New Media

Who knew it was such a bargain to live in a city where a run-down shell of a house goes for half a million bucks?

Just days after giving another tearful lament about real estate prices in Vancouver, one survey now shows that the cost of living here is actually quite reasonable… compared to London and Tokyo. We barely even made the top 100 most expensive cities, placing seven points behind Toronto’s rating of 82.

It’s good to keep things in perspective, I suppose. But a good price on a litre of milk and a loaf of bread still doesn’t put me into the West End.

Then again, I’m certain there are some big problems associated with placing dead last on a survey like that. Be thankful for what you’ve got.

As Father’s Day arrives, my thoughts turn back to one of my favorite childhood memories: hanging out with my dad at the Zoo in Winnipeg.

My mom took my brother and sisters and I there a lot, too. We always had a great time.

But I remember my father’s enthusiasm for those happy little field trips. The zoo is really spread out – or at least it seemed so to a kid with short legs – but we never took any shortcuts.

I remember starting out at the polar bear habitat. I would lean up against the rails overlooking their enclosure as high as I could to see them closer. Usually, they were sleeping, but occasionally, they’d put on a bit of a show, racing from one side of the rocky habitat to the other (before taking another nap). My dad kept a hand on me just to reassure me I that I wouldn’t fall in.

I think the monkeys came soon after. My father usually had some little bit of trivia ready for us by then. He would teach us things about the animals, things that they hadn’t even put on the signs on the habitats, so I knew he was a smart man.

Near the camel pasture, there was an ice cream stand. Most of the time, my dad would get us a snack there. I usually chose ice cream, sometimes caramelized popcorn.

Then we’d wander into the tropical house. There was a section for the nocturnal animals where one has to go through a darkened tunnel. My dad would hold my hand so I didn’t bump into a wall or get left behind.

The rest of the way, we all slowed our pace. Partly, it was from just being tired from all the walking, but partly it was because we just didn’t want to leave. Lots of times, we would go back to our favorite part just to see the animals one last time.

I don’t live in Winnipeg anymore and I don’t get to see my dad as much, since we live in different cities. But next time he’s in town, I think we should go to the Vancouver Aquarium in Stanley Park. I think he’d like it.

And this time, I’ll buy the ice cream.

Love you, dad.

A two-storey home in Vancouver now costs the average Canadian about 70 per cent of their pre-tax income – not including the down payment.

That kind of home is now worth a figure creeping relentlessly upwards to $700,000. That basically means I could win the lottery, buy a very nice house in central Vancouver, and probably still count on having to work until 55.

To locals intent on getting a piece of land somewhere close to the center of our fair city, the latest real estate buzz is not exactly news. Most of us hard-core urban dwellers who aren’t doctors, lawyers, or people who steal the financial identity of doctors and lawyers have pretty much given up on the dream of a nice house with a white picket fence. Perhaps that will come in retirement, as we cash in our tiny city condos in our old age to buy mansions in Kelowna in sort of a reversal of the usual downsizing retirement trend.

Forget about affordable housing for the poor. How about affordable housing for urban professionals?

There’s a new reason for Canadians to be happy they never sent our “peacekeeping” forces into Iraq.

In a move straight out of Orwell’s 1984, the USA has started arming Sunni insurgent groups that have turned on Al Queda in Iraq. These are the same Sunni groups that blow up American soldiers with improvised explosive devices, kill hundreds of civilians with suicide bombings in crowded markets and drill holes in the back of their prisoners with power tools. The Sunni militias haven’t stopped doing these things, mind you – they’ve just trained their guns on the other bad guys for the moment.

As John Stewart says on the Daily Show, this plan is so crazy that… well, it’s just so freaking crazy.

Kudos to the Conservatives for putting Native land claims back on the fast track. New legislation to be co-written with Aboriginals will hopefully clear up a backlog of 800 land claims over the next decade or so and clear out some of the rot in our national fabric.

Will the news head off a planned national day of protest by First Nations people on June 29? Phil Fountaine, the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, was evidently impressed enough to call today a historic day and added that he prefers negotiation to confrontation. Sounds promising.

We’re in a unique period in history. A small minority can extract financial concessions from the national government of a multicultural population that no longer really represents the invading cultures – cultures that alternately conquered or demographically swamped germ-emptied territories of the decimated minority centuries ago.

This sort of legal action is not without precedent, but the opposite situation is far more common even in present day. The Han never bothered to financially compensate nations within China that their own ethnic group swallowed up. The Ainu people of Hokkaido also got nada from the ethnic Japanese. Same goes for Russia’s far eastern native groups. Ditto for the pygmies and other groups that got wiped out by the Bantu in Africa before the European colonization really got going.

But just because everyone else is doing something (or not doing it) doesn’t really make it right.

Land claims treaties on their own won’t be a panacea for the poverty, illiteracy and lack of opportunity that are epidemic for First Nations people living on reserves and to a lesser extent in our big cities – but Natives and non-natives need to get along in this country. The government is right in its new rush to put the land claims behind us so we can focus on the future together.

(The video above shows a traditional Ainu dance outside of a replica of an Ainu home. Interesting parallels to some aspects of North American native culture).