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YYZ (aka "What a %@#$hole!") gets transformed
Of all the terminals I've had the experience of passing through, Toronto's Pearson Airport (YYZ) is among the shoddiest. Landing there years ago was like landing in Soviet-era Eastern Europe. But all that's changed. Today was the first day of operation for the new Terminal 1 International Pier, an immense new space designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill that serves both U.S. and international flights (the rest of the terminal, for domestic Canadian flights, opened previously).
I've flown through the new terminal a few times, most recently in the fall, and there is simply no words to compare it with the old space. The old terminal was simply an awful hovel. Avec passport control. The new terminal is soaring, gleaming, light-filled and, pardon the new-ageness, hopeful--everything the old Terminal 2 was not.
Posted by Sebastian / Aviation / Toronto / January 30, 2007 /
Is the Stanley Park crisis overblown?
 In Vancouver, the Pickton trial is getting a wee bit less exciting as it enters its second week. Or at least that's the only thing one can infer by the latest string of stories being produced by reporters who've been covering the trial. While prosecutors dig up more evidence in the case of the pig man and the prostitutes, Christopher Mason from the New York Times and Rosie DiManno from the Toronto Star are among those who have decamped for Stanley Park to instead cover the immense damage to Vancouver's crown jewel caused by last month's high winds.
While the Times piece offers up a good lesson on Vancouver's urban appeal, in the Star, the prolific and beloved Rosie DiManno takes a more pessimistic approach to the state of Stanley and the outpouring of affection for all the fallen trees:
Trees have spirits, many believe. Their passing has broken hearts and provoked intense grieving. Some, the most sickly green of the Greens, actually suggested grief counselling sessions to deal with the trauma of loss. That was a tad silly, even for Vancouver...Certainly some rhetoric has been absurdly over the top. Mayor Sam Sullivan declared that collecting the dead trees was 'the equivalent of loading up stones from St. Peter's Basilica into a dump truck.'
Its Wild Heart Broken, a City, Like Its Eagles, Rebuilds (NYT)
Stanley Park 'tragedy' spurs grief (Star)
Posted by Sebastian / Vancouver / January 30, 2007 /
Pickton Trial, Day Four
In yesterday’s Pickton trial proceedings, jurors were shown a videotape in which the deadliest alleged serial killer in Canadian history all but confesses to the murders of various Vancouver prostitutes. In the 2002 video, Pig Farmer Pickton agreed to cooperate with the investigation into the disappearance of the women if they stopped searching his farm for evidence. Hmmm...
“Pickton's offer to negotiate came not long after police told him there was a witness who had told them she saw him butchering a woman's body at the farm near Vancouver. ‘She talks about coming in while you were skinning a girl, hanging on a hook,’ RCMP Inspector Don Adam tells Pickton during the interview as police attempt to get him to confess to murder. Police say Pickton hired the women on the streets of the city's down-and-out Downtown Eastside neighborhood, took them to his farm, killed them after having sex, and butchered their bodies to dispose of the remains.”
Posted by Sebastian / Vancouver / January 25, 2007 /
Downtown Eastside description of the day
The Robert Pickton trial continued today in Vancouver -- and let's just say that after the evidence being presented and the media attention the case is getting, it's going to be going on a very long time.
Describing the city's Downtown Eastside, where the women allegedly killed by pig-farmer Pickton lived, Rosie DiManno of the Toronto Star calls it "a human cesspool inhabited by whores, drug addicts and vagrants." Not too far off.
And now for the gory details: The missing women's
"paltry remains were found in plastic buckets, chest freezers, garbage bags, troughs of dirt and mounds of debris, buried in the very soil of the Pickton farm, court heard: Some teeth here, a couple of split skulls there, fingers and heels, blood splatter across the wall, and thousands upon thousands of minute DNA traces...investigators laboriously searching the property grid by grid came upon a green garbage can near the southern wall of the slaughterhouse, tucked inside another pail. There was a skull in there too, also sliced in half, with hands and feet similarly bundled, but these remains were in a more advanced state of decomposition."
These are the bodies of some of the women you see below.
Posted by Sebastian / Vancouver / January 24, 2007 /
Vancouver's missing women trial begins
One of the stories I've always found interesting about Vancouver is that of its missing women. In recent years, dozens of women have vanished from the streets of the city's notorious Downtown Eastside without a trace. Robert Pickton, the pig farmer accused of killing at least 26 of them, began his trial yesterday in a suburban Vancover courtroom in a scene the New York Times described as simply, "grisly."
As the paper explains, "The murder charges stem from the discovery of women’s remains and DNA during an 18-month excavation of the farm Mr. Pickton owned with his brother. The authorities found the heads of three women sliced in half vertically, the hands and partial feet of the same three women, and DNA, clothing and belongings that have been traced to the other women he is accused of killing...After Mr. Pickton’s arrest, the police issued a tainted meat warning for pork from the farm for fear that it may have contained human remains."
Eerily, six years ago Vancouver magazine wrote, "The Vancouver Police Department has no bodies and no clues, no crime scenes and no
witnesses, and repeatedly downplays suggestions that a serial killer might be on the prowl." Oh how times change!
Related coverage:
CBC
Missing People
Pickton Trial Blog
Posted by Sebastian / Vancouver / January 23, 2007 /
Perspectives on the Downtown Eastside
Regular readers of this blog know my fascination with Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Ever since I first wandered through the seedy section of town many years ago, I've been intrigued by the place. Now that the Robert Pickton trial, which focuses on the lives of 26 missing women from the streets of the neighbourhood, has gotten underway, it is sure to be in the news more than ever. Here are some interesting voices on it:
Nettie Wild, filmmaker: "You run into a whole gambit of people [on the Downtown Eastside]: It’s a catchment for people who, as a society, we run out of alternatives with what to do."
Vancouver Sun: "When the international media descend on the Downtown Eastside, they will shine a light on the nation's poorest neighbourhood and one with features not commonly found elsewhere. The corner of Main and Hastings Streets is home to a drug market so brazen that dealers are able to sell crack cocaine, heroin, morphine, codeine and a variety of illegally obtained pharmaceuticals in plain view of the public and the police. Less than a block away is Insite, a supervised facility where injection drug users can use street drugs under medical supervision. Permanent syringe disposal boxes are mounted on iron poles in alleys in this neighbourhood. Addicts huddle in alleys or right on the street to smoke crack."
Urban Photo: "It isn’t a subtle change by any means. One minute you’re surrounded by healthy-looking Korean students on Seymour Street, munching on kimbob and fish cake; a few blocks later, you’re standing across from a skinny junkie smoking crack cocaine on Hastings Street. This is the Downtown Eastside, a blatant rejection of the glassy, healthy city Vancouver tries to be."
The New York Times: "Just blocks away from the boutique-filled tourist district, the Downtown Eastside is a world of its own, where the streets are lined with huddled figures, many buildings are abandoned and boarded up, and the pawnshops, taverns and rooming houses are fortified with thick metal bars. Drugs are bought and sold openly."
Posted by Sebastian / Vancouver / January 23, 2007 /
I (heart) Kimpton
I'm not sure I could be a bigger booster of Kimpton Hotels, like the Hotel Monaco in Salt Lake City, even if they gave me free rooms. Ever since my first stay at the Monaco about five years ago, I've been in love with the Kimpton chain and its hip and comfy rooms. Besides the Monaco SLC, I've done the Pacific Palisades and the Palomar, and of course hung out at the Nine Zero in Boston -- and I love them all.
Posted by Sebastian / Salt Lake City / January 22, 2007 /
Spotted in Salt Lake
Only in the most conservative big city in America could I spot this sign.
Posted by Sebastian / Salt Lake City / January 17, 2007 /
Vancouver zoning: worked too well!
The New York Times has a decent piece today on the what's happened in Vancouver since the city enacted an overly pro-residential zoning strategy for the downtown core. While the downtown population has doubled in recent years with the explosive growth of new neighborhoods and gleaming glass towers, businesses are being squeezed and pushed to the 'burbs. In five years the city will run out of downtown commercial space. Yikes!
As always, the Times closed out their piece with a simple zinger: “Most downtowns would love to have our problem,” the city's planning director said. “We are well-positioned to do that deeper level of urbanism.”
Posted by Sebastian / Real Estate / YVR / January 17, 2007 /
Gone to a very cold place
And yes, for once, I'm, talking about the weather, not the people.
Posted by Sebastian / Salt Lake City / January 16, 2007 /
My new fav building
This is my new fav building -- the Bleecker Building. The sun was beginning to set on one of the most beautiful days ever when I finally stopped and looked up at this building at Broadway and Bleecker that I've walked past countless times. I had just left Crate and Barrel and was walking home to Chelsea when the light was hitting this gorgeous building just right for a photo.
Posted by Sebastian / NYC / January 14, 2007 /
Blue skies over Chelsea
In one of the most bizarre weather patterns ever, it was clear blue skies over Manhattan today, and 70 degrees according to the thermometer. After spending the morning running along the Hudson, I spent the day wandering around the city IN SHORTS and a t-shirt. Thank you, global warming.
Posted by Sebastian / NYC / January 6, 2007 /
Spotted in the West Village
Very fitting considering the posers who tend to inhabit certain Manhattan neighbourhoods!
Posted by Sebastian / NYC / January 6, 2007 /
2007 is here
Is it just me, or did I look like Elton John last night?
Posted by Sebastian / Etceteras / January 1, 2007 /
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