BC BREAKING NEWS:
North Vancouver-Seymour: The Chosen One?
Posted by Barry Forward - North Shore Outlook • August, 21 2008 9:48 AM
MLA Daniel Jarvis appears to be having the last laugh as the jockeying heats up to replace him in North Vancouver-Seymour. At least two potential candidates say they have sent letters of intent to the BC Liberals announcing their interest in the riding should Jarvis step down. Both school trustee Jane Thornthwaite and community activist Wayne Hunter are doing their best to be gracious as Jarvis continues his work as MLA and refuses to bow to any pressures to leave the post he has held since 1991.
So why then are Hunter and Thornthwaite pressing the issue when the provincial election is still over nine months away?
Quite simply it’s because the civic election campaign is about to kick off. For Thornthwaite that means it’s decision time – time to decide what political route she’s going to take – given that Jarvis is still, the last time we checked, the sitting MLA for the riding. Her dilemma is that she has until October 10 to file her nomination papers for her re-election to the School Board, and if she runs and wins (which is extremely likely as she topped the trustee polls in 2005) she will have a tough time convincing voters to pay for an expensive byelection should Jarvis hold off his possible retirement until January or February 2009.
The ironic thing here is that Thornthwaite appears to be Jarvis’ heir apparent. It turns out Jarvis is telling anyone who will listen that he is a fan of Thornthwaite and that she would make a great MLA. There are also those who say Jarvis supports her because she is a federal Liberal – and that he has no intention of letting a “right wing reform candidate” take the riding after he’s gone. If this were true one might think that Jarvis would make his departure announcement sooner than later so that Thornthwaite does not have to go through even the prospect of triggering a messy school trustee early term byelection.
No comments »Our real estate woes continue
Posted by Kirk Pedersen - BC Local News • August, 20 2008 8:52 AMOver the past two weeks, we have been dealt two major blows in the search for our home.
First, my fiancee lost her job, and the market for her skill set isn't as wide and far-reaching as we had hoped.
Second, as a direct result of her job loss, we had to forget about the 1,300 square foot palace we made an offer on, because the mortgage payments combined with the ridiculous strata fees were too much for one breadwinner making a modest living to handle.
So, we started looking at smaller places, narrowing our search, but still looking predominately at concrete high-rise buildings in Surrey.
Women and Human Rights take centre stage
Posted by Brooke Ward - The Northern View • August, 18 2008 8:38 AMToday was another day full of action as a young journalist at the 4th World Youth Congress in Quebec City. Contrary to the past several days, I was able to mix a little work and play, though. The day began as horrifically early as the rest, me rolling out of bed around 6 :30 a.m. in order to way my way through the motions before the eight a.m. meeting.
We all set to work in the newsroom right away, several of us on tight deadlines in order to participate in the two p.m. tour of le Soleil offices, the largest newspaper in Quebec City. I set to work on multiple pieces, my favourite being an interview with Algerian rapper Solo, who has actually had an attempt made on his life after speaking out on political oppression in his country. If there is anything the congress has done so far, it has definitely made the world smaller and begun the vital process of removing the veils so many of us are wearing.
With today’s theme on women and human rights we are focusing on a paper covering personal stories and human rights issues from cover to cover. One of the young journalists is from Afghanistan and he has written a piece about how the Afghan culture is sadly misrepresented in the media. Socializing with the entire Afghan delegation and seeing them dressed in Western clothes, it’s hard to believe that they are from the very same "war-torn" country that we see portrayed on the news however many days a week.
I also got up the courage to actually spend some time hosting on the radio, and mediated several conversations on "controversial" topics and one on the day’s theme of womens’ rights. It was quite the rush at first and I would have liked to have spent the whole day there had it not been for needing to go to Le Soleil, which was and experience in and of itself. I mean, I work in a newsroom most days but the reality is that a six person operation doesn’t really compare. Other than its sheer size, the visit to the paper was nothing special.
Of inspirational stories and a dancing Governor General
Posted by Brooke Ward - The Northern View • August, 15 2008 1:24 PMWorkshops started today, with the day's theme being Social Entrepreneurship. It was hard to choose which ones to go to with simultaneous workshops, round tables and conferences on a number of extremely interesting topics. There was one, however, that stood out. One of the late afternoon sessions included a talk-show featuring a panel of experts from around the world.
Between sessions I hung out a lot at the radio broadcasting booth today. It's actually really cool, being broadcast around Quebec City and played in rooms all over the congress. We had several live discussion/debates on there today and interviews with different delegates with really good stories but the best part to me is just hearing the music from all over the world, brought by the delegates themselves.
Speaking of delegates with good stories, I got to interview a young guy from Ghana with a pretty unique story about how a backpack helped him to get to the Congress. I guess about eight years ago he was in school and picked up a secondhand backpack, inside which he found an address. He wrote to it and received a reply from a girl in Ontario, who didn't even realize that her mom had given her backpack to Goodwill and mystery of all mysteries, how it ended up in Ghana. They remained friends for quite some time, but eventually lost contact. When the young man found out he was coming to Canada for the congress he did some searching around and managed to get back into contact with his friend, who wrote the story of how they met and sold it to make money for his trip.
Otherwise, I had to do a double take at lunch time when I passed a woman in the lunch line that looked like someone from my favourite Canadian TV show. Turns out it was her, and she was doing backup singing/dancing for Jully Black, who was performing for the congress later in the evening.
Making North Shore housing affordable - Part 1
Posted by Darrell Mussatto - North Shore Outlook • August, 14 2008 8:53 AMWhat is the best strategy for dealing with the dearth of affordable housing in your community?
Mayor Darrell Mussatto, CNV
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