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!

Alfred DePew

Alfred DePew’s day job consists of training executive leaders and their organizations in change management, emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, diversity, non-toxic communication, and implementing vision. He is on the faculty of Center for Right Relationship, for whom he delivers advanced training in Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching. He is available for keynotes, breakout sessions, leadership training, staff development, team building, and retreat facilitation. For more information see his website or read his regular blog, “Relationship Matters”.

Before moving to Vancouver in 2007, DePew taught at the Maine College of Art, the Salt Center for Documentary Studies, and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. His first book of stories, The Melancholy of Departure, won a Flannery O’Connor Award. His second book, Wild & Woolly: A Journal Keeper’s Handbook is available to Canadian readers through his website and at a few local independent bookstores. His third book, another collection of short fiction, is in search of a publisher—got any ideas?

 

Candidate profile: Adriane Carr, Vancouver Centre, Green Party

DECISION 2011: If an election could be won by sheer enthusiasm, Adriane Carr would have this one in the bag by now.

Sunday’s Almost-All-Candidates Meeting in the West End

The moderator explained that the missing candidate had a last-minute conflict. So they went on without her.

Coalition: the c-word in this year's Canadian election

It was an innocent enough question: why is Ignatieff so opposed to a coalition? The answer I got made me curious about what we mean when we talk about coalition here in Canada.

Buffoons strike again in Vancouver April Fools Day. No arrests or injuries reported.

This is a public confession. I am no longer worthy of the title buffoon. I have let my tribe down. Betrayed our code of honour: to show up wherever and whenever called to satirize human beings and...

Federation of BC Writers calls writers out of their caves and into the village

“I’m a tribal person by nature,” says Sylvia Taylor, Executive Director of The Federation of BC Writers. Which explains, in part, how she got involved to begin with, over 12 years ago. In those days...

Living into the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami

My friend Yuri lives outside Tokyo and writes that she and her family are safe. But that was yesterday. And what can any of us possibly mean by “safe”?

Deborah Dunn's "Trial & Eros" to feature T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets at Vancouver International Dance Festival

Ms. Dunn’s description of “Trial & Eros” isn’t much help. But let’s think of it as the art of building suspense—nearly as obscure and provocative as T. S. Eliot's poetry itself.

Way down in Egypt’s land

The silence that has gripped me since the beginning of the Egyptian uprising has a bewilderingly personal feel.

The deep democracy of a Canadian Town Meeting with Michael Ignatieff

Nothing in me is smug about the safety of Canada. I'm an American on the brink of becoming a Canadian citizen and I’m here tonight to see how we conduct our political discourse.

Not Somewhere Else, But Here

  There was a time when New Year’s Eve inspired a terrible restlessness—trying to find the right place to be at midnight—fueled by a superstition that where you were at that moment would...