December 2012
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Fatal fire, river rescue linked
Dec 12, 2012 The Winnipeg Free Press
SELKIRK — A 51-year-old woman died in a house fire here Monday and a few hours later, her nephew drove his truck into the frigid Red River at Lockport but survived the crash.
RCMP did not release the name of the victim of the blaze, but neighbours and relatives identified the woman as Gloria Sanderson. The fire, which engulfed the house’s front...
May 2012
3 posts
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Is Quebec better at holding student...
May 28, 2012 The Canadian Press
When a six-year tuition freeze was lifted in British Columbia in 2002, causing tuition at most universities to double over the next three years, a group of 50 students spent a night camping in the University of British Columbia administration offices while a few hundred protested outside.
Then the group stormed the student union’s executive offices to demand...
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Finding Morgan Freeman
May 3, 2012 The Canadian Press
A catastrophic hard drive failure has led a pair of film school students on an epic odyssey to convince Hollywood icon Morgan Freeman to narrate their project.
Just a week before his graduation project deadline, Ian MacDougall knew he had to do something drastic.
His hard drive had crashed, taking seven months of work on his short film with it. It would be...
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The problem with Bountiful
May 2012 The United Church Observer
By all accounts, Bountiful is a beautiful place. Nestled in the Creston Valley of southeast British Columbia, just north of the Idaho border, it is home to about 1,000 people. Aside from the nearby town of Creston, Bountiful is isolated — and that’s how the residents prefer it. It may be the most controversial community in Canada.
Bountiful’s inhabitants...
March 2012
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Is UBC’s new biomass power plant a looming...
March 1, 2012 The Ubyssey
UBC is a month away from opening a $27 million biomass power plant with Nexterra Systems Corp., a local green-tech company. Two of Nexterra’s American projects have ended in failure. Is UBC headed down the same path?
ON OCTOBER 9, 2011, South Carolina’s largest newspaper published a lengthy exposé on an alternative energy power plant at the University of South...
February 2012
2 posts
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The AMS puts a little imagination to work
February 16, 2012 The Ubyssey
The AMS has made national headlines over the past couple of weeks, including stories in The Toronto Star, The Huffington Post and The Province. Considering the AMS’s recent history, this would normally mean I’d be writing a column that starts with a recap of a hilarious and embarrassing scandal that has swamped our student union.
But this time the buzz is good: the...
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A student union in crisis: How did the Kwantlen...
February 1, 2012 The Ubyssey
All student unions have scandals. It’s what happens when politically inexperienced young people gain power over millions of dollars. Few elections occur without squabbles, and personal attacks are common at student council meetings.
But when it comes to scandals, no student union in the country holds a candle to the Kwantlen Student Association.
The KSA has seen...
January 2012
2 posts
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Leaders in training: how UBC’s student development...
January 22, 2012 The Ubyssey
On January 25, there will be a birthday party at the Centre for Student Involvement (CSI).
The party is for the CSI itself. That day will mark the two-year anniversary of the university’s signature project under the realm of “student development.”
The definition of student development depends on who you ask. Most faculties have their own student development...
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The more elections madness, the better
January 18, 2012 The Ubyssey
Whenever a student union election is underway, the question arises of how serious we should treat it.
The reason that question arises is because there are always a few stern-faced observers wagging their fingers at everyone else, saying things like “the candidates are behaving shamefully!” and “why can’t we focus on policy?” and “this is why turnout is so low!”
The...
December 2011
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Fortress UBC
December 5, 2011 The Ubyssey
As the terminus of two transcontinental railroads and a major seaport, Vancouver was a clear target for any Japanese attack on coastal North American cities.
When Pearl Harbour was bombed on December 7, 1941, an attack on the harbours in BC became a frighteningly real possibility.
The main base for Vancouver’s defence was located at UBC—right in the spot where...
November 2011
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Keep an eye on those crafty engineers
November 27, 2011 The Ubyssey
If the Engineering Undergraduate Society (EUS) screws up, you can’t sue them.
Well, you sort of could, in a roundabout way. But you’d have to sue the AMS, because the EUS isn’t a legal entity. As with the undergraduate societies of Arts, Commerce, Science and so on, the EUS is essentially just a branch of the AMS, the student union that all UBC students are...
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Andrew Coyne: the pundit who won't be typecast
November 26, 2011 The Ubyssey
“I’ll tell you a funny story. I think I can tell you this story.”
So begins Andrew Coyne, the national editor of Maclean’s magazine, when asked about being threatened with a lawsuit by the Prime Minister’s chief of staff in 2005.
“The first I heard about it was on the front page of The Globe and Mail,” says Coyne. According to the story, Tim Murphy was going to...
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The Senate shouldn't hide their work
November 20, 2011 The Ubyssey
Last Wednesday, the UBC Senate voted to give special degrees to Japanese-Canadian students who, during World War II, were kicked out of university due to the forced internment of all Japanese-Canadians. Yet we can’t tell you what the deliberations were like, or whether there was any significant dissent, or even the details of the vote. That’s because all of the...
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November 16, 2011 The Ubyssey Roundtable, Episode...
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Wesbrook residents express outrage at UBC's land...
November 6, 2011 The Ubyssey
Wesbrook residents voiced strong opposition to additional residential development in south campus last week, as UBC held their last open house for the South Campus Neighbourhood Plan.
On November 1, Joe Stott, director for Campus and Community Planning (CCP), stood at the front of the commons room in MBA House for 90 minutes while campus residents lambasted him.
...
October 2011
7 posts
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The future of Occupy
October 31, 2011 The Ubyssey
It has been four months since Adbusters first advocated an “occupation” of Wall Street, six weeks since the tents went up at Zuccotti Park, four weeks since the media started paying attention and two weeks since a Canadian version of Occupy Together began.
But as the novelty of the movement wears off and the occupiers don’t get into the media anymore just for...
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Emails show UBC Bookstore told supplier to cut off...
October 27, 2011 The Ubyssey
What does a university bookstore do when falling book sales threaten its business model? At UBC, one tactic has been to use its buying power to cut smaller competitors out of the market.
All large retail outlets, such as the UBC Bookstore, have staff called “buyers,” who have the job of negotiating supply contracts with product distributors. The buyers negotiate...
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Occupy Together may be what the left needs
October 15, 2011 The Ubyssey
There’s a lot to like about the Occupy Together movement that’s taking root in cities across the continent, and I say that as someone who normally rolls his eyes whenever professional protesters get all worked up over something.
This protest feels different than the demonstrations against the G20, the Olympics, the World Trade Organization or any other occasion...
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Planning the system: Bus routes
October 17, 2011 The Ubyssey (Transit Supplement)
Planning out a bus network in a metropolitan region is a rather complicated task.
Katherine McCune, the manager of service planning for Coast Mountain Bus Company (CMBC), paused when asked what people should know about her job. “Well… it’s a lot of fun,” she said with good-natured sarcasm. “It’s so many elements, and we try to design service...
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The Insufferable Apple Junkies
October 6, 2011 The Ubyssey
“Are you serious?”
That was my reaction late Wednesday afternoon when editors in the office started buzzing about how we had to make a last-minute change to the paper to pay tribute to Steve Jobs, the just-deceased multi-billionaire former CEO of one of the most profitable corporations in the world. Apple’s only current competitors on the stock market are oil...
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Go ahead, be a snoop
October 2, 2011 The Ubyssey
Last July, a Canadian-owned boat that planned to run the Israeli naval blockade around Gaza was blocked from leaving a Greek port. This week, The Ubyssey discovered that the $700 transfer from the Social Justice Centre (SJC) to the Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights club (SPHR) for the purposes of donating to that boat was never actually processed, despite...
September 2011
5 posts
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9/11 did not fundamentally change global politics
September 11, 2011 The Ubyssey (10 Years Later Special)
On the morning of September 11, 2001, Dr Allen Sens was awoken by his radio alarm clock. As usual, it was set to CBC. “The first thing I started to hear was the reports coming in from New York, and so I bolted upright and turned on my television. And I watched the towers collapse.”
In the first issue of The Ubyssey published after the...
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The politics of 9/11
September 11, 2011 The Ubyssey (10 Years Later Special)
The moment the second plane hit the World Trade Centre, 9/11 became political. This was no horrible coincidence; this was an attack.
Going back and reading the columns written right after 9/11, I’ve never been very impressed with those who were more concerned about the United States’ reaction than with the fact that a clearly well-financed...
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Reporting the story from Ground Zero
September 11, 2011 The Ubyssey, 10 Years Later Special
Shortly after the second plane hit the World Trade Centre, Douglas Quan received a call from The Ottawa Citizen telling him to get to the site as quick as possible.
Quan, a former UBC student and Ubyssey news editor, was enrolled in the journalism program at Columbia University in September 2001. He had previously worked as an intern at the...
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Michael Warner was across the street when the...
September 11, 2011 The Ubyssey (10 Years Later Special)
Michael Warner’s first day on the job was September 9, 2001. His office was in the World Financial Centre, directly across the street from the World Trade Centre.
In 2000, Warner had worked at UBC as the AMS VP Finance. When he graduated from UBC in 2001, he accepted a job offer from Merrill Lynch and left for New York City. He has lived...
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Why the AMS needs your righteous anger
Hello, new students. Welcome to UBC.
You now belong to a student union, the Alma Mater Society (AMS). The AMS takes a fairly small amount of money from you in the form of a student fee, but when all these fees are added together, it makes up a budget of millions of dollars. So you should pay attention to what your student union is doing.
And you should get angry when your student union does...
August 2011
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Banning liquor to promote safety is a risky...
August 2, 2011 The Ubyssey
University students like to drink alcohol. Some drink very little and some drink a ridiculously large amount, while most of us fall somewhere in between. But this is something that no law in a free country will ever change: we want to drink, we want to enjoy ourselves and we are going to do it whether the various authorities like it or not.
Naturally, alcohol-related...
July 2011
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Oxford commas are smart, sensible, and under...
July 6, 2011 The Ubyssey
In general, humanity can be trusted to make simple things much more complicated than necessary. A straightforward rule or principle will inevitably become bogged down in countless caveats and exceptions. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to fight against this tendency. The stronger among us must stand for clarity and steadfastness.
The issue of whether a comma...
May 2011
2 posts
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Osama’s death means little to Afghan war effort
May 3, 2011 The Ubyssey
It is not yet clear whether Osama bin Laden actually picked up a gun to defend himself when American Special Forces assaulted a mansion in Pakistan, shot him in the head and carried off his body. It wouldn’t be a surprise if he didn’t; bin Laden rarely did any fighting of his own. On the few occasions when he was actually in Afghanistan to fight with the mujahidin during...
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Stain of terror
Iran’s main opposition group laid down its arms a decade ago. But as far as Canada is concerned, it’s still a terrorist organization. What does it take to lose the label?
May 2011 The United Church Observer
Last June, Rev. Rob Oliphant and four other Liberal members of Parliament went to Paris for a huge rally in support of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). It was the second...
April 2011
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The oasis of Kabul University
April 7, 2011 The Ubyssey
Afghanistan wrested the world’s attention back from Libya and Japan this week with a series of violent protests over a Koran-burning stunt in the United States. The stunt was performed by a pathetic old man named Terry Jones, a villainous right-wing pastor with a Yosemite Sam moustache and a tiny religious following. His fringe actions were properly ignored by all major...
March 2011
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In Kandahar, education is a battlefield
March 31, 2011 The Ubyssey
Kabul is a much safer city than most Canadians think, though one can never be complacent about the danger that still exists. I noticed that a supermarket which I visited on my trip in October was blown apart by a bomb on January 28; it was a senseless attack that mostly killed Afghan civilians, as most Taliban attacks do. But the vast majority of Kabul’s four million...
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The other battlefield
Cover story, March 2011 The United Church Observer
A slightly beat-up red Toyota Corolla pulled up outside our hotel in Kabul. Walid, our driver, smiled as I took a seat next to him in the front. Lauryn climbed into the back seat, a black and grey head scarf over her blond hair. Men in the front, women — with heads covered — in the back. This was only my second morning in Afghanistan, and already...
February 2011
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A school defining Afghanistan's struggle
February 11, 2011 The Ubyssey
This is a story about two buildings run by two men who could not be more different. One is a hero, the other is a villain. The villain is wealthy; the hero has to constantly scramble to get by. There is a climactic clash between the two sides. We do not know how this battle will end yet—but more about that later.
On the side of the just and the good is Marefat...
January 2011
2 posts
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The villagers learn to teach
January 30, 2011 The Ubyssey
One of the most enduring clichés about Afghanistan is that of the relatively cosmopolitan city dwellers waging battle against the illiterate, impoverished and violent rural Afghans. Like all clichés, it contains a germ of truth wrapped in layers of false and offensive stereotypes. But on my second day in Afghanistan, I took a trip to a village school which ensured...
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A war, an orphanage, and hope
January 10, 2011 The Ubyssey
Few things are as depressing as looking at statistics on children in Afghanistan. UNICEF estimates that one of every five children born will die before their fifth birthday. They also place the number of orphans at two million.
Although one should always be skeptical about population numbers in Afghanistan—Kabul has anywhere between two and five million people,...
