Premier-designate Christy Clark juggled the responsibilities of a working mother her first day on the job.
"Work started today," British Columbia's premier mom said Sunday outside Trout Lake Rink where her son, Hamish, was the starting goalie for the Vancouver Thunderbirds in an Atom A4 playoff game. "I was up at 6 o'clock this morning."
Clark narrowly rose to power over rival Kevin Falcon one night earlier on the third ballot of the B.C. Liberal leadership vote, in which 60,000-plus members participated.
Between attending meetings and worship at church, the ex-deputy premier said she had already begun leafing through transition binders to prepare her for the position of premier.
The family of a murdered Delta teen had spent the past four months preparing to see the face of their daughter's alleged killer.
"We're expecting a big, black, dark, scary monster," said Rachael Szendrei, mother of 15-year-old victim Laura, outside Surrey provincial court where an 18-year-old male made his first appearance on first degree murder charges.
Instead, a young man, thin with dirty blonde hair, wearing a charcoal button-down shirt, stood in a prisoner's box at the corner of a high-security courtroom. With his head in his hands, Crown Counsel declared it would seek an adult sentence against the accused at the conclusion of the trial.
The Caucasian suspect cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act because he was 17 when he allegedly beat Szendrei within an inch of her life in broad daylight at Delta's Mackie Park Sept. 25. She died of severe head injuries the next day.
Homicide investigators have identified the charred body found in a ditch more than a week ago as Tara Lynn Westgarde, 34, of Surrey, B.C., RCMP said Wednesday.
Westgarde, who was found Nov. 13, was last seen two days earlier by a family member.
Investigators are now turning to the public to piece together the last hours of Westgarde's life.
"We are releasing a photo of the victim along with her description in hopes that someone will be able to provide us information to tighten the timeline from when she was last seen to her discovery," said Integrated Homicide Investigation Team spokesman Cpl. Dale Carr.
At a remote park in British Columbia's Shuswap region, nearly 15,000 people clamoured to catch a glimpse of bright red sockeye salmon moving upriver in record numbers on Sunday.
This year, as many as 70,000 people from all over the world will come to Adams River, which runs through Roderick Haig-Brown Provincial Park, to witness in awe as up to 6 million fish swim the waters to mate at the end of their four-year lifespan.
"People literally plan vacations to come here from all over the world," explained Jeremy Heighton, community liaison officer for fisheries and oceans Canada.
"They're from anywhere you can imagine. It's really a phenomenon in many other areas of the world."
A criminal mastermind must be behind the Thai freighter carrying up to 500 Tamil migrants to the British Columbia shores, according to a human-trafficking expert.
UBC professor Benjamin Perrin said Thursday only a small number of organizations could manage such a sophisticated and large-scale migrant smuggling operation that would be able to collect debts ranging in the tens of thousands of dollars for passage owed by those aboard the MV Sun Sea.
"This is not some sort of humanitarian flotilla run by the Red Cross," said Perrin. "This is likely a criminal enterprise operated by current or former terrorists."
He acknowledged a strong possibility the ship, reportedly carrying men, women and children, is under control of terrorist organization Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which the Sri Lankan government defeated in 2009 after a three decade civil war.
A 12-year-old Nanaimo boy spent Wednesday night behind bars on an armed robbery charge.
On Tuesday, the youth, who's had more than 100 run-ins with police, pulled a replica handgun on a 21-year-old victim and demanded his cellphone and cash.
The victim, who was getting out of his vehicle, fled and called police with a suspect description allowing officers to quickly capture the adolescent and another boy who was with him at the time.
Investigators have yet to determine if the second boy was an accomplice or oblivious to the heist.
More than 200 migrants aboard cargo ship MV Sun Sea apparently bound for B.C. are entitled to due process of their refugee claims, said a Toronto-based lawyer.
Gary Anandasangaree, who was in Vancouver last October to provide legal counsel to 76 Tamil men aboard the MV Ocean Lady, said Canadians should ask why these people have taken such an "extraordinary risk" in crossing the Pacific Ocean.
"The danger that we face here is that there's significant generalization as to who and what they are," he said. "First and foremost, we have to look at these people as individuals.
"Depending on the number of people, each would have a specific and unique experience that would either qualify them or disqualify them as a refugee claimant.
Vancouver's own Martha Stewart of marijuana is making a compelling case for consuming cannabis.
Watermelon, best known for beating trafficking charges for selling sticky-icky ginger snap cookies at Wreck beach, is sharing her recipes with medicinal marijuana users through her Baking a Fool of Myself cooking show, which at first glance has more in common with Julia Child than Cheech and Chong.
The Commercial Drive resident explained her production makes marijuana accessible as a treatment for people living with illness, but are skittish about smoking their medicine.
"Food removes the stigma that we've all been inundated with for years," she said. "You have this old propaganda that lurks in the back of our minds that smoke has this bad connotation like, where there's smoke there's fire. It's just never good."
A movement aimed at disrupting demand for paid sex during the Olympics has landed on the doorsteps of Vancouver’s exotic show lounges.
Supporters of the “Buying Sex Is Not A Sport” campaign have staged silent protests outside three strip clubs and Canada Hockey Place this past week to deflate some men’s desire for paid sex.
“When you have a demand for paid sex a supply has to be created,” explained Michelle Miller, Resist Exploitation, Embrace Dignity executive director. “You don’t have hundreds of women out there just waiting to suck some stranger’s dirty penis multiple times a day.
“The supply is created from women living in poverty, women who are vulnerable to sexual exploitation and often women of colour.”
Miller added the demonstrations have had mixed results with some people offering words of support while others simply listened.
“We’ve had some good engagement with men outside of clubs and then they head back inside. That’s fine.”
Funeral services were held Monday morning for the Georgian luger who died while training at Whistler for the Olympic Games.
The Georgian Olympic Committee, athletes, local Georgians and VANOC officials honoured Nodar Kumaritashvili during an open-casket service at First Memorial funeral home.
The 21-year-old died hours before the Opening Ceremony when he careened off the track at about 140 km/h and collided back first into a steel beam.
"People [were] in shock and sorrow," said European Olympic Committee president Patrick Hickey of the mood inside the funeral home. "There were no speeches. Nobody wanted a speech."
Flashing a press pass can give you a free pass with law enforcement.
So says, Vancouver-based social media star Kris Krug who on Saturday in Copenhagen found himself at the centre of a chaotic police crackdown on protesters during a march for a fair equitable pack on climate change solutions.
Police arrested 968 people during the demonstration with 13 still in custody yesterday, according to reports.
“These people were a little bit more angry about the whole thing,” Krug said of the demonstrators who surrounded him. “To them, it’s not about climate change but it’s about system change [and] and changing world governments.”
A British Columbia billboard campaign for Coors beer is being pulled after area Torontonians were offended by the ad.
About 30 billboards scattered across the province boldly state Coors Light is “colder than people from Toronto”.
Adam Moffat, Molson brand and marketing public relations manager, said a handful of offended customers e-mailed to complain.
But, when news of the billboards spread yesterday, a public relations firestorm erupted.
