Union rules could hit drug addicts’ job chances

Up to 35 positions are scheduled to be eliminated from the City of Vancouver Department of Engineering, but so far, one group appears to be safe.
Vancouver City Council passed its 2010 operating budget Dec. 18, 2009, which included cuts to programs and jobs proposed in November.  According to a union official, jobs will go as [...]

Researchers aim to clean up toxic Athabasca water

Northern Alberta is home to some of the fastest-growing bodies of water in the world. Every day roughly two billion litres of water – enough to fill 800 Olympic swimming pools – are added to these lakes, which are already over 11.5 trillion litres in volume.
The largest one, located near Mildred Lake just north of [...]

Anxious times for rising numbers of BC temporary workers

For the past six months, Mehernosh Panthaki has been earning 40 per cent less than his fellow construction workers at Woodward’s, a marquee housing and commercial project in downtown Vancouver.  When the project opens in January, he will be out of a job.
Panthaki, 32, a temporary worker who emigrated from Mumbai, India, two years ago, [...]

Hundreds of unnamed cameras watching Vancouver

Nearly 500 surveillance cameras in downtown Vancouver do not post information about who owns them, making it impossible for people to find out who is watching them and why.
The cameras, 200 of which are in alleyways, skirt privacy laws and breach official guidelines for overt video surveillance by private companies. These guidelines require notification to [...]

Aboriginal youth centre gets funding lifeline

Krystal Bell and Soila Hill surf the web on side-by-side desktop PCs. It’s a typical Tuesday evening at the Kla-how-ya Youth Drop-in Centre in Surrey.
Led Zeppelin, New Order and others flowed out of the radio, mixing with the sounds of teens talking and laughing as they spent time together.
“I wasn’t very social before Kla-how-eya opened [...]

First Nations street vendors cornered by Olympics bylaws

Dennis Rose and Chris Turo sit on foldable chairs outside Robson Street’s designer shops in downtown Vancouver nearly every day, selling their art on the sidewalk.
They carve wooden feathers and watch shoppers stroll by, arms draped with shopping bags that hang like ornaments on a Christmas tree.
Wood chippings typically collect at their feet. The smell [...]

UBC students disengaged from rezoning row

Allie Slemon, a fifth year English student at the University of British Columbia, was surprised to find a strongly worded email from President Stephen Toope in her inbox.
Toope warned of Metro Vancouver’s proposal to regulate academic lands on the Vancouver campus. He said this would be “devastating” to academic freedom and could put a “choke [...]

More Vancouver boys leap into dance

Live drumming signals the start of a new exercise in Edmond Kilpatrick’s boys-only dance class.
The group of 13 six- and seven-year-old boys wear uniforms of black stretch pants and white shirts, and anxiously wait for instructions. Kilpatrick, a former Ballet BC principal dancer, calls out, “pliez,” and 13 pairs of knees immediately bend.
This program at [...]

Vancouver struggles to plan for growing diversity

Xin Xin Deschner emigrated to Vancouver from Beijing nearly 20 years ago for the quality of life.
She settled in Kingsway, one of east Vancouver’s oldest and most culturally diverse neighbourhoods. She married, had a family, and went to work as a teacher in a local secondary school.
Now she’s worried the city’s plans to increase density [...]

Muddled handling of Vancouver’s Little Mountain angers residents

BC Housing and the City of Vancouver are listening to ex-residents and advocates of Little Mountain housing site, but for many it is two years too late.
Demolition crews, cranes, and rubble have taken over the 15-acre land in Vancouver once occupied by BC’s oldest public housing development.
Nearly 600 people were displaced throughout the province. For [...]

Copyright 2010 UBC Graduate School of Journalism