The Flinging Place
By Suvi TeigenI come from the prairies, from wide-open spaces that fling their arms in welcome to newcomers in ways only wide-open spaces can. The meals and conversations are long and lingering, the laughter is infectious and hearty, and if the door is locked, you know where all the keys are. Court is held at a thousand kitchen tables […]
Living Bigger, Looking Closer
By Charlene KwiatkowskiI went to the city not because I wished to live deliberately and front only the essential facts of life, but because I wished to live, period. To say I was dying might sound melodramatic, but I am an English major. We can be prone to embellishment and altering Thoreau quotes. I came to Vancouver why any […]
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Maybe it’s The Cherry Blossoms
By Lynn PassmoreI had only been in the city a couple of hours before I ended up sitting at a Starbucks on Seymour Street blubbering over a piece of pumpkin loaf. It was autumn. A man across the street was using a leaf blower to clean the sidewalk, but every time a car drove by, a gust […]
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Irrational Vancouver
By Jason KellerVancouver is a city that makes you behave in irrational ways. Less than a year ago, I had a well-paying job, within a respected news organization, and a strong social circle while living in bustling Toronto. Today, I am sitting in a food court sponging free WiFi and anxiously wondering if I will be rejected […]
Benching in Vancouver
By Dell Catherall“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” Jane Jacobs It’s my husband’s suggestion—a series of dinner picnics on Vancouver’s benches. “You know, the ones we stride past and never use.” The proposal is so appealing I ignore the pointed allusion to my rushing […]
Tough City
By Erin Flanagan“You wouldn’t last a day in Vancouver. It’s a tough city, you gotta be tough there.” My nine year old self looked at my twenty year old sister as she streaked dark blue shimmering powder across her eyelid. She had been to Vancouver and she knew first-hand about how the city was just waiting to […]
Born and Raised
By Rhyleah HylandsThe sun sneaks into my room past my curtains to kiss my skin, the friendly finches greet me good morning. Sometimes I wake up to the soft murmur of Jodie Vance of City TV’s Breakfast Television, and other times its the early morning cartoons. I have lived in the West End my entire lifespan of […]
The Vortex Effect
By Kathy Kwon“The way you got sideswiped was by going back.” –Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking – Humans are the strangest creatures. With all our cognition, we choose to dampen it. We spend a lifetime perfecting our arrangement of filters and screens. But who can blame us. We wanted not just to see God’s face, […]
Looks Like Rain: Heartbeat, Heartbreak
By Margaret LinSometimes, I wish I were a novel character. For one, I would never have to worry about dying (unless my author was JK Rowling), because I’d exist forever embedded within the pages of a book: you’d just have to flip back to the beginning of the book and voila! Instant Reincarnation™! Unfortunately, I am mortal, […]
Vancouver: A (sort of) Love Story
By Rachel McDonnellApproximately three years ago Vancouver lost its top spot as the world’s most liveable city. Two years ago the Economist Intelligence Unit released a special report kicking Vancouver out of the top ten most liveable cities in the world. The latest headlines scream that Vancouver traffic congestion is the second worst in North America and […]
