When the RCMP busted two people for attempting to bomb the BC legislature on Canada Day in 2013, few questioned the millions in police resources spent intercepting the alleged terrorist plot.
Author: Sarah Berman
Sarah Berman’s writing has appeared in VICE, Adbusters, Maclean’s, Reuters, the Globe and Mail, the Vancouver Sun and many others. A lifelong supporter of independent and alternative media, Sarah has contributed to nonprofits like Journalists for Human Rights, Megaphone Magazine and Paper Tiger TV.
This Seattle non-profit wants to compost dead people
There are a million different ways to die, but only three ways to (legally) dispose of a body. You can be cremated, you can be buried, or you can donate your corpse to a medical school (the school will eventually cremate you, FYI).
Meet the menstruators fighting Canada’s ‘tampon tax’
It’s an uncomfortable conversation at first, but once a tax exemption on menstrual products is in place, you won’t even notice it’s there.
That’s the tongue-in-cheek messaging Jill Piebiak and Kathleen Fraser have packed into a petition calling for Canadian tax law to reclassify tampons as “essential” medical devices like contact lenses or adult diapers.
Mount Polley mine’s headquarters raided six months after massive spill
On February 3, law enforcement raided the headquarters of Imperial Metals, the mining company responsible for a massive mining waste spill in British Columbia’s central interior. The search could potentially lead to millions of dollars in fines and even jail time.
Victoria’s Secret: Dumping raw sewage like it’s 1915
When friends of mine recently got norovirus from eating foraged Gulf Island oysters, my first instinct was a strange one. I blamed Victoria.
More specifically, I blamed Victoria’s raw sewage, which is pumped out to the Juan de Fuca Strait at a rate of 130 million litres per day.
2015 will be a terrible year for Alberta oil
Less investment, less drilling, and possibly a recession: I’m no financial expert, but based on several reports from Canada’s leading oil-industry stakeholders, there’s no good news coming for Alberta’s economy in 2015.
Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan has declared war on Kinder Morgan
”This is going to be a war.” In the context of recent clashes between police and protesters on Burnaby Mountain over a proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion, you might guess this was said by one of the 73 people who were arrested over the weekend.
First Nations are blocking an Imperial Metals mine, and the RCMP may intervene
On Friday, Imperial Metals, the company responsible for Canada’s largest-ever mining waste spill, served an injunction application to First Nations protesters blocking roads to its Red Chris copper and gold mine near Iskut, BC.
This guy is petitioning to return a massive boner-wielding Satan statue to East Vancouver
We asked him about Vancouver’s shitty public art, his thrash metal band, and the dickheaded Christopher Columbus statue that the devil replaced.
As America doubles down on climate targets, Canada stays quiet
Can you hear the awkward silence? That’s the sound of Environment Canada not releasing its annual report on national carbon emission trends, amid news that America and China have both made ambitious commitments to curb climate change.
Reporting from the First Nations resistance camp that’s evicting Imperial Metals
After a man-made lake full of mining waste spilled in British Columbia in early August, locals have been up in arms about the residual damage caused. We visited an active First Nations mining resistance camp that sits eight kilometres away from the spill zone.
The Mount Polley disaster has sparked a First Nation blockade
After a man-made lake full of mining waste collapsed last week, BC Minister of Energy and Mines Bill Bennett compared the disaster to an avalanche.
For ‘Little Mosque’ creator, ‘everything is copy’
Zarqa Nawaz gives Islam the Nora Ephron treatment at Vancouver’s Indian Summer Festival.
‘I was a PR campaign’: oil cleanup worker
As Cold Lake disaster oozes into year two, wildlife rehabber remembers ‘insane’ media day.
Canada is super chill about commercial drones
Unlike the US, Canada is pretty lax about commercial drone use. Wildlife scientists, filmmakers, and real estate photographers (to name a few) have taken advantage of these flying robots in Canadian airspace.
Why do the residents of Victoria, BC buy more sex toys than any other place in Canada?
Grey, wet vibes in Canada’s sex toy capital.
Is Vancouver the bitcoin capital of Canada?
The city’s patented mix of real estate market speculators, gaming industry nerds, recreational druggies and lefty counterculturists seem to be creating a perfect storm of bitcoin enthusiasm.
The RCMP and CSIS are creeping on environmentalists
Heavily redacted documents released in November show that Canadian spies ‘monitored’ opponents of the Enbridge Northern Gateway through social media, blogs and a storytelling workshop at a church in Kelowna, B.C.
BC’s ‘other’ multi-billion dollar energy projects
Most Canadians are vaguely aware that Enbridge is planning a massive pipeline expansion through northern British Columbia. But there are two other megaprojects in BC—one more costly, the other more risky—flying under the radar.
Lan Tung sets out to redefine ‘Chinese music’
The musician and improviser puts her eclectic tastes on display with the first-ever Sound of Dragon Festival beginning May 1.
When work is play (and play is work)
For more than two decades Vancouver has been a global leader for video game development. While a few big studios like EA Games and Capcom are still here, major industry shifts have pushed smaller tablet and mobile games into the spotlight. Guidebook sits down with indie gamers to find out the best ways to score a gaming job in Vancouver.
Canada sets refugee removal target at 875
This year border services in Canada have a set a minimum quota for stripping refugee status. Here is what you need to know about refugee cessation and vacation—the two ways border services take away protected status and residency.
The spill that keeps on spilling
Eight months and nearly two million litres of spilled bitumen later, Canadian energy company CNRL hasn’t figured out how to stop four mysterious leaks in northeastern Alberta.
Doctors in BC can no longer prescribe heroin
There’s at least one recorded casualty in the fight over prescription heroin in British Columbia. Back in September, B.C. doctors won approval from Health Canada to prescribe diacetylmorphine—the active ingredient in heroin—to 20 hardcore addicts in Vancouver. That decision lasted two weeks.
Chuck Strahl oversaw government spies while registered as an Enbridge lobbyist
Like those underemployed twenty-somethings the internet loves to ridicule, former cabinet minister Chuck Strahl has to hustle a few side jobs to get the bills paid. “I’m not independently wealthy,” he told the National Post earlier this month, when questioned about his work as both an energy lobbyist and a government spy watchdog.
Young Bucks in the Mushroom Kingdom
It’s been a banner year for British Columbia’s wild mushroom foragers. And with one month left in the high season, there’s still money to be made.
Mennonites in southern Alberta have connections to a notorious Mexican drug cartel
I called up the DEA—not to discuss their expensive, racist and failed war on drugs—but to unpack the devoted/bearded supply chain that brings Calgarians their party drugs.
An oil spill in Cold Lake, Alberta can’t stop, won’t stop
Over 1.5 million litres of heavy crude has seeped out of the ground at a military base in northeastern Alberta. Regulators aren’t sure of the cause or when the spill will end.
British Columbia should keep an eye on the Fukushima disaster
Just a friendly reminder that two-and-a-half years after an earthquake and tsunami caused a series of equipment failures and nuclear meltdowns in northeastern Japan, the threat of radiation poisoning in the Pacific Ocean will be around another 40 years or more. Have a nice day.
The B.C. government trusts Nestlé with the province’s fresh water
B.C. hasn’t bothered to update a century-old law that allows multinational corporations like Nestlé to take water without measuring, reporting or paying for it. You’re welcome, billionaires.
Canadian crowdfunding just got crowded
In 2013, crowdfunding is no longer the realm of little guys and start-ups. Not only is Spike Lee funding hislatest million-dollar film on Kickstarter, but Vancouver’s own educational institution Science World recently turned to online community donations to build an upcoming exhibition called AMPED.
Search and rescue, doggy-style
When my cat went missing this summer, the last place I thought to look was the Internet.
Don’t get me wrong—I look at cute animals on the interwebs as much as the next Buzzfeed reader. I just never thought such an activity would somehow result in my pet’s return.
