By Jodi A. Shaw Last week, Angela Campbell, a professor of law at McGill University, testified at a constitutional reference case examining Canada’s current polygamy law that the practice ought to be decriminalized. I wasn’t sure if I should gasp or applaud. Campbell visited Bountiful, B.C. in 2008 and 2009, interviewing 22 women over a […]
British Columbia
Don’t drink and drive, unless it’s bad for business
By Bev Schellenberg What does a province do when a law acts as an effective deterrent? They consider changing it, apparently. At least, that’s what the still wet-behind-the-ears Solicitor General Rich Coleman is thinking of doing with B.C.’s strict new impaired driving laws. Since September, B.C. has been abuzz with news of tougher drinking and […]
Potash and trout bring out the best in the Cons
By Frank Moher Perhaps Alison, the regular blogger in this space, will disagree, but it seems to me the Conservatives have actually done two things right in the last two days. That’s two things in a row. Significantly, both are liable to prove unpopular with their business base in the West, which may mean that […]
BC Railroaded
By Alison@Creekside Just as former BC finance minister Gary Collins was due to take the stand in BC’s biggest and longest running political corruption case, it’s all over. Defendants Dave Basi and Bob Virk, ministerial aides to Collins and former BC transport minister Judith Reid respectively, have agreed to stay home for two years and […]
You really don’t care about Betty Krawczyk, Mr. Selley?
By Alison@Creekside A column in the National Post last week compared the peaceful civil disobedience and incarceration of 82-year old environmental activist Betty Krawczyk with that of 62-year old anti-abortion protester Linda Gibbons: Two court injunctions; two women who violated them in a way that significantly harmed no one; prison time for both that would […]
HST Follies: BC dumps electoral officer. Revenge?
By Alison@Creekside The popularity of Lotusland’s estimable premier is currently running at 12%. There are a lot of very good reasons for this but let’s just go with what 83% of the people polled told Angus Reid: they don’t trust the bastard. Here’s another reason, not that you’d know anything about it from reading our […]
Who needs a BC arts council when we have the Liberals?
By Frank Moher Jane Danzo, in her letter of resignation as Chair of the BC Arts Council and in various exit interviews that followed, has confirmed what most of us already suspected: that the Liberal government now sees itself as arbiter of all things cultural in the province. At last, we can begin to see […]
Yes, an oil spill could happen in B.C.
By Alison@Creekside Hands Across the Sand began in Florida in February to “protest the efforts by the Florida Legislature and the US Congress to lift the ban on oil drilling in the near and off shores of Florida.” Well it’s a global movement now and here’s the Vancouver Canada page. But don’t we already have […]
Kevin Neish and the flotilla: human rites
By Frank Moher I got to know Kevin Neish, one of three Canadians currently being held by Israel after its attack on the Gaza aid flotilla, last Fall, when a production of the play My Name is Rachel Corrie that I had directed toured to Victoria. Kevin was instrumental in bringing the show to his […]
Rescued from the scrapheap
THE LIFE & ART OF FRANK MOLNAR, JACK HARDMAN, LEROY JENSEN By Eve Lazarus, Claudia Cornwall, Wendy Newbold Patterson Mother Tongue Publishing 146 pp., $34.95 Review by Brian Brennan Frank Molnar, Jack Hardman, and LeRoy Jensen were three dedicated and unfashionably tradition-based Vancouver artists of the 1960s who today are largely forgotten. Because they operated […]
