After living in Vancouver for three years, I finally decided to take the plunge – and write a guidebook about my own city for Frommer’s.  It’s really a daunting task.  You get a few hundred pages to sum up a whole metropolis – restaurants and hotels and museums, touristy must-sees and out-of-the-way spots that only locals know about.  Whatever anyone says, guidebook writing is ultimately a very subjective undertaking.  I’ve presented the Vancouver I’d want to experience: Not the glitzy, Pacific jewel, but the gritty port city that’s still searching for its identity as a world capital. I also contributed most of the photography.

You can browse most of the book by following this link to the Amazon.com website.

When Vancouver erupted into riots more than a year ago after a Stanley Cup loss, the city – and its police – were taken by surprise.  Today, that might be a different story.  Police across North America and around the world have developed an active presence on Twitter – using the social network both to monitor rabble-rousers seeking to stir up trouble and to preempt confrontations before they start.  Cops from as far as Australia and Belgium descended on Vancouver recently to attend the Social Media the Internet and Law Enforcement Conference (SMILE for short).  I covered the heavily hashtagged proceedings for Vancouver Magazine.

To Tweet and Protect

By Remy Scalza for Vancouver Magazine

On a recent rainy afternoon at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver, 150 cops from as far away as Australia are getting chewed out by one of their own. “A riot can go from zero to 150 with one Tweet,” says Toronto training constable Nathan Dayler. A veteran of both the G-20 riots and Occupy demonstrations, Dayler has had more experience than most policing the Twittersphere. “You can’t let tension just simmer on social media,” he says. “That’s not an option.”

Tweets, hash tags, and netiquette are the subjects of the day at the fifth installment of Social Media the Internet and Law Enforcement (SMILE). A kind of boot camp for police departments training up on social media, the conference broaches issues as diverse as mining Facebook for open-source intelligence to getting the most out of your 140 characters on Twitter.

“There’s such a big gap between where law enforcement is and what they can achieve with these tools,” says Lauri Stevens, who started SMILE in 2010 and has 14,895 followers on Twitter (@lawscomm). The rare expert equally at home discussing perps and pingbacks, Stevens, 50, began her career in the 1980s as a journalist in Boston, walking the beat with police, paramedics and fire officials. She later chaired an interactive media department at a local college, becoming an early social-media convert.

Click here to read the full article on the Vancouver Magazine website.

British Columbia’s Cariboo Country is a lot like a Canadian version of the Wild West.  It was settled in the mid 1800s by miners in search of gold, then by ranchers, who brought huge herds of cattle to the stark terrain: semi-arid foothills, canyons, sagebrush.  In many parts of the Cariboo, little has changed in the last hundred years or so.  Ranching remains a way of life and many people learn to ride a horse before they learn to ride a bike.   I had a chance to explore the Cariboo – and check in on three guest ranches where city slickers can mount up – for British Columbia Magazine.

Urban Wrangler

By Remy Scalza for British Columbia Magazine

I’ve come to British Columbia’s Cariboo country to find my inner cowboy. But I’m not afraid to admit: I’m terrified.

The Cariboo, a wild, sparsely settled hinterland stretching from the banks of the churning Fraser River to the peaks of the Cariboo Mountains, is home to more than two dozen guest ranches. Options range from working farms to luxury retreats where time can be spent in the saddle—and in the spa.

Horses, of course, are the common denominator. The daily rhythm at all self-respecting dude ranches revolves around riding—long, scenic romps through rolling grasslands, pine and aspen forests, and granite-walled gorges.

This is where things are about to get interesting for me. I’m not really a horse person. My prior experience adds up to a handful of pony rides as a kid at backyard birthday parties. But all that’s about to change.

Click here to read the full story on the British Columbia Magazine website (subscription required).

Parts of Jamaica are hopelessly touristy, colonized by all-inclusives marketed towards travelers looking for little more than rum punch, reggae music and white sand.  But Treasure Beach – despite the catchy name – is no tourist trap.  A rural community that still survives mainly on fishing and farming, Treasure Beach is hours from the nearest international airport and worlds away from the hype and crowds of Montego Bay or Negril.   I got a chance to explore the community and meet a few of its residents while working on an article for The New York Times travel section.

Rum and Reggae? Not Here

By Remy Scalza for The New York Times

OUTSIDE Treasure Beach, on Jamaica’s rural southern coast, a half-dozen oxen are blocking the one potholed road into town. When the taxi driver honks, they turn, stare and stand their ground.

But that’s hardly a problem. A twisting, two-hour drive through rain forest from the international airport in Montego Bay, Treasure Beach has long drawn travelers who come as much for its inaccessibility as for the black-streaked sand and azure water. The contrast from the rum-and-Rasta Jamaica of package tours is pronounced: no sprawling all-inclusives, no Margaritavilles; just a string of waterfront guesthouses set among local homes and a patchwork of rolling farmland.

Backwater status may be fleeting.

Click here to read the full article on The New York Times website.

Little-known fact: The creator of Flickr, the hugely successful photo-sharing website, lives across the street from me in Vancouver.  In fact, the city has evolved into a kind of Silicon Valley North in recent years, with start-ups attracting attention from major international investors.  I looked at some of Canada’s most promising new tech companies – in social media, gaming and more – for the Globe and Mail newspaper’s Report on Business magazine. 

The People Behind Canada’s Most Promising Tech Start-Ups

Content from Remy Scalza, Dawn Calleja and John Lorinc for the Globe and Mail

The éminence grise of Vancouver’s tech scene is in his late 30s, wears Converse sneakers and plaid flannel. Stewart Butterfield rocketed to tech stardom all the way back in 2004, when he launched Flickr, the site that ushered in the era of digital photo-sharing. He sold it to Yahoo in 2005 for a rumoured $35 million (U.S.). Flickr today is likely worth many, many times that. Butterfield doesn’t mind.

“If I could be doing anything right now, I would be doing this,” he says. This is Tiny Speck, the 40-person company developing Glitch, a web-based multiplayer game involving giants, elfish avatars, barnyard animals and a mission to save the future. He thinks it’ll make his Flickr sale look like small change.

Click here to read the full article on the Globe and Mail website.

When I came to Vancouver several years ago, no one told me I was moving to earthquake country.  The city is vulnerable to the same type of  megaquake that devastated Japan in March 2011, killing more than 20,000 people.  Experts estimate that there’s a one in four chance of a cataclysmic quake hitting Vancouver within the next 50 years.  But because the city has never suffered from a major temblor, almost no one is prepared.  I investigated exactly how a quake might impact the city for Vancouver Magazine.

The Big One

By Remy Scalza for Vancouver Magazine

For someone whose business is disaster, Anne Ward is uncommonly charming. Today, Ward, an older woman who lives in Kitsilano but is originally from Saskatoon, is wearing two-inch silver heels, a shimmering gold shawl, and jade earrings with a matching amulet that looks vaguely Mayan. “I figure you got to look good while you can,” she says with a slight prairie twang. “It’ll come soon enough.”

Ward is president and CEO of Krasicki and Ward, an emergency preparedness supply store in City Square Mall at 12th and Cambie, right next to a beauty salon and below a Fitness World. The “it” she’s referring to is the big one, a major earthquake. In her store, you can buy earthquake survival kits, big bricks of high-calorie rations, crowbars and hatchets, solar-charged flashlights, emergency toilets in a bag called Wag Bags, and most anything else needed for the apocalypse. “You can try calling 911, if the phone lines are operational,” she says, raising a knowing eyebrow. “But you know what? You might not be their highest priority.”

Click here to read the full story in PDF version.

Bodrum used to be an isolated fishing village and penal colony on Turkey’s remote Aegean Coast.  But for the last decade or so it’s been the go-to destination for wealthy Istanbulus, not to mention whole colonies of British and Russian travelers looking for sun, sand and kebaps. Still, its appeal is pretty timeless – azure water, fresh seafood, rows of olive trees stretching along dry hills.  I visited recently and reported back on a unique art-themed hotel for The New York Times’ In Transit blog.

In Bodrum, Turkey, a Hotel for Art and Artists

By Remy Scalza for The New York Times In Transit Blog

This spring, guests at Casa Dell’Arte will have access to a white sand beach, Balinese and deep-tissue massage and workshops with the Pakistani experimental video artist and provocateur Basir Mahmood.

Opened in 2007 by Turkey’s first family of modern art, the Buyukkusoglus, Casa Dell’Arte (casadellartegallery.com) is a 12-suite hotel outside the Aegean beach town of Bodrum that doubles as one of the country’s most important contemporary art galleries.  Hung in hallways and guest rooms inside the airy manor home are hundreds of Turkish masterpieces collectively valued at more than $4 million, including seminal works by Fikret Moualla, regarded as Turkey’s van Gogh.

Click here to read the rest on The New York Times website.

The Calgary Stampede – which takes place every July in the Canadian prairies – is among the most storied events in rodeo: a 10-day competition with millions in prize money up for grabs and a history stretching back more than a century.  It’s also a huge party, which transforms the otherwise mild-mannered city of Calgary, Alberta, into a giant, debauched hoedown.  I checked out the Stampede – and its unique version of cowboy culture – for Canadian Geographic Travel magazine.

Meet Me at the Rodeo

Story and photography by Remy Scalza for Canadian Geographic Travel

The men’s dressing room below the grandstand at the Calgary Stampede feels a little like a hospital waiting room, but not as clean. It’s a Thursday afternoon in July, toward the end of the 10-day rodeo competition, and cowboys wrapped in elastic bandages and ice packs are splayed out on a set of couches, grinding mud into the fabric and trading stories. Strewn across the carpet is a mess of well scuffed boots, spurs and chaps, frayed reins, blue jeans in various states of disrepair: the telltale detritus of a rodeo.

On one couch, Tyler Thomson, in a bright purple button-up shirt with Wrangler written across the back, is running through his hit-list for me: “Plenty of bumps, bruises, stitches, a broken thumb. But my knees, I guess you could say, have been my Kryptonite.” Thomson, 31 years old and from one of the most storied families of Calgary rodeo, has blue eyes, a million-dollar smile and one Canadian Professional Rodeo Association championship under his belt. “I think I’ve torn every ligament out of my right knee,” he says, “and I tore the ACL out of my left knee. Kept me out a year and a half. But nothing too serious, knock on wood.” In an hour or so, for the third day in a row, Thomson will mount a nearly one-tonne bull and try to stay on for eight seconds.

Click here to read the complete story in PDF version.