If you live on the North Shore or Vancouver’s West Side, you’re probably not just wealthier, but also healthier. That’s according to the researchers at Statistics Canada.

They also say if you live on the East Side or North Surrey, you might not have all those advantages. Maybe you don’t buy organic food or can’t afford family ski passes this winter. But, rich or poor, there are some hidden killers none of us can avoid.

Those are the toxins that hide everywhere in our homes — toxins that cause reproductive problems, birth defects, asthma. They impair memory and cause cancer.

They’re in your curtains, furniture and carpets. Check those personal care products in your bathroom. They’re probably toxic, too.

In the 1930s, one in 10 Canadians got cancer.

Today, one in three will be diagnosed.
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There’s an old political maxim that says when they start to laugh at you, you’re in trouble. There’s an even older one that says, when they start to pity you, you’re finished.

I never went through that first phase with our federal environment minister, Rona Ambrose. The government’s irresponsible plan to dump our Kyoto commitments is no laughing matter.

When it comes to Ambrose, I’ve moved straight into phase two: I feel sorry for her.
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When Vancouver city councillors designated Granville Street an entertainment zone, they hoped it would rejuvenate the late-night scene.

They wanted to create party central. What they got instead was a rowdy all-night street circus which attracts drunks and troublemakers from across the Lower Mainland. Now police say the party is getting downright dangerous.

They’re so busy they often ignore the huge number of people they see urinating and drinking in the street.

Police have bigger problems to deal with. This week, a cop had his leg broken in four places when he tried to arrest a drunk.

Resisting arrest is the order of the day — or night — on Granville now. When officers attempt arrests, they get jumped by third parties, apparently delighted to join the fray.

It’s not quite anarchy, but it’s getting close.
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I would never have guessed that Norman Spector would be a topic for my book club. And he wasn’t just a topic, he was the subject of passionate debate.

Spector is the right-wing pundit on Bill Good’s CKNW political panel, which I will be hosting tomorrow morning.

Last Monday, Good asked him and Bill Tieleman, who argues from the left, for their thoughts on Foreign Minister Peter MacKay, Belinda Stronach’s ex-boyfriend, allegedly calling her a dog in Parliament.

Spector defended MacKay, saying Stronach is a “rich girl who’s never made an intelligent statement in her life . . . I think she is a bitch . . . for the way she’s broken up Tie Domi’s home and for the way she dumped Peter MacKay.”

He said he uses the word all the time to refer to “treacherous, malicious women.”
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