The Province is providing an opportunity for you to chat with Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts here at The Newsroom today at noon. Want to know if she'll run for premier? What they're going to call Surrey's new park? Whether she's ever accidentally left a microphone on after a council meeting?
The live chat is now over. See an archive of Mayor Watts's question-and-answer session below:
We shot a video while Mayor Watts was in our boardroom answering your questions. Here's a behind-the-scenes look at how the chat was set up:
We in the newsroom thought it practical to mark the beginning of Lindsay Lohan's sentence with an update of the poster for her breakout film, Mean Girls. Here's what we came up with:
Emergency responders are reporting a worker is in serious trauma after a fall from a ladder at the Arms Reach Bistro on the North Shore.
A dispatch sent just after 8 a.m. Tuesday said the patient was in full cardiac arrest.
Arms Reach is a restaurant on Gallant Avenue in Deep Cove.
The audio tape of Mel Gibson's racist, sexist rant against mother-of-his-child Oksana Grigorieva has been leaked by Radar Online.
In the tape, Gibson is heard saying: "You're an embarrassment to me. You look like a f***ing bitch in heat, and if you get raped by a pack of n***ers, it will be your fault."
Prince Charming also berates 39-year-old Grigorieva for breastfeeding with implants and for wearing tight clothing, and tells her she looks like a "whore."
Gibson and Grigorieva have an eight-month-old daughter together, Lucia.
Gibson is being investigated by the L.A. County Sherriff’s Department in connection with domestic violence charges, according to Radar Online. Oksana has told police that Gibson punched her on January 6, knocked out two of her teeth and was violent with her on several occasions, according to a RadarOnline.com source.
Gibson has been dropped by his agency, William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, since the leak of the tape Friday afternoon, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Warning: This clip contains extremely offensive and graphic language.
You can listen to the tape here.
Whew! If you managed to sit through that cacophony of hate, you should probably watch this next video of an adorable-if-pudgy marmot chewing on a biscuit to help your nerves simmer down.
A Burnaby Mountie got a taste of a postman's life when he was attacked by a Jack Russell Terrier mid-arrest on Thursday.
Video footage shows him calmly completing the arrest of a female suspect even as her angry Terrier tears at his pant leg, which it had already ripped off up to the plain clothes officer's knee.
The officer was responding to a call of shots fired in the area of Byrne Road and Lowland Drive. Two suspects, a man and a woman, were stopped in a car and arrested. A rifle was seized and the man is facing firearms charges.
The dog was brought to the Burnaby police station and later reunited with its owners, according to police. Both suspects were released but the male is scheduled to appear in court to face the charges.
It's enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, ISN'T IT? Hellooo, it's called the RIGHT to SHOP? It's enshrined in there somewhere, I'm sure of it — right between 'freedom of conscience and religion' and the rule of law?
This guy sure thinks so...
This poor fella' from Toronto just wanted to shop at the Eaton Centre during the chaotic protests on the weekend SO BADLY that he felt the need to scream at mall staff: "Why? Why? Why are you closed?"
A tip of my hat to the guy desperately clinging to the glass behind him. Nice touch.
The G20 summit was met with its first wave of violent protests Saturday afternoon as anarchists torched two police cars and there were reports the downtown Eaton Centre had to be evacuated.
While considerably smaller, a group of protesters in Vancouver figured to catch wind of the chaos back east. Let's hope the violence doesn't spread here.
The coalition of B.C. activists planned its protest from noon to 2 p.m. at Grandview Park in east Vancouver. Buses were being diverted, however, close to 3 p.m. as the protest was still under way in the intersection of Hastings and Clark streets.
Here are two shots posted to Twitpic today from the Vancouver demonstration, one of the protesters and the other of police blocking access to the Port of Vancouver:
The European director of market development for B.C.'s Big White and Silver Star ski resorts, Klaus Gretzmacher, is also a filmmaker specializing in wildlife documentaries.
He has posted a three-minute video of his trip to Knight Inlet on B.C.'s north coast from last week, which revisits several families of grizzly bears in Glendale Cove he's been filming as part of an upcoming feature.
Here's the clip:
Glendale Grizzly Bears June 2010 update from Klaus gretzmacher on Vimeo.
A Vancouver man has come up with a rather fruitful use for old cars in an effort to highlight the climate-change issue.
Julien Thomas and friends took four used cars, removed their engines, and planted fruit trees where the gas-guzzling culprit used to be.
The car gardens (cardens?) have been placed around the city to draw attention to our reliance on fossil fuels in a "collaborative act of urban transformation" they call Stick Shift.
Thomas hopes the project will get locals to "imagine a Vancouver without fossil fuels.
"How would we re-purpose our roads and cars? How would we feed ourselves?" he ponders on the project website.
The four cars will be in the following locations all summer: Dunbar Street at W. 29th Avenue, Blenheim at W. 41st Avenue, W. 16th Avenue at MacDonald Street and Oak Street at W. 37th Avenue near Oak Street.
He says the fruit-filled cars are a response to media messages that hint at changing attitudes while continuing to hawk new fossil-fuel-burning vehicles.
"Advertisements show SUVs driving through pristine wilderness, implying that in order to experience nature we must destroy it," he wrote. "I think that in order to experience nature, we need to transform the city in its current state."
He hopes, ultimately, to drum up support for an urban orchard in Vancouver.
Photo: Wayne Leidenfrost — PNG
Emergency crews were dispatched to a runway at Vancouver International Airport Wednesday morning after reports of an inbound Dash 8 that had experienced a hydraulic failure.
The midsize passenger turbo-prop was due to land, carrying about 1,500 pounds of fuel and with 40 people on-board, at about 9:40 a.m.
We'll update this story at theprovince.com if there is any major trouble with the landing.
B.C. Ferries has been forced to cancel two sailings of the Queen of New Westminster between Tsawwassen and Swartz Bay on the island.
The 8 a.m. sailing out of Tsawwassen did not run, nor will the 10 a.m. out of Swartz Bay.
The ferry corp. didn't say what caused the cancellations.
Check for updates on later sailings at B.C. Ferries: Current conditions.
Hate to make light of the greatest environmental disaster of our time, but this YouTube video from the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre is quite hilarious. Imagine what happens when coffee is spilled in the BP boardroom:
A reader in West Vancouver shared this recent clip from MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show. It looks at the striking, sad similarities between the industry and government response to this year's disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill and one that happened more than 30 years ago.
With 1.5 million views in just six days on YouTube, this drummer is clearly at the wrong gig. Enjoy.
UPDATE (June 9): It's come to our attention that this drummer has his own website, The Mad Drummer, which features more performance videos.