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We’re an independent, online news magazine from B.C. founded in 2003. We’re devoted to fact-driven stories, reporting that informs and enlivens our democratic conversation. This feed features our stories, read by AI narration. Our reporting has changed laws, started movements and garnered numerous awards.

  1. 1d ago

    A Stunning Exploration of Climate Grief

    Are we redeemable? Humans, I mean. Up until the last few years, if you asked me this question, I would have answered, "Of course!" But now, the certainty of this response has been whittled down into uneasy silence. I'm not so sure anymore. Any student of history will tell you with alacrity the multiple and ongoing atrocities humans have engaged in over the millennia. Almost from the beginning of organized society, we have been murdering and torturing our fellow sapiens with glee. I'm sure hominids and neanderthals also took to clobbering each other whenever the opportunity arose. But despite the recorded evidence, I've always believed that deep in its heart of hearts, humanity wanted to be good, helpful, kind, considerate. I'm not sure I believe this any longer. Art hasn't changed this. It has cemented it more firmly. A new exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery takes the relationship between art and the environment as its animating idea. But in examining the concept, something else surges to the fore. Namely, that we've made a nightmare of things. Future Geographies: Art in the Century of Climate Change features 35 works drawn from the last quarter century. It is a big show — the ideas it tackles are global in their implications and impact. It's also big in another more literal sense, encompassing some of the most influential folks in the art biz, one of whom is John Akomfrah. The Ghanaian and British artist works in a number of creative disciplines, including documentary film. Vertigo Sea, Akomfrah's large-scale three panel installation, takes pride of place in the VAG show. First, a gentle word of warning. There is something about the convergence of beauty and horror in the piece that pierces the senses in the most profound fashion. Just as one is beguiled by the staggering beauty of the natural world, be it a whirling murmuration of seabirds or a pod of whales moving sleekly through the ocean, other elements enter, pulling you under the dark water. Beauty makes you vulnerable to the larger message of the work, sinking the experience so deeply into the conscious and unconscious mind that it refuses to budge. Even when you really want it to. There are so many things at work in the piece that one viewing probably isn't sufficient to take it all in, even in a practical way. The triptych of screens, moving independently of each other in the narrative flow and sometimes in concert, means that you spend time whipping your head back and forth so that you don't miss anything. Ideally, one should be able to see an artwork of this magnitude and power a great many times, but that too comes with some caveats of the emotional variety. In 'Vertigo Sea,' an unforgettable tale of grief On the surface, 2015's Vertigo Sea is a three-channel video installation. It makes ample use of archival footage from the BBC Studios' Natural History Unit, as well as images captured in different places around the globe, including the Faroe Islands and the Isle of Skye. Over the course of its running time, it makes tidal shifts, moving from nature documentary to literary exploration to something far greater than the sum of its parts. The literary works cited include Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, and Heathcote Williams's epic poem "Whale Nation." The latter two are both central to the work. Other key elements include the transatlantic slave trade and Argentina's Dirty War. While the whaling industry might not seem entirely related to the atrocities committed in the slave trade, the connective tissue between them is just that, tissue, flesh flayed out in enormous ribbons of muscle, sinew and veritable oceans of blood. In an extended interview with curator Johanne Løgstrup entitled Co-existence of Times — a Conversation with John Akomfrah, the artist explains his ideas: The connection between the whaling industry and industrialized, extractive capitalism is a direct line. The hunt for whales and their oil formed the b...

    8 min

  2. 1d ago

    Gu Xiong's Constant Evolution

    Becoming: The Art of Gu Xiong traces the evolution of internationally recognized multidisciplinary artist Gu Xiong. On display at the Museum of Vancouver now through Feb. 7, 2027, Becoming is the most comprehensive display of his work and highlights landmark pieces from his 50-year career. MOV: What will people see when they visit 'Becoming: The Art of Gu Xiong'? Gu Xiong: I like to work in multimedia formats, which gives me more diverse opportunities to explore my ideas. People will see A River of Migration, which is an installation formed by hundreds of plaster salmon fish and small white plastic boats flowing across the entire exhibition space. There will be paintings like Enclosures and charcoal drawings in Here, There, Everywhere. Illuminated Niagara Falls is made of hundreds of photographs, and its associated piece A Migrant Worker's Crate is a re-creation of the crates Jamaican migrant workers send home to their families. Yellow Cargo is a sculpture made from cardboard boxes, produce labels and video projection. My favourite piece is Smile, three individual portraits of my family with a poem in English and Chinese. It explores our family's resilience through humour. Creating this exhibition has been a journey to retrace my artistic roots and the flow of my artistic development, through migration and global changes, like a river finding its way through treacherous landscapes. These renewed reflections shaped the spaces and themes of this exhibition, forming new meanings from past and recent work. How did you start as an artist? During the Cultural Revolution in China in the 1970s, I was sent to the countryside. I sketched every day, recording my daily life. In 1978, I applied to art school and was accepted by the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, where I earned a bachelor's and master's degree in fine arts. I became an instructor and started to teach students in 1985. In 1986, I was the first Chinese artist to attend the artist-in-residence program at the Banff Centre for the Arts. I worked with contemporary artists from around the world, and we went to New York to visit art galleries and museums. This experience had a big impact. I saw the work of Andy Warhol, which had a huge influence on me. But I knew I had to find my own way for my art. I returned to China, and in 1989, I participated in the groundbreaking exhibition China/Avant-Garde at the China national museum of fine arts in Beijing with Enclosures. In 1989 I had my second residency at the Banff Centre. Tell us about moving to Canada. I dreamed of going to Canada after seeing a review of a Group of Seven exhibition in 1975. At the Banff Centre, Alvin Balkind, the head of the visual art studio, was very supportive of my immigration. I moved to Vancouver in 1990, and my wife and my daughter came to join me. In the initial years we were caught in a culture shock, losing everything we once had, feeling lost and disoriented in a new culture. The most challenging aspect was making a living and trying to make art at the same time. As a new immigrant, family was very important. Without their support, I couldn't keep doing my artwork; they are part of me. As an immigrant I wanted to explore the process of creating our new identities, to have our experiences and voices be heard and shared. We became a blend of two cultures, creating something new. In the 1990s and early 2000s, your work shifted, partially because of your role as a professor at the University of British Columbia. Tell us about that. In teaching at UBC, I encouraged my students to deepen their artistic voice and concepts through researching other artists' work, art history and critical theory. This also inspired me to research and deepen my art. Through my research project, I was inspired by migrant workers on Canadian farmland. They came to earn money from physical labour to support their families. Their situation resonated with me. What is next artistically for you? Today, I see myself as a complex person w...

    5 min

  3. 1d ago

    Teaching Artificial Intelligence to Zap Hate Speech

    How can spaces where people gather on the internet be safeguarded from trolls poisoning them with hate speech? Liam Hebert wondered if artificial intelligence could be trained to do the job. So, he dived deep into the complex world of teaching machines to grasp what people truly intend when, in conversation, they use certain words that can have different meanings in different group contexts. After all, some words that can be used as a vicious insult in some settings can be harmless in another. Hebert tackled the challenge as he pursued a PhD in computer science at the University of Waterloo in Ontario — and produced a hate-speech zapping deep learning model so effective that when he was done, Google hired him as a research scientist. Hebert has also received prestigious awards including the IEEE Canadian Foundation, the Nick Cercone Graduate Scholarship in Computer Science award and a Vanier scholarship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. We are two secondary school students who participated in a UBC research project that invited us to note our worries about the future and interview someone working to make things better. Racist and sexist speech online is something each of us encounter often, so we wanted to know if a technological fix might be invented. That led us to reach out to Hebert and talk to him about his project and why he pursued it. Along the way, we also spoke with Takara Small, a Toronto-based journalist who covers technology and its social impacts for news outlets including the CBC and BBC. She reminds us that even if AI gets better at detecting and removing hate speech online, "a lot of the platforms that many people use are designed by private companies and their filters are designed to work based on what they feel is important, what words, what ideas, what topics they feel their audience should have access to or be able to talk about." The people who run these "private entities decide what words, what language is allowed and it may differ from what the general public feels is acceptable, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they're not working how their builders want them to." One example that comes to mind is Elon Musk's X platform which is home to a lot of bigoted views. But Small considers combatting hate speech online "an incredibly important topic because a lot of these online spaces are how young people and people of all ages primarily engage with the world. That is their window into learning about other cultures, other people, world news. It's not necessarily from fact-based reporters like myself. Sometimes it's from individuals who have no interest in truth telling and reporting on the real world." So addressing hate speech online, Small adds, is "important not just because it forms how we engage with each other, but because it's become the primary place where people learn about what's happening around them." Small notes that legal regulation of hate speech can be an important tool alongside any technological fixes. "If you look at racism and how hate speech is treated in Canada versus in other places, for example, the European Union, there's a real divergence," she notes. "The European Union has stricter rules when it comes to that. There are actually quite hefty fines in some instances, and then the consequences can grow from there. I think it goes to show that governments can have a huge role to play when it comes to the type of speech we see online, the type of racism, and that it exists everywhere." With Small's perspectives in mind, we conversed by Zoom with Hebert in San Francisco about the power and limits of AI in detecting hate speech, how atoms and molecules helped him figure out his approach, the rough experiences as a kid that still motivate him, and more. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Can you tell us a bit about how you became interested in doing something about online hatred? I grew up when the internet was popping off and...

    13 min

  4. 1d ago

    When Urban Planning Works Too Well

    Planning the Future of Abu Dhabi: A Canadian-Emirati Collaboration for Sustainable Urbanism Edited by Larry Beasley and Michael White UBC Press, On Point Press (2026) There is a version of city-building that planners often imagine, if not quietly hope for. A place where vision aligns with implementation. Where institutions work in concert rather than at cross purposes. Where decisions are made efficiently, guided by long-term thinking rather than short-term pressures. Where plans are not just written, but realized. It is, in many ways, a planner's ideal. And yet, this ideal tends to appear most clearly in places where another condition is also present — one that sits less comfortably within contemporary North American planning discourse. In many of these contexts, decision-making is centralized, public participation is limited, and the mechanisms of democratic accountability are comparatively weak. This raises a question that is easy to sidestep but difficult to ignore: what if the conditions that make planning most effective are not always the ones that make it most democratic? Planning the Future of Abu Dhabi: A Canadian-Emirati Collaboration for Sustainable Urbanism, offers a compelling entry point into this question. Co-edited by former Vancouver co-director of planning Larry Beasley and Michael White — now associate vice-president of campus and community planning at the University of British Columbia — the book reflects on a Canadian-led effort to reshape Abu Dhabi's planning system in the mid-2000s. Beasley led the overall planning initiative, while White served as its in-country lead during the implementation of the new planning framework. The book offers a series of essays that document a Canadian-led effort, beginning in the mid-2000s, to bring coherence to a rapidly growing city shaped by fragmented decision-making and ad-hoc development — what Beasley describes as an "accidental" urban condition. But this is not simply a story about urban design. It is, more fundamentally, a story about building a planning system from scratch. That alone makes the book notable. Much of planning literature focuses on plans — their form, their intent, their outcomes. Far less attention is given to the institutional machinery that makes planning possible in the first place. In Planning the Future of Abu Dhabi, the reader is taken inside that machinery. The book documents, in considerable detail, the creation of a planning agency, the development of regulatory frameworks, the establishment of design review processes and the co-ordination of infrastructure systems across a rapidly urbanizing region. In this sense, the book's most significant contribution is not its vision of Abu Dhabi, but its account of how planning institutions are constructed. It shows how a city moves from reactive decision-making toward a more deliberate, co-ordinated approach to growth. It also makes a strong case for strategic planning over rigid master plans — frameworks that set direction while remaining adaptable to changing conditions. Throughout, there is a clear effort to reconcile global planning principles with local cultural and environmental realities, drawing on Arab-Islamic urban traditions and the specific constraints of a desert climate. Taken together, these elements form a persuasive argument: cities do not falter for lack of ideas alone, but for lack of institutions capable of organizing those ideas into action. The book also hints at another important force shaping the planning initiative: Abu Dhabi's ambition to position itself as a competitive global city. Throughout the essays, there are recurring references to tourism, international investment, economic diversification and the desire to establish the Emirate as a globally significant urban centre. This context matters because the planning project was not unfolding in isolation from global economic pressures, but alongside a broader effort to transform Abu Dhabi into an internationally rec...

    14 min

  5. 2d ago

    Listen Up! 'The Tyee Podcast' Is Now Live Listen Up! 'The Tyee Podcast' Is Now Live

    Tyee News Podcast Media Readers asked, and we delivered. Find it today across major streaming platforms. Jacob Boon 29 May 2026The Tyee 3 3 3 29 May 2026 Jacob Boon is The Tyee's newsletter editor. Our journalism is supported by readers like you. Click here to support The Tyee. URL copied to clipboard! SHARE: 68 SHARES Comments / New Readers asked, and we delivered. Find it today across major streaming platforms. … Article written by Jacob Boon. As a reader-funded publication, we're always listening to what our audience wants. Now, you can listen to us, too. Today we're excited to share a whole new way to connect with our journalism. Introducing The Tyee Podcast — a deep dive into the stories shaping the West Coast, because Canada needs more B.C. Every other Friday you'll hear conversations with remarkable guests discussing the events and stories shaping our world — journalists, experts and iconoclasts who will break down big topics and cut through the noise to find solutions. In our debut episode released this morning on all your favourite podcast apps, we're diving into the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, or DRIPA. Premier David Eby's reversal on changing DRIPA this past spring stirred as much controversy as it did confusion. The moment was both inevitable and inescapable, says our guest, Adam Olsen. Lead negotiator for the Tsartlip First Nation, former BC Green Party MLA and a Tyee contributor, Olsen believes this firestorm was brewing for over a century — as long as British Columbia has evaded answering the question of Indigenous land rights. But Olsen says there might be a way out — and a beacon of hope for reconciliation. Check it out right now on Apple or Spotify, or listen to the episode directly right here. The Tyee was founded to bring a B.C. perspective — and impact — to Canada's mediascape. For over 20 years that's what we've excelled at. And for nearly as long, our readers have told us they wanted a Tyee podcast. It took a while, and a few stutter steps over the years (RIP, Chumbucket), but we've finally delivered. A Tyee staff team consisting of Jacob Boon, Isaac Phan Nay, Sarah Krichel and our host-with-the-most Harrison Mooney has been hard at work building this podcast over the past few months. We're thrilled to finally debut it during our spring Builder campaign. This project doesn't happen without the support of our readers — the generous folks who contribute an amount of their choosing on a monthly, annual or one-time basis. We call them Tyee Builders. They're the reason we remain fiercely independent in a media ecosystem dominated by hedge-fund-controlled news entities. They're why our journalism remains free and open for all to read, with no paywalls. And they're why we can grow our non-profit operation and launch exciting new projects like The Tyee Podcast. If you want to hear what all the noise is about, search for The Tyee Podcast in your favourite podcast app, or click the Apple, Spotify or RSS icons on this page to subscribe. For those fans of our audio articles, never fear. The Tyee's Audio Edition will remain up as a separate channel. If you like what you hear, it would mean the world to us if you could follow, like and share the podcast. Even better, leave a rating or a review so we know how you feel. Got an idea for a topic for a future episode? Send us a message at podcast[at]thetyee.ca. We always want to hear from you. Ready to support The Tyee in sustaining its capacity for exciting new projects like these? Consider signing up to become a Tyee Builder today. Listen closer to the world around you. Listen to The Tyee Podcast.

    4 min

  6. 2d ago

    Amid Tensions over Police in Schools, a Vancouver Report Shows Promising Change Amid Tensions over Police in Schools, a Vancouver Report Shows Promising Change Amid Tensions over Police in Schools, a Vancouver Report Shows Promising Change

    29 May 2026The Tyee 13 13 13 News News Education BC Politics BC's human rights commissioner would like to see external reviews for all programs in the province. News Rights + Justice Education BC Politics Comments / New Read more: News Rights + Justice Education BC Politics BC's human rights commissioner would like to see external reviews for all programs in the province. Katie Hyslop 29 May 2026 Katie Hyslop is a reporter for The Tyee. Follow them on Bluesky @kehyslop.bsky.social or send story tips to khyslop[at]thetyee.ca. Our journalism is supported by readers like you. Click here to support The Tyee. URL copied to clipboard! SHARE: 68 SHARES BC's human rights commissioner would like to see external reviews for all programs in the province. … Article written by Katie Hyslop. Vancouver students' opinion of police in their schools has changed significantly since the program was reinstated in public schools in 2023, according to a recently released third-party evaluation. Earlier this month, a long-promised external review of the program that stationed police officers in 17 of the district's high schools and seven Vancouver-based independent schools was finally released publicly. It's almost exactly what B.C. human rights commissioner Kasari Govender has been asking the province to do since 2022: review the efficacy of programs that place police officers in B.C.'s public schools. "I'm really pleased to see them following at least the gist of the recommendation I made, which, despite how it was represented, wasn't to cancel all SLO [school liaison officer] programs carte blanche," said Govender, who had previously called for the programs to be cancelled until a provincial evaluation of their impact and potential harms was completed. "It was to evaluate them and figure out what could alleviate some of the negative impacts that we have heard, certainly anecdotally, that these programs can cause... see how those can be alleviated, and study whether they actually are doing a job." Govender's concerns had included the penalizing of Black, Indigenous and other students of colour, as well as students with disabilities, in particular, as highlighted in U.S. scholarship on police in schools. There are comparatively few academic studies of police in Canadian schools. As well, she was concerned that police seemed to take over positions that teachers and other educators are trained to handle, such as counselling students and coaching sports teams. Govender attributes the positive reviews the Vancouver Police Department's SLO program received this time around to the changes they made for the new program that started in September 2023. This includes an emphasis on relationship-building with students, teachers and staff, over law enforcement duties. SLOs also traded wearing police uniforms for VPD-branded athleisure wear. They carry smaller and concealed weapons — a gun and baton — instead of the standard-issue police weapons in visible holsters. And they are driving unmarked vehicles instead of police cars. "We saw them take some important steps towards addressing some of the potential harms of SLO programs and harms that had emerged from the 2021 review," Govender said. "It's not perfect; I have some concerns. But I am pleased to see them properly evaluated and take stock of what works and what doesn't." The evaluation report was released about two weeks before fired Greater Victoria School District trustees got their jobs back. The trustees were dismissed by government in January 2025 due to their alleged failure to create a district safety plan in collaboration with local police and the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations, following the board's cancellation of the SLO program. The fired board members had requested a judicial review of their dismissal, which was supposed to begin May 25. However, over the weekend the Ministry of Education and Child Care's lawyer disclosed previously unreleased text messages between Victoria Police Depa...

    13 min

  7. 2d ago

    Vancouver Unveils Its World Cup Human Rights Plan. And Gets Blasted Vancouver Unveils Its World Cup Human Rights Plan. And Gets Blasted

    29 May 2026 29 May 2026The Tyee Vancouver Unveils Its World Cup Human Rights Plan. And Gets Blasted Vancouver Unveils Its World Cup Human Rights Plan. And Gets Blasted The approach falls short in preventing and addressing violations, says Vancouver Anti-FIFA Coalition. The city responds. 11 11 11 News Sports News Sports Read more: News Rights + Justice Sports News Rights + Justice Sports The approach falls short in preventing and addressing violations, says Vancouver Anti-FIFA Coalition. The city responds. Katie Hyslop Katie Hyslop is a reporter for The Tyee. Follow them on Bluesky @kehyslop.bsky.social or send story tips to khyslop[at]thetyee.ca. Our journalism is supported by readers like you. Click here to support The Tyee. URL copied to clipboard! SHARE: 68 SHARES Comments / New With less than three weeks to go before the first Vancouver match of the 2026 World Cup, the host city's official human rights action plan has been released. But advocates don't see much response to criticisms they raised about earlier drafts. Big holes remain, they say, when it comes to protecting people experiencing homelessness and poverty, and those marginalized for their drug use, mental health issues or survival sex work. Many people who fit those descriptions live in the city's Downtown Eastside, which is located within the two-kilometre-radius game zone where some city bylaws have temporarily changed for the almost month-long World Cup. In a May 27 press release, the Vancouver Anti-FIFA Coalition, which includes organizations such as Pivot Legal Society, the BC Civil Liberties Association and the BC Poverty Reduction Coalition, highlighted their main concerns with the human rights action plan. Their claims mainly fall into three categories. 1. A weak system for reporting abuses Vancouver's 311 phone line and website continues to be a recommended outlet for submitting human rights complaints during the games. The municipal service typically used to report damaged garbage cans or a busted street lamp won't receive additional funding to take on this duty. "The Plan provides no information on critical procedural fairness details, including: who will be reviewing reports of violations submitted through 311, what reviewers will be looking for, what notice and evidence requirements apply, whether an investigation may occur and what such an investigation might look like, when people can expect to hear back, and what the available remedies might be," the coalition's press release states. Without this information or additional investment into 311 services to accommodate the load, the Vancouver Anti-FIFA Coalition predicts human rights abuses will go undocumented and unaddressed during the games. The Van311.ca website already has a portal for World Cup-related inquiries and requests. But the multiple-choice options for narrowing down your issue do not currently include human rights complaints. 2. Not enough safe options for homeless The coalition and Downtown Eastside residents have called for expanded daytime shelter hours during the month-long game period where people experiencing homelessness or housing precarity can watch televised games — especially in air-conditioned spaces, as the summer temperatures are predicted to be high this year. But the human rights action plan is offering extended hours in existing daytime shelter spaces in the Downtown Eastside and south Vancouver during the seven game days only. "In other words, a handful of days during a weeks-long period of increased policing, tourist surges, and service disruption," the coalition's press release reads, adding that the spaces also fail to meet needs because they won't employ peer workers and offer harm reduction supplies. "Further, the Plan offers scant details on how these spaces will be made accessible for people who are unhoused or precariously housed, as they are notoriously discriminated against in accessing City-run services." While the city's host committee has pledged the...

    6 min

  8. 2d ago

    Firing Victoria's School Board Was an Abuse of Power Firing Victoria's School Board Was an Abuse of Power Firing Victoria's School Board Was an Abuse of Power

    The provincial government colluded with police on a costly, undemocratic campaign. 29 May 2026The Tyee 47 47 47 Opinion Education BC Politics Opinion Rights + Justice Education BC Politics Comments / New Read more: Opinion Rights + Justice Education BC Politics The provincial government colluded with police on a costly, undemocratic campaign. Paul Willcocks 29 May 2026 Paul Willcocks is a senior editor at The Tyee. Our journalism is supported by readers like you. Click here to support The Tyee. URL copied to clipboard! SHARE: 68 SHARES The provincial government colluded with police on a costly, undemocratic campaign. … Article written by Paul Willcocks. Not only did B.C.'s Education Ministry conspire with Victoria police to oust a democratically elected school board, it also concealed evidence from the B.C. Supreme Court, where the trustees had challenged Education Minister Lisa Beare's January 2025 order to fire them. The abuse — revealed only days before a recent hearing and months after the court had ordered the government to disclose all documents — was so outrageous it drew a sharp reprimand from Justice Lindsay LeBlanc. It also led the government to abandon its case this week, reinstate the board with back pay and cover the board's legal fees and other costs. The whole fiasco likely cost taxpayers more than $1 million. More importantly, Victoria students and parents have had no elected school trustees for more than a year, with the district run by a government appointee. The recently disclosed documents — including texts and emails between Jennifer McCrea, associate deputy education minister, Victoria Police Department Deputy Chief Mike Brown and special adviser Kevin Godden — revealed a shocking lack of professionalism. How unprofessional? When McCrea messaged VicPD's Brown about a small protest at the Education Ministry office over the push to restore police in schools, he responded: "Losers." McCrea said her office was trying to get a photo of board chair Nicole Duncan at the protest, and Brown replied, "She would be the one that looks like a narcissistic moron." Brown also suggested police were watching the protesters and his "source on the ground" saw a number of trustees. The board had decided to suspend the police program in 2023, after B.C. human rights commissioner Kasari Govender researched the programs in 2022 and wrote the BC School Trustees Association, suggesting the harms — especially for marginalized students with historically difficult experiences with police — may outweigh the benefits. Govender suggested pausing the programs until more research was completed. When the board and Govender held a media conference to discuss the issues around police in schools, Brown messaged McCrea and again called the trustees "morons." He also called Govender an "arrogant ideologue." (Which is demonstrably false.) Nowhere in the 100 pages of messages and other withheld documents do the participants stop and self-reflect, nor do they question whether the ministry and police should be working together to force officers back into Victoria schools. McCrea doesn't hit pause or recognize that insulting the trustees and the public is destructive and incompetent. No one raises the question of why the ministry and one interest group — the police — set out to undermine and destroy a school board elected by the citizens of Greater Victoria. The messages also make Beare look ridiculous. At one point, McCrea suggests the minister is wavering on the attempt to crush the board. And she enthusiastically grasps at a message from Brown aimed at stiffening Beare's resolve. "George Jay elementary just seized a home made shank and a box of vapes from a Grade 5 student," Brown wrote. "Principal told our cops it's like working in a prison." George Jay has about 440 students from kindergarten to Grade 5. I have a family member who went there in recent years. To claim it resembles a penitentiary, with Grade 3 students stalking the playground...

    7 min
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Ratings & Reviews

4.2
out of 5
13 Ratings

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We’re an independent, online news magazine from B.C. founded in 2003. We’re devoted to fact-driven stories, reporting that informs and enlivens our democratic conversation. This feed features our stories, read by AI narration. Our reporting has changed laws, started movements and garnered numerous awards.

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