After 11 years of bringing you local reporting, the team behind the Vancouver Observer has moved on to Canada's National Observer. You can follow Vancouver culture reporting over there from now on. Thank you for all your support over the years!

Howard Breen

Howard Breen is the Campaign Director of Smart Change ( http://www.smartchange.ca ), a Vancouver-based non-profit think tank engaged in building a social movement for systemic change, and safeguarding Canadian democracy.   

Undetectable, Kim Goldberg, Vancouver, poetry, book review, Pig Squash Press

A poet never breaks, a poet breaks free: On paying for the world’s most expensive drug with a poem

The award-winning poet and author Kim Goldberg can always be counted on by her readers to be entertained by a literary surprise or two.

EARTHx: Empowering People for Our Planet and Our Future

As a physician for nearly 40 years, Pender Islander Dr. Peter Carter did his best to save lives and help heal thousands of patients. But it wasn’t until he retired and became a full-time climate...

Oil and gas industry's right to profit vs. the right to live

Can Canada oppose assisted suicide yet support the voluntary extinction of the planet?

Google Maps offers rare look inside abandoned Fukushima town

The nuclear era has not been kind to Japan. Here's a stark reminder why Germany is decommissioning nuclear plants and investing heavily in renewable energy utilities—unlike Canada, which doesn’t even...

"Shell screwed up in 2012 and we're not going to let them again": U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar

  Environment News Service reports that: “Shell screwed up in 2012 and we’re not going to let them screw up when they try to drill in the Arctic again,” Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar...

Intrusive surveillance software FinSpy found in 25 Countries including Canada

Wonder which Canadian government (provincial/federal or both) or corporation(s) has enlisted Finfisher to spy on Canadians?   According to a report by Citizen Lab the intrusive and...

Red Zone: Where Will YOU Sleep Tonight?

RED ZONE by Kim Goldberg Pig Squash Press $18.95 “I can no longer discern where the political ends and the personal begins. The deeper I push into this swollen red midden of hidden box springs and...