Progress With a Price

I was driving north across the Granville Street Bridge the other day.

I looked at the landscape, so radically changed in recent years by the blooming of a hundred concrete towers.

I still love Vancouver and am still happy and grateful to live here.

But I don't like much of what I see.

No doubt, this is all very good for the economy.

But it is ugly and I don't like it.

The Ministry of Heartbreak

It is heartbreaking to read the continuing nightmare of neglect to foster children from the Child & Family Ministry.

I feel a particular ache in this regard because my mother, may she rest in peace, took in foster children on occasion. One at a time, not nine. And she provided the most loving care and attention imaginable.

Of course, she didn't have to deal with this government's indifference.

The Ministry has been a rotating graveyard for politicians for at least a dozen years now.

And, while the cement is being poured and the monuments clutter the landscape, Children & Families continues to be underfunded and understaffed.

The priorities of this administration are clear.

It's unfortunate that their vision is so muddy.

Little Martyr on the Prairie

Mass murderers being praised at religious services as "martyrs?" Here in Canada?

This is a detestable example of the worst unexpected consequences of a muddle-headed multiculturalist policy.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Welcome to the New Canada, where Terrorism is sanctioned, stamped and approved.

Stephane Who?

It is one thing to criticise a federal budget; it is quite another to give any notice whatsoever, let alone credit, to a nebish like Liberal "leader", Stephane Dion.

What's with Don Cayo and the newspaper? Are they among the folks who, having forgotten the corruption of the Liberal regime, are still crying about Harper's election?

Guest Comment from John Deserves an Audience

Hi David,

I was a crew member for two of the shows (whole summers in fact) in which you appeared in what was in those days called "Theatre in the Park": "Guys and Dolls: and "The Pajama Game".

In fact, I spent several entire summers of my teen years at Malkin Bowl. I am still friends with many of the people I worked with in those years. Quite a few of us went on to careers in the theatre, including myself.

I am sure you remember the dressing rooms in the bowels of the bowl. My only interest in those rooms was the many hundreds of signatures on the walls of all the people who appeared in shows or worked on them over the decades. Amongst those scrawled signatures was one of "Robert Goulet".

All the signatures were lost in a tragic instance of bureaucratic well-meaning in the '80s when the parks board sent someone in to repaint all the interior walls. We who spent so much of our young lives in that place were devastated at the news.

I still think of that decrepit old theatre as a crucible of learning and sanctuary for a generation of musical theatre people (onstage and backstage) that are still practicing their craft. It was my Hogwarts.