Vancouver Courier

This article, published four years ago yesterday in the Vancouver Courier, was a forewarning of the economic meltdown that is taking place right now. However, not all of it has come to pass as far as we in Vancouver are concerned... at least, not yet.

As a boy working on his grandparents' farm in eastern Ontario, William Rees found his vocation in life. Rees, a professor at the UBC's School of Community and Regional Planning, calls it his epiphany. It was also the root of his now famous "ecological footprint" that has been adopted by individuals, organizations and policy makers across the globe as a tool for understanding the impact we as humans are having on our environment.

It’s a balmy June evening and a river of colour is flowing South up the three lanes of the Burrard bridge. Bicycles, hundreds of them, are jingling and swaying. They ride on mountain bikes, racers, tandems, cruisers, crazy choppers, kiddie bikes with their training wheels, bike-powered music machines, a bicycle-shopping cart hybrid, in-line skates, and skateboards. It’s bike month and this is the biggest of the year’s Critical Mass rides that start off from outside the Vancouver Art Gallery on the last Friday of every month.