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On Vancouver’s new logo

The City’s new logo is not a lot of things.
It’s not inspiring, it’s not reflective, it’s not exciting, it’s not very good — but at $8,000, it’s not a rip off.

I’m not at all suggesting this was money well spent — it’s not. Of course the actual cost of implementing this logo across the city’s print collateral, web presence, social media, mobile apps, signage, et al will cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands (at least) of dollars. It’s a bizarre priority for a city with so many real priorities like affordability and housing and homelessness.

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Remembering Joe Wai: Architect, Activist, and Placemaker

Remembering the late Joe Wai who designed some of our city’s best loved Chinatown places, including the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Gardens, the Chinese Cultural Centre, Skwachàys Healing Lodge, and the Millennium Gate. Along the way he was a driving force behind the preservation of Chinatown and renewing it’s many heritage buildings and facades, and he led the campaign to see Chinatown designated as a National Historic Site.

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Naming the new school: Crosstown vs Cumyow

With the naming of the new elementary school in North East False Creek, it seems the debate is still raging and petitions are being circulated after the interim appointed Vancouver School Board decided to go with Crosstown rather than honouring Chinese Vancouver pioneer Won Alexander Cumyow

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Year In Review: When you’re chewing on life’s gristle, don’t grumble, give a whistle!

2016, what a stinker of a year —right?

Trump, Brexit, Aleppo, record-breaking climate change and biodiversity depletion, geopolitical uncertainty and upheaval, bigotry and intolerance, fake news, an unstable and untenable local housing situation, growing economic disparity, close to 1,000 dead in the overdose crisis gripping our province, the pipeline, Site C — the list goes on!