Vancouver Mayor's Foster Son Charged In Gun And Drug Case

On Nov. 19, 2011, Jinagh Navas-Rivas was on the stage with his foster dad Gregor Robertson, celebrating the Vancouver mayor’s election victory.

The day before, according to allegations contained in court documents, Navas-Rivas, 21, was illegally in possession of a 22-calibre Ruger firearm.

The young man who lived with Robertson’s family for two years is also facing two counts of cocaine trafficking in both Richmond and Vancouver in November and December 2010.

He is one of five men charged last week in a six-month Richmond RCMP drug squad probe that began with intelligence about a dial-a-dope ring. There are 18 counts on the indictment, which I picked up Thursday afternoon from the Richmond Provincial Courthouse.

Navas-Rivas is wanted on a warrant and Robertson issued a statement from Hawaii, where he is vacationing, urging the young man to turn himself in.

bit.ly/2RfXvMz via @VancouverSun

Suzanne Anton Makes A Fool Of Herself At City Council Meeting

During questions to the staff (Fire chief, Health inspector) Suzanne Anton decides she would try and use the meeting as a political grandstand to try and push her own agenda. She tries to use Occupy Vancouver, a peaceful social protest, and turn it into a political issue so she can try and campaign on it!

bit.ly/2CTx0Dt via @YouTube

Downtown Eastside Vancouver Victim Overdoses

Vancouver Downtown Eastside victim overdoses because drug dealers are permitted by City Hall and Vancouver Police Dept to sell poisonous drugs.

This is the statistics for Texas Drug Arrests: bit.ly/2UINvcN

This is what we need in Vancouver.

bit.ly/2sYLdup via @YouTube

Wastings & Pain (Full Film)

Filmed over the course of one summer in 2008.

In 2010 the Bruxelles Fiction & Documentary Festival awarded "Wastings & Pain" a Special mention award. The film also received the Royal Reel Award in film making from the Canada International Film Festival of 2010.

bit.ly/2MJHjhT via @YouTube

Coun. Suzanne Anton’s Casino Expansion Vote Confusing For Many

Okay, I admit that I’m still a bit confused over Coun. Suzanne Anton’s rationale for voting for Mayor Gregor Robertson’s amended Edgewater Casino plan and moratorium on gambling expansion even though she says she supports an expansion of the casino.

And I’m not the only one. Virtually everyone I talked to is scratching their heads trying to figure out what Anton was doing when she joined a unanimous vote that, in its true effect, solidly killed Paragon Gaming’s $500 million casino and hotel plans for BC Place.

The motion was clear: the city would allow hotel and commercial use on the property and allow Paragon to move the existing 600-slot Edgewater there. But it also said “no dice” to the big honkin’ casino Paragon and B.C. Lottery Corp wanted, and just to make that exceptionally clear put in a moratorium until BCLC comes back with solutions to a laundry list of problems. The media wrote that this was a unanimous decision rejecting the expansion. As in 11-0. As in no dissenters.

bit.ly/2Aj2TF7 via @VancouverSun

The Birth Of A City - Vancouver, BC

In 1862, John Morton, Samuel Brighouse and William Hailstone were mocked for spending $555 on a big chunk of land squeezed between Burrard Inlet, English Bay and a pair of government reserves.

New Westminster was the main town on the B.C. mainland; only “three greenhorn Englishmen” would lay claim to 550 acres of swampy forest in the middle of nowhere.

But the Three Greenhorns had the last laugh — although it took awhile. In 1885, the Canadian Pacific Railway decided to locate its terminus at the head of Burrard Inlet, where the provincial government had quietly given the company 6,000 acres of land.

On April 6, 1886, the City of Vancouver was incorporated. And the Three Greenhorns’ great folly became the West End.

bit.ly/2SjiZ8L via @VancouverSun