Twilight fans stake out Surrey film set

I know where Bella Swan’s house is.
The Twilight movie set, built for the second and third installments of the popular teen vampire series, lies on an unassuming residential street somewhere in a rural Surrey neighbourhood.
Film crews, and possibly the film’s biggest, gorgeous stars, Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, were there last week.
Not that any fans [...]

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What happened to WTVS-Detroit?

Something terrible happened to channel 43 this summer.
Sometime, when I wasn’t paying attention, my tied-for-favourite PBS channel, WTVS-Detroit, vanished from my Shaw Cable lineup. And in its place was some cruddy kiddy TV station showing idiotic baby-oriented cartoons with primary colours, shrieking voices, and loud, clunky soundtracks.
It took me a few weeks to realize what [...]

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Reporters in peril: A tale of two kidnappings

It’s a story-book ending for former detainees Laura Ling and Euna Lee, two American journalists who’ve spent more than four months imprisoned in North Korea.

Yesterday, after an unannounced meeting in Pyongyang between former U.S. president Bill Clinton and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, the two women were pardoned and freed. They had been sentenced to 12 years hard labour for illegally entering the country.

For family, friends and supporters of a Canadian woman held captive in Somalia for the past year, today’s news headlines and footage of the two jubilant women returning to the States must have provided a painful contrast indeed.

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What you’re worth at 14

Fifty bucks and an apology letter is all it takes to get away with taking sexual advantage of an underage girl in British Columbia.
A White Rock man who pleaded guilty to assaulting a 14-year-old girl last August has been ordered to apologize to her in writing, take respectful relationship training and stay away from drugs [...]

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The next voter in line wins a car!

It would be simple. Raffle off five new cars, say, (or the equivalent cash prize) on election night. Anyone who votes would be eligible. Do something like that, and I bet you’d get people pouring into the polls come election day. And somebody better do something pretty quick. In just eight years, B.C.’s voter turnout for provincial elections has plummeted from 71 percent in 2001 to slightly higher than 50 per cent in May 2009.

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Our Liberal overlords have been returned to power

7:22 p.m. A giant flock of seagulls floats past the skies above our ocean view deck. “It’s like The Birds!” I shout. “Isn’t it freaky?” the gulls float in the balmy wind currents over White Rock, where incumbent Liberal MLA Gordon Hogg is so assured of victory, I’m not even planning to check tonight’s results. But I fear the birds are a sign. A portent of things to come. The Liberals will win a majority. Like the grease-fattened gulls who beg for fish and chips from unsuspecting tourists and visitors along White Rock’s promenade, they don’t deserve it, I think darkly.

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Election day reflections of an unhappy camper

Is it just me, or have the past eight years under the B.C. Liberals seemed to drag on a bit?
At times arrogant, elitist and increasingly out of touch, our political overlords have really done all they can to stretch out their two consecutive terms. From massive cutbacks to selling off or privatizing B.C.’s assets, they’ve [...]

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Dear ex-Kitimat council, I secretly hated you, sincerely Gordon Campbell

I wasn’t impressed with something the premier said last week on the hustings in the northwest.
He told reporters he was frustrated by the previous district council’s stance over Alcan power sales and blamed their stubborn pursuit of the issue for hurting the town. In short, Campbell said it’s no wonder Rio Tinto Alcan didn’t get [...]

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The haters are calling it the Owe-Lympics. Here’s why:

Related: Things I hated in 2008 – Women’s ski jump not an Olympic sport
We still haven’t been told how much the 2010 Winter Olympics are going to cost.
Even though there’s been an election campaign underway, the provincial government hasn’t filled us in, yet. We’re waiting for a detailed auditor-general’s report on the subject. Last I [...]

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Buddy, can you spare a luge run?

Keep in mind just over 3,000 athletes are coming to the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver next February. By strange coincidence, that’s the same number as Vancouver’s current homeless population.
If you ask me, 3,000 doesn’t sound like a lot when you’re talking about athletes for a “world class event” costing the host country billions in [...]

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Canadians are “idiots”, Ignatieff skit reveals

Thank you, Gavin Crawford of This Hour Has 22 Minutes, for your impression of prime minister-in-waiting Michael Ignatieff, unveiled to a grateful TV audience last night.

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Live (to tape) blogging the inauguration

It all seemed pretty quiet for such a big crowd. Watching the presidential inauguration ceremony on TV this morning, I was struck by the sheer size of the crowds in Washington D.C.
There were so many people, the Mall looked like a massive, undulating carpet – later I realized it’s because everyone was wearing a tuque [...]

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Pemberton festival’s a bust, Live Nation admits

The Pemberton music festival has been scuttled for 2009.
Despite getting the go-ahead on the outdoor venue in November, promoters Live Nation finally revealed this week they just don’t have enough time to line up talent for the budding music festival.
The mega-concert company wasn’t able to secure the land through the Agricultural Land Commission until November, [...]

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Things I liked in 2008 – the black bear who went to Subway

A lone Subway employee in Kitimat, B.C., got the surprise of her life this summer, when dark and early one morning a black bear with the munchies wandered into the deserted sandwich joint hoping to find a snack.
The persistent bear managed to open the restaurant door and walk inside.
The employee, working all alone in the [...]

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Things I liked in 2008 – Sasquatch sightings along Hwy 16

See also: Sasquatch sightings are still a hot B.C. trend
After spending the past couple of decades pushed to the sidelines while jazzier unexplained phenomena like crop circles, alien abductions, and UFO reports grabbed all the attention, North America’s elusive, hairy ape-man is back, baby.
Community newspapers along a stretch of remote highway in northern B.C. were [...]

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The PM’s handcuff fetish (Things I hated in 2008)

Does Stephen Harper even have a sense of humour? Consider this awkward moment from September 2008, when comedienne Geri Hall of CBC’s long-running fake news show This Hour Has 22 Minutes caught the PM and his staff off-guard at a press conference in Halifax.
Hall, standing in a sizable crowd of reporters, tried to ask Harper [...]

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Sarah Palin (Things I hated in 2008)

John McCain’s Hail Mary Pass running mate announcement – coming practically on top of the triumphant Democratic party convention’s endorsement of Barack Obama and his VP choice Joe Biden – was one of the swiftest and most divisive political buzz kills of the summer.
I’m not sure what was more disturbing about Republican vice president hopeful [...]

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Farewell to a Queen

It was an emotional final sailing on the Queen of Saanich.
Passengers making the voyage home from Vancouver Island to Tsawwassen late Sunday afternoon were surprised to learn they were part of BC Ferries history.
A smattering of applause greeted the captain’s request that passengers observe a moment’s silence to mark the Queen of Saanich’s last round [...]

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