For a city by the sea -- a port town that enthusiastically believes in its own "world-class" status -- Vancouver is a shockingly segregated place, a study in emphatic delineations.

Despite half its population being Asian, its neighbourhoods remain suburban enclaves as opposed to metropolitan melting pots.

And local...

Since the world didn't end on Dec. 21, I found myself once again taking in the annual Salute to Vienna New Year's concert at Vancouver's Orpheum Theatre.

As I waltzed into 2013 with an audience composed mainly of those born in earlier, pre-digital, mobile phone and reality TV...

The other day I found myself in a 100-year-old Anglican Church in Vancouver, in a place called rather fittingly, the Sanctuary.

At St. Mark's, the sanctuary, with its vaulted ceilings and exquisite acoustics is sought after by musicians as a performance space, and today was no exception.

I...

Could the time be ripe for a Gilbert and Sullivan revival?

After taking in Vancouver Opera's opening night of The Pirates of Penzance, I am inclined to say yes.

What's that you say? Gilbert and Sullivan and their famous Savoy operas are the height of sentimental, bourgeois entertainment.

Watching Robert Lepage perform his seminal work The Far Side of the Moon in Vancouver last night, was an exercise in nostalgia.

The play, that eloquently poses the question "are we alone?" by juxtaposing the space race with one man's quiet individual and familial struggles, pits the vastness...

Warning: before you take in the final performance of Vancouver Opera's La Boheme, some Prozac may be required.

It demands a certain sang froid to not emerge rather melancolique after two hours of Puccini's moving opera -- sung convincingly by a talented young cast -- about the joy...

After a week of watching images of Ahmedinejad being interviewed by Piers Morgan -- surreal at best -- Netanyahu offering the UN a scarily cartoonish version of his worldview, and Romney spouting war-mongering malaprops, I took refuge in music.

Thank God for Vancouver's

Unlike the tragic heroine herself, who meets an untimely end buried alive in a tomb, Aida the opera is nothing if not a survivor.

Giuseppe Verdi's enduring work, commissioned by Khedive Ismail in an era of Suez Canal, inspired nationalist fervour. First staged in 1871, it has been revived...

Ah, Vancouver. Such a beautiful place. The sea, the mountains, the greenery. And by the way, the biggest city in a province with the lowest arts funding per capita in the country.

PEI spends more money on the arts than B.C. does -- and it's supposed to be...

So, you say you're suffering from post seasonal distress disorder? Did your VISA bill arrive just as your significant other ran off with a 28-year-old salascise instructor? Or has your yuletide sugar high simply plunged as the January blues slide in?

Well my friends, I have found something better than...

I am in New York at Christmas time. The lights are brilliant, the crowds at Rockefeller Centre take in the giant Christmas tree and the Rockettes are already into their umpteenth performance of their Christmas extravaganza.

I would like to be thinking about things like Miracle on 34th Street and...

There's a special feeling in the air. Actually it's a special aroma -- slightly damp grass mixed with patchouli oil and whale tails. Yes it's the start of that singular season in Vancouver -- folk music festival time.

It's hard to explain what it's like to someone unfamiliar with West...

There's an antidote to our long dark summer of discontent and endless post-hockey riot hand-wringing. Paco de Lucia is coming to town and promises to inject Vancouver with a potent dose of duende.

Now for those who have never fandangoed or read Garica Lorca, duende is that indefinable,...

After Monday night's disastrous Stanley Cup playoff game that saw Boston Bruins forward Nathan Horton blindsided by the Canucks' Aaron Rome, I contemplated the brutal ballet of our 'national game.'

There is a grace to hockey even as there is an undeniable violence; a choreography amidst the chaos. Players, like...

A woman of mixed Cree, Metis, Ojibwa and Scottish descent arrived at Vancouver's Roxy Nightclub one evening in March of 2009, and was denied entry.

Colleen Mitchell White, whose complaint against the club is going through the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, says she arrived bearing a golf club...