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Entries from January 2016

Surrey candidate McCallum shows he’s ready to fight hard

July 31st, 2014 · 2 Comments

Last week, Doug McCallum attacked the current city council for its development corporation’s lack of action in Cloverdale. This week, he’s out with a hard-hitting news release saying that Barinder Rasode and Linda Hepner both voted in favour of closed police committee meetings. This is going to get testy — and interesting, as everything has […]

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Gregor Robertson holds steady with 59 % decided voters but NPA’s LaPointe starts strong

July 31st, 2014 · 40 Comments

I went to get some of my crazed summer-frizzed hair chopped the other day, so got to talk to my hairdresser, my infallible guide to the mood of the city. He has a lot of west-side clients, so he gets a sense of things percolating before I do. He told me when the tide was […]

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New city living: High-income families squeeze into small condos, which takes strategy and a good attitude

July 29th, 2014 · 83 Comments

When I was at a Bulablogger brunch organized last spring by jenables, I heard the story about this family living in an artists’ loft with two kids. It stuck in my head. Well, really, it would for any of us who have lived with kids and locked ourselves in the bathroom for a little privacy, […]

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CP and Vancouver bargain over value of Arbutus rail line — $20 mil or $100 mil — as July 31 deadline looms

July 29th, 2014 · 19 Comments

I educated-guessed the prices that CP and Vancouver might be dickering with over the Arbutus rail corridor in my last post. Then Daphne Bramham at the Sun got off-the-record info confirming those prices. And now here’s me catching up on the story in today’s Globe. I personally can hardly wait to see what CP will […]

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Vancouver offers to buy Granville Island, Arbutus corridor — but the sale price unknown

July 24th, 2014 · 81 Comments

Continuing to catch up on posts here. (Sorry, as many of you know, I was camped out at the Vancouver Folk Festival all weekend, though without a “structure,” so no park rangers came to chase me out. As a result, I fell behind in alerting you to all of my brilliant recent pieces of journalistic […]

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When journalists become politicians — the perks and perils for Kirk LaPointe, Michael Valpy, Rene Levesque, Nicole Parton, and more,

July 24th, 2014 · 7 Comments

Got to talk to yet another one of my former bosses, Mel Rothenburger of the once-great Kamloops Daily News, about what it’s like to go from journalist to politician. Do your former colleagues give you the kid-glove treatment? (No) Is it more rewarding than journalism in some ways? (Yes, because you get things done instead […]

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NPA pushes De Genova up to council, keeps Coupar at park board

July 18th, 2014 · 49 Comments

Little announcement out from the NPA today about incumbents running. Only deviation from what had previously been suspected is that John Coupar is being kept at park board instead of moving up to council. I can only guess that’s to leave some room to recruit some candidates who aren’t 1. white 2. mostly male, as […]

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Vision park candidate Trish Kelly drops out after online mini-tempest re her sex-positive masturbation video

July 17th, 2014 · 21 Comments

So Trish Kelly, the woman who got the most votes for Vision park-board candidate in the recent nomination, just issued a statement via Vision saying she is dropping out of the race because of a video she made is being “sensationalized.” This is all very weird — Vision vetters knew all about this video before […]

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Former Vancouver Sun managing editor Kirk LaPointe launches campaign for mayor

July 14th, 2014 · 74 Comments

Busy day for me and all city-hall journos today as NPA and Kirk LaPointe finally went public, after six weeks of rumours, that he is definitely, really, no kidding, the mayoralty candidate. A group of those of us who cover city hall regularly got invited to meet him this morning at Kafka’s on Main (not […]

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Mayor Robertson’s marriage becomes a political football that wreaks havoc everywhere

July 7th, 2014 · 92 Comments

I realize almost everyone reading this blog has probably read ALL the stories already about the decision by Gregor and Amy Robertson to separate, which has turned, in this season of elections and social media, into a strange gothic novelette of its own. Here’s my story from today’s Globe, which largely focuses on why Vision […]

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