Looking south from Jameson House, whose view will be blocked by the Exchange tower. (Photo: Joel Barde)

The Vancouver councillor who led the way in approving a controversial office tower in the heart of its downtown business area said the city may have erred in allowing a condo building nearby years earlier.

“This is a situation where we perhaps didn’t think as clearly as we might have,” said. Coun. Raymond Louie. He  acknowledged that in the wake of a nasty debate the last six months over the tower, which saw condo residents living across the alley campaign against it.

The debate culminated in a recent vote approving the 30-storey Exchange tower at Howe and Pender, a project being developed by Credit Suisse and Swissreal Group. The $200-million project will include restoring and building partially on top of the city’s historic stock-exchange building.

But, in the process, Louie wasn’t the only one to raise questions about how the city came to be caught in the middle of an unwinnable fight between condo residents who said they had a right to housing that didn’t face into office cubicles and office developers who said they had the right to build in a business district.

Supporters of the project largely dismissed the condo residents’ objections, saying they shouldn’t have moved into the office district if they don’t like office towers.

They also said the city made a mistake by allowing any condos into the area.

Rob Danielsen, a senior commercial adviser at Century 21, is among many who think the Jameson House should not have been allowed. “I think the business district should be the business district.”

That sentiment is shared by Bob Ransford, a development and and housing issues columnist for the Vancouver Sun.

He says the city’s business district is critical to the region’s economy.

“If a residential building hadn’t been built there, we would not have seen these conflicts when this building was proposed.”

Jameson House was one of three business-district sites where the city allowed condos in the early 2000s as part of its push to encourage residential development in the downtown peninsula.

The Hudson and the Shangri-La, on the shoulder of the business district, were complete rezonings. The developers of the Jameson House, closer to the core, were required to include the amount of office space it was zoned for and then were allowed to put condos on top.

The tower’s opponents

But those on the other side say the problem wasn’t the city’s original decision to allow a condo tower. It was the recent decision to allow a much taller office tower on the Howe and Pender site than was originally planned.

Green Party Coun. Adriane Carr said the area is effectively a neighbourhood — that it was transformed into one when the city allowed Jameson House to be developed — and that it would be disingenuous to now allow the Exchange tower.

Carr’s central contention was that Jameson House residents had a reasonable expectation that any development on adjacent property would be “constrained” by land-use policy.

When the Jameson House condo first went to market, the Howe and Pender site was zoned to allow a building that was seven times the area of the land. The city’s decision gives Credit Suisse and Swissreal the go-ahead to develop a building that is seven times that density.

“If you signal to the public there is a certain zoning in place and they can look with confidence that it will inhibit a big tower from being built there, I think you have to stand by your words,” said Carr.

Artist rendering of the Exchange tower and Jameson House. (Image: Iredale Group Architecture)

 An “exemplary application”

Supporters of the Exchange tower say the increased density is warranted because the tower will help create much-needed office space and preserve the city’s heritage by incorporating the old Vancouver stock exchange building.

Louie praised the developers and called the proposal an “exemplary application.”  The city, Louie said, must encourage the development of office space in order for it to remain working and viable.

He referred to a 2009 city-commissioned study that says Vancouver faces a 5.8-million-square-foot shortfall in office space over next 30 years. And he underscored the fact that the development is in line with the city’s effort to restrict residential in favor of commercial development within the city’s business district.

Accommodating the neighbours

Selwyn Dodd, chief architect for the project at Iredale Group Architecture, said there has been a lot of discourse between the city, his office, and the residents of Jameson House.

And he says he has made significant overhauls to his design — on three separate occasions. These included truncating the northwest corner of the building and agreeing to cover sightlines (areas where Jameson House residents would be able to view office workers) in areas where the tower is within 20 metres of Jameson House.

Dodd would not comment on the cost of the changes, but he indicated that the revisions were a lot of work and “has resulted in a much less favorable floor plan for leasing.”

“The only thing that would make them happy,” said Dodd, “is if we didn’t build.”

◄ Back

Next ►

Picture 1 of 3

Old stock-exchange building and Jameson House from Pender and Howe (Photo: Joel Barde)

Sixty-year-old María Diosdado tidies up and gets the coffee and popcorn ready for bingo.

She’s getting ready for the special day. Every Friday, 18 Latin-American women come here to the third floor of the South Vancouver Neighbourhood House to play. The neighbourhood house is tucked in between dozens of South-Asian and Chinese shops. It’s also the one place in the neighbourhood where the women can gather and speak their own language.

Maria welcomes the other women with a warm smile and “hola” – hello in Spanish.

“This is very important for them. It’s the way to get distracted in their own language,” says Diosdado. “You always have to remember its not going to be easy, but if others can make it, so can you.”

The neighbourhood house tries to reach out to Spanish speakers by offering programs, including the bingo games.

“They’ve had to focus on raising their children, support their families and work. There is just not enough time to learn English,” said Kwangyoung Conn, a staff member at the neighbourhood house.

Free English classes are available for anyone who wishes to attend, but many come just to  play bingo because it is easy to understand and it allows the women to be together and tell stories.

“When I just arrived, I pointed at the stuff I wanted to buy and started doing mimics to the cashier,” said Isabel Aguilar. The 83-year-old sits smiling as the group laughs with her.

Her story about shopping is one that all of them can relate to.

A minority within a minority

More than 18,000 people live in the 20-block area around South Vancouver Neighbourhood House, from Kingsway to 49^th and Victoria. It’s a microcosm of Vancouver’s diversity, but also its loneliness and separation.

In this multicultural world, there are 41 languages spoken in these few blocks. The majority of residents speak Cantonese. Almost full quarter of its residents do not speak English, including many of the 255 Spanish speakers. The vast majority of those with no English are women, according to Statistics Canada. In the middle of all that, the Spanish-speaking women are minorities within minorities within minorities.

This group is a living illustration of a recent Vancouver Foundation report that concluded the main concern of Vancouverites was not homeless or housing affordability, but social isolation.

For this group of women, simple things like shopping can be difficult without English or Chinese language skills.  Gloria Rodriguez smiles as she looks around the bingo room.  She described the specific challenges people face when they’re trying to buy canned fish.

“They think it’s a tin of tuna and they don’t have a clue it’s cat food, so they eat it.”

The women around her burst out laughing and begin telling story after story. This gathering is important for a group of women who spend much of their time alone.

Working life

But not everyone is able to connect.

Rosa Osorio, 54, waits alone at the bus stop near Victoria and Kingsway.

“We are just not used to this kind of weather,” she says while bundling herself up in her wool winter coat, tuque and scarf.

She is heading to her house-cleaning job in North Vancouver. Osorio, a teacher from El Salvador fleeing the civil war, came to Canada 21 years ago. Vancouver is home now, but it has been quite an adjustment.

Orosio, speaking Spanish, says she doesn’t mind working 10 or 12 hour days cleaning other people’s homes. It’s a job that doesn’t require a lot of talking.

“Hispanics are always worried about not being understood at work or afraid of their accents. Sometimes it’s easier not to talk,” she says.

She does not attend bingo or language programs mostly because, with long hours at work, she doesn’t have time.

She says she’s grateful that her Canadian grandchildren won’t have have the same trouble with English. But their improving English means that she is isolated even more by her language.

“I’m glad to know my grandchildren speak English perfectly, but I get sad when I speak to them in Spanish sometimes they do not understand.”

Jack Darcus has been an artist for over 50 years and a park caretaker for 20. (Photo: Emma Smith)

Vancouver’s initiative to house artists in its park field houses is new. But it’s not the first time artists have ended up in the park cabins.

Jack Darcus is testament to that.

Darcus sits comfortably behind a desk littered with brushes and paint in his Granville Island studio. He talks freely, bringing his hands up to his face to rest under his chin.

This house in Kitsilano’s Hadden Park is similar to the field house Darcus lives in.  (Photo: Emma Smith)

He graduated from UBC with a fine arts degree in the early ‘60s with dreams of making movies and painting, but he was broke.

When a friend moved out of a field house, he told Darcus about the deal: free rent in exchange for taking care of the park.

“That for me was a godsend,” says Darcus. “Because a film project I had didn’t get the financing I’d hoped to have. I could see myself moving to Toronto to direct television, which I didn’t really want to do.”

Back then, Darcus says the field houses “attracted people whose income was perilous and they needed the break of having free rent.”

That meant writers and artists.

But it wasn’t just for economic reasons that artists gravitated to these cabins in the woods. Darcus says he’s produced paintings in that house that he couldn’t have done elsewhere.

Darcus paints with egg tempera, an ancient medium that combines egg yolk, pigment and either vinegar or wine. (Photo: Emma Smith)

He thinks it’s a great idea by the city to officially use these houses as artists’ spaces, with no requirement to manage the park. But he’s careful to point out that the space doesn’t guarantee high-quality art. That’s still up to the painters, sculptors and dancers who will use the space for the next two and a half years.

He speaks with pride about his dual role as artist and caretaker. He understands his job in the park as “making it safe and happy”

“Some of my best friends are the dogs that people own and I’ve been through a few generations of dogs with people now.”

Robert Sutherland will be the driver if Clem’s put in service for Metro Vancouver’s Zero Waste Challenge. (Photo: Arman Kazemi)

Clem the red truck could be helping out in his new home of Mount Pleasant sooner than he expected.

Lynn Warwick, executive director of the Mount Pleasant Business Improvement Association, was given an opportunity a few weeks ago to apply for Metro Vancouver’s Zero Waste Challenge. The regional body will award a $5,000 grant to three successful BIAs to launch waste-diversion strategies in their communities.

For 10 weeks, participating businesses will have their waste picked up every day and transported to a local site to be composted or processed into biofuel.

In order for her BIA to get the grant, Warwick needed someone with a truck willing to transport the waste at a reduced cost.

“That was one of my impediments,” said Warwick. “How was I going to transport this garbage, how was I going to tie it all together?”

When Robert Sutherland approached her about his idea to turn an old Studebaker into the Mount Pleasant community truck, she immediately saw Clem’s potential.

“I’d already been approached about the Zero Waste Challenge,” Warwick explained. “So it’s in the back of my mind, thinking, ‘I have no concept of how to proceed with that,’ and [Clem] was sort of the nail in the wood that might make it feasible.”

Clem may be “cute,” but he’s ready to tackle some serious waste. (Photo: Arman Kazemi)

Although still in the proposal stages, the program could offer Clem his first chance to prove himself to the community.

“I think he’s a great symbol of the neighbourhood,” Warwick said. “I think he really encapsulates the fact that we all tend to work together in Mount Pleasant.

If the funding comes through, Warwick sees Clem being the face of the program in Mount Pleasant.

“I think the whole package just ties together really well: the photo opportunity of the cute red truck with the garbage he’s recycling and the waste reduction,” she said.

Lillian Shakespeare uses a walker and takes a taxi to get around because she can’t get on the bus. (Photo: Tiffany Kwong)

It’s a struggle for many seniors to get around North Delta. Each trip is hard in a different way.

Lillian Shakespeare, 86, takes the taxi to get to Kennedy Seniors Recreation Centre ever since she fell and broke her ankle last year. She pays $6 each way for the three-minute trip to and from the centre, a cost that mounts up.

“I don’t use transit because there’s no strength in my ankle – I can’t get on and use buses,” said Shakespeare.

June Walker also goes to Kennedy but can manage, just barely, to take the bus. She walks to the local stop and climbs on to the 319 that travels along Scott Road.

June Walker is one among many seniors who come to the Kennedy centre to have a hot meal before going to their activity. (Photo: Tiffany Kwong)

Walker, 67, can walk just fine but she is recovering from a serious disease. The four-block trek to Kennedy centre is tiring for her. But she doesn’t qualify for HandyDART, a service that requires a doctor’s verification.

Some members at Kennedy do qualify and use the HandyDART, but it presents its own challenges. The trips must be booked in advance and must involve designated drop-offs.

“[Seniors] have long waits before they can get [HandyDART] to come here,” said Margaret Nielsen, director-at-large at Kennedy centre. “Sometimes a half or an hour, but they have to be patient and wait … and it’s kind of frustrating for them, not being able to leave.”

Many seniors forego their driver’s licences as they age and others stop driving because of poor health. But that often leaves them stranded or dependent on others.

Deltassist does run a volunteer drivers program for seniors, but that is often restricted to medical appointments not door-to-door service. In the last year, Deltassist had 19 volunteer drivers who made a total of 108 trips.

“Transportation is one of the biggest problems here [in North Delta] … particularly for people that have any disability,” said Nielsen. “Getting a shuttle bus would be a vast improvement. It has to be a route that is going to give the most opportunity for people, particularly seniors.”

The July 2007 cover of Vanity Affair had 20 different covers with photos of celebrities shot by Annie Leibovitz. “These are incredible people of our time, involved in this effort to make Africa better, to get Africa self-sufficient, and to try to get rid of AIDS on the continent,” she said.

Celebrity campaigns to “save Africa” often play into stereotypes that perpetuate a single homogenous story about what it means to be “African.”

Viewers are confronted with Africa as “the dark continent,” writes James Michira in his 2002 essay, “Images of Africa in the Western Media” (PDF), a wild jungle full of exotic animals, famine, violence, conflict, disease, and political instability.

“These images are not all that Africa is about,” asserts Michira. Yet it is these unbalanced images that are used for celebrity-based campaigns.

In the media, stereotypical images of Africa are widely distributed when celebrity-based campaigns are given news coverage, while stories written about issues within the continent of Africa are ignored.

As Julie Hollar of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), a U.S.-based media watch organization, noted back in 2007, “Following Bono to Africa or reporting on conflict diamonds via Leonardo DiCaprio is both easier and more ratings-friendly than sustaining bureaus and teams of reporters on the ground.”

And a celebrity face that presents a unified understanding of “Africa” and “African” helps generate profits. iPods, Starbucks coffee and Belvedere vodka are among the many products that benefit from this branding of Africa as part of Bono’s (RED) campaign, for example.

What the (RED) campaign and others ignore is that such celebrity advocacy has created misrepresentations which, according to Zimbabwean freelance journalist Innocent Madawo, “overemphasize its [Africa’s] political and socio-economic shortcomings, while playing down or ignoring its potential or even success stories.”

In other words, celebrity advocacy potentially does more harm than good when it comes to constructing representations of Africa.

William Easterly, author of  White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, puts it another way: “Could Africa be saving celebrity careers more than celebrities are saving Africa?“

PNPs have allowed provinces to nominate immigrants for permanent residence according to regional labour needs rather than relying on federal economic immigration programs, which take a country-wide outlook, since 1998.

How welcoming is Canada? Photo courtesy of Flickr user 5of7 via Creative Commons

If the feds set minimum language requirements for PNPs, it would encroach upon provinces’ ability to recruit newcomers on their own terms, as pointed out in this recent Winnipeg Free Press op-ed. Minimum language requirements would be especially detrimental to those provinces that target semi-skilled workers in industries such as construction, hotel and lodging and food services.

Prairie provinces in particular have become increasingly reliant on their PNPs to build a permanent semi-skilled workforce.  Under PNPs, more than 36,000 new permanent residents are brought into Canada each year; between 42,000 and 45,000 immigrants are expected to be admitted via the program in 2012.

In the meantime, many employers already rely heavily on the federal Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), which doesn’t have a minimum language requirement. Designed to fill temporary jobs, the TFWP is also especially popular in high-growth prairie provinces like Alberta.

However, a 2010 IRPP study suggested that TFWs, whose visas tie them to a single employer, are subsequently vulnerable to employment abuse. Permanent residents, even those with low language skills, are not as vulnerable to abuse because they enjoy labour mobility.

A minimum language requirement for PNPs would shut out a significant number of semi-skilled workers hoping for permanent residency, thereby increasing the number of TFWs. Provinces reliant on PNPs would suffer as employers invest in the resources needed to constantly turn over TFWs as their visas expire.

Canada shouldn’t be using temporary labour for permanent jobs. Instead the country should be investing in those that want to invest in Canada.

While the total number of drone-related deaths remains unclear, the non-profit Bureau for Investigative Journalism, based in London, believes that as of October of 2011, at least 2,347 people had been killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan alone since 2004. Some 392 of these deaths were civilians, including an estimated 175 children.

Such numbers indicate that drones are not the future of warfare — they are the now of warfare. That being the case, what does the future really hold?

Northrop Grumman's X-47B completed its first test flight on Feb. 4, 2011 at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. (U.S. Air Force photo/Rob Densmore)

The future of warfare is pilot-less

The U.S. military is commissioning companies like Northrop Grumman to develop autonomous unmanned aerial systems (UAS). Northrop Grumman’s X-47B, for example, is an experimental stealth fighter drone that is capable of taking off and landing on an aircraft carrier without an in-cockpit or on-the-ground pilot.

The purpose of autonomous UAS, according to the United States Air Force Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan 2009-2047, is to increase “effects while potentially reducing cost, forward footprint and risk.” In other words, autonomous UAS will enable one operator to monitor several drones at once.

Northrop Grumman is developing aerial refueling stations — similar to those already used by the U.S. Air Force and Navy (pictured above) — for its most advanced UAS, including the X-47B (U.S. Air Force photo/Master Sgt. William Greer)

The future of warfare is unblinking

The U.S. military is also commissioning companies to develop UAS that are capable of refueling themselves. Here, again, the X-47B is a pioneer. High-altitude, long-endurance UAS — like Predator and Reaper drones — can execute surveillance and reconnaissance missions for approximately two days at a time.

The X-47B, however, will be capable of refueling itself at aerial refueling stations (much like those already used by manned vehicles belonging to the U.S. Air Force and Navy), allowing it to remain airborne for 50 to 100 hours.

Similarly, as the LA Times reported in Dec. 2010, QinetiQ’s lightweight, solar-powered Zephyr drone is capable of flying at 70,000 feet for 14 days straight without refueling.

Autonomous aerial refueling and “green-powered” drones will dramatically extend the range and endurance of unmanned surveillance and reconnaissance missions.

The future of warfare swarms

While nano-drone technology — such as AeroVironment’s Hummingbird nano-drone — remains in the development stages, its future is already clear: autonomous swarms. On Feb. 2, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania released a video of their “nano quadrotors” — small, unmanned autonomous helicopters that are capable of communicating with and distancing themselves from each other, sensing and avoiding objects in their flight path and flying in synchronized patterns.

Boeing is working on similar projects for the U.S. military.

This technology will soon be used for monitoring and surveillance purposes, for inspecting combat and disaster zones and in search-and-rescue operations.

The future of warfare never forgets a face

Perhaps the most controversial development in drone warfare is the U.S. military’s desire to equip UAS with facial recognition technology.

Progeny Systems is developing software that uses pictures of a target’s face or “soft-biometric” identifiers — such as age, gender, ethnicity, race, height, weight, etc. — to digitally construct and register a 3-D model of the person’s face, giving drones the ability to identify and track targets more than 750 feet away.

Another firm, Charles River Analytics, is building a human behaviour engine that uses intelligence data from “informants’ tips, drone footage and captured phone calls” to conduct “intent-based threat assessments of individuals and groups,” according to CBC.  In other words, drones will soon be able to detect and analyze human emotion.

This technology will allow the military to locate, hunt and kill its enemies more effectively and more precisely than ever before.

Thus, drones are not “the future of warfare,” nor are they the “stuff of science fiction” being used non-consequentially in far-off distant lands. Rather, they are lean, mean, killing machines being used right now in the War on Terror and, as shown, they are getting leaner, meaner and more deadly very quickly.

It’s time that we acknowledge — and hold ourselves accountable to — the importance of context when reporting about Africa.

Images of exotic safari animals are often portrayed as "real" Africa, when I lived in South Africa, the only time I saw an elephant was in a game reserve. ©babasteve via flickr.

Binyavanga Wainaina, an award-winning editor and writer originally from Nakuru, Kenya, tackled this topic in his 2005 article,“HowtowriteaboutAfrica.” His piece didn’t provide the one-size-fits-all solution that some readers may have desired, however; he resorted to satire out of desperation over the mainstream’s constant misrepresentation of the continent on which he was born.

“Treat Africa as if it were one country,” he writes, tongue firmly planted in cheek. “It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving.”

Later in the piece, he advises: “Remember, any work you submit in which people look filthy and miserable will be referred to as the ‘real Africa,’ and you want that on your dust jacket. Do not feel queasy about this: you are trying to help them to get aid from the West.”

I find Wainaina’s blunt openness about his frustrations with mainstream representations refreshing, but only up to a point. For just as not all people in Africa are the same, not all stories written about Africa lack context and perpetuate stereotypes.

That being said, it should not be common practice to say that someone is going to or from “Africa” unless they are going to or from multiple countries on the continent of Africa. The more detailed the reporting, the more information provided to the readers, and the more informed and educated people can become.

Background, which explains the uniqueness and specifics of a nation, city, or group of people, is crucial.

“[C]ontextual background…including how the West contributed to the underdevelopment of Africa, are conspicuously missing from [most] Western media coverage of Africa,” argues academic and journalist Nana Bonsu-Amoako.

Understanding the history of global development and the politics within one or among several countries will produce better stories and fill the gap that Bonsu-Amoako discusses.

And as he rightly points out, a “reporting paradigm” needs to allow people within Africa to have a voice in telling their stories.

It may be intended to spark rage, but could graphic footage from Syria backfire? (Image courtesy Flickr user Freestylee via Creative Commons.)

The recent footage coming out of Syria has been brutal. The Syrian regime seems intent on making an example of the Free Syrian Army holed up in Bab Amr, the opposition stronghold neighbourhood in Homs. But it is innocent civilians who are taking the brunt of the punishment. Stories of shelling, shrapnel bombs, snipers and torture, all against civilians, accompany Twitter hashtags like #Syria and #Homs.

Both Andy Carvin and Anthony de Rosa have tweeted multiple video links with warnings about graphic content: the dead and dying, wounded children, the maimed. It’s obvious that the content is affecting Carvin, who tweeted: “After everything that happened with Hamza this week, the video of the 2-yr-old really shook me up. Dammit. #homs #syria”

Blogger Zeynep Tufecki wrote in support of Carvin’s choice to tweet graphic video links, saying that Twitter curators are changing the content of news that we view. She argues that by tweeting links to graphic content that would have never made prime time news, we are now able to obtain a more accurate picture of what is happening in countries like Syria. In addition, because curators like Carvin react personally to these videos, it brings a human face to the conflict in a way that new anchors do not. Tufecki says this “anti-playstation effect” is in contrast to sterile mainstream news reporting which distances viewers from the human reality of war.

But while I agree with Tufecki, I also wonder what long-term effect Twitter will have on the way we view news.

While I understand that there are terrible atrocities being committed in Homs, I have already begun to avoid clicking on links sent out by Carvin and others like him. The warning tells the content, and I’d rather not have my mind full of images of death and dying. Is this chicken of me? Possibly. Or it might just be human: some sights are simply too much to bear.

Will the majority of Twitter users begin, like me, to skip over graphic content? Or, if they view it, will they become numbed to it? Ostensibly, the goal of Free Syrian Army supporters, in tweeting out this kind of content, is to inform the world of the Syrian government’s actions and to draw support for their cause. But could they be shooting themselves in the foot? Will there be a breaking point at which Twitter users tune out and turn away? The evening news initially brought the same kind of horrified response. It had the power to move people and governments to action. Now, however, too many turn away with a feeling of powerlessness.

I suspect that graphic content overload coming out of Syria via Twitter will have the same effect of shutting viewers down, causing them to tune out and turn off. And that would be worse for the revolution than if the graphic content had remained unseen.