Just heard that the main dockworkers’ union in Vancouver and other B.C. ports have reached a watershed eight-year deal. The contract between the International Longshore Warehouse Union Canada and maritime employers ran out more than a year ago. But that still leaves seven years on the new contract, an impressive length, when you...

By Alison Bate First published in Maritime Magazine, Fall 2009 UPDATE: Eight-year contract approved on Vancouver docks (May 4, 2011): Vancouver longshore worker Karen Crossan (pictured) stood in the ghostly dispatch hall looking vainly for work on tonight’s graveyard shift. “I’m bored and I am broke,” she said, after...

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...