Monika Qually misses Vancouver. The 30-year-old misses the lush North Shore mountains and the fresh West Coast air. But she does not miss the city’s sky-high housing prices and low-paying jobs. “We couldn’t afford to start a family in Vancouver,” said Qually, so she and her husband decided to move to Toronto, where houses are [...]
Members of the Vancouver Downtown Eastside’s community have praised new police guidelines to protect sex-trade workers, but are also raising concerns about whether they will make a difference. The police released an eight-point set of guidelines in January stressing that the department considers the safety and security of sex workers a priority and reinforcing that [...]
Halfway down a sunlit alley off Vancouver’s East Hastings Street, Sandra finds what she’s been searching for. She calls out to her partner, Linda, and walks over to the prickly collection of used needles nestled among yard waste and road sweepings. She gingerly deposits the dangerous syringes in a plastic container, counting them aloud as [...]
Vancouver is known for its condos and urban living. But it is also home to Southlands Farm, the only family-run livestock farm within city limits. Providing Vancouverites with fresh, local food is challenging — Southlands is just about breaking even. The farm, owned by the Maynard family, has been forced to think creatively about how [...]
Jennifer Allan, a well-known activist in the Downtown Eastside, co-created DTES Cop Watch over a year ago as a new way to discourage police misbehaviour. The project uses social media to keep the police constantly in the public eye. Like other police-monitoring organizations around the United States and Europe, DTES Cop Watch observes and documents [...]
A group of Kitsilano residents say they are willing to lobby for a developer to build higher in order to preserve a bowling alley for their community — an unusual move in a city that has seen nothing but anti-development protests from residents in the last couple of years. But the idea from the Kitsilano [...]
Maureen Sugrue thought she was doing a good thing. When Vancouver councillors started pitching the idea of taking down the viaducts that connect the downtown to eastern Vancouver, Sugrue and many other residents campaigned energetically to get city engineers to also look at how to reduce commuter traffic that streams from those viaducts through a [...]
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 [...]
The British Columbia government is missing out by not regulating and taxing the $500 million of cannabis that is sold locally each year, according to a study published Tuesday in the International Journal of Drug Policy. The study — a collaborative effort between the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, the University of British Columbia [...]
Commercial Drive businesses are not budging from their opposition to what they fear is a city fixation on a concrete-barrier bike lane, wielding polls and phone calls and meetings to try to stop the city’s plans. Although city engineers and councillors say the lane plans aren’t decided yet and there are lots of options, the [...]
