It turns out that Vancouver’s gorgeous scenery, vibrant multicultural population and world-class infrastructure make for more than great vacations.  Lured by the city’s many charms, global banking giant HSBC opted to set up the world headquarters for its IT division here.  In a break from my usual travel and food reporting, I explored why HSBC and its well-heeled CEOs have fallen in love with Vancouver.

HSBC Comes to Burnaby: What HSBC’s new nerve centre means to Metro Vancouver’s IT industry

By Remy Scalza; Special for BC Business

There’s a cold drizzle falling in Burnaby, where the sky has been overcast all day. Now, with almost theatrical gloom, crows have started circling, climbing in menacing gyres above HSBC’s brand new global software development centre, the five-storey, 146,000-square-foot building it has dubbed Discovery Green.

But despite the ominous portents outdoors, inside the atmosphere is anything but bleak . . . .

Click here for the full article on the BC Business site.

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Vancouver’s Winter Games have an official credit card, cola and cold medicine, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there’s an official wine gracing Olympic tables.  Last week, I had a chance to cover the Olympic wine scene for Wine Spectator.  Among the highlights: discovering North America’s first Aboriginal-owned winery, tasting with Napa Valley wine royalty Margrit Mondavi and sampling the Olympics’ own brand of bubbly.   The reporting was included in a special Olympic Unfiltered column on WineSpectator.com.

Olympic Champion Lindsey Vonn says, ‘Cheese!’

WineSpectator.com

Inside the big Indian longhouse erected in the heart of downtown Vancouver, a bit of Olympic history is taking place. Vancouver 2010 marks the first Olympic Games ever in which an Aboriginal community—Canada’s First Nations peoples—has participated as an official host. Guests at the Chief’s House, as the quirky, postmodern Aboriginal Pavilion is known, enjoy traditional Inuit throat singing, buffalo burgers and wines from North America’s first native-owned winery . . . .

Click here for the full article on the Wine Spectator site.

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Like birthdays and anniversaries, Olympics tend to be the kind of thing that sneaks up on you.  Next Friday, the 21st installment of the Olympic Winter Games kicks off in Vancouver.  Now, I live here.  For at least the last five years, it’s been just about all anyone has talked about.  But I know that the rest of the world has had more pressing things to worry about than crowning the next Nancy Kerrigan.  The good news is that if you still want to come, there are plenty of flights, beds and tickets available (For a price, of course).  I broke it all down for The Washington Post.

Vancouver Snapshot: Last-minute travelers’ sprint is a quadrennial Olympic event

By Remy Scalza, Special to The Washington Post

So between slogging your way through the Great Recession and following the inaugural season of “Jersey Shore,” you haven’t had much time to think about the Olympic Winter Games starting in Vancouver, B.C., on Friday. But now, all of a sudden, those Morgan Freeman commercials for Visa — the ones with the slow-mo shots of Olympic glories past — have you in the spirit. You want in, front-row center, as the next generation of Apolo Ohnos is crowned.

Is it too late? Maybe not.

Click here for the full article on The Washington Post site.

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Maybe Ben Franklin had it right.  Turkey booster until the bitter end, Franklin railed against the choice of bald eagle as America’s symbol.  “He is a bird of bad moral character,” Franklin wrote. “He does not get his living honestly.”  Up close, it definitely looked that way.  I had a chance to visit Brackendale, B.C., the world’s self-proclaimed bald eagle capital, while researching a story for The Washington Post.  A few eagles kind of looked like the majestic bird on the back of the quarter, but most were busy tearing into rotten salmon, which end up floating in the rivers after spawning is over.  One local lady called them nothing but big seagulls.  Still, it was pretty impressive to see dozens all in one place.

Vancouver snapshot: Bald eagles find a home in Canada

By Remy Scalza; Special to The Washington Post

The highway turnoff is easy to miss. On the rugged stretch of mountain road that connects Olympic cities Vancouver and Whistler, B.C., just past the midway point, is a small, handmade sign. Look hard and you’ll see a bald eagle in profile, beak painted a brilliant yellow, beady eye aglow.

Next stop: Brackendale, self-proclaimed World Eagle Capital.

“One year, we counted 3,769 bald eagles in one day,” says 40-year resident and avian enthusiast Thor Froslev. “You practically had to have a hard hat on to go outside.”

Click here for the full article on The Washington Post site.

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Vancouver snapshot: Japanese cuisine beyond sushi

Welcome to the dark side of Japanese dining: izakayas. Greasier and louder than a sushi joint, these Japanese pubs have invaded Vancouver, B.C.

Izakayas have reportedly been around for a few hundred years in Japan. Their patrons, mostly men, congregate after work to drink and snack on deep-fried tofu, chicken and savory salads — the buffalo wings and nachos of a parallel universe — before heading home, often roundly soused. But like the hibachi and sushi before it, izakaya cuisine has found a global following, and Vancouver, with its strong ties to Japan, is at the forefront of the izakaya explosion.

Click here for the full article on The Washington Post site.

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If you’ve never experienced the build-up to an Olympics first-hand, imagine all the hype surrounding the Super Bowl, but  stretched out for years and years instead of just a few weeks.  In Vancouver, which is hosting the 2010 Winter Games in February, the Olympics have been front-page news since about 2003.  Officials have spent $1.6 billion on, among other things, the snazziest curling rink the world has ever seen.  One thing they may have neglected, however, is a place to put all the people expected to show up.  I wrote about the city’s Olympic accommodation crunch in an article for Sunday’s Washington Post travel section.

Vancouver’s hotel shortage sets off an Olympic scramble

By Remy Scalza; Special to The Washington Post

It doesn’t take a gold medal in arithmetic to see that the numbers didn’t add up.

About 250,000 spectators are expected to pour into Vancouver, B.C., for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in February. Yet according to the city’s Olympic committee, only a paltry 10,000 hotel rooms were available to them. With three months to go before the Opening Ceremonies, the pool of rooms at hotels in and around Vancouver — from highway HoJos to the Four Seasons — has essentially dried up.

Click here for the full article on The Washington Post site.

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Around Vancouver, several Indian bands are rewriting the book on Aboriginal tourism in the lead-up to the Olympic Games, moving away from tepee villages and kitschy gift shops and embracing more authentic and sophisticated experiences.  I checked out a few of the new Aboriginal offerings in an article for The Washington Post:

As hosts of the Vancouver Olympics, First Nations are ready to welcome the world

By Remy Scalza; Special to The Washington Post

It’s an Olympic first that has drawn few headlines. When the 2010 Winter Games open in Vancouver, B.C., in February, four Canadian Indian nations will be on hand — not as window dressing but as full-fledged hosts. “This isn’t just get out the drums and feathers for the Opening Ceremonies,” says Alex Rose, communications director for the Four Host First Nations, the society representing the four groups of Canada’s indigenous people who will host the Games. “Those days are gone.”

Largely gone, too, are the tepees, totem poles and tchotchkes that once defined aboriginal tourism in Canada. In their place has sprung up a new generation of indigenous travel experiences — from urban powwows to luxe native-owned wineries — aimed at courting the more than 250,000 visitors expected at the Games.

Click here for the full article on The Washington Post site.

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Anyone who likes sushi – or Canadians – might be interested in this article I wrote, which appeared in Sunday’s Washington Post.

Rolling Through Vancouver’s Olympic-Size Sushi Scene

By Remy Scalza; Special to The Washington Post

It’s hard to say what was going through the minds of Vancouver’s Olympic planners when they came up with the mascots for next year’s Winter Games. To serve as one of Canada’s ambassadors to the world, they picked an earmuffs-wearing Big Foot that looks like Chewbacca. The city’s Olympic brain trust could have saved themselves a lot of trouble by recognizing a real symbol of Vancouver: a big piece of sashimi.

Click here for the full article on The Washington Post site.

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Host city for the 2010 Winter Olympics, Vancouver has some of North America's highest alcohol prices.

Vancouver is ranked world’s most livable city for good reason.   The international throngs set to descend in February for the Winter Olympics will no doubt be awed by the city’s setting, between snow-capped mountains and the green-gray waters of the Pacific.  They’ll marvel at its sleek, modern architecture and efficient public transport.  And they’ll probably warm right up to that earnest Canadian charm.  But sooner or later, Olympic fans are going to get thirsty and discover Vancouver’s dirty little secret:  exorbitant alcohol prices.

I’m not a beer snob.  I’ll drink a microbrew, but I’m just as happy with a Bud Light.  The problem is that even budget beer has premium prices in Vancouver.  My first trip to a B.C. Liquor Store – the provincial chain authorized to sell booze in Vancouver – was a wake-up call.  Domestic or import, beer or wine , it made no difference.  There wasn’t a cheap buzz in the house.

Take Coors Light, for example, standby of frat boys and bargain beer fans everywhere.  In lots of places in the U.S., you can walk into a 7-11 with $10 and come out with a dozen cans of the Silver Bullet and enough change for a Slurpee.  That same 12-pack north of the border:  $18, factoring in the exchange rate, plus tax and deposit.   I checked out the other beers to make sure it wasn’t a fluke.  12-pack of Heineken: $22.  Case of Corona: $37!   I even went looking for PBR, bargain-basement refuge of functioning alcoholics everywhere.  It just didn’t seem fair: $7 for a measly sixer.

The problem lies partly in the way British Columbia’s liquor board taxes and distributes alcohol.  First, beers are assessed a boggling array of mandatory taxes and sin taxes.  On top of that, the board adds its own markup.  Sales are then restricted to official government stores and select, private liquor stores, which tack on their own margin.

Ordering a drink in a pub or restaurant can be even worse.  Unlike the hospitality industry in other cities, bars and restaurants in Vancouver generally pay retail prices for their booze.  So the alcohol served to customers has to be marked-up even further.  Factor in five percent sales tax and a 10 percent liquor tax, and a pint becomes a major investment.  Adding insult to injury, happy hours here are illegal.

Mid-range imported wines cost nearly twice as much in Vancouver as in nearby Washington state.

Wine drinkers are no better off.  A mid-range bottle of imported wine is assessed a 117% tax when it enters Canada.   So even generic international plonk ends up extravangantly priced.  A bottle of Yellowtail Cabernet Sauvignon, for example, sells for $6.65 in Washington state’s Safeway grocery stores.  Cross the border, and the same bottle will cost you $11.50.   Vancouver lawyer and wine enthusiast Mark Hicken has railed against British Columbia’s wine regulations for years.  So far, though, all he’s come up with is this depressing wine calculator, which shows you exactly how much you’re getting fleeced for a given bottle of wine.

So what’s a thirsty Olympic fan to do come February?  One option: Pack it in.  Canadian law allows international visitors to bring in up to one case of beer, two bottles of wine or 40 ounces of hard liquor.  For those without the extra carry-on space, there’s another possibility:  homebrewing.  Partly in response to the high prices, several outlets have sprung up in Vancouver offering u-brew supplies and even on-site kettles for boiling up custom blends.  Just don’t tell your hotel you’re brewing pale ale in their bathtub.

And there’s even talk of bootleggers, who supposedly truck in cheap shipments of beer from south of the border and sell it at a discount.  Sounds a bit far-fetched, but things are getting desperate.  Consider this:  A 12-pack of Molson – maybe the most Canadian of all beers, proud emblem of Canuck culture the world over – now sells for about $18 in Vancouver.  Make your way across the border to Washington, and you can find Molson 12-packs on sale in Safeway for $9.95.

What do you think? Does Vancouver have the priciest beer in North America?  In the world?  Any ideas on finding cheap drinks in the Olympic city?

• Links:
  • West Coast U-Brew, Vancouver’s “first and finest u-brew facility,”  lets customers craft their own beer, wine and cider.
  • Juice, a blog by a Canadian lawyer and wine fan, offers detailed information on Vancouver’s wine laws and also a useful wine mark-up calculator.

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• Whistler’s Wild Side: The backcountry behind Canada’s alpine mecca

Outside of Whistler, chalets and ski slopes give way to farmland and rugged hiking trails.

Whistler, host of the 2010 Winter Olympics, is Canada’s uncontested capital of alpine chic.  The ski village, year-round population 10,000, has six five-star hotels, a thriving SUV limo service and bars full of ski bums sipping $16 martinis.  But venture a bit outside of town and the wilderness closes back in.  On the drive north from Whistler, million-dollar chalets quickly give way to much humbler accommodations scattered on Indian reserves.  Then – suddenly – there’s nothing at all, just a thin shoelace of asphalt rising steadily into the mountains.

This transition from cushy resort to real backcountry is jarring and seems to catch a lot of people off-guard.  I pull off the highway at Joffre Lakes Provincial Park, a popular hiking spot less than an hour’s drive north of Whistler.  The park is named after a string of Caribbean-blue glacial lakes tucked away in the mountains.  Though its sunny and warm in town, up here there’s still a foot of snow on the ground.  Serious hikers stare as a few girls try to negotiate the snowbound trail in sandals and shorts.  I’m not much better off, underdressed in jeans and sneakers (or “runners,” as they’re known here), but I make it to the first lake without a problem.

Some of the ice has melted to reveal the glacial water, tinted a deep, electric blue.  In the height of summer, the color is even more intense: a brilliant turquoise that you’ll swear is a Photoshop trick in this clip.  Beyond the lake, a set of snow-covered mountains rises, throwing their reflection in the water.  A sign nearby says the next lake is only two miles up the trail.  I figure the scenery is worth a pair of soggy sneakers.

Run-off from the Joffre Lakes Glacier gives water a blue tint at Joffre Lakes Park, about a one-hour's drive north of Whistler.

Looking back, this might have been a bad idea.  The trail starts out easy, but gets steeper as it winds into pine forest.  After a few minutes, I’m alone.   Working my way across a sunny clearing, I break through the snow for the first time and end up buried to my waist.  Later, I pass a pair of hikers coming down the mountain and realize that I’m out of my league.  They’re both wearing snowshoes and carrying helmets and ice picks.

I’m closing in on the second lake when I start to notice some big, ominous prints in the snow.  Bears are common around Whistler, and lots of hikers wear bear bells – pretty much little Christmas ornaments that jingle – to scare them off.  The tracks skirt the trail, sometimes veering off, but always circling back.  They look too big for a dog.  They also seem fresh.

Next, a few things happen at once.  The second lake comes into view, half-frozen into shimmering bands of blue water and ice.  At the same moment, a black ball of fur comes streaking out of the woods.  Big enough and hairy enough to be a bear, it’s – of all things – a big, slobering Great Dane.  The dog is so heavy that its legs keep poking through the drifts.  It rocks back and forth a few times like a snowbound car to break free and makes its way toward me.

In late spring, the rumble of calving glaciers can be heard from the trail along Third Lake in Joffre Lakes Park.

A few minutes later, the dog’s owners show up, outfitted in snowshoes and oversized rucksacks.  Talk turns to bears and avalanches and inclement weather and greenhorn daytrippers that end up needing to be rescued.  I get the hint.  One more lake waits a few miles up the trail, but I might leave it for another day.

On the drive back into Whistler, I see a real bear nosing along the highway – It’s so big that drivers are rubbernecking to catch a glimpse.  A few minutes later though, I’m back in town, listening to chill-out music at a bar and enjoying a grilled chicken with brie on ciabatta.  So it goes in Whistler.

• Getting There:
  • Whistler is a two-hours’ drive north of Vancouver along the scenic Sea to Sky Highway, which runs along Lions Bay and offers views of the sea and mountains.
• Getting Around:
  • To reach Joffre Lakes Provincial Park, with its Caribbean-blue glacial lakes, continue north along the Sea to Sky Highway for one hour beyond Whistler, passing through the towns of Pemberton and Mt. Currie.  The parking lot for the Joffre Lakes trail is directly off of the highway, near the summit of the mountain.  There are three lakes in total, about 1/4 mile, two miles and three miles, respectively, from the parking lot.
• When to Go:
  • The Joffre Lakes trail is generally snowbound from November through May.   The winter scenery makes for great hiking, but snowshoes are recommended.  During the summer months, Joffre Lakes is a moderately difficult trail, with some steep sections, but no special equipment is required.  Allow about four to five hours, round-trip, to visit all three lakes.
• Tips:
  • If the Joffre Lakes trek sounds too ambitious, consider stopping at some of the impressive falls, lakes and gorges located just off of the Sea to Sky Highway.  Among the best spots are Shannon Falls, in Squamish, Nairn Falls, outside of Whistler, and Brandywine Falls, also outside of Whistler.

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