Everybody loves a good storyteller and I’m no exception. Last week, I listened to some of the live streaming of the Enbridge hearings from Kitimaat, the First Nations village a few clicks outside the company town of Kitimat in northwest B.C. It was the tail end of the first day and the Haisla’s Chief Councillor, Ellis Ross, was telling...

June 22, 2011 I was working the evening shift at The Vancouver Sun the night the first hockey riot broke out. Depressed about the Canucks losing, we’d just about finished laying out the front page and “put the paper to bed”. Then news came in that a mob was forming at Robson and Thurlow, with drunken fans climbing lampposts and...

Feb. 27, 2010 By Alison Bate It’s Saturday morning and my sister Gill and I are hanging out over coffee in my little cottage, listening to the rain beating overhead and enjoying being dry again. Yesterday we spent the day up Cypress Mountain watching the women’s snowboarding live at the Olympics. Huge buses from California took...

By Alison Bate It was dark and sleepy as I drove down to Snug Cove at 5:30 a.m. yesterday, but every house had its lights on. I parked the car, offloaded my bike and pedalled across the cool damp field to Snug Cove. I passed walkers with their headlights on as I trundled across the boardwalk and left it outside the library. “It’s...