Posted 1/4/2009
Happy New Year everyone. Stay tuned to the Weekend Morning News for details of a 12-week media challenge about to start. You can follow along online and find useful fitness and nutrition tips. And, you can see who is winning the challenge with the goal of getting five hundred dollars to donate to charity. It's all thanks to Precision Fitness. More details to follow soon!
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Posted 12/20/2008
Not very many people knew Tracey until she died. Today, we know a little more about her. We know she had red hair. We know she was struggling. We know she burned to death in downtown Vancouver early Friday morning.
There are flowers being placed at the corner of Davie and Hornby where Tracey died. There are notes from strangers saying, ‘Sorry we never met you’. Are we really sorry? If we were truly sorry, wouldn’t we have taken the time to meet Tracey while she was still alive? Instead, we all left her to die on the streets of one of the most beautiful and prosperous cities in the world.
The truth is, most of us would never have even known Tracey lived in our city, if she hadn’t died in a most horrible, undignified and painful way.
Her death has once again brought the issue of homelessness to ...
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Posted 12/7/2008
Sometime I really don’t understand people. Today, I don’t understand city planners in Vancouver.
I was in the Cambie and 7th Avenue neighbourhood the other day and I use the word neighbourhood very hesitantly here.
Now that the construction is wrapping up the area is taking shape and a new part of town is emerging. And I have to say it’s one of the ugliest things I have even seen.
It’s awash with giant glass and concrete walls mixed with soulless, overbearing storefronts. It is big box store after big box store after big box store. It is a cold, industrial looking retail wasteland.
What were the city planners thinking when they approved this one? Have none of them ever taken a stroll around the South Granville area and seen what a real community looks like? Are they all from Ontario?
And how can a city where people stood up and ...
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Posted 11/30/2008
On Saturday I spent some time talking about something I think dropped out of the headlines faster than I think it should of. At the very least, I think it went away without enough debate.
It’s about Vancouver Council and the last meeting of the current council, the meeting where they decided it was a good idea to hire a lawyer to look into the Olympic loan debacle and get to the bottom of it.
Not only will taxpayers be paying for that lawyer, someone to look at any ‘non criminal aspects’ of the leak from an in-camera meeting, we will also be paying for every lawyer needed by any staff member or councilor who requests one as the probe continues.
Well, I have a message for all of the councilors who voted in favour of that idea. It’s not that important. It’s a huge waste of money.
In making ...
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Posted 11/23/2008
When was the last time you went for a visit to the Downtown Eastside? On purpose? Well, several members of the international media took a drive through the area when they were in town recently. The reaction? They were stunned. Many referred to the area as the most eye-opening, decrepit, stunningly discarded neighbourhood they has ever seen. Well, those are my words but that’s the feeling I got when hearing their reactions.
I imagine people who live, or maybe a better word is survive, in the downtown eastside get an ironic chuckle when they hear about people everywhere going through "tough economic times". Or maybe they are angry. We breathe a collective sigh of relief when we see the price of gas drop to less than a dollar a litre. Thank goodness we can once again fill the tanks of our vehicles AND get a latte without dipping into our ...
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