Careening Through a Creative Life

  Andre Petterson is impatient, at least when it comes to his work. Once a peice is completed, this Vancouver-based artist is happy to say goodbye and never look back. “I have too many ideas and I want to do too many things to paint one painting for a month. It makes me crazy, so…

Embracing Industrial Chic

  Concrete and steel are often seen as elements that make up a house’s framework, but architectural designer Fances Zago-Schmitt had another vision, Instead of hiding behind drywall and carpet, she left them uncovered for an industrial-chic look in this West Vancouver home. “Steel becomes a really big feature for me, ” Zago-Schmitt says. “It…

Scene of the Cleanup

BC Business October, 2012 TV crime dramas have made rock stars of forensic investigators, but once the medical detectives have left the scene, nobody likes to talk about what happens next. Cleaning up after violent crimes is left to a rare breed of specialist, one that in B.C. is subject to very little regulation. continue…

A Game Changer for Mining Finance

Canadian Business October 5, 2012 Where there’s Robert Friedland, there’s hype, and that might be just what the junior mining sector needs right now. The billionaire promoter’s initial public offering of his African mining venture, Ivanplats Ltd., is being watched… See full article

Queue Tips

Embedded at a New Year’s Day levee in Prince Edward Island The Walrus January/February 2013 At 10 A.M. on the first day of the new year, the line of smartly clad participants snakes up the brass-banistered staircase of Charlottetown’s city hall, at eye level with the framed photographic replica of Robert Harris’s 1883 painting The…

Mother of Invention

BC Business October 2012 The story of Sir Isaac Newton and his apple teaches that inspiration can come from strange places. Such was the case for one Sunshine Coast-based small-business owner, whose propensity for heat stroke inspired her creations, which became key props in Victoria’s Secret’s US$12-million fashion show. See full article

From the Ground Up

BC Business September 2012 More than half of the province’s pine forests have been decimated by beetles and fire, and at least two million hectares of Crown forest need to be restocked. The province doesn’t have the money to do it. Can private investors and innovations in tree planting fill the gap in time to…

David Black’s Pipe Dream

  Canadian Business December 3, 2012 Victoria businessman David Black has thrown yet another log on the fiery debate over Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline with his proposal to build a $13-billion oil refinery on the province’s northern coast. While the scheme is given little credence in Canada’s oilpatch, the discussion it sparks could be surprisingly…

Youngsters Take the Helm to Combat Child Sex Trade

Financial Times January 25, 2008 The meeting took place outside on a patio in Sri Lanka, in broad daylight. If he liked the merchandise she presented, they would make a deal. The product the two were bartering over was her body. Canadian teenager Cheryl Perera was undercover, playing the role of a child sex worker…

Ottawa Leaks Facts on Asylum-Seekers

Toronto Star July 25, 2008 Canadian border agents are providing personal information on asylum seekers to officials from the very country these people are fleeing, according to foreign diplomats. Karel Hejc, head of consular and political affairs at the Czech Embassy in Ottawa, says he has received several faxes at the embassy… See full article