Warehouse retail chain opens doors of its most urban outlet in North American to a horde

Frances Bula
Sun

The first big-box store embedded in a downtown residential tower complex opened in Vancouver Friday to big crowds and enthusiastic reviews from shoppers.

“It’s just thrilling. And I love the light. It’s easier to see stuff here,” said Dawn Knight, a post-production film worker who was shopping with friend Melissa Ruffle, a film accountant, at the city’s newest Costco.

The two had one cart piled high with packages of green beans and the store’s trademark Ling Ling chicken potstickers, among other things, as they patrolled the aisles of the high-ceilinged and brightly lit warehouse space.

Around them, throngs of people were nibbling on free samples of everything from chocolates to butter chicken to croissants.

The new store is a feat of engineering and an unusual mix of uses. It is built in a hole bordered by GM Place, the Georgia viaduct and the escarpment on the eastern end of Vancouver’s downtown. The 127,000-square-foot store, built by Concord Pacific, has two floors of parking below it, two floors of parking above it, and then, above that, another four towers of residential condos with 900 units.

As pedestrians and cars streamed into the warehouse store below, construction crews were still working on the sold-out condo project due to be finished and occupied in mid-2007.

It’s the most urban Costco in North America, said Robin Ross, the chain’s regional marketing manager for Western Canada. Only San Francisco has an equally downtown location, but it is located in a commercial area, not a residential tower.

To appeal to what is expected to be a slightly higher proportion of downtown shoppers, the store stocks a bigger variety of home-ready meals — chicken parmigiana, prawns and pasta, souvlaki, lasagna, and the like — electronics and leather goods, said Ross.

But other than that, it looks and feels like a regular Costco. While many might imagine that people living in downtown apartment wouldn’t have room for a Costco-sized box of Cheerios or a 48-pack of toilet paper, that didn’t appear to be the sentiment of the thousands who thronged to the store.

Moyez Bhattia, a 37-year-old West End resident, said he buys in bulk and then splits some of that with his mother or sister.

Like many, he was thrilled with the new convenience of the store and found the access — right off Expo Boulevard — and parking easy.

Joanne Mah, an adjunct professor in medicine at the University of B.C. who was shopping with her son, Ryan, a chef, also found the location and parking far more convenient than the suburban stores she usually goes to.

The lot is covered, which makes it more pleasant on a rainy day than an outdoor lot. Mah said the location also makes it exceptionally easy for her to do her regular stop in next-door Chinatown.

The 700 parking spots will cost $2 for two hours, but in an effort to keep out downtown office workers, the system requires parkers to return to the lot every two hours.

Concord Pacific has also incorporated an elevator and stairway that connect the store to the Stadium-Chinatown SkyTrain station above it.

The project, unlike the Wal-Mart proposed for Southeast Marine Drive, had no public opposition. Former city councillor Anne Roberts, who has worked on anti-Wal-Mart campaigns, said at the time that Costco made sense because it was in a downtown location, close to transportation.

Costco has, in general, provoked far less community opposition throughout North America than Wal-Marts have.

Unlike Wal-Mart, it has received public accolades for paying its employees well and providing good health benefits.

The chain started in 1983 in Seattle. The first B.C. store opened in Burnaby in 1985.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

 

It can pay to do some research before you buy, so here are some sites to comparison shop, check out hotels and seek out bargains

Andy Riga
Sun

Packaged vacations, which can include flights, hotels, meals, rental cars and more, are as popular as ever, with travellers looking to save money and the bother of organizing their own holidays, especially of the sun variety.

With the busy winter-holiday and spring-break seasons approaching, we offer a look at some sites that will help you start shopping.

The Web is where people research and book their packaged holidays for popular destinations such as Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America. Even if you plan to go through a trusty travel agent, the Web can help. You can:

– Comparison shop. What are other operators charging for similar packages on the same dates? Does another company offer deals to the same resort?

– Find last-minute deals. Sign up for regular e-mail newsletters featuring coming specials and special alerts for last-minute deals.

– Look for reviews of tour operators and individual hotels and resorts. Some booking sites offer only a few pictures and a short description. Always do your own follow-up research. Go online and find the resort or hotel’s own site, then search out reviews. To start, simply type the full name of the hotel or resort in Google (in quotation marks) and see what pops up.

First, though, you’ll have to see what’s out there:

Uniglobe (www.uniglobetrips.com). This is the most confusing site we looked at, but we’re starting with it because it offers so much useful information.

It’s in the form of a primer (found on the front page), titled: All-inclusive resorts: top 10 questions to ask before you book. Questions include: What’s really included?, What’s on the menu? and What are the rooms like? After each question, you’ll find related information you should think about before booking.

Click on “Click here to see all tips,” for more practical advice on such topics as travelling with kids, pets and laptops.

The site is confusing because before you can search for vacations, you must pick a bricks-and-mortar travel agency to deal with using a “agency locator” on the front page. After that, click Vacations to browse all-inclusive packages.

Expedia.ca. Head for the Packages section, where you can choose to build your own package or scan trips packaged by several of the biggest tour operators in Canada. Your personalized package can include hotel, flight, car rental, insurance and attraction tickets. Click on Deals, then Package Deals to see what’s on sale. Sign up for the Bon Voyage e-mail newsletter.

Travelocity.ca. Click on Vacations to go to a screen that lets you create a discounted custom vacation that includes flight and hotel and, if you like, rental car and attraction tickets. Unfortunately, for some reason the prices displayed are in U.S. dollars, making comparisons more complicated than necessary. Go to the Last Minute Deals for special offers. Travelocity offers FareWatcher, a free e-mail service that tracks the lowest round-trip fares for up to five city pairs of your choice.

Like Expedia, Travelocity is a subsidiary of a big U.S. company and won’t let you book vacations in Cuba, a no-go-zone for the U.S. government.

Signature Vacations (www.signaturevacations.com). A veteran of the Canadian all-inclusive scene, this company has a long list of destinations. Click on Special Packages for a list of trips based on your needs — seniors, short stays and weddings, for example. The Deals page shows specials for your departure city. The site has a useful “My Signature” service. Sign up and you can easily keep track of the resorts and specials you’re considering.

Sunquest Vacations (www.sunquest.ca). Another big, long-time player, this company has added Quebec City as a departure city and three new destinations to its list — St. Kitts, Barbados and Samana in the Dominican Republic. Click on Deal of the Day and Hot Deals for the latest specials. My Personal Brochure is where you register if you want to be able to save your research.

Air Canada Vacations (www.aircanadavacations.com). Anyone who has used Air Canada’s cumbersome flight-booking page will appreciate this service. Perhaps because the options are less numerous, the vacations site is uncluttered and fast. Click on Hot Deals for specials on trips with departure dates within the next few weeks.

Transat Holidays (www.transatholidays.com). Another old-timer, this company’s site lets you store information for future reference. There, you can pack away your favourite holiday offers. The site does a good job of dividing its destinations by category (click on Holiday Ideas), such as adults-only, family-friendly, singles, golf, and more.

Nolitours (www.nolitours.com). Owned by the same company as Transat Holidays, this company goes to some different destinations. The site will sell to you directly but also offers 10 Good Reasons to Choose a Travel Agent. Top reason: Personal and professional advice from an experienced adviser.

Go Travel Direct (www.gotraveldirect.com). The crisp, easy-to-use site offers some nice touches, such as short videos about its destinations, links to zoomable satellite pictures of golf courses near the resorts it deals with, and an e-newsletter to advertise special offers.

Sunwing Vacations (www.sunwing.ca). This Toronto-based operator, in business since 1985, flies out of a number of Canadian cities. Its destinations include Cuba, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Panama and Florida. Click on Sell Offs to see specials, organized by departure city, destination and date. Sign up for its “hot deal” mailing list.

WestJet Vacations (www.westjetvacations.com). WestJet’s recently launched packaged-deal division. The airline recently added the Bahamas to its list of destinations.

Sell Off Vacations (www.selloffvacations.com). Scan discounted deals from several major tour operators.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

 

Official calls new store ‘most unique’

Gillian Shaw
Sun

Vancouver’s downtown dwellers will no longer have to trek out to the ‘burbs for their big box shopping with the opening today of Costco’s first warehouse in a core urban residential area.

“It is the most unique Costco in the world,” said Robin Ross, Costco’s regional marketing manager for Western Canada.

Ross said while San Francisco has a Costco downtown, this is the first project of its kind where the warehouse has been built as part of a residential and commercial project in the heart of the city.

Part of Concord Pacific Group’s Spectrum project, the new Costco warehouse on Expo Boulevard anchors a residential development of four highrises being built on the edge of Yaletown.

Outside, the 127,000-square-foot retail outlet won’t much resemble its suburban siblings that come in on average at a heftier 140,000 square feet. Instead of being surrounded by asphalt, the store has two floors of underground parking.

Inside shoppers will still recognize the familiar towering Costco shelves of merchandise — complete with cases of soup, a selection of cereals in sizes geared for the average fraternity and bread by the loaf or by the dozen.

But in a twist that caters to downtown demographics, the new store will add a selection of products Costco shoppers won’t find in the suburban warehouses.

“In terms of merchandising it is going to be pretty different from what you would find in another Costco,” said Ron Damiani, Costco’s assistant vice-president of corporate communications. “It is going to tend to be higher end and recognize that a lot of people in the downtown core are condo dwellers.”

The regular food offerings will be augmented with an expanded deli selection of “home ready meals” or HRM’s — the grocery buzzword describing the shopping needs of multi-tasking downtown families and singles.

The cheese selection has been expanded to bring in products that might appeal to shoppers who aren’t just looking for cheese to slap on a school sandwich.

In clothing, a popular area for Costco shoppers, the brands will include such upscale names as Louis Vuitton, Ross said.

“This is a place where you can buy tires and a two carat diamond ring for $19,699,” he said.

Ross said the decision to open a store in the downtown core was made to meet the demands of “one of the most densely populated areas in North America.

“I think sometimes there is a misconception that Costco is always about bulk food products,” he said. “Coming into a Costco, the first thing you hit is major appliances and electronics, plasma TVs, iPods and high end electronics.

“I think that fits very well into the downtown market.”

Ross said the store won’t just attract downtown dwellers, but he said the retailer realized many of those in the densely populated core wouldn’t bother heading far from home to find a Costco warehouse.

“What is unique about the marketplace are the travel patterns,” he said. “People who live downtown don’t really leave downtown to shop.”

The new outlet brings the number of Costco warehouses across Canada to 69.

Costco memberships are $55 a year plus GST for consumers and $50 a year plus GST for business memberships, with both memberships including a free spouse card.

Ross said until Sunday, new members joining at the downtown location will get a $10 Costco cash card.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

 

Cool concrete: It’s not dull, grey and boring any more — concrete with colour has that wow factor

Joanne Blain
Sun

Get over the idea that concrete floors belong only in the garage or the laundry room. With a shot of colour and a polished sheen of a finish, they can work in any room of the house.

Just ask Gary Jones. The Richmond-based president of Smart Surface Technology was brought in to finish the concrete floors that run from top to bottom of a $20-million San Francisco house.

Think Yaletown loft rather than sidewalk and you’re on the right track. The type of floors Jones’s company creates are smooth, burnished canvases of colour, without a square inch of dull grey concrete in sight.

Growing numbers of homeowners are noticing decorative concrete floors in commercial buildings and realizing they may be the answer to their quest for a practical, contemporary-looking floor.

The wow factor is also a big draw, Jones says.

“A lot of people want concrete because they want to be unique,” he says. “They don’t want to be like the guy down the road — they want something cool.”

And Jones has lots of ways to achieve that look. Under the Colormakers label, his company markets both stains and dyes that can be used to colour an existing concrete floor, as well as colour-enhanced resurfacing treatments.

All three types of products are water-based and sink right into the concrete rather than sitting on top of it like paint, which tends to chip and flake over the years, he says.

Colormakers has eight shades of stains, which are spread over an existing concrete floor and create an irregular pattern of colour by reacting with the lime in the concrete. These generally produce earth tones like copper and bronze, Jones says.

Water-based dyes come in 25 shades, many of them vivid, and are sprayed on top of the concrete for a translucent effect.

Colormakers also makes resurfacing treatments — essentially a thin coating of concrete, pre-coloured in eight shades — that can go right over ceramic tile or concrete that’s irregular or in poor condition.

That was the situation in a house in the Main Street corridor with rough, uneven concrete floors. The homeowner chose a resurfacing treatment in a warm beige colour to smooth out the floor and add a up-to-date look to the fairly conventional home.

Even though the floor is in a below-grade basement, it’s warm to the touch. When properly insulated from below, Jones says, concrete floors absorb the ambient temperature of the room, making them far more comfortable underfoot than unheated ceramic tile.

Concrete also breathes, he says, meaning that it doesn’t trap moisture and become musty like carpets often do when installed in basements.

As well, if you get bored with the look of your floor, it’s relatively easy process to change it.

“If in five years you want to change the colour of the floor, we can do that,” Jones says — just remove the sealer, apply a new colour and re-seal it.

And you’re not restricted to just a stain, a dye or a resurfacing treatment — you can combine one or more to create a wide variety of colours and effects. “You end up with a thousand combinations if you really play around with it,” says Jones.

You can also vary the intensity of the surface sheen by putting down just a couple of layers of finish or a dozen, he says. And maintenance is easy — clean up spills quickly and then every year or two, mop on a liquid wax “to give it a nice sheen again.”

Jones says he’s seen decorative concrete floors that are 14 or 15 years old and still look great. “You can’t really degrade one of these surfaces if it’s put down right.”

And it doesn’t take a huge amount of expertise — homeowners can apply the dyes and stains on existing concrete themselves for as little as 50 cents a square foot, says Jones. If they’re ambitious, they can even put down a resurfacing treatment for about $1.50 a square foot, he says. Hiring a contractor will bring the cost up to between $4 and $6 a square foot, depending on the treatment.

About 70 per cent of Jones’ customers in the U.S. and Canada are commercial, including retailers like Whole Foods, Starbucks and Bootlegger. But the residential market for decorative concrete is growing, he says.

“Many homeowners have seen it in a restaurant or store and they want that floor,” he says. And seeing finished concrete on the floor of a high-traffic business “tells you that it can take a lot of wear and tear.”

Smart Surface Technology is offering half-day workshops at their Richmond headquarters for do-it-yourselfers who want to learn how to stain or dye existing concrete floors and how to apply a coloured concrete overlay to an existing floor. The workshops run every Saturday starting Nov. 25 and cost $75 (discounts for groups available). For more information, call 604-244-3122. The Colormakers product website is www.colormakerfloors.com.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

 

Stunning satellite images show the planet as astronauts see it

Randolph Schmid
Sun

WASHINGTON — Science and art merge in a stunning new Smithsonian museum exhibition featuring planet Earth as seen from above.

Some of the satellite images show the home planet as only astronauts can see it; others taken with special instruments show things even they can’t see.

There’s a myth that the Great Wall of China is the only manmade object that can be seen from space, but that’s not true, exhibit curator Andrew Johnston said.

And he proves it, pointing out satellite images of the Great Pyramids, downtown San Francisco, New Orleans while flooded by hurricane Katrina, container ships in the harbour of Hamburg, Germany, and a nighttime view of the globe with city lights.

Johnston, a geographer at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, organized the exhibit, which opens Saturday. It will remain at the Air and Space Museum until Jan. 7 and then begin a tour of cities around the U.S.

The images were made by a variety of satellites operated by government and private companies. Most of the satellites circle the globe at around 1,000 kilometres altitude; captions on each picture show the satellite that took it.

One unique shot shows Mount Taranaki, New Zealand, surrounded by what looks like a circular shadow.

It turns out to be Egmont National Park, which was created by drawing a circle around the mountain. The dark area inside the circle is forest reserve, the lighter surrounding lands are farms.

For people who have vacationed in the Caribbean, there’s a view of those islands highlighting the shallow water around them and the darker deep water nearby.

Clouds blowing along the ocean break into great swirls and twists where islands reach up into them, images reminiscent of the bow-wave of a giant vessel.

Also evoking the ocean are wave after wave of sand in Yemen, contrasting with blue rocky land nearby.

The picture is said to include the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia, though in this uninhabited area that line has yet to be surveyed.

Perhaps the most striking image is the multicolour picture of the great delta of the River Lena in Siberia. The dark blue river divides into twists and turns and threads through the green land in this summer view of the area.

The Nile Valley glows with light in a composite nighttime image of the Eastern Hemisphere.

The great cities of Europe — London, Paris, Madrid, Berlin — sparkle. It’s possible to trace railroad lines in Russia, and at the far edge Japan is a bright crescent.

Most of the images in the exhibit come from Johnston’s 2004 book Earth From Space, though new ones, such as flooded New Orleans, have been added.

– – –

ON THE NET

Earth From Space: http://www.earthfromspace.si.edu

National Air and Space Museum: http://www.nasm.si.edu

Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service: http://www.sites.si.edu

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

 

Chris Carter
Province

Dear Chris:

I’m about to buy a condo. If I dip into my RRSP and take out a Home Buyers Plan withdrawal, I’d be able to make more than a 25-per-cent down payment to reduce my mortgage payments. Is this a good idea?

— Christy, Port Moody

Dear Christy:

The pros and cons of building equity in your home versus your RRSP is a common debate for individuals and financial planners. Before you raid your retirement nest egg, here are some facts to consider.

When you access funds from your RRSP using the Home Buyers Plan, you are effectively borrowing from your RRSP. Like any other loan, the HBP withdrawal must be paid back and Ottawa requires you to pay back a minimum one-15th of the original loan per year, starting two years after taking the money out.

Once you add this HBP repayment on top of the slightly reduced mortgage payment, your monthly outlay will be at least as much as the original mortgage payment would have been, and probably more.

The main drawback to raiding your RRSP now will be the damaging impact the loan will have on your fund’s value at retirement.

As an example, if you invest to earn a compound annual return of seven per cent over 30 years, pulling $20,000 out and repaying the HBP over the mandated 15 years would reduce your plan’s value at retirement by more than $60,000.

For those homebuyers with no alternative to the Home Buyers Plan, conceding the future growth of their retirement savings might be a trade-off worth considering.

If you’ve already managed to save your down payment, the odds are stacked in favour of maintaining the RRSP.

© The Vancouver Province 2006

 

Pete McMartin
Sun

Judy Graves is the housing advocate for the City of Vancouver, and she remembers the exact year it all started to happen.

It was 1995.

For the first time, she noticed people sleeping on the streets. They had begun to drift in to the city’s doorways, like leaves.

“Then, in 1996, I started to get calls from the media asking me how many homeless there were in Vancouver. I had no idea. So I started going out into the streets to find out for myself.”

She did this on her own time. She haunted street corners and back lanes. She did counts, like a birder. And she would try to talk to the people she saw. She was breaking through the stigma of homelessness, and all the easy generalizations that came with it, and trying to find the human being underneath.

“People say it’s a bunch of lazy bums who have addictions, but the actual equation to homelessness is really quite simple,” Graves said. “There will be an increase in property values and a decrease in incomes. So we would wind up with more people, especially young people, falling through the cracks.”

And often — to put it indelicately — they would be damaged goods. The sexually abused. The children of addicts. Trauma victims. Fetal alcohol syndrome sufferers. Schizophrenics. The grab-bag of dysfunction.

Graves noticed something else about them.

Most had little or no income. Few were availing themselves of welfare.

They didn’t go on welfare, they told Graves, because they couldn’t negotiate their way through the system.

For them, the system had become a barrier, not a hand up. To flush out the welfare fraud of the 1980s and early 1990s, the NDP provincial government of the day had tightened up the application process. Identification requirements became more stringent. Past employment records had to be produced.

When the Liberals came to power, the cuts continued. Several welfare offices were closed. Caseloads increased. Wait times, even for emergency cases, stretched to weeks.

The number of people applying for welfare plummeted — not because of the economy, Graves said, because by then the truly employable had already found jobs — but because the people who needed it most, that underclass she was seeing on the streets, did not have the skills to make their way through the system.

It was too confusing, too dependent on the strict observance of paperwork. Many were illiterate. Many had trouble keeping appointments because, living out on the streets, they had lost their sense of time.

Over-all, these people who were in chronic need, Graves said, were a very small percentage of the population. But a host of effects made them more and more visible — deinstitutionalization, a drug epidemic, less social housing, rising rents, fewer rooms. So when the people affected by these problems hit the welfare wall, they began to back up on to the streets.

So Graves came up with an idea.

She designed an outreach program.

Beginning in the spring of 2005, she went out early in the morning — before the homeless had roused themselves and moved on, Graves said — picked out someone on the street and asked that person if she could help him or her get welfare and a place to sleep.

She would then take the person to a welfare office at 8 a.m. — an hour before the official 9 a.m. opening and the daily rush — and with the help of a welfare worker who had volunteered to come in early, process a welfare application right then and there. Within the day, her client would have a welfare cheque and a room of his or her own.

The program, called the Vancouver Homeless Outreach Project, was a joint effort between the City and the province. It worked so well that this spring, the provincial government funded it with $300,000 more to keep it running for another year.

There are now 10 two-man teams around the province, with four of these teams in Vancouver — two in the Downtown Eastside, one in Downtown South and one in Mt. Pleasant. Each team brings in four people a week to be processed.

But there are large numbers of homeless, Graves said, in Kitsilano, Point Grey, the Commercial Drive and Joyce Street areas and in northeast Vancouver. The homeless there, she said, are essentially out of luck.

“In essence, a homeless person picked by one of the Outreach teams has won the lottery. And you have to ask yourself, why is that? Why is it that a homeless person has to depend on pure luck to get a welfare cheque and a safe place to sleep. Every human being, and I don’t care who they are, deserves a safe place to sleep.”

All of this reeks of a great irony, of course. In its continued funding of the outreach project, the provincial government has not only acknowledged the project’s effectiveness, it has tacitly recognized the dysfunction of its own welfare system. Otherwise, why would it need Graves’ program?

The welfare offices do have some outreach workers of their own — in hospitals, for example, and drug clinics — but not nearly so many that they can make a dent in the growing numbers of homeless.

If Judy Graves proved anything, it wasn’t that a single person could make a difference.

It was that an entire welfare system couldn’t make a difference, and that that system needs to be changed.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

 

FASHION WEEK: Event features B.C. designers and Top Model

Battle over Web democracy has begun

Province

TORONTO — The battle in the U.S. by major telecoms to control Web content has arrived in Canada with little fanfare — and it’s a fight that could forever change the Net as we know it.

It’s being waged over something called Net neutrality, dubbed the First Amendment of the Internet in the U.S. Net neutrality aims to ensure the public can view the smallest blogs just as easily as the largest corporate websites.

“Right now, the Internet is almost a perfect, universal democracy,” says Pippa Lawson, the executive director of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Law Clinic. “The smallest bloggers can be accessed as easily and as quickly as the websites of major corporations.”

That could change drastically if telecommunications firms, including Bell and Telus, have their way. Following the lead of their U.S. counterparts such as Verizon and AT&T, Canadian telecoms are pushing to have more control over the web — and to make a lot more money doing so.

Industry Minister Maxime Bernier is poring over a report by the federally appointed Telecommunications Policy Review Panel that recommends changes to the Telecommunications Act, including replacing a clause on “unjust discrimination” that does little to either uphold the principles of Net neutrality or prevent it from being violated.

“Our position on network diversity/neutrality is that it should be determined by market forces, not regulation,” Jacqueline Michelis, a spokeswoman for Bell Canada.

In other words, says Lawson, the fight is on. “There’s a big push in Canada right now to allow those sort of discriminatory practices,” she says.

“The companies that own the pipes of the Internet — the telecom companies — haven’t liked sitting back and watching big content providers like Google and Yahoo make billions of dollars. They want a piece of the pie, and they want to be able to favour their own content or the content of the corporations that would pay them big money.”

Telecoms want to determine which sites load quickly or slowly and which don’t load at all — and, especially, to promote their own content, says Ben Scott of the U.S. media watchdog Free Press and SavetheInternet.com.

“If I’m Telus and I’ve just created my own Telus iTunes and I decide I want my Telus iTunes to work better than Apple’s, well, too bad for Apple,” says Scott from Washington, D.C.

“Essentially they set themselves up as gatekeepers and they say: ‘Well, we own the wires and instead of treating all bits alike in a non-discriminatory fashion, we’re going to set up special deals and if you have the money, you can pay us to make your websites go much faster. And you can pay us to set up an exclusive deal where your website goes very fast and your competitor’s doesn’t.’ “

That’s something big content providers such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are dead set against, arguing it will destroy the free and open nature of the Internet and also create a tiered, dollar-driven Net that favours the wealthiest corporations over everyone else.

“Telephone companies cannot tell consumers who they can call. Network operators should not dictate what people can do online,” Google’s Vint Cerf said.

© The Vancouver Province 2006

Province

Name: Lorna Rush

Business: Daelor Products/ SendOutCards, south Surrey, B.C.

Contact: www.sendoutcards.com/8971 or www.daelorproducts.com or 1-888-575-1497

Number of employees: Five, including my husband

Years in business: Eight months

What is your business?

It’s the coolest thing going.

You go to the website and use a password to access more than 7,500 greeting cards.

You pick out the perfect card and the exact words you want — you can even add a photo — then you click the mouse to send the order to a printing company.

The company prints your custom greeting card and sends it out through Canada Post, and it costs about $1 plus the stamp.

How did you get started?

A friend heard about this business, which is a U.S. company and the fifth-largest greeting-card group in North America.

She thought it was a great idea.

What do you like best about this business?

I like the flexibility of fitting it in around the things I want to do with my family.

What is your biggest challenge?

Keeping up with all of the opportunities and getting the word out about the service.

It’s so much better than sending an e-card, and you don’t have to go to card shops any more.

Expansion plans?

My business can expand wherever the company expands, and it’s already in Australia, England and Ireland.

I am only limited by my ability to think. The problem is, I have a hard time sleeping because I have so many ideas.

© The Vancouver Province 2006