https://www.scmp.com/rss/13415/feed en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Geoff Langford thought he knew the way to San Jose. A self-described experienced traveller, Langford and Amber Lowdermilk were buckled into their seats and about to take off from Vancouver, Canada, for a holiday in Costa Rica when the flight attendant’s welcome message caught their attention. “She was telling us about our three-hour trip to San Jose and we thought, ‘That seems really fast’. We asked the guy beside us, ‘Was she joking?’ And he looked at us like, ‘What are you talking about?’” The... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3025016/tale-two-sydneys-when-travel-plans-take-tourists?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel/article/3025016/tale-two-sydneys-when-travel-plans-take-tourists?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 03 Sep 2019 00:15:09 +0000 They are still coming in droves, but those droves are no longer growing as quickly as Canadian tourism officials would like. There was a time when the Vancouver economy wasn't so dependent on tourists from China. Approved Destination Status (ADS), which allows guided groups of mainland travellers to visit a country, wasn't bestowed upon Canada until 2010. Before then, the limited number of mainland visitors to the country weren't the type who went sightseeing and shopping; they were mostly... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel-leisure/article/1916625/destination-vancouver-mainland-chinese?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/travel-leisure/article/1916625/destination-vancouver-mainland-chinese?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 27 Feb 2016 14:45:45 +0000 When Cheng Shu Ren came to Vancouver from Shanghai 25 years ago, he wanted to learn about the history of the Chinese in Canada. Two decades - and a lot of history - later (the Chinese have been in Canada since migrant workers helped to build the Canadian Pacific Railway line, in the 19th century), Cheng completed three murals charting the early history of Chinatown. The first, 1884: Wah Chong Laundry, is a reproduction of a photograph taken just before a head tax of US$50 was imposed on Chinese... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1860993/mural-outrage-vandalism-vancouvers-chinatown?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1860993/mural-outrage-vandalism-vancouvers-chinatown?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 26 Sep 2015 14:48:03 +0000 When Wendy Tsao's son came home from kindergarten with a stick-man self-portrait, it sparked an idea that would become a global trend: she would make a soft toy based on his drawing. "He recognised it right away and said, 'That's me, I made that.' That's when I decided to make toys based on children's drawings," she says. Born in Montreal to Taiwanese immigrants, Tsao trained as an architect before relocating to Vancouver and becoming a landscape painter. That job, however, didn't fulfil her,... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1849149/vancouver-artist-who-started-craze-making-toys-drawings?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1849149/vancouver-artist-who-started-craze-making-toys-drawings?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 15 Aug 2015 15:34:29 +0000 Murder by dismemberment; a Chinese millionaire with a potential love child; and a reality television star faking it to make it. All these elements came together last month in one of the oddest and most disturbing crimes Vancouver has seen. Gang Yuan, 41, was found cut into more than 100 pieces (for "easy disposal", according to the police) at his C$5 million (HK$31 million) mansion, in an expensive suburb of West Vancouver. Li Zhao, 54, who is married to a cousin of the victim, has been charged... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1830945/murder-dismemberment-money-and-reality-tv-chinese-mystery?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1830945/murder-dismemberment-money-and-reality-tv-chinese-mystery?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 04 Jul 2015 13:15:00 +0000 Harry Yung wasn't looking for love when he posted an ad online for a tour guide in Vietnam, where he was heading on holiday. But when he felt a romantic connection with the woman who replied, the Canadian of Chinese-Vietnamese descent knew one thing: everything about their relationship had to be recorded. A training document for Citizenship and Immigration department officers in Canada, which became public last month following a freedom of information request, confirmed that Yung's instinct had... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1816221/documenting-courtship-eases-vietnamese-brides-entry-canada?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1816221/documenting-courtship-eases-vietnamese-brides-entry-canada?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 06 Jun 2015 15:18:32 +0000 In 1957, Jim Wong Chu - then nine years old - was sent from Vancouver to Hong Kong. When he returned to Canada four years later, speaking what he called "Hongkongese", Wong says he failed to connect. "I tried to speak to people on the street and they ignored me," he says. "There was a chauvinism about Cantonese and everyone else was speaking their village dialect [such as Taishanese or Hakka]. So for 10 years, I didn't speak any Cantonese." It was only when the next wave of Hong Kong migrants... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1761629/cantonese-under-threat-vancouver?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1761629/cantonese-under-threat-vancouver?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 11 Apr 2015 11:30:30 +0000 "Chinatown is dying." Eight minutes into Julia Kwan's documentary Everything Will Be, this observation is made by a local herbalist as she condemns a world in which rich Chinese are snapping up property across North America with little sense of heritage. "In five years it's fated that Chinatown will be gone," she says, with a resigned air, while grinding Chinese medicine. "Half of it will be the Westerners' world." Kwan's film explains how Chinatown in downtown Vancouver is being targeted by... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1612698/city-scope-all-change-chinatown?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1612698/city-scope-all-change-chinatown?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 11 Oct 2014 14:15:15 +0000 Could Vancouver's real-estate crash really be down to a new school board policy that supports transgender students? That's the claim put forward by two school board trustees in the city - and it's one that sent ripples through the Chinese community and had immediate political ramifications. A recent press conference was held in one of the city's Chinese restaurants by Sophia Woo and Ken Denike, who claimed foreign buyers had become concerned about plans to pass a policy giving gay and... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1563326/city-scope-claims-inflame?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1563326/city-scope-claims-inflame?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 02 Aug 2014 15:31:04 +0000 It's hard to fathom quite why rogue dentist David Wu (right) turned himself in recently after being on the lam for so long. For six months, Wu, who also goes by the name Tung Sheng Wu, had ignored all entreaties to appear in court to face the rap over his illegal dentistry practice. Last month he was sentenced in absentia to three months in jail and ordered to pay more than C$100,000 (HK$742,000) in fines. A week ago, however, he turned himself in to the Toronto Police Service. Believed to have... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1361883/city-scope-reality-bites-fake-dentist?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1361883/city-scope-reality-bites-fake-dentist?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 23 Nov 2013 15:18:57 +0000 The recent furore over a photograph of a little Asian boy peeing in a rubbish bin in a shopping mall in Richmond, a satellite city of Vancouver, echoed stinks that have periodically erupted in Hong Kong and elsewhere. Prompted by responses to the incident on social media - the picture, taken on a smartphone, first appeared on Twitter - national news channels here picked up the story, such as it was. And to a surprising number it seemed cut and dried that the child in the photo, and the woman... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1338747/city-scope-letting-it-go?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1338747/city-scope-letting-it-go?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 26 Oct 2013 14:52:46 +0000 The scammers knew exactly what strings to pull. They had overheard Mrs La's concerns about her sons and her worries about them driving on Vancouver's streets during the rainy seasons, and they used those fears and superstitions against their victim. It is a scam that has kept five Chinese nationals, in Canada on visitors' visas, behind bars since July 15, when they were stopped trying to leave Vancouver airport for Hong Kong with C$148,000 (HK$1.1 million) in cash and enough hidden jewellery to... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1318225/city-scope-taken-ride-bus?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1318225/city-scope-taken-ride-bus?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 28 Sep 2013 16:00:00 +0000 In the tiny town of Tumbler Ridge, in north British Columbia's resource belt region, the swift departure of 16 Chinese workers earlier this year has left half-finished houses abandoned and an underground mine un-mined. So taken with these new members of their community - who had arrived in the autumn - were the senior citizens of the town (population 3,000), that they had knitted scarves to keep them warm through the winter. But a relationship that began so promisingly unravelled quickly. The... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1243554/city-scope-labour-pains-newfound-friends?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1243554/city-scope-labour-pains-newfound-friends?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 25 May 2013 16:00:00 +0000 A valuable parental lesson is that it never hurts to say you're sorry. But here in Vancouver, Canada, the provincial government has found there can be a backlash from trying to use contriteness to win over voters; in this instance, ethnic Asian voters. The governing BC (British Columbia) Liberal party is down in the polls ahead of the May 14 election. In response, the party has spent millions on advertising in an attempt to win back voters deserting the centre-right incumbents for their... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1201746/city-scope-sorry-state?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1201746/city-scope-sorry-state?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 30 Mar 2013 16:00:00 +0000 Scotland's most famous viaduct (no one I ask can think of a runner-up) sneaks up on you. It is a curved construction that leans into the landscape beyond and can be glimpsed only briefly as the train thunders over it. For more than a century, the railway line that crosses the viaduct and connects the West Highlands to Scotland's largest city, Glasgow, was a crucial, yet underused link. So remote is this part of the country there was talk a few years ago of closing down the station in... https://www.scmp.com/article/974894/about-boy?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/974894/about-boy?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 30 Jul 2011 16:00:00 +0000 It was official business that brought Zhou Qiang, Communist Party chief of Hunan province, to Atlanta, Georgia, earlier this year, but it was a personal passion that prompted his sole request as a tourist to this southern United States city. With only four hours of free time before he had to leave, Zhou asked to see the home of Margaret Mitchell, a local author with just one novel to her name. That book, published 75 years ago this week, was Gone With the Wind, or, as it is known in... https://www.scmp.com/article/971700/frankly-my-dear?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/971700/frankly-my-dear?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 25 Jun 2011 16:00:00 +0000 Until a fictional character with attitude usurped her position, the most famous resident of Sodermalm, a Stockholm neighbourhood undergoing gentrification, had been Greta Garbo. The reclusive silent-film-era movie star, born and raised at Blekingegatan 32, is remembered in Sodermalm with a statue, but the Swedish capital's largest and most populated district is these days better known as the neighbourhood where the girl with the dragon tattoo lives. Stockholm is made up of 14 islands,... https://www.scmp.com/article/735136/way-dragon?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/735136/way-dragon?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 08 Jan 2011 16:00:00 +0000 When Claudia Li was a little girl, she used to beg her grandmother to take her out for dim sum so she could have her favourite food. Growing up in Canada, Li would get startled looks from non-Chinese friends when she confessed to how much she enjoyed eating chicken feet. 'I asked my grandmother why do Chinese people eat chicken feet and she told me, 'Chinese people don't like to waste, so we eat every part of the animal's body,'' says Li, 24, who was born in Vancouver. A few years ago,... https://www.scmp.com/article/734547/diaspora-diaries?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/734547/diaspora-diaries?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 01 Jan 2011 16:00:00 +0000 For the first 10 years of his life, Ben Ho knew nothing except Hong Kong and no one who wasn't Chinese. That changed in 1974, when he moved with his parents to the 1,000-strong community of Chase in British Columbia, Canada. 'We were the only Chinese family there, so it was 180 degrees different from Hong Kong,' says Ho, who was born and raised in Kowloon. 'But we quickly adapted.' Ho, now 48, remembers how Canada seemed very cold. The family arrived in early autumn and by Halloween it was... https://www.scmp.com/article/731158/diaspora-diaries?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/731158/diaspora-diaries?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 20 Nov 2010 16:00:00 +0000 Ask my young American-born nephews where Chinese people come from and they'll think of their grandparents and answer, 'Canada'. But for tens of thousands of American-born Chinese, the history of their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents can be traced to one side of an island five kilometres from San Francisco. New York's Ellis Island, under the silhouette of the Statue of Liberty, is more famous, as the gateway to America for European immigrants. But Angel Island, in San Francisco Bay,... https://www.scmp.com/article/725193/writings-wall?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/725193/writings-wall?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 18 Sep 2010 16:00:00 +0000 The day Madellina Lau Mo-ping started a new life in Canada, she was confronted by hairy chests. 'That was my first day in Toronto, as well as the only night I cried,' says Lau, a friend of whose arranged for her to live for free for three months in a bachelor's apartment building. It was the late 1980s and Lau was trying to establish a home for her two children, Carolyn, 16, and Patrick, 11. Lau was born and raised in Hong Kong and had had no intention of leaving Mei Foo, where she... https://www.scmp.com/article/718203/long-distance-call?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/718203/long-distance-call?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 26 Jun 2010 16:00:00 +0000 In 1959, months after having arrived in Hong Kong from Shanghai, Nelson Tsui hated sitting on sofas and cake made him feel nauseous. 'As soon as I sat on a sofa, it reminded me of the whole boat rocking,' Tsui says. Half a century later, he recalls how his family was smuggled into Hong Kong. The journey began on a train and a nine-year-old Tsui spent the sea voyage that followed being sick. One passenger fell overboard and was lost. 'When we started our journey, my auntie gave me a box of... https://www.scmp.com/article/715645/long-distance-call?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/715645/long-distance-call?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 29 May 2010 16:00:00 +0000 Long-time residents may remember what was probably Hong Kong's first English-style fish and chips takeaway, the Hasty Tasty. Open in the 1950s and opposite the Waltzing Matilda Inn in Kowloon, it was one of the places in which Mary Woo Sims grew up. Decades later, Woo Sims recalls how wonderful it was to be able to eat fish and chips whenever she wanted. 'I still crave them. Wrapped in newspaper with malt vinegar,' says Woo Sims, whose Chinese name is Sum Ming-li. Her father was born... https://www.scmp.com/article/714435/long-distance-call?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/714435/long-distance-call?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 15 May 2010 16:00:00 +0000 Having lived in Dubai, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Britain and the United States before she was out of her teens, it took writer Hsin-Yi Cohen a long time to feel settled enough to be the dog owner she had always longed to be. 'Children adapt. I learned to sing the Star-Spangled Banner when we lived in New Jersey for a year and by the time we went back to Taiwan for my fourth grade, my Chinese was completely gone - but we were only there for a year and I don't remember much about it,' says ... https://www.scmp.com/article/711675/long-distance-call?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/711675/long-distance-call?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 17 Apr 2010 16:00:00 +0000 When journalist Jennifer 8 Lee (the subject of last week's column) walked into Hong Kong-born Sam Lau Chi-ming's restaurant three years ago, it changed his life - even though it couldn't save his business. Lee declared Lau's Zen Fine Chinese Cuisine to be the 'world's greatest Chinese restaurant outside of China'. Lee shone a big spotlight on the chef's little corner of Richmond, a suburb of the Canadian city of Vancouver. Until Lee published her review in a book about Chinese food around... https://www.scmp.com/article/709140/long-distance-call?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/709140/long-distance-call?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 20 Mar 2010 16:00:00 +0000 Carol Lee could have picked anywhere in Vancouver for her headquarters - but the daughter and granddaughter of two of the city's most prominent businessmen, and a successful entrepreneur in her own right, planned her future by delving into her family's past. The Chinatown her grandfather helped develop in the early part of last century had, by the 1990s, become a shadow of its former self. The drug addicts of neighbouring Downtown Eastside spilled over into the once proud and historic... https://www.scmp.com/article/703195/long-distance-call?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/703195/long-distance-call?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 09 Jan 2010 16:00:00 +0000 Tung Chan's first day at work in a bank was memorable for two reasons: it was the start of a long and successful career and the first and only time he encountered racism in Canada. 'What is that China boy doing here?' asked a customer in a voice loud enough to be heard by everyone in the building. The elderly man - whom Chan later learned was the branch's biggest customer - demanded to know why Chan was there instead of working in a kitchen. The bank manager pulled the customer aside,... https://www.scmp.com/article/692286/long-distance-call?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/692286/long-distance-call?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 12 Sep 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Bing Wing Thom was one year and 10 days old when Japanese soldiers marched over the border into Hong Kong. Today, he is a celebrated architect whose designs are known from London to Dalian to Washington. Vancouver-based Thom, head of the prestigious firm bearing his name, first set foot in his homeland as a child. His father had had to leave Canada as an adult in order to find work. Tam Sze-lai (anglicised to Wesley Cunningham Thom) was born in British Columbia - a child of the railway... https://www.scmp.com/article/686540/long-distance-call?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/686540/long-distance-call?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 11 Jul 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Sidney Ming Fai Chow Tan promised his grandfather that, on his first trip back to Asia, he'd not set foot in mainland China. That was in 1967 and Tan was about to come to Hong Kong to visit the parents he barely knew and the siblings born after he had left a Taishan, Guangdong, village, as an infant. 'He was worried that I would be a smart-ass and get into trouble with the Chinese authorities,' says Tan, 59, a prominent activist in Vancouver who has spent years seeking redress for... https://www.scmp.com/article/678874/long-distance-call?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/678874/long-distance-call?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 02 May 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Alex McCuaig and his girlfriend were hungry after midnight recently, so they walked down the block from their home in Calgary, Alberta, to the only restaurant still open. It was the Chinese barbecue house in one of the dozens of new Asian malls that have opened in the past two decades in the biggest city in the province. 'There's no other place open that late,' said McCuaig, a writer who was in the middle of renovations at his girlfriend's home when the hunger pangs hit. 'We were saying... https://www.scmp.com/article/673736/calgary-does-u-turn-asian-mall-limit?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/673736/calgary-does-u-turn-asian-mall-limit?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Photographers waited to greet the planeload of immigrants arriving in the Canadian city of Calgary the day Jim Chu Xiaosun and his family first set foot in the country. It was 1962 and a picture taken for a newspaper shows an excited group of 30 people from Hong Kong and China arriving to start new lives. One of them - Chu, who was three years old - would, 45 years later, become the first Chinese police chief of a major Canadian city. Of those who arrived that day, Chu's father was the... https://www.scmp.com/article/673304/long-distance-call?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/673304/long-distance-call?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 14 Mar 2009 16:00:00 +0000 A high-profile kidnapping and reports of another have sent a ripple of fear through the community of Hong Kong and mainland students in Vancouver. 'When I first came here I thought ... 'I don't have to worry about safety',' said Hong Kong student Wingki Chan, 18, who arrived in Vancouver two months ago. 'But these kidnappings are scary.' What raised concern for Ms Chan was the abduction last month of an 18-year-old mainland student, who was allegedly seized from his West End apartment by a... https://www.scmp.com/article/671683/kidnappings-vancouver-alarm-hong-kong-students?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/671683/kidnappings-vancouver-alarm-hong-kong-students?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 01 Mar 2009 16:00:00 +0000 A team of five, including lawyers and a magistrate, will head to Canada this week from Hong Kong for a hearing to collect evidence from actor-singer Edison Chen Koon-hei, a key player in last year's celebrity sex-photos scandal. A lawmaker yesterday questioned the need for the trip, and its cost. The hearing, which begins on Monday, will take place under Hong Kong law at the Supreme Court of British Columbia. Chen, who fled to Canada at the height of the scandal a year ago and has stopped... https://www.scmp.com/article/670371/canada-hearing-edison-chen-case-criticised?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/670371/canada-hearing-edison-chen-case-criticised?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Andrew Work's two daughters were born in Hong Kong and have only ever lived here, but they sing Canadian children's songs and know the only topping for pancakes is maple syrup. Mr Work, executive director of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, has no doubts that his Asia-born girls are thoroughly Canadian. 'They can sing the national anthem and Land of the Silver Birch,' he says. 'These girls are only and always have been Canadian.' But under new rules due to take effect in April, Mr... https://www.scmp.com/article/669276/canadian-expats-fear-citizenship-changes?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/669276/canadian-expats-fear-citizenship-changes?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Feb 2009 16:00:00 +0000 China's most wanted fugitive spends his days in Vancouver leafing through the help-wanted ads after the Canadian government issued a one-year work permit to the accused smuggling kingpin. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Ottawa had 'little choice but to grant a work permit to Lai Changxing as he fights extradition to China, where he is accused of masterminding a massive smuggling and bribery ring. Permission for Lai to get a job is another twist in a case that is a thorn in... https://www.scmp.com/article/669124/canada-issues-work-permit-fugitive-lai?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/669124/canada-issues-work-permit-fugitive-lai?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:00:00 +0000 A newspaper has been shut down temporarily by Falun Gong followers who are protesting against a review of a dance show. The followers are members of staff at Epoch Press, which prints the Asian Pacific Post, an award-winning newspaper published in Vancouver. The January 9 edition was to highlight a story about a show by the New York-based Divine Performing Arts on its front page. The show features musicians, dancers and singers performing in vignettes before digitally projected Chinese... https://www.scmp.com/article/667860/falun-gong-staff-close-canadian-newspaper?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/667860/falun-gong-staff-close-canadian-newspaper?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:00:00 +0000 Vancouver Nothing unites people like the holidays. And united Vancouver holiday travellers were this past week - united in their rage against long queues, flight chaos and seemingly uncaring airlines. Air Canada, already known for one of the worst customer-service reputations in Canada, did little to redeem itself as heavy snowfalls gripped Vancouver and much of the rest of the country. Dozens of cancelled flights and queues of hundreds of passengers left many with little to do but vent their... https://www.scmp.com/article/665198/white-christmas-woes-travellers?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/665198/white-christmas-woes-travellers?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 28 Dec 2008 16:00:00 +0000 Vancouver Vancouver enjoys Canada's mildest climate, in a country known for ice and cold. Thanks to geographic good fortune, snow is rare, attracting homeless people from around the country who can usually sleep in relative comfort - relative to the frigid pavements elsewhere. But this month has been different, and the results have been tragic. As Vancouver temperatures dipped below minus 13 degrees Celsius and snowdrifts piled up, the major concern for most residents was the icy pavements... https://www.scmp.com/article/664630/city-shaken-homeless-woman-burns-death-shopping-cart?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/664630/city-shaken-homeless-woman-burns-death-shopping-cart?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 21 Dec 2008 16:00:00 +0000 Vancouver Vancouver's most famous racing driver isn't even known by name or face. He is known by a number, however: 240. That's the speed in kilometres per hour he reached in his silver Honda as he raced past familiar Vancouver landmarks, recording the whole thing on video and brazenly posting it on YouTube. Police are now hunting the Honda driver, along with other young street racers he filmed. Their antics were revealed on CBC news last week. 'That's so slippery, dude,' said one driver as he... https://www.scmp.com/article/663847/street-racers-leave-death-and-anger-their-wake?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/663847/street-racers-leave-death-and-anger-their-wake?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 14 Dec 2008 16:00:00 +0000 Vancouver Canada has just gone through a week of unprecedented political upheaval. Just two months ago, the country went to the polls and elected another minority government. In a country known for its staidness and in recent years an apathetic voter base, it would be tough to come up with two words more incongruent than 'political upheaval'. The Conservative minority government didn't expect to spark such a rebellion when it presented its economic update late last month. The update is not a... https://www.scmp.com/article/662963/politics-and-upheaval-still-ruling-canada?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/662963/politics-and-upheaval-still-ruling-canada?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 07 Dec 2008 16:00:00 +0000 Vancouver They call it the 'Obama Effect' and every political campaign since November 4 is being judged on whether the victory is proof of youth and new ideas prevailing or a sign that the status quo has won. In Vancouver, the near landslide victory of political novice Gregor Robertson as the new mayor was credited to the so-called Obama Effect. Now, in the Vancouver suburb of Surrey, the election of a new, youthful slate of South Asians to the leadership of one of the country's most... https://www.scmp.com/article/662067/sikh-temple-feels-obama-effect?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/662067/sikh-temple-feels-obama-effect?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 30 Nov 2008 16:00:00 +0000 Vancouver In the fight over the public image of Vancouver, supporters of the Olympics clearly won the latest round of the battle last week. Major protests were planned by activists to send the message that the Winter Olympics would drive up homelessness and worsen conditions for indigenous people. There was hope that the arrival of 250 foreign journalists for the international briefing on the Games would boost their cause. 'The international media needs to realise that not all is peachy... https://www.scmp.com/article/661279/natives-games-pleas-falling-deaf-ears?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/661279/natives-games-pleas-falling-deaf-ears?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 23 Nov 2008 16:00:00 +0000 Vancouver Vancouver voters who headed to the polls at the weekend had their choice between two men who were remarkably similar. Both play the guitar and are avid cyclists. They even look like they could be related, with two-term city councillor Peter Ladner often portrayed as the more studious older brother to Gregor Robertson, who is taller and more tanned. But the latter scored over 10,000 votes more than his rival in a victory that was a clear indication of how quickly a campaign can... https://www.scmp.com/article/660420/scandal-over-games-village-swings-mayoral-post-younger-brother?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/660420/scandal-over-games-village-swings-mayoral-post-younger-brother?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 16 Nov 2008 16:00:00 +0000 Vancouver Out of all the skills that construction worker Adam Clark has acquired, the most important was one that he learned from his father, but required no tools. The good times don't last in construction, Mr Clark's father warned him. Prepare for when things turn. He has been in the business for decades, and seen both good times and bad. Even though Mr Clark is only 23 and has worked mainly in boom times, he lives by that lesson. 'People used to say money was no object and they just wanted... https://www.scmp.com/article/659549/housing-construction-slowdown-signals-sharp-end-boom-times?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/659549/housing-construction-slowdown-signals-sharp-end-boom-times?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 09 Nov 2008 16:00:00 +0000 Vancouver The Royal Canadian Mounted Police sergeant was first defensive, then downright chippy when asked to comment on the latest arrest of an officer for drink-driving. How many media people have been arrested for drink-driving? he retorted. Plenty, no doubt. But fair or not, the subject of police behaving badly has been a recurring theme in Greater Vancouver this year. And last week was probably the worst yet. It began with the RCMP admitting that one of their own was being investigated... https://www.scmp.com/article/658707/police-come-under-fire-after-officers-arrested-drink-driving?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/658707/police-come-under-fire-after-officers-arrested-drink-driving?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 02 Nov 2008 16:00:00 +0000 Vancouver Construction goes on and the steel forest of cranes still towers over Vancouver. But alongside the din is an unmistakable note of caution. The Beijing and Vancouver Olympics may go down in history as illustrations of the differences in life before and after the global financial meltdown. The new economic realities have already hit home for the Vancouver Organising Committee. Two potential problems have come up, both linked to the New York-based hedge fund Fortress Investment... https://www.scmp.com/article/657824/winter-olympics-feel-meltdown-chill?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/657824/winter-olympics-feel-meltdown-chill?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 26 Oct 2008 16:00:00 +0000 Vancouver No one knows exactly when the first bomb went off under the EnCana firm's gas pipeline in a remote part of British Columbia. It wasn't until a hunter in the northeastern part of the province, near the town of Dawson Creek, spotted the 2-metre-deep crater under the pipeline on October 12 that it was known that an explosion had even occurred. It was when the second attack took place nearby late on Wednesday or early on Thursday that everyone sat up to take notice. 'We're not... https://www.scmp.com/article/656949/pipeline-blasts-set-british-columbia-town-edge?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/656949/pipeline-blasts-set-british-columbia-town-edge?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 19 Oct 2008 16:00:00 +0000 It was billed as one of the tightest races in Canada, and both the Conservatives and Liberals saw the seat of Richmond - home to the largest number of ethnic Chinese in the country - as an important battleground. But in the end, there was no battle at all between its two high-profile Chinese candidates, with Conservative Alice Wong handily beating incumbent and long-time Liberal Raymond Chan. Ms Wong is one of the four new Conservatives elected in British Columbia, giving the minority ... https://www.scmp.com/article/656588/hk-expatriate-eyes-cabinet-post-after-key-win-canada?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/656588/hk-expatriate-eyes-cabinet-post-after-key-win-canada?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:00:00 +0000 Vancouver Stuck on the headboard of Amanda Zhao's bed was a written reminder of the struggle she faced to make up for the sacrifices her Chinese parents had made to send her to Canada. 'I should work hard and earn money so that mum can have a better life,' the note said. It's easy to picture the 21-year-old English-language student waking to that motto daily. The note was among the items police recovered from the basement apartment where Zhao lived until she disappeared in October 2002.... https://www.scmp.com/article/656046/familys-public-face-private-torment?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/656046/familys-public-face-private-torment?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 12 Oct 2008 16:00:00 +0000 It was a rare, unguarded moment in a tightly controlled campaign before next week's elections that provided Canadians with a glimpse of their country's leader being taken aback and forced off message. 'If you were a vegetable, what vegetable would you be?' was the tongue-in-cheek question asked by a reporter as Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited a produce warehouse in Winnipeg. Surrounded by carrots, potatoes and cabbages, Mr Harper appeared stumped by the question. 'I, uhhh ... I really... https://www.scmp.com/article/655799/cold-fish-who-can-be-caught?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/655799/cold-fish-who-can-be-caught?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:00:00 +0000