In response to opposition to the Columbia Ave redesign with a wider sidewalk and parallel parking on the north side "feature block" between Queen and Washington, Bill Profili led a delegation to council on Monday evening to support the design. Profili said, "I'm here on behalf of a group of individuals who are very interested...

Anyone following online citizen media closely this month, would inevitably have come across the heated global debate over the Invisible Children viral campaign to stop Ugandan war criminal and rebel army leader Joseph Kony. While the Kony 2012 campaign certainly received the attention it sought, many Ugandans and Africans...

By Lois Beckett in ProPublica. Instead of picketing outside company headquarters, an advocacy group is using Facebook ads to try to influence people whose profiles identify them as employees of Freddie Mac or JPMorgan Chase. The anti-foreclosure ad campaign, which launches today, asks Freddie and Chase employees to talk to ...

A former Catholic nun who first gained the spotlight with her 1993 book A History of God: The 4,000-year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam,  Karen Armstrong is now an author of 20 books that focus largely on commonalities of major religions – including the nearly universally but often-ignored principle of compassion....

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) held its 14th annual Teddy Waste Awards ceremony last week, giving well-deserved recognition to the worst of the worst in government waste. CTF federal director Gregory Thomas hosted for the first time as Master of Ceremonies at the black tie news conference on Parliament Hill on...

Grand Forks resident, Christopher James Cusack, 47, has been charged with two counts of arson endangering life in connection with the fires at the Grand Forks Hotel and the Winnipeg Hotel in the early morning hours of Wednesday, March 7. Within two hours of the fires being reported, Grand Forks RCMP had Cusack in custody and...

Following an attempt last year to achieve a mediated solution to the ongoing sewer dispute between Rossland, Trail, and Warfield, the chair of the Regional District of Kootenay Boundary (RDKB), Larry Gray, wrote Minister Ida Chong on Feb. 8 to ask that  the issue be declared a "prescribed matter suitable for binding arbitration."...

Council will soon debate a series of bylaws to revoke both the Development Cost Charge (DCC) and the regional Sewer Cost Recovery Charge (SCRC), and to replace these with a single Service Capacity Connection Charge (CCC) for water, sewer, and drainage. Council's decision to support CCCs over DCCs and SCRCs was unanimous. They...

Council voted to release the tender documents for the Columbia Ave. project after an in camera discussion and a "special" meeting on Monday night, but when the public were admitted for the following committee-of-the-whole meeting, Mayor Greg Granstrom moved to modify the tendered design "to have angle parking be the design ...

My reassessment by green builder Ray Smith was not only an opportunity to secure a fat cheque in the mail from BC and the feds—albeit three months from now—but Smith took the time to give me more insight into the future of construction.   Every stage of this energy-upgrade project has been a valuable education, from my original...