September 2018
In this issue
The scene at Central City Brewers and Distillers’ downtown Vancouver brew pub doesn’t exactly look like something that will reverberate around the province. On this May morning, a couple of TV crews are on hand, setting up tripods while a few other journalists mill around, clutching leather notebooks. Bar staff go about their day as usual, cleaning countertops and changing taps. In...
Jennifer and Stephen Bailey, Cursor & ThreadThey’re making old-timey sartorialism casual-chic again, with dandy button-on suspenders and ties, scarves and pocket squares in cool fabrics, from linen to Japanese cotton. This Vancouver couple travel stylishly, efficiently and carry-on-only when visiting their stockists, from Regina to Reykjavik. Jen favours packing cubes and lightweight totes from Muji, and rocks cotton bandanas. “They...
For the fourth time in his 20-year career, David Shepheard has set up a film commission office from scratch. The British transplant landed in Vancouver from London in late 2016 as one of only 350 film commissioners worldwide, to promote the city’s ability to do it all, from script to post-production. Where once Shepheard might just have shown off a...
We are developing a plant-based yogurt to extend our dairy brand. How do we position our products so the plant-based yogurt is viewed as neither a lesser option for non-dairy eaters who have no alternative, nor as superior to dairy? We hope the same consumers will buy both styles to enjoy at different times.” —Scott and Merissa DiGiustini, owners, Tree Island...
One warm night in downtown Hong Kong, I’m sipping a Japanese session IPA with the head of the local Vancouver Canucks fan club. Thomas Lau owns this joint: Coedo Taproom, a stylish resto-bar on a back street in the bustling Causeway Bay district.Lau, president of NextStep Gourmet Group, gripes about the city’s high rents, long lineups, cramped living quarters, volatile...
“We basically play at places where people have no choice but to hear us,” Lawrie Ferguson declares cheerfully about her band, Couldn’t Sleep (more about the name later). “So, little parties and stuff.” Their biggest audience so far was at a birthday celebration with about 60 guests. Last summer the group put on a backyard concert from the lower deck...
The fall after he graduated from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland with an MA in economics, Peter Muench started work as an associate at the Vancouver branch of Toronto-based real estate giant Colliers International. That was five years ago. Since then, the North Vancouver native has overseen countless deals, most involving local tech businesses moving into new offices.
As he moves to consolidate power at home, Xi Jinping is sowing doubt abroad. From Asia to North America, other countries were already questioning the motives of an increasingly assertive China. Now President Xi’s war on corruption—a key justification for extending his rule indefinitely at last March’s National People’s Congress—has created a new China threat for business partners and even...
Tiffany Ottahal, a working mother of two children aged three and one, knows how lucky she is. Her son and daughter are in licensed child care, and she and her husband own, together with the bank, the roof over their heads. But those blessings are hard-won. Earlier this year, the Ottahals were making a go of it in a two-bedroom Burnaby...
Less than 10 years after SFU was built, then–university president Pauline Jewett was lamenting its isolation on the top of Burnaby Mountain. She proposed building a village. It now exists. UniverCity is a bustling, sustainable community with shops, services and some 5,000 residents. In Building Community: Defining, Designing, Developing UniverCity, Gordon Harris, president and CEO of SFU Community Trust, with...