Industries
As Surrey continues to make headlines as a sprawling suburban centre, on pace to overtake Vancouver as the most populated city in the province in the next fifteen years, let’s take a quick glance at the history of the fast-booming city. British Columbia was proclaimed a British colony on November...
Not much, if you're the B.C. minister responsible for technology. You would think if you were an industry that represented 5.3 per cent of the provincial GDP, you might command a little respect; surely the provincial government would dedicate a ministry to you. Well, not really. The Ministry of Economic Development...
The razzle-dazzle of Hollywood began seeping north in the late 1960s, with the $500,000 budget studio film That Cold Day in the Park, starring the long forgotten Sandy Dennis and Michael Burns. Now, nearly four decades later, there's little that's forgettable...
B.C. is becoming an incubator for emerging forms of journalism. From NowPublic, one of the largest participatory news networks worldwide, to independent online news sites such as TheTyee.ca, Vancouver-based companies are finding new ways to communicate with audiences in a digital environment. The big question is, who will pay for...
We’ve all seen the newsreel by now. John and Hillary Smith, standing in the driveway in front of their new Hummer, crying how unfair it all is that they’re losing their home, car and credit. They bought with a “No Decs No Docs” mortgage – a mortgage approved in America...
In another movie, I wrote a newspaper column called The Cheap Guy , which advocated that we all get off the spending merry-go-round and bring simplicity and frugality into our lives. This frugality movement had an interesting, almost cult-like, run. We lived – some of us still do – by...
Once I took a cab to the Cairo Airport. It was a better-than-average cab for Cairo, which meant less than 30 years old with working seatbelts. Mohammed, the driver, was a genial fellow, but it was all strategic. He spent the hour-long trip relentlessly congratulating himself for every minor development...
An article I wrote on prostitution for BCBusiness was published this month, and just as it hit the stands a series of ads from the Salvation Army titled "The Truth Isn't Sexy" appear around town, even within the pages of...
When the elite of the digital security world gathered at Vancouver’s CanSecWest conference earlier this year, the focal point was the geek equivalent of a bench-press competition: a computer hack-off called Pwn2Own (if you’re not hip to the lingo, “pwn” is Internet slang for “thump an opponent”). On a table...
There's a possible guide for B.C. communities devastated by changes in the resource economy in a New York Times article about the rebirth of Bellows Falls, Vermont, The “gritty river village” is, like many other towns, caught in a downward spiral of economic decline. But townspeople decided they wouldn't simply...