people

Carole Taylor receives big business honour

By Ricardo Khayatte /

Carole Taylor at the Rix Awards Wednesday night

THE#BCBIZDAILY
Plus, trouble in Greece for a B.C. miner and a better Granville Island

Carole Taylor honoured
Last night, B.C.’s former finance minister—and chancellor emeritus of SFU—was honoured by the Vancouver Board of Trade with the Rix Award for “engaged community citizenship.” The gala event, held at the Vancouver Convention Centre, marked a rare public appearance by the popular ex-politician, who admitted that she “doesn’t like giving speeches.” Taylor went on to say that, in accepting the award, she wanted to acknowledge how important civic engagement is. “If there’s anything that drives me,” she told the black-tie crowd of 900, “it’s the feeling that we all have not just the responsibility but the opportunity to give back. To try to make a difference. To make the world a better place. They may be clichés in one sense, but if it drives you to try to make things better, we all have a role to play. And we can’t leave it to others. We can’t say, ‘I’m not going to run for public service’ or let somebody else do it.” —Matt O’Grady

VFx job expo
For all you unemployed animators out there, Vancouver’s largest visual effects (VFX) career fair to date is headed your way. On Saturday, the Vancouver Economic Commission will be hosting 40 local employers including Electronic Arts and Sony Pictures Imageworks at the Vancouver Convention Centre for a job fair for local artists, programmers and production management professionals. Thanks to the low Canadian dollar, attractive government subsidies and Sony’s relocation of its VFX division from Los Angeles to Vancouver, 2015 is shaping up to be a banner year for the city’s industry, which employs around 25,000 people.
 
Greek gold
Thousands of Greek miners and their supporters took to the streets of Athens on Thursday to protest the closure of a gold mine owned by Vancouver-based Eldorado Gold. The decision to revoke final construction of the project in Skouries, a city in northern Greece, came from the government’s Ministry of Energy in late February. With over $450 million already invested in two mines and plans to invest $310 million moving forward, Eldorado CEO Paul Wright said that he hopes the ministry will reconsider its recent decision.
 
Granville Island 2.0
The federal agency that runs Granville Island is mulling over plans to renovate or expand the public market after 35 years without significant change. One option is to repurpose the old Emily Carr University campus, which would make approximately 200,000 square feet available, according to the Province.