First published in BC Business Magazine There was a telling scene at an auction I attended recently. It was the Modern Woman show at Maynards, where the 108-year-old auction house had assembled a group of 35 contemporary fine art works from 24 emerging artists. Unlike the typical Maynards auction of items sourced from estates and […]
Tag: Articles
The brutal honesty of Doug Coupland
A fantastic, supportive quote has come in from UBC English professor Laura Moss, who is also an editor at the literary quarterly Canadian Literature, and the author of Canadian Literature in English: Texts and Contexts In the this quote, Moss compares my work to Coupland. I’m flattered by that comarison, as I admire Coupland a lot. And […]
As It Is: And/Or/Neither/Nor Work by Andrew (A01) Owen
Andrew (A01) Owen was a huge influence on me during the writing of The Blue Light Project. His street activity was high during the months I was writing and researching the book, primarily in the form of 1:1 scale “re-photo-cubic-surfaces”. I became very intrigued by this practice and by this artist. Over the following years, […]
Those Weird and Wonderful Benford Numbers
From the Report on Business Magazine, December 2010 When WikiLeaks released nearly 80,000 classified documents relating to military operations in Afghanistan this past July, a wide range of journalists, politicians and members of the public were eager to see the data. Some of them were looking for a true tally of IED attacks, others for […]
What We Talk About When We Talk About “Buyer’s Pain”
Globe and Mail ROB Magazine My introduction to the topic of “buyer’s pain” came via a colleague, an editor of an American food magazine, who was describing the excruciatingly long line-ups he had to endure to get a hamburger at the Shake Shack in New York’s Madison Square Park. I’ve never eaten one, but I’ve […]
Watching the Waterfront
1. It’s my central Vancouver image, which surprises people on occasion. If they’ve read my fiction, people tend to expect Stanley Park to occupy the definitive place in my imagination’s geography. But this is not so. I think of Vancouver – and I think of it often, especially when travelling – and I think of […]
Garry Kasparov Interview from 2001
Originally published in Saturday Night online, 2001 Chess writers typically describe world chess champion grandmaster Garry Kasparov as either the best player in the world or the best player in world history. He won the title in 1985 at the age of 22. He has defeated all human challengers in tournament play since. Last year, […]
Jacqui Cohen: Army and Navy’s Sole Survivor
BC Business Magazine, July 2010 There was a story the newspapers used to tell about Army & Navy. It showed up a number of times during the late ’70s and early ’80s. It involved pointing out what was then considered to be a central irony about the company. That is, the fact that the iconic […]
The Ugly Truth
Globe and Mail Report on Business Magazine June 24, 2010 Facing down a world wracked with financial turmoil, Mark Carney brings many strengths to the table on behalf of Canadians: Harvard and Oxford training, years of experience in the private sector at Goldman Sachs. But Carney may also have another, less obvious competitive advantage: The […]
Meditation at 7,500 RPM
From the July 2010 Walrus Magazine The racetrack I’m driving is a five-kilometre, eighteen-turn road course. Looked at another way, it’s just a strip of pavement that covers some arbitrary geography before ending up exactly where it started. That’s why, I think, friends tend to roll their eyes about my fixation with auto racing, yet […]