Ever since the Americans have elected their wackjob, extortionist, President Trump, Canada has had to deal with his threats, reneging of agreements, and bullying. Fortunately we have elected a Prime Minister who is the exact opposite in terms of temperment, intelligence, and respectful standing with the rest of the world. And while Carney charts a badly needed diversification path for our country, the rest of us also need to get serious about how we can do our part to reduce our reliance on the U.S.
Swims With Seals
Thoughts on happenings that in some way connect to the Vancouver waterfront - by Nelson Quiroga
Sunday, August 17, 2025
Elbows Up Canada
Saturday, July 5, 2025
FIFA Vancouver - A $700 Million Circus
If anyone ever needed an example of how mixed up Vancouver and the Province of B.C. have gotten with their priorities, never mind their math, you only need to look at the FIFA sponsorship they signed up for to really give your head a shake. The cost to host a portion of the 2026 games has ballooned from an initial estimate of $260 million 3 years ago to $700 million and rising. This works out to $100 million per game and there is no way of getting out of this ludicrous contract.
The government trots out all sorts of rosey predictions of how this will pay for itself in the end with a boost to the economy by all the people staying in the city to attend the games plus the increased future tourism the games will generate as a result of Vancouver being in the world spotlight. What a load of bunk. Vancouver is already well known in the world thanks to Expo 1986 and the 2010 Winter Olympics with the main result being a lot of high-rise construction and overheated property values.
Wednesday, May 21, 2025
Lost City
Vancouverites could be forgiven if they have started to wonder what has happened to their beloved city these days. It all started with Expo 86 of course, when we were all so anxious to show off our magnificent location to the world and embrace the spirit of boosterism that went with the cleaning up of False Creek and the inauguration of a new driverless transit line called Skytrain. And sure enough the world took notice.
Before we knew it there was a construction boom and high-rise apartment buildings were going up all over the place. Overseas money was pouring into developments that were grander, richer, and more fantastic than anything ever constructed before. And property values started to skyrocket.
New high density neighborhoods were popping up in areas like Coal Harbour, the River District, Yaletown, Olympic Village, and the Cambie Corridor, with many others in various stages of planning. This didn't even count the even bigger developments taking place throughout Burnaby, Coquitlam, Surrey and Langley not to mention the North Shore. And in spite of all this supply the prices kept rising.
With all this new housing, traffic on the main roads is at the breaking point and the transit system can barely keep up with the demand. The original Skytrain line from Surrey to Downtown continues to expand with routes throughout Burnaby and Coquitlam, and out to Richmond and the airport. Construction has now started to bring it out to UBC in the west and Langley in the east with planners now looking to find a way to the North Shore. And of course everything is already years behind.
Then there are the unsexy, hidden parts of the city that have to be expanded to handle all of this development. Clean water, a sewage system, and other utilities like natural gas, electricity, and Internet connectivity. With this comes endless disruption as streets are repeatedly dug up and patched. And of course everything goes hopelessly over budget.
From approximately 1.5 million in 1986 to 3 million now, the Metro Vancouver population has doubled since Expo 86 and Vancouver itself has gone from 430,000 to over 600,000 residents. The neighbouring municipalities have also seen rapid growth with Surrey projected to pass Vancouver in population in the next few years. Where all these people have come from is a mystery.
However, in the midst of all this construction there is one thing the City has not kept up with and that is the Parks & Recreation facilities and Community Centres. Vancouver hasn't built a new community centre or swimming pool since 2009 and most of the inventory is more than 50 years old. There a total of only 8 indoor swimming pools of 25 metres or more in length and, with the exception of the Hillcrest pool, they were all in place before 1986.
With every new development the City continues to grow but it's also been slowly losing its soul. Rising property values are pushing out the small merchants that provide character to a neighbourhood and drugs and homelessness are everywhere you look. With many apartments owned by absentee investors, buildings are dark and there aren't the expected number of people living in a given area to support the shops and restaurants.
Yes times have changed, and we have gotten what we indirectly asked for but one can't help but feel nostalgic for less crowded streets, streets that were free of homeless people hunched over in drugged out oblivion, and well maintained streets and public facilities. Never mind housing and rental prices that are within reason. Vancouver has certainly been discovered but, for those who live here, it's in danger of becoming lost.
Friday, March 21, 2025
Looking Out My Back Door
Imagine my surprise the other day when I looked outside my window and saw a rather strange looking ship sitting at anchor in English Bay. Wondering what type of ship it was, a quick search identified it as a first of its kind ship-to-ship refuelling vessel, owned by Seaspan, that instead of diesel it supplies LNG. With LNG now coming into its own as a transition fuel for the shipping industry, this is a welcome improvement to the dirty bunker oil most ships are using.
And in keeping with cleaner, low carbon solutions for the shipping industry, Vancouver is now one of the few places in the world to have electric tug boats operating in its harbour. With a fleet of over 200 tugs SAAM Towage is the largest tugboat operator in the Americas, and adding electric tug boats is a big game changer for the industry. Quiet, pollution free, and providing instant power when needed, tug captains are singing their praise.
But they weren't the first electric tugs to appear in Vancouver. The first electric tug in Canada, and the world, was the Haisea Wamis, owned by HaiSea Marine, a collaboration between the Haisla Nation and Seaspan. HaiSea now has a fleet of three electric tugboats and all of them are up in Kitimat where they are providing escort towing services for the LNG industry.
Thursday, January 9, 2025
Let It Be
With 2025 already off to a rocky start thanks to governments everywhere falling apart, a psychotic buffoon elected President of the U.S.A., intractable wars in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, and the everlooming threat of climate change hanging over the world, there's never been a better time to consider the merits of stoicism. The problems of the world are too overwhelming and unsolvable so, rather than sink into despair, stoicism offers up a different way of looking at things and managing our emotions.

Take warfare for example. For over 2,000 years Europe has been at war with itself in a seemingly endless clash of ideology and religion to establish the boundaries of nations and empires in one form or another. From Greek and Roman empires through to the Middle Ages and then World Wars 1 and 2 it has never let up and here we are at it again with the Ukraine and Russia. Since it doesn't seem likely this will ever end or that the Europeans will ever learn from history why should we worry about it? Even before the Europeans, the various empires of the Middle East have been conquering one another over the ages with the Babylonians, Egyptians, Persians, Ottomans, and ultimately the Europeans trying to take control of the region with predictable results. Once again add a little ideology and religion into the mix and you have perfect conditions for endless warfare.
Global warming is another example of something we may have to examine in a different way. There's no denying we have put more CO2 into the atmosphere as a result of our fossil fuel consumption but unfortunately this is only going to get worse because our energy consumption is growing faster than we can supply it rather than slowing down. Even as we add solar, wind, and nuclear energy we still need the fossil fuels and other energy sources to maintain all of our activities. Energy intensive facilities such as new data centres to power AI and other technologies, are only adding to the problem. As energy historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz points out in his book, More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy, evolving high-energy societies incorporate their old energy addictions into new ones to solve more problems and, as a result, consume more energy of any kind. Rather than transitioning from consuming wood to coal, for example, we end up using even more wood to build timbers in coal mines and for building railways to haul the coal. Likewise we use even more coal to manufacture steel and other products to enable us to extract oil and transport it by pipeline.
Thursday, November 28, 2024
Make Canada Great Again
Now that we've gotten over the shock of a convicted criminal and corrupt businessman being elected by the supporters of law and order, a sex offender and sexist pig being elected by women, a racist and anti immigration champion being elected by blacks and hispanics, and a sacrilegious, spiteful, liar being elected by the Christians, we need to move on and recognize the world is rapidly changing. Rather than wringing our hands in despair Canadians need to embrace the opportunities this change offers us in spite of tariff threats and other sabre rattling. A slap across the face and a kick in the ass is a good way for us to finally wake up.
First on the chopping block should be the dairy and other marketing boards that serve no other purpose except to inflate the cost of milk and cheese while protecting the incomes of the farmers who have managed to secure a quota. The farmers claim that without a marketing board they will go broke. Years ago a similiar situation existed in New Zealand where farmers went from a highly protected market to a very competitive open market and soon became a major exporter of dairy products in the process, thanks to improved efficiency and productivity. We could do the same.
If the Trump administration wants to bring in tariffs on our highly integrated auto industry then its a good time to shut down our subsidized car factories and ask for our money back from those companies who received grants, tax relief, and loan guarantees. With the world Electric Vehicle (EV) market now increasingly dominated by China, which has also cornered the market in car batteries, especially with the recent bankruptcy of Northvolt, we can now cancel the multi-billion dollar subsidies we promised to Volkswagen, Stellantis and others to try and build a competitive battery business. Nobody is going to want or need these batteries and it will save us billions.
Instead of being hewers of wood and drawers of water we should be adding value to our mining, forestry, and petroleum products. Rather than selling cheap crude oil to the U.S. let's refine it ourselves and sell them more expensive gasolene and diesel. Instead of selling raw ore to the U.S. or anyone else let's smelt it and produce the copper, zinc, and steel like we used to in places like Sudbury and Hamilton. And instead of exporting logs and 2x4's why not open up a pre-fab factory and sell pre-made houses?
And with regards to our NATO spending commitments this is a perfect opportunity for us to open up the North with roads connecting some of the communities like the Mackenzie Valley Highway extension, upgrading northern airports with Instrument Landing System (ILS) electronics so they can function in all types of weather, and building deep water ports to service icebreakers and other naval patrol ships. Billions can also be added to the economy by building ships, planes and armoured vehicles in-house which we used to do a lot more of. Remember that at the end of WW2 Canada had the world's 4th largest airforce and navy in spite of our relatively small population.
Best of all we can stop dragging our feet on producing nuclear power. We already have a world leading technology with our CANDU reactors and we should be the leaders in Small Modular Reactors (SMR's) development to power our northern communities as well as providing electricity to mining and other operations in remote areas. Demand for clean electricity is increasing by the day and adding more nuclear power plants to the electrical grid will give us yet another valuable product to export.
For too long Canada has been much too dependant on the U.S. for its economic survival and been all too happy to operate with a branch plant mentality. It's time we shook off those shackles and took advantage of our natural resources wealth to develop the industries the world needs and is willing to pay full price for. If we are going to subsidize anything let it be our own organizations and factories not the subsidiaries of American, European, or Asian companies. It's time for us to pull up our bootstraps and make Canada great again.