Topics

Where have all the cowboys gone?

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:13:36 -0700

by Danielle Egan

“This could be bloody. How’s your stomach?” asks Mike Rose, ranch manager of Quilchena Cattle Co. Ltd., as we approach the red bull corseted by a steel cage and three cowboys in fringed chaps, smeared with blood.

Cow boss Miles Kingdon clamps a wrench-like device around the bull’s testicles and muscles down on them while the other cowboys steady the squirming 270-kilogram yearling that somehow managed to avoid the typical one-month-old castration. With the placement of his testicles on a fence stump, alongside two others, the Hereford-Angus cross is now officially a steer.

The inheritance problem

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:25:38 -0700

by Vicki O'Brien

When the executor read out the terms of their father’s will, Julia and her two siblings just stared at each other in stunned silence. “We were completely shocked,” recalls the Vancouver marketing specialist. “My dad had done his best to control us while he was alive – now he was doing it from the grave.”

What they expected to be a simple three-way division of their dad’s considerable estate turned out to be a complex set of instructions, sending his adult children cap in hand to his executor any time they needed a little extra cash to cover unusual expenses such as new vehicles, home renovations or weddings.

Learning on the line

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:11:09 -0700

by Lucy Hyslop

There is a decade-old story – told by an adult literacy worker in a small industrial town in northern B.C. – of a supervisor demanding that the name of an employee being helped with his reading be revealed. Why? So he could fire him and put in his place someone with higher skills.
Fast-forward to 2008 and this lack of sympathy would cut no ice with Marlyne Harrison. Today the 10-year veteran at Teck Cominco Ltd. is happily opening up to me – and management – about her learning curve through a much-acclaimed scheme to help the 1,500 employees on-site in Trail, B.C.

Tales of a fur trader

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:57:23 -0700

by Stephen Hume

In the early days of July 1808, Montreal fur trader Simon Fraser caught his first glimpses of the Pacific Ocean. He had arrived at the mouth of the river that now bears his name some 36 days after leaving Fort George (modern-day Prince George) and almost three years after establishing B.C.’s first European settlement at McLeod Lake.

The ring cycles

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:47:14 -0700

by Brennan Clarke

You don’t have to look far in the Lower Mainland these days for evidence that the 2010 Olympics are pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into B.C.’s economy. Take, for instance, the $315-million athletes village currently under construction along Southeast False Creek. Check out the $82.2-million Hillcrest curling centre, the catalyst for an Olympics-driven makeover of Nat Bailey Stadium Park.

Out at UBC, there’s a $48-million winter sports centre, where most of the 2010 Olympic ice hockey games will take place.

Midnight at the oasis

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:48:24 -0700

by David Jordan

What is it about Vancouver that attracts the eccentric fringe of the airline industry? The question seems only reasonable in the wake of this spring’s collapse of Oasis Hong Kong Airlines. It would be one thing if just one offbeat billionaire’s dreams of a low-cost long-haul airline went up in flames. But the collapse of Oasis came just one year after the sudden demise of Harmony Airways, another low-cost carrier started on the whim of a wealthy entrepreneur who saw a golden opportunity in Vancouver’s ties to Asia.

Harmony was started in November 2002 by reclusive Vancouver billionaire David Ho. Harmony initially flew to vacation sunspots such as Mexico and Hawaii.

Here come the vultures

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:39:21 -0700

by Cynthia Cushing

Imagine there’s a company you’ve done a ton of work for – one that has yet to pay – and now the rumour is it’s going bankrupt. What do you need, urgently? The answer: certainty.

You need to know, now, what assets this shaky company has and what they’re worth, who the other creditors are and what they are owed, as well as how your claim ranks in the creditors’ lineup.

Down to the wire

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:15:36 -0700

by Steve Burgess

Fourth Avenue and Yew Street café one night when he noticed a car in the parking lot; a man sat alone in the vehicle. It was long after closing and Rootman feared the man might be casing the premises, planning a break-in. “I was getting ready to call the cops,” Rootman says. But when he moved to the window for a closer look, he realized the theft was already in progress.

What's up, docks?

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:30:25 -0700

by Dee Hon

Deltaport sticks out into the Georgia Strait like a hatpin – a squarish man-made island tethered to the coast by its thin causeway. On the west side of the island, great dunes of sooty coal await loading onto Pacific-bound freighters. On the east side, steel shipping containers stuffed with the inbound bounty of Asian factories sit stacked like giant Lego.