It’s time for the sixth annual Light Up The Quay, a fun and friendly competition put on by the Quayside Community Board that helps increase donations to the winter food drive and encourages neighbours to duke it out for awards.

While my list of pie-in-the-sky wishes for our city includes a complete overhaul of our city’s animal services*, the reality is any city’s animal services department is going to be low on the priority list if the powers that be don’t get told it should be a priority.
Do you know how municipalities determine how important animal services are? In part, they use the data collected by the number of licenses purchased to tell them what kinds of dogs are living in the city and where those dogs are. (I’m saying …

Christmas music is at the top of many minds, given that seasonal favourites seem to follow us wherever we go – work, school, the mall, and on and on. So, what I thought I’d do is list of some favourite Christmas anthems that, perhaps, you’ve never heard (or haven’t heard quite as often), as opposed to the ones you’re tired of.

Cadeaux Gifts in Sapperton never ceases to impress and entice. It is “a trendy boutique and gift store providing the best in essential indulgences” and is easily one of the Lower Mainland’s best-kept secrets.

Piccolo World Gifts is a small Sapperton storefront with a global worldview. Inside, you’ll find an assortment of bright, beautiful, and sometimes random treasures from around the world. It’s interesting enough on its own, but chatting with store owner Nancy Patrick brings a whole new appreciation to her collection.

Never heard of energy resiliency or energy transition planning?  Neither had I until a few weeks ago, however will become a growing topic of importance in New Westminster over the coming years.
New Westminster Environmental Partners (NWEP) would like to invite the public to learn more at a forum on Energy Resiliency and Energy Transition Planning on Monday December 5th. This forum will be preceded by the NWEP’s Annual General Meeting and election of directors for 2012. The AGM will start at 6:00 with the public forum presentations starting after 6:30pm. …

As the Christmas shopping season arrives with Black Friday in the US, I can’t think of anything more ridiculous than camping outside of a store in order to buy stuff. Except for shooting, trampling or pepper-spraying your fellow shoppers in order to get at said stuff, of which there were many reported instances this year.

Battered & fried fish is usually a rare greasy indulgence for me. Cod can be rather flavourless, and often is more grease and crunch than fish. Not at The Crab Shop. The batter is crispy but not thick, and the cod tastes fresh and delicious. The fries are good too, and the homemade tartar sauce is divine. In fact, the fish & chips at River Market’s new Crab Shop is so good I couldn’t resist ordering it for lunch two days in a row.

The day Shelley Rothenberger came to sketch my portrait, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Like most of the subjects of the New West Artists Perfect Strangers show, I had never sat for a painter before. I was one of 25 New Westminster citizens, chosen to represent a broad cross-section of people, including the mayor, a local historian, and a barista. Each subject was randomly paired with a member of New West Artists, an upstart artist-run group supporting both career artists and emerging talent.

British Columbia tot pop stars Bobs & Lolo are coming to New Westminster for a free concert to kick off Royal City Centre’s Christmas activities this year.

Cities have their own vernacular. Some boast unique architecture, a common sense of style and still others, a mode of transportation favored by the citizens. Certain cities, however have their own scent or combination of scents – both good and bad.

A drug-addicted single mother of a 10-year-old girl trying and failing to hold her life together. A father of two, the sole breadwinner in the family, laid off from his job and desperate for work. Families like these struggle to scrape together money for groceries, let alone presents. As evidenced by the long lines at Metro Vancouver’s largest food bank here in New Westminster, many local families need help. They need you and me to step forward and offer it.

New Westminster author and nominee for the Governor General’s Literary Award JJ Lee will talk about his new book The Measure of a Man at the New Westminster Public Library on Thursday, December 1 at 7 pm.

Preliminary New Westminster election results are in, and the results are not entirely unexpected. As in the 2008 election, there is only one new face on City Council, but unlike last time, voters did opt for change on school board. And despite an energetic campaign by challenger James Crosty, incumbent mayor Wayne Wright won by a landslide.

Remember that scene in “You Have Mail” where Meg Ryan is explaining to Greg Kinnear why they should break up? She confesses to him that during the last election she went for a manicure and forgot to vote. That’s right, went for a manicure, and forgot to vote. Apparently this is more common that I would have thought as 75% of New Westminster’s population didn’t vote in the last election – were they at the spa?