My friend Gil Hewlett passed away the other day. He was 80.

Gil was a respected marine scientist who grew up in Lake Cowichan on Vancouver Island. He told the story of walking past the Vancouver Aquarium one day when he was a young man arguing with himself about what to do with the rest of his life. This was 1964 when the Aquarium was just getting into orca research. Gil went inside to...

Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart has served notice he wants to change the name of Trutch Street, a Kitsilano neighbourhood thoroughfare. The street is named for a nineteenth century colonial official in British Columbia.

There is a lot of debate these days about removing statues and renaming buildings, but this one is a no-brainer.

Several years ago Canada's History magazine compiled a tongue-in-cheek list of "worst Canadians" and invited me to make a contribution....

In the history of modern art there are several key exhibitions that seem to upend the landscape. I am thinking of the 1910 exhibition at the Grafton Galleries in London, for example, which introduced the Post-Impressionists (Cézanne, Manet, Van Gogh, etc.) to the British public. Or the Armory Show in New York in 1913 which brought all the big-name European avant-garde painters...

The first time I met Tom Berger, who died this past week, age 88, was in 2005 when we sat together on a panel of "experts" convened by the Globe and Mail to determine the "top" British Columbians of all time. It is the only time my level of expertise has ever been equated with Justice Berger's.

Actually he was unaware that our paths had crossed, sort of, 35 years earlier. It was the provincial election of 1969, my first time as a voter and his first as leader of the...

Vancouver's Chinatown in 1906. (Courtesy Vancouver Public Library 5240)

The epidemic, and more recently the horrible murders in Atlanta, have focussed attention on the corrosive impact of anti-Asian prejudice and discrimination. Most Vancouverites are aware of the city's long history of discrimination against its Japanese, Chinese and South Asian residents. Unable to vote,...