that statements made in the disgraced politician’s new book Bill Vander Zalm: For the People, (claiming that Hughes acted in self-interest, not for the public good) were damaging to his reputation.

In their continuing crusade to catch Stanley Cup rioters (including a shiny new website), the Vancouver Police Department has identified an additional six suspects in the beating of Robert Mackay on the evening of the Stanley Cup riots. Mackay was swarmed after attempting to get between rioters and things they wanted to break.

BORED AT WORK BONUS: Monsanto Patents the Pig

“There are rock and roll bands on every street corner in the world, and then there is The Clash” writes an article in the Vancouver Express, as ‘The Only Band That Matters’ plays its first North American show ever at the Commodore Ballroom.

“The Clash is a band of four Britons whose angry young music is exceeded only by their vision: nothing less than a world in flames,” notes the paper, in an article written by budding rock journalist Vaughn Palmer. “The Clash came to North America this week playing their first concert ever on this continent at the Commodore Wednesday night. If the boys like it as little here as they have elsewhere, we can expect some bad notices when they get back home – perhaps in the form of a scathing song or two.”

The band turns in a solid performance, opening with “Complete Control”, (described by Palmer as “a blistering attack on the sins of their own record company that is also a statement of brazen artistic freedom”) and following with songs such as “Drug Stabbing Time”, “I’m So Bored with the U.S.A” and “Tommy Gun”.

“Compared with what The Clash sing about, other rock bands don’t sing about anything that matters,” Palmer notes. “From where they sit the band warns: ‘It’s all around the corner: the English Civil War.’

The act is well-received by Vancouverites (showing their appreciation by hurling projectiles at the band), as are their openers: local teen punk group The Dishrags. However, their second opener, rock ‘n’ roll legend Bo Diddley, receives a less positive reception, by forced offstage by abuse and catcalls before he can complete his set. The Clash, clearly irritated by their reception, cut their set short, ending with a jam with Diddley, on “I Fought the Law”.

“The Clash are unbeatable at anything that can be done with three electric guitars and a drumkit,” the article continues. “Interested bystanders are directed to either of the Clash albums, especially the new one, ‘Give ‘Em Enough Rope’ (give who [sic] enough rope?). As for Wednesday night, we heard you boys, and it sounded mighty fine. But was anyone really listening?”

IMAGE: Vintage advertisement for The Clash at The Commodore, circa 1979.

Prior to 1968 there was no Divorce Act in Canada. Couples looking to terminate their marriage had to petition the Senate to have their union nullified by an act of parliament. In 1987, a change to the Divorce Act reducing the number of years of separation required before a divorce could be granted saw a leap in Canada’s rates, with an estimated 48% of marriages terminating before their 25th anniversary. Since then, the trend has been steadily downward, with 2003 figures suggesting 35.3% of marriages will fail before their 25th anniversary.

A week after massive online protests against the anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA killed the proposed legislation in the U.S., Michael Geist, Internet and E-commerce Law Professor at the University of Ottawa, is warning Canadians that a similar bill is about to be passed in Canada. “…several groups have laid the groundwork to add SOPA-like rules into Bill C-11, including blocking websites and expanding the ‘enabler provision’ to target a wider range of websites,” Geist writes on his own website. According to Geist, the same lobby groups behind SOPA and PIPA in the U.S. are shaping Bill C-11 here in Canada. The text of the proposed legislation can be found here.

Geoff Dembicki over at The Tyee examines the implications of legal precedent for consultation between Enbridge and Coastal First Nations on the Northern Gateway pipeline project. “Even non-native analysts predict Northern Gateway is likely to become a test case for what level of consultation with First Nations is required by previous Supreme Court decisions. Arriving at that answer — whatever it turns out to be — may take so long that the sheer passage of time cripples the effort to finance and construct the proposed link between Alberta’s oil sands and Kitimat’s port on the northwest coast of B.C.,” Dembicki explains.

BORED AT WORK BONUS:

Techno-savvy Vancouverites swoon, and the city prepares to plunge headfirst into the future with the news that it will soon be home to its very own FM radio station.

“A 250-watt frequency modulation broadcasting system, latest radio development, will be established in Vancouver as soon as equipment is available,” reports the Vancouver Sun. “Frequency modulation, or ‘FM’ as it is familiarly known in radio language, reduces static to almost nothing and permits truer reproduction of broadcasting, including reception of musical overtones and other notes not now available in transmissions.”

The 250-watt stations, which will be installed by the CBC in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal, are expected to open “new vistas in broadcasting”, according to an address by CBC chairman A.D. Dunton, speaking to a luncheon meeting at the Hotel Vancouver. Unfortunately, as of Dunton’s address, not a single FM radio set is available in retail outlets in Vancouver, and, due to technological limitations, it is likely that the new CBC frequency won’t be available to all areas of the city.

“It is expected [FM sets] will be manufactured and ready for sale on the retail market in Canada this fall,” the Sun reassures its readers, however “even parts of Vancouver thus may not be able to hear the new station established here, depending upon location of these areas.”

IMAGE: Radio announcer at work at CJOR, circa 1942. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Archives.

BC Ferries has announced that plans are underway to convert their fleet to liquefied natural gas, which is currently around 40% cheaper than diesel, the Sun reports. The news comes on the tail of an independent review suggesting the change as a viable cost-cutting measure for the embattled fleet. Independent analysts have declared that the high cost of ferry operations in B.C. have “reached the tipping point of affordability”.

Vancouver taxi companies are requesting permits for an additional 99 cars for weekends and peak hours, the Sun reports. Meanwhile, the B.C. Taxi Association is lobbying to allow cabbies licensed in other municipalities to help with the volumes. Currently, only taxis licensed in Vancouver can pick up within city limits, the Sun explains.

BORED AT WORK BONUS:

Just in time for the opening of western Canada’s first High Fidelity Music Show, the Vancouver Sun attempts to make sense of the latest technological and “cultural revolution”: Hi-Fi.

“Painting, the book industry, sculpture – none of the arts has had anywhere near such benefits from an invention,” gushes the paper, “nor can they even begin to approach great music in popular dissemination.”

News of the benefits of Hi-Fi, which, by no coincidence, share two full pages with advertisements for the trade show, explain the intricacies of woofers and tweeters, the “electronic cop” known as a crossover frequency, as well as new innovations such as stereophonic sound.

“Stereo recordings uses [sic] two microphones or two sets of mikes in a studio or concert setting,” the paper explains, helpfully. “Each set of mikes is aimed at a particular section of the orchestra or opera, but picks up the entire sound as a background[...]When the sounds are played back on stereo equipment, the sound from the right of the orchestra comes out of the right-hand speaker.”

“The LP record does for music what the invention of printing had done to literature,” the Sun quotes a University of Michigan professor as saying. “Because of the extent of coverage of all types of music by LPs I’ll wager the music of the 14th and 15th centuries is more familiar to our students than the literary works of the period.”

Among the paper’s predictions for the future are that records will one day be “trinaural”, and speakers will “work by cosmic rays”.

IMAGE: Woman with record player in recreation room. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Public Library.

The $1.4 billion Evergreen Line, which will connect the Tri-Cities area to the region’s rapid-transit network, has finally been approved. After years of debate on how to fund the project, a recent agreement between Metro mayors has made construction possible through a 2% gas tax increase.

YVR has announced significant upgrade plans in response to growing competition from other Canadian airports. New navigation and airliner technologies have mitigated the geographic advantage Vancouver once had as the gateway to Asia, The Globe quotes YVR CEO Larry Berg. With flights now traversing the polar regions to connect with Chinese terminals, Calgary, Toronto and Edmonton all have their sights set on new Asian passengers. Naturally, The Province is upset: Vancouver Airport to grow. Guess who’s paying for it?

BORED AT WORK BONUS: ”Will Israel Attack Iran?“

“Rain setting new records” declares the Vancouver Sun, as the city experiences its 20th consecutive day of rainfall, making it the wettest January in half a century.

“The city set a new record Sunday as rain fell on the Lower Mainland for the 20th consecutive day,” the paper reports, “and more rain today set another record, based on 50 years of weather observations.”

The unprecedented precipitation floods ditches, turns a deep hole at a Venables St. construction site into a “deathtrap”, and even allows an armed-robbery suspect to escape from Oakalla Prison, when the police dog tracking him loses his trail in the rain. Weather around the country is little better, with heavy snowstorms hitting farther east, in cities such as Winnipeg and Edmonton.

“Precipitation at Vancouver weather station on Sea Island today stood at 7.84 inches so far this month,” the Sun continues, “and it seems almost certain the existing January record of 8.17 inches will be surpassed.”

The rain will continue to fall, unbroken, for a further eight days, setting a consecutive rainfall record for January which is yet to be surpassed.

IMAGE: Granville Street in the rain, circa 1951. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Public Library.

In British Columbia, roughly 360,000 more men than women own these classifications.

The Vancouver Sun seems pretty pleased that infamous B.C. polygamist Winston Blackmore struggled to remember the names of all his wives during testimony in his tax trial.

President Obama’s State of the Union address, quite possibly his last, outlined a tax policy to attract business back to America, called on the the rich to help rescue the country from its dire financial situation, and named the growing disparity between rich and poor as a threat to the American middle class.

Meanwhile, in the local political arena, Vision Vancouver has called for an end to corporate and union donations in civic elections. “Mayor Gregor Robertson says the current rules are outdated and it’s time the province made the voting process more fair and transparent,” CBC reports. I wonder if the ban will apply to corporate donations apparently originating from charitable organizations. Hmm?

BORED AT WORK BONUS: But I love pie…

“Representatives of Vancouver’s poor people marched on city hall [sic] Monday to declare council ‘null and void’ and to establish a shadow civic government,” reports the Vancouver Province, as 200 members of the B.C. chapter of the National Coordinating Committee of Poor People join a national protest movement, and occupy City Hall.

“The 200 participants had hoped to take over the council chamber, but found the doors locked and guarded by two dozen policemen,” the paper reports. “They camped for an hour outside the mayor’s office, decrying their plight and demanding change.”

Establishing a “provisional council” in the building’s foyer, the committee protests the province’s high unemployment rate and outlines a number of demands, among them “total rent control”, that “lands owned by the city shall be used for low-cost housing and not for private developers’ profit”, and “that all welfare applicants must be eligible for cash assistance”.

Alderman Harry Rankin, an outspoken supporter of many of the committee’s goals, is named “Honourary Mayor of Vancouver”, though when he attempts to make a speech is greeted with “a chorus of boos”.

Mayor Tom Campbell – long a figure associated with big development, and an outspoken enemy of the city’s poor, youth, and alternative voices – is characteristically unsympathetic to the protestors’ demands, staying in his office during the entirety of the occupation, and stating: “I think it was rather childish. They’re just playing games now… They’re not doing their cause any good.”

The protest, part of a nationwide movement that also included direct action in Toronto, Ottawa, Kingston, Halifax, Saskatoon, and Calgary, is largely composed of young people, the Province notes, “but all ages were represented.”

Following the occupation, a small group marches on the Canada Manpower Agency, protesting British Columbia’s high unemployment rate and demanding jobs. They vow to meet each Monday, Wednesday and Friday, in an attempt to “mobilize the poor”.

“We are in a position of having to tell the present council that it has failed at its job,” claims a statement by the group, “and that it is now time to move over and give someone else a try.”

IMAGE: The “Provisional Council” in the foyer of Vancouver City Hall, January 25th, 1971. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Province.

For the second time in a week electoral history is made in B.C., as female voters (exercising their franchise for the first time) and their male counterparts grant a landslide victory to the province’s first female MLA – much to the chagrin of The Province.

Mary Ellen Smith, who ran as an independent on the slogan “Women and Children First”, and who had taken up politics after the death of her moderately-successful MLA husband Ralph, wins a decisive victory of 3,500 votes over her opponent, returning soldier Sgt. Walter Drinnan.

“Not only did the women of my fair city stand behind me… but the men were there too,” Smith says in a speech thanking her constituents.

“Hundreds of men voted for Mrs. Smith because of the novelty of a woman candidate,” an unnamed official in Drinnan’s camp claims in an interview with The Province. “They want to see how she will get along in the legislature.”

The paper does little to disguise its bitterness over the win, running several full columns on the outrage of voters of both sexes, with colourful subheadings such as “How Did It Happen?”

“Why that’s horrid of you awful men,” a female voter is quoted as saying. “Now I hope that you will all have to wear petticoats. I am sorry that I am a voter in Vancouver when the people will defeat a returned soldier.”

“People should remember that of returned soldiers probably not 500 were on the voters’ list,” a Drinnan official assures the paper. “The women’s vote was a mysterious quantity.”

“The returned soldiers waged a good, clean and able campaign,” The Province concludes, attempting at last to disguise its rancour. “They can take comfort that no one could have headed off Mrs. Ralph Smith. The truth is that she, as a leader of her newly-franchised sex and a fitting successor to her late husband, was certain of election on the day she announced her candidature. Against any male candidate in a campaign fought under regular conditions, the returned soldier would probably have won in a walk. Now that the ladies have tasted blood, there is, of course, no telling how far they will go.”

Mary Ellen Smith will go on to have a lengthy career in politics, spearheading a number of initiatives, including a minimum wage for women and girls and laws regarding juvenile courts, and establishing social welfare for mothers. She will go on to become the first female cabinet minister in the country and, in 1928, be appointed as the first female Speaker of the House in the entire British Empire.

IMAGE: Mary Ellen Smith, circa 1920s. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Archives.

Meanwhile, Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts has penned a letter to the federal government requesting tougher sentences for illegal firearms…

Vancouver Police have issued an apology to Manjit Singh after six officers mistakenly arrested the 51-year-old for a bank robbery that never happened. Singh, who is seeking legal advice, says the officers arrested him as he was taking out the trash, forcing him to the ground and kicking him multiple times.

Public outcry over the fate of the Rio Theatre may serve as the catalyst for changes to our antiquated liquor laws, The Province reports. Provincial edict declares alcohol cannot be served in movie theatres – a revelation that left the venerable Rio without a business model following its approval for a liquor license last year. Sunday, the theatre screened its last film, but a groundswell of support has put the issue in front of City Council.

Insert real estate joke here: Vancouver reclaims unused graves at city-run Mountain View Cemetery (thanks @gregeh)

BORED AT WORK BONUS: How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work

Also, novelty gavels.

Peter and Shahram Malek, the original developers of the ill-fated Olympic Village, have purchased a new piece of property on Hastings St. for $4.9 million. Why is this news? Well, as you may recall, the Malek brothers were bailed out by Vancouver taxpayers when their flailing Olympic Village met with the Great Economic Downturn, and the city had to assume the $1 billion development loan. According to The Globe, the purchase has irked city officials who are investigating whether the Malek’s met all their commitments for securing the city’s loan.

The Vancouver Sun and The Province have announced they will comply with a court order to hand over all photographs gathered during the Stanley Cup riot to the VPD. “We will reluctantly turn over the photos and videos to police, but remain concerned that the production order turns journalists into evidence gatherers for police,” The Sun quotes Harold Munro, its own deputy managing editor. Not much sympathy towards journalistic ethics in the comments, however.

Police are asking anyone who may have information about a targeted shooting that left one man dead and another in critical condition in Surrey to come forward and speak with investigators. Heh.

BORED AT WORK BONUS:

“Revolution has hit the Georgia Straight,” reads the front page of The Ubyssey, as, following failed negotiations with owner Dan McLeod, the alternative paper’s own staff members take over its Powell St. offices in an attempt to turn the enterprise into a legal collective.

“Staff members of the Vancouver alternative weekly Wednesday morning occupied the paper’s publishing office at 56-A Powell Street in an attempt to give the Straight legal status as a co-operative,” The Ubyssey explains, reporting that the occupation, which began at 6:30 in the morning, is expected to last “indefinitely”.

A “negotiation committee” was formed in December of 1971 to convince McLeod to forfeit ownership of the paper. However McLeod, who owns all legal rights to the name, the bank account and all other aspects of the company (and has since 1967), was, not surprisingly, uninterested in discussing the issue. His counteroffer of allowing the staff to use Straight offices and equipment to start their own enterprise was flatly refused.

“The basis was economic,” former music editor Dan McGrath will claim in a 2010 interview with The Dependent. “Basically, we wanted to get paid. For the last eight or nine months I was there, I didn’t see a nickel. But McLeod, at the same time, had a distribution company. And he was making all this money distributing these American magazines and rock newspapers, and he was also distributing pornography. Well, of course, it finally dawned on some people that the money from the Straight was being siphoned off into this distribution company, and at the same time we weren’t getting paid. It didn’t bother me so much, because I was making money as a teaching assistant, but the other guys, it was killing them. And, they finally said: ‘Okay, enough of this.’”

In response to the occupation, McLeod (who, according to The Ubyssey, owes staff members more than $2,000 and is “in debt to his printing company”) will cut off both mail and phone service and file a number of injunctions – one to reposess the office and equipment, and another to prevent the collective from distributing an alternate Straight, known as the Georgia Grape.

“The paper, and the community it serves are more important than the staff,” McLeod replies, in a Straight interview published later that month, “and if that paper folds, it is the community which will suffer most. I believe it is quite possible the paper will fail under collective ownership, and this must not happen. I never wanted to own the Straight, but I’ve always felt very strongly that the Straight, or a paper like it, MUST survive. I have never found, though I wish I could find one, an alternative to single ownership which would ensure the survival of some kind of free press in Vancouver.”

After two weeks, the collective will be removed from the Straight’s offices, taking with them the only piece of equipment they officially own, a typewriter, and shortly thereafter the Georgia Grape will cease publication.

Decided to make it all about the ladies this week.

-Liam

Downtown residents living near BC Place are rallying against the video billboards installed around the stadium. Apartment dwellers have banded together to form “Take the Giant Screen Down Now”, complaining that the flashing lights are invading their homes. Particularly loathed is a 1,500-square-foot sign installed on Robson, which, as The Globe astutely points out, is “larger than many of their glass-walled condos”.

Enbridge has announced that a controversial agreement with the Gitxsan Nation, which would have seen the band take an equity stake in the Northern Gateway pipeline project, has collapsed. In December the band’s chief negotiator, Elmer Derrick, announced that an agreement had been reached, prompting immediate outcry from the community. A Tuesday vote among tribal chiefs officially rescinded their support. The news comes on the heels of President Obama’s surprise announcement that he was denying TransCanada Corp.’s application to build a pipeline from the Alberta tar sands to refineries on the Gulf Coast.

BORED AT WORK BONUS:

In a meeting room originally known as “Bummer’s Hall”, Captain James Raymur, manager of the Hastings Mill, opens the New London Mechanics Institute, a reading room which serves as Vancouver’s first public library.

Raymur, an accomplished seaman who took over management of Edward Stamp’s lumber mill after the latter went bankrupt and returned to Europe, is described as an intelligent, well-dressed man, with a keen interest in establishing decorum and education on the uncivilized shores of Burrard Inlet.

“He had the pallor of ascetic which could be mistaken for intellect,” early settler Joe Mannion (owner of the Granville Hotel) says of Raymur. “Nobody would believe that he had sailed the seven seas – well educated, well dressed, with a ready business manner.”

The Institute has few books, though those it does have are stamped with the words “Mechanics Institute” on the interior cover. However, two months later, Admiral George Fowler Hastings will donate the majority of his ship’s library (including George Eliot’s “Middlemarch”, Byron’s “Works”, and a book known as “The Wonders of Optics”) to the reading room, on the occasion of his return to Europe. In honour of this gesture, New London will be renamed the Hastings Institute, and will remain the repository for the city’s books until the Great Fire of 1886.

The following year, the Vancouver Reading Room will be established as the city’s first official library in rented space above Thomas Dunn’s hardware store at 136 Cordova Street, and, in 1888, fees will be abolished, allowing free access for all.

A number of the New London Institute’s original books will remain in the possession of the City Archives.

IMAGE: Cordova Street, circa 1890. The Vancouver Reading Room is on the right-hand side, barely visible, next door to the Hudson’s Bay Company. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Public Library.

- RJ McDougal, BC Real Estate, 1911

Last year, the average price of a detached home in Vancouver passed $887,000, triggering groans from locals, and renewed worries about overseas property speculation pricing the average homebuyer out of the market. With mean house prices rising by 10-15% per year, average prices that, when compared with income, now exceed those in New York and London, and Vancouver bearing the distinction of being one of the three least-affordable cities on the planet, real estate, speculation, and affordability are topics on the lips of activists, politicians and locals all over town.

So how did it get this way? What changed? When did overseas ownership take over the market? How did Vancouver go from being a city where one could reasonably expect to purchase a single-family home, to the most expensive city in the country?

The reality is, nothing’s changed. Contrary to the cozy little myths about inflated land values and foreign ownership started in the 80s by mainland China, the factors that fuel the city’s vibrant real estate market are actually little different than they were 100 years ago. In fact, if it weren’t for the global property market, there may never have been a Vancouver in the first place. The only difference is, back then, the speculation that transformed the tiny logging village of Granville into a bustling metropolis was coming from entirely different places: the United States and Europe.

The Early Years

James Quiney's Real Estate Office, circa 1920. Image Courtesy of the Vancouver Archives

In 1887, only a year after incorporation, Vancouver had 12 grocery stores and 16 real estate firms. The city’s first mayor, Malcolm McLean, was a real estate agent. But, in the late 1870s, before the arrival of the CPR, land in what is now downtown Vancouver sold for approximately $1.00 an acre. Previous to that, the West End itself was granted to  Englishmen Samuel Brighouse, John Morton and William Hailstone for a total of 116 pounds (a sum thought to be so exorbitant that it earned them the nickname “The Three Greenhorns”). However, by 1886, with the announcement that Vancouver would be the home of the CPR’s coveted Western Terminus, property values skyrocketed, and suddenly a lot near Granville and Dunsmuir was selling for $400. By 1893, a lot in the same area sold for $1,100, and, by 1900, an adjoining lot went for roughly $4,250. Incredibly, by 1912, – at a time when wages were roughly 50 cents an hour, and a tailored suit cost less than $40 – a lot in the very same area was worth $725,000. Property speculation was so rampant that, when the first CPR land auction took place in 1886, (the railway was granted large tracts of land in exchange for extending their Western Terminus) Vancouver CEO Harry Abbott realized with dismay that speculators “had seized upon all the best sites without any intention of putting up buildings.” By 1889, proceeds from the sale of granted land in Vancouver had made the CPR more money than in all other company towns across the country, combined.

“Better chances for investment were never offered,” reads an 1870s advertisement in The West Shore, out of Portland, Oregon. “Lots that can now be bought for a few hundred dollars will beyond a doubt be worth as many thousands within a year or two. Investment of only a few hundred dollars will yet return fortunes to those that have the foresight to realize the future in store for this place.”

Growth and Crisis

By 1912,  the market was an orgy of borrowing, spending, and inflation, a place where real estate fever had even hit those who could least afford it; according to a 1912 survey conducted by the Ministerial Union of British Columbia (entitled “The Crisis in BC”), during a single week in October, more than 40% of the land-purchase applications received were from working-class people. Vancouver had become a place where, according to novelist Bertrand Sinclair, the common man would “go without lunch to make payments on plots of land in distant suburbs.”

Construction, circa 1953. Image Courtesy of the Vancouver Archives

In fact, so great was the influence of the real estate industry on the development of Vancouver that it influenced the names of many well-known streets.

“During that land boom at the turn of the century, American speculators bought large tracts of land in the area of Ninth Avenue and Westminster Road,” Anne Broadfoot explains, in her history of the Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board. “To promote sales, they decided to upgrade street names, so in 1909, Westminster Road became Main Street, and ninth [sic] Avenue became Broadway – familiar names found in many major centres around the world, so bound to appeal to the cosmopolite. News reports of the day show that it worked, because all the land sold quickly.”

However, the prewar boom was not to last. Between 1913 and 1915, following the U.S. stock market collapse, and resultant worldwide depression, Vancouver’s real estate bubble burst for the first (and possibly only) time; suddenly, commercial rents declined by 50%, and ordinary working people, no longer able to meet their obligations, defaulted on their loans. The city of South Vancouver went into receivership. The market was decimated. In fact, there is one recorded instance of a corner lot on Cambie and Broadway being listed for $90,000, and eventually selling for less than $8,000.

Even though the Depression took longer to affect Vancouver’s real estate market than it did the rest of the province, construction slowed to a virtual standstill. This, combined with the sudden influx of unemployed men and women seeking refuge in its neighbourhoods ensured that, by the time servicemen were returning from overseas after the Second World War, the city was being affected by a severe housing shortage. Even the creation of the Vancouver Housing Registry (started during the Depression with the intention of encouraging homeowners to rent empty rooms to prospective tenants) couldn’t completely solve the problem, and, faced with little other choice, people began to crowd into existing buildings. The crisis eased only slightly throughout the 1950s (fuelled by the continued demand for single-family homes) and, through it all, prices continued to rise.

“It may be, also, that to achieve a truly low-cost home in this high-priced time we will have to spread the repayments over a far longer period than the terms accepted today,” complains a Vancouver Sun editorial from 1958. “Housing costs are high, but we can’t afford to throw up our hands and say we can’t afford to build many more houses until costs come down again. In a city growing as fast as ours this would be the counsel of stupidity and despair. We must have more homes and we must have them at prices people can afford to pay.”

The Condo Boom

Though housing price increases in Vancouver continued to outpace the national market by a substantial margin (in 1967 alone, according to property assessments, the value of lots for single-family dwellings increased by 25-35%), there was one crucial factor that would change the face of city real estate forever: apartment living. Before 1966, it literally wasn’t possible to own your own apartment; you either owned the entire building, or you rented from someone who did. Apartment buildings, viewed as a terribly downmarket option, were exclusively rented, usually only a few stories high, and were generally built outside of the downtown core. It was only with the enactment of the Strata Titles Act in 1966 that it became possible for British Columbia’s apartment owners to subdivide their properties into individual units for sale, thus allowing for multiple owners. Today, 99% of the downtown population lives in apartment buildings. However, even in the 60s, downtown highrise living was still considered a revolutionary idea, one which would take time to catch on, and would require massive changes to existing zoning bylaws.

Plans for Apartment Development, circa 1960s. Image Courtesy of the Vancouver Public Library

“Downtown zoning should be changed and great apartment towers should rise above stores,” a 1966 article in the Province suggests. “If thousands of people had their homes downtown, they would both extend the daily ‘life’ of the city and reduce its traffic problems.”

In 1958, 75% of all housing starts were declared as single-family dwellings. By the mid-1960s, apartment construction outnumbered house construction by 2 to 1. Suddenly condominium living was so popular that apartment owners began rushing to convert their rental stock into 99-year leases and selling them to buyers. However, it wasn’t long before speculators got involved in this lucrative new market. In fact, the problem became so pronounced that, following a report made to council, the city of North Vancouver requested a provincial ban on any such sales, and both Vancouver and Burnaby put a moratorium on all rental-lease conversions. The report, prepared by a North Vancouver land agent, estimated that close to 25% of all condo sales in the city were being made to speculators. The report details one incident of a suite purchased in May of 1973 for $38,500 and sold for $42,000 later the same day.

Though Vancouver enacted a lease conversion freeze in 1973, and provincial programs such as MURB (the Multiple Unit Residential Building program) were enacted in hopes of encouraging developers to construct purpose-built rentals, cries about the city’s lack of affordable housing remained on people’s lips. Accusations of developers abusing MURB are evident in many of the papers of the day, as in the case of the False Creek developments in the 1980s – with word of developers building condos for tax breaks, and then selling the units to wealthy speculators.

Map showing the history of Urban Development in Vancouver, circa 1963. Image Courtesy of the Vancouver Public Library

“Many of the suites are expected to be rented out by investors,” reports a Vancouver Sun article from 1982, regarding the development. “A $100 million False Creek apartment project will soon become a refuge for many of the city’s wealthy – and a renter’s rights spokesman calls it ‘typical’ of lower mainland development.”

“There’s no shortage of expensive apartments,” comments Tom Lalonde, of the Greater Vancouver Renters’ Association, in an interview with the paper. “Developers have used the MURB program as an example of affordable housing, (but) MURB has never given anybody affordable housing.”

Even Pennyfarthing Development spokesman Ian McBean admits, when interviewed, that “the project falls well short of the False Creek apartment goal of one-third high income, one-third medium income, and one-third lower income, but added: ‘Construction costs and land costs are extremely costly. It would be economically impossible to do that.’”

Land of Destiny

“Like the European Union, Vancouver is crumbling, not along ethnic lines, but among the owns and owns-not,” an article in this week’s edition of the Vancouver Courier reads. “Globalization, in the form of foreign investment, may help chase an entire generation of native-born residents from the city and deny other immigrants a chance at home ownership. Remedies are scarce. But returning property to people who live, work and raise families here seems like a good start.”

There’s no debating that Vancouver is the most expensive city in the country. And, it’s possible to argue that that part of its value is the result of speculative investment. However, contrary to the views expressed by newspapers such as the Courier (Mark Hasiuk’s article asserts that “it began in the 1980s, when waves of Hong Kong residents including members of the business elite, wary of communist China’s pending takeover, poured across the Pacific, gobbling up property with converted HKDs”), this isn’t a recent phenomenon. People from all over the world have been investing in Vancouver for more than 130 years. In fact, Vancouver was a real estate investment before it was even incorporated as a city. The factors that draw investors today are no different than those that brought the European settlers of the 1870s; simply, that Vancouver is a desirable place to live. As the first few generations of Vancouverites bought, sold, swapped, and developed, and realized the desirability of their new city’s climate, location, and resource wealth, the land took on incredible value unbelievably quickly.

And we’ve been bitching about it ever since.

“We live in the land of destiny,” RJ McDougal wrote, in 1911. “In the land of wealth where, though gold is not idly picked off the rocks or from the pavements in the streets, it is just as surely gained from the platted acres and twenty-footers around us. One day an artisan may put the scanty savings of a lifetime into a tiny holding out among the evergreens, and on the morrow almost, he is building city blocks from the proceeds thereof.”

For those of you interested in learning more, Wired has an excellent primer, while Reddit offers up this in-depth analysis.

The U.N. gang’s key cocaine cartel contact was shot dead in the streets of Mexico, The Vancouver Sun reports. 37-year-old Salih Abdulaziz Sahbaz followed in the footsteps of his two predecessors who were both shot dead at a taco stand in Guadalajara in 2008.

Meanwhile, a little closer to home, a man was murdered in what appears to be a targeted shooting at Bar One Lounge inside the Sheraton Wall Center. Photos over at The Sun show a blood-stained window with a bullet hole peering out into the street.

Environment Canada has issued an “arctic outflow warning”, predicting a wind chill factor up to (or is it down to?) -20 degrees. “An Arctic ridge of high pressure building across the British Columbia interior is producing strong outflow winds through coastal valleys and inlets,” the warning explains.

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PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

“Lamont Given Cash, Constable Testifies,” reads the front page of the Vancouver Sun, as the Tupper Inquiry – the largest investigation of police corruption in the city’s history – enters its 34th day.

Early in the afternoon, Police Constable Lorne Tompkins takes the stand, testifying that he saw, on a number of occasions, envelopes being exchanged between identified underworld figures and police.

“There were quite a number of bills,” Tompkins testifies, regarding one such transaction. “I would say the bills would be an inch or more thick in the man’s hand.”

Tompkins also testifies to seeing officers (such as the aforementioned Lamont) accept envelopes of money on a number of other occasions from other individuals. The Tupper Inquiry, convened after allegations that Vancouver Police Chief Walter Mulligan – as well as several detectives, sergeants and constables – was accepting money from leading underworld figures in exchange for police protection, has already seized local headlines. One officer implicated in the scandal has already committed suicide, and another, Detective-Sergeant Len Cuthbert, shot himself but subsequently survived.

Tompkins’ testimony comes on the heels of explosive revelations the previous day, by Cuthbert himself that he had, on orders from Mulligan, approached a number of underworld figures to offer police protection in exchange for money, including leading bootlegger Joe Celona (who intimated “he would be willing to pay $200 a month to police for protection”).

Though it isn’t mentioned in the newspapers, and Mulligan himself has yet to be positively identified in connection with the scandal, the Inquiry is of particular embarassment to City Hall. Mulligan, the youngest police chief in city history, was handpicked by Mayor Gerry McGeer in response to the years of lax vice crime enforcement during the L.D. Taylor administration, and his appointment was initially lauded as one which transform the force and make it tougher on crime.

“Do you know Walter Mulligan?” counsel asks “landlord and club owner” Bruce Snider, reputed to be one of the biggest figures in the West End gambling territory.

“No, not to my knowledge,” Snider replies.

“Did you ever pay money directly or indirectly to Mulligan?”

“I did not.”

“It has been suggested that there were payoffs to police – particularly to Walter Mulligan.”

“I don’t know of it.”

By the end of the Tupper Inquiry, it will be revealed that Mulligan and a number of officers at all levels of the VPD were in fact accepting bribes from dozens of underworld figures (among them Celona and Snider), and the proceedings will ultimately result in Mulligan’s resignation.

Though no police officer will ever be charged, Walter Mulligan will spend the remainder of his life working as a limousine driver at Los Angeles International Airport.

The owners of the recently-closed Videomatica have worked out a deal with local universities to preserve their $1.7 million film collection.

As premiers Canada-wide gathered in B.C. to discuss the future of health care in Canada, a new study released by UBC reveals that cost prevents British Columbians from filling their prescriptions more often than other Canadians.

And lastly, but certainly not “leastly”, more snow for Metro.

BORED AT WORK BONUS: Amanda Hocking, the writer who made millions by self-publishing online

“Sarah Bernhardt, greatest of actresses, considers Vancouver the most beautifully situated city in the world,” gushes the Vancouver Sun as, for the first time in 12 years, the 19th century’s most famous actress visits the city.

“I adore your city and the Canadian Rockies,” she beams in Parisian French, “What is more beautiful? They seem to be the only friendly landmarks all the way from Calgary. I have kept my eyes glued to the window revelling in the fleeing landscape. But I can scarcely believe my eyes when I see all the magnificent improvements that have taken place in and around Vancouver.”

Bernhardt, the highest-paid performer in vaudeville and a presence on the international stage for more than half a century, is one of the most colourful show business personalities of her time. Her early life is shrouded in mystery, due to her propensity for exagerration, and, among the rumours, it is said that she sleeps in a coffin, once worked as a courtesan in Paris, and previously had an affair with a Belgian nobleman. Giving an interview with the Sun aboard her private rail car, while en route to Victoria (where she will give two performances), the actress says “many nice things” about the city’s geography.

Recalling her previous visit to Vancouver, in 1891, (when she played the Vancouver Opera House) Bernhardt fondly remembers a trip up Burrard Inlet with a “well-known CPR official”, in search of ducks, “which were plentiful then, and I bagged one.”

“Madame laughed girlishly at her triumph,” reports the paper.

Bernhardt does not make a Vancouver appearance.

IMAGE: Orpheum Theatre, circa 1918. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Archives.

Meanwhile, a new report from the Fraser Institute suggests bilingualism in Canada costs government $2.4 billion per year.

“The Liberal Party is Canada’s Bold New Party!” their website boasts, following a convention to rejuvenate the battered old beast. Among the major changes announced are a resolution in favour of legalizing and regulating marijuana, and a new membership class with limited rights, but zero fees.

And here in B.C., Christy Clark’s newfound affinity for Stephen Harper is not hard to decipher, The Globe suggests. Sandwiched between the well-polling NDP and rallying B.C. Conservatives, Clark needs to unite opposition to the ultra-communist NDP party; past New Democrat victories in British Columbia have been the result of splits between right-leaning voters.

And last but not least, The Globe reminds us about the lesser-known of the proposed Kitimat pipelines, the $1 billion Pacific Trails project, which will carry natural gas from northeast B.C. to supertankers destined for worldwide markets.

BORED AT WORK BONUS: Hunter S. Thompson’s 1958 cover letter for the Vancouver Sun

After learning that the cast has defied a city order to clean up “lewd” and “obscene” material, Vancouver police storm the stage at the Avon Theatre and arrest five members of Everyman Theatre Company’s staging of “Tobacco Road” – in the middle of a performance.

“Seven big city detectives joined the cast of ‘Tobacco Road’ at the Avon Theatre Friday night,” reports the Vancouver Province, “and five members of the regular cast were taken to jail, charged with taking part in an indecent performance. But the show went on after a 1.5 hour delay in which the actors were bailed out and returned to take up their lines where they were forced to break off.”

The arrests draw a chorus of boos and cries of “Gestapo!” from the 850-person, sellout crowd. “Tobacco Road” – based on Erskine Caldwell’s novel about life, love and poverty in the American South – has been a phenomenal success on Broadway (going on to become the 2nd-longest-running nonmusical in Broadway history), and has been drawing large crowds since its opening two weeks earlier. However, it has also attracted attention from the Vancouver Police Department, with two separate teams of detectives sent to investigate the performance, submitting reports claiming the show is “lewd and filthy” and “full of blasphemy.” Resultant orders from City Prosecutor Gordon Scott to remove any offensive material were ignored by the cast.

Following the arrests the entire audience will remain in their seats, chanting “We’ll wait”, and are treated to a capella singalongs with the cast (which includes Bruno Gerussi). The audience will consume 39 gallons of coffee in the 1.5 hours to follow, and when the cast is finally released, they will reenter a theatre “rocked with cheers”, and pick up exactly where they left off.

“Everything went on as usual,” the Province reports, “except that the constabulary kept ‘Ellie May’s’ share-cropper dress, described as somewhat longer than a sweater. They said they wanted it for evidence.”

The next day, Everyman Theatre Company will file an injunction against the VPD, barring them from further interference with the production.

“The theatre has announced the show will go ahead tonight and all next week,” the Province reports, “without a line changed from the original. The house is sold out tonight.”

IMAGE: Shelly’s Minstrel show, onstage in Vancouver, circa 1920s. Image courtesy of the Vancouver Archives.

“Student Campaign Topples Bus Fare,” exclaims a headline in the Vancouver Sun, as, after nearly two weeks of campaigning, high school and university students manage to force BC Hydro into a 20% reduction in student bus fares.

“Militant students have won the battle of bus fares, forcing a 20-per-cent reduction by beleagured BC Hydro,” reports the Vancouver Sun. “Hydro co-chairman Dr. Gordon Shrum conceded victory to high school and university students late Tuesday when he announced directors of the huge government agency will cut fares to 10 rides for $1 during school hours.”

Student action included demonstrations, petitions, and a number of students paying their 15-cent fare entirely in pennies, after the student rate was increased by 300% on January 1st.

“This shows that even a group of students can do battle with a big company and win,” says Doug Costain, head of a student fare protest committee at Lester Pearson High School.

Hydro, meanwhile, is less excited, estimating that the fare cut will cost an estimated $125,000 per year, in addition to their current $1 million deficit, prompting fears that the company may “dump” the bus franchise on local municipalities.

“The directors took a second look at the fares and agreed there was some hardship particularly in the case of families with several children attending school,” Shrum explains. “You might say it is our contribution to education.”

IMAGE: A West Vancouver bus, circa 1934. Image Courtesy of the Vancouver Public Library.

Stephen Harper, meanwhile, made a surprise celebrity appearance yesterday in promotion of the $35 billion in shipbuilding contracts awarded to companies in Vancouver and Halifax last October.

The Eastside Illicit Drinkers Group, an organization supporting addicts who consume hand sanitizer and other illicit high-proof alcohol products, has received a $52,000 research grant towards a “drinkers lounge” project, with aims to dole out free booze and counselling to those in need. “The longer you drink it, the more you see sparkling light at the edge of your eyes. That’s the first step in going blind from guzzling cheap illicit booze,” The Province advises.

If you’re looking for something to do tomorrow night and want to check out some sweet chamber music, SFU student composers are having their grad show at Woodward’s at 8 pm! Why, thank you, Reddit.

Appropriately announced via Twitter, the federal government has decided to repeal the 1938 ban on early publication of election results.

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This is due, in part, to a higher number of single-family households, with 2008 estimates finding that downtown residents typically also spend roughly $6,000 less per year than the rest of the city.

The environment and geography of northern British Columbia is too dangerous for an oil pipeline and tankers, opponents told the federal review into the proposed Northern Gateway project. Critics contend that heavy snowfall would make containing spills exceedingly challenging, and unpredictable weather would make navigation of the Hecate Strait – ranked the fourth most dangerous body of water in the world – unacceptably risky.

The rights of thousands of gay couples who travelled to Canada to get married have been called into question following a legal about-face by the federal government, The Globe reports. The news emerges with a recent test case, wherein a Toronto lesbian couple have been told they cannot divorce since they were never legally married. Department of Justice lawyers argued their marriage is not legal in Canada since it’s not recognized in the United States, where they reside.

Having completed the business case and alternative assessments for the Burnaby Mountain Gondola Project (a.k.a. the SFU gondola), TransLink has decided not to include it in the current strategic plan. From the report: it’s a good idea, but there’s just no money.

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