Industries
The ink- and electron-stained wretches of the BCBusiness digital and editorial teams got together and reminisced about dropping out of high school, growing up in Comox, admiring Corey Hart's lips, grimacing through Alanis's ear-puncturing first career. And took comprehensive notes. And this, friend, is the result: the best and worst Canadian...
Left: Senate Bailout Hearing (Nov. 2008) Bailout, it was announced this week, is Merriam-Webster’s 2008 Word of the Year. The dictionary people define the omnipresent word as “a rescue from financial distress.” Last year the top word, as voted by MW readers, was “woot” – as in, “woot! I won...
There’s no mistaking the Vancouver headquarters of B.C.’s Hydrogen Highway for anything but a government office. The angular grey building, nestled in a remote corner of the UBC campus, is dominated by National Research Council Canada signage. Decorating the entrance are logos attesting to the multiple public agencies and programs...
Left: Daimler Chrysler Canadian headquarters in Windsor, Ontario I grew up in Chatham, Ont, which was an hour away from Windsor and Detroit, the twin motor cities. As a young man, my step grandfather hand built bodies for the Gray Dort car company. There were many small car companies in...
John MacDonald, co-founder of local high-tech pioneer MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (MDA), and Leonid Rubin, former biophysics professor at Moscow State University and one of Russia’s former top physicists, were supposed to be long retired by now. After decades of success in business and academia, respectively, both should be...
There are few places on Earth where the forces of nature are on such violent, chaotic display as Hecate Strait, the narrow stretch of shallow ocean that separates the Queen Charlotte Islands from the B.C. coast. Winter low-pressure systems born over Alaska can push winds to 160 km/h, driving waves...
All my father ever wanted was for his home, the 820-square-foot two-bedroom bungalow I grew up in, to be “clear title.” My parents bought that house on East 5th Avenue in 1953 for $7,500, and I remember like it was yesterday driving with Dad to the Royal Bank at Granville...
It’s a hazy summer day when I tour the former Western Star truck factory in Kelowna with Brian Fry, vice-president of RackForce Gigacenter. As we talk, Fry’s teenaged son and his girlfriend skip down to the other end of the cavernous 150,000-square-foot building, practically disappearing into the horizon. Ghosts of...
Few inventions have withstood the test of time as well as beer. Sipped by ancient pharaohs and Sumerian rulers over 6,000 years ago, the concoction has survived the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, Industrial Revolution and Prohibition. Many things go into beer’s complex creation, including malt, water and yeast, but it...
Said Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all.” On the topic of gift cards, he had nothing. “Thus Christmas doth make morons of us all,” would be good. Or there’s always the one about a fool and his money. I recently bought a digital camera at London...