By Bev Schellenberg As a mom of two children in elementary school in British Columbia during the Winter Olympics 2010, I braced myself for an onslaught of Olympic-twisted curricula and information — dare I say, propaganda — coming home prior to the grand spectacle. After all, the Olympics website includes a section for teachers complete […]
Vancouver
Ambivalent at the Olympics
By Bev Schellenberg The Vancouver Winter Olympics will open in six days, whether British Columbians like it or not. The other day I was sitting in a Burnaby chiropractor’s office across the waiting room from a white-haired lady when she suddenly blurted, “I don’t want the Olympics here. They never asked me.” I looked around, […]
Cultural games
By Alison@Creekside The City of Vancouver ordered the removal of this mural from the public artspace outside the Downtown Eastside’s The Crying Room gallery on the grounds it is “graffiti.” Artist Jesse Corcoran works at a homeless shelter: “The oppressive nature of the Games is what I wanted to capture and how the majority is […]
FUN no more
By Frank Moher I am back to listening to my local CBC Radio affiliate, the one out of Vancouver. This comes after a lovely respite, during which I listened instead to a talk-station called CFUN, whose hosts — besides offering news and commentary of substance — were, well, fun. Earlier this month, CFUN switched to […]
Olympics: Celebrate or else
By Alison@Creekside An enthusiastic supporter of the Beijing Olympics who posted his photos online at Flickr under a creative commons licence – which allows anyone to use them for free with attribution – received a cease and desist letter from International Olympic Committee lawyers: “Images of the Games taken by you may not be used […]
Supernatural! Downtown Eastside!
By guest blogger Alison@Creekside United Nations envoy Miloon Kothari, on a tour of Canada to examine homelessness, said he visited Vancouver specifically to assess whether the Olympic bid’s pledges “are being kept.” “Vancouver said, ‘If we get the Games, we commit to leaving a positive legacy,’ and we [at the UN] are taking that at […]
The Duke of Vancouver
By Frank Moher Daryl Duke, the Vancouver-born TV director and producer who died last Saturday, was the real deal. In an industry full off hypesters, especially in B.C., where there are 20 would-be producers for every dollar of financing available, Duke had sufficient credits that he didn’t need to tell you all about them: you […]
