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Storm clouds are gathering over B.C.'s construction industry as we enter 2023. For more than a decade, cheap money has helped fuel a booming sector. Although Covid and material escalation [...]

The business of construction is a roller coaster ride at the best of times. But few things challenge the industry more than the fierce cost escalation that construction is currently [...]

How can cities continue to expand and provide housing for a growing population, while limiting the negative impacts on the environment that may arise from such new construction? Recent amendments [...]

The Canadian Construction Documents Committee's (CCDC) industry standard prime contract between owners and the general contractors is a well-known document in the construction industry. Known as the CCDC 2 Stipulated [...]

A recent B.C. case has addressed the legal issues surrounding tower cranes and their infringement upon neighboring land. If followed, the case may significantly redefine the discussions between developers and [...]

Most trade contracts incorporate 'by reference' the terms and conditions of the prime contract. Are these clauses effective? Short answer: not really. The general rule of interpretation is that a [...]

An awful lot of cash sits every day in holdback accounts. That cash waits there, ever so patiently, until such time as somebody says or does the right things to [...]

Byline: Christopher Hirst Alongside such treats as bloater paste and smoked mackerel paté on Jeremy Lee's acclaimed menu at Quo Vadis in Soho, there appears the mystifying proposition: 'Kickshaws £3 [...]

Byline: Christopher Hirst Growing up in the West Riding of Yorkshire, I enjoyed black pudding from an early age, much preferring its flavour and even its texture to (as I [...]

Byline: Christopher Hirst In the lush outskirts of Penshurst, Kent, a village so impossibly picturesque that it must surely be a regular setting for Marple-esque murders, you come across an [...]

Byline: Christopher Hirsts It's an unexpected place to find a pub, never mind a thriving one. Thixendale is an isolated hamlet of maybe two dozen houses tucked into a deep [...]

Byline: Christopher Hirsts The White Horse Inn, known to locals as Nellies, in the well-heeled East Yorkshire town of Beverley is perhaps the closest you'll get to time travel in [...]

Byline: Christopher Hirst The unspoilt pub that we search for in the country, usually in vain, may be found on your doorstep - at least if your doorstep happens to [...]

Byline: Christopher Hirst Middle Eastern and North African dishes are currently the height of gastronomic fashion (my colleague Stevie Parle uses his own version of them), but any newcomer who [...]

Byline: Christopher Hirst Tonight, in thousands of French homes - and hundreds of English ones - a flaky cake known as a galette des rois (kings' tart) will be served. [...]

Byline: Christopher Hirst If you're seeking a delicious celebration of spring, you should mark March 20 in your diary. This is the date of Nowrooz, or the Persian New Year, [...]

Byline: Christopher Hirst The latest government advice that we should eat meat once a week at most has not gone down well in a nation so fond of beef that [...]

Byline: Christopher Hirst 'I always try to shop locally,' said Andrew Fairlie, the 47–yearold chef–patron of his eponymous restaurant, situated in the Gleneagles Hotel, an hour north of Edinburgh. 'But [...]

Byline: Christopher Hirst Nestling in a fold of the Pennines, the West Yorkshire community of Slaithwaite (pronounced Slough-it) boasts one of Britain's most unusual bakeries. What makes the Handmade Bakery [...]

Warranties form part of nearly every construction contract yet they remain poorly understood by many stakeholders in the construction industry. Despite this lack of knowledge, courts have had little hesitation [...]

Byline: Christopher Hirst and Rose Prince From Auguste Escoffier to Heston Blumenthal, from Alexis Soyer to Gordon Ramsay, the professional kitchen is primarily a male domain. Yet women seem astounded [...]

Byline: Christopher Hirst The annual flood of cookbooks is currently in full spate. This is one literary genre that the British public can't get enough of, but it is a [...]

Byline: Christopher Hirst The 'choucroute route', which threads through Alsace in north- eastern France, is one of the world's least likely tourist assets. You might not know that Alsace produces [...]

If you are in the construction industry, you will have heard of the 'pay-when-paid' clause and its evil twin, the 'pay if paid' clause. Though widely used, these clauses remain [...]

Byline: Christopher Hirst IT WOULDN'T normally be surprising to see a top chef demonstrating his way with drumsticks, but it gave me a jolt when Jamie Oliver snatched up a [...]

Byline: Christopher Hirst, Christina Patterson and Boyd Tonkin If you were horrified by Martin Creed's Turner-winning light switch, or by Spencer Tunick's mass nude happening at the Saatchi gallery, then [...]

Byline: Christopher Hirst, Christina Patterson and Boyd Tonkin Valerie Martin's tale of marital misery and slave revolt on a sugar plantation in the deep South won this year's Orange Prize [...]

Byline: CHRISTOPHER HIRST SOMETIMES, IN these charts, biography is almost interchangeable with sport. This week's indicates that we like sex, too. Among the sporting heroes are enfant terrible John McEnroe, [...]

Byline: CHRISTOPHER HIRST IF GRAFFITI is the art of the hip and the youthful, then Egypt is very hip indeed. Its street graphics go back 5,000 years and are now [...]

Byline: CHRISTOPHER HIRST IN BOOKSHOPS and on TV screens, Britain is awash with makeover advice for houses and their interiors. Yet the tastes revealed run a narrow gamut from trad [...]

Byline: CHRISTOPHER HIRST Though their transgressions differed as much as their talents, Jeffrey Archer's spell in jug was surely the most celebrated case of literary incarceration in this country since [...]

Byline: Christopher Hirst SOONER OR later, every heavyweight commentator turns to the theme of mousetraps. If this topic seems too hackneyed, may I remind you that it inspired Ralph Waldo [...]

Byline: CHRISTOPHER HIRST The announcement by the Met Office that last month was the hottest for 28 years sent hacks scurrying for records of June 1976. Now that was a [...]

BESTSELLERS IF WOMEN are the main consumers of fiction, perhaps only men splash out on hardbacks. The current top ten is an all-male line-up of boys' own adventures, full of [...]

WE'LL MEAT AGAIN UNTIL RECENTLY, walking or driving through Smithfield market was a visceral reminder of the dripping, bloody source of your bacon sarnie or boeuf bourgignon. It was also [...]

POTTERING ROUND the British Museum the other day, I was stopped in my tracks by possibly the most frightening sculpture I've ever seen. It was a realistically carved stone lion, [...]

SO, HARDY'S, Australia's second-largest wine company, has been taken over by an American outfit with the ringing name of Constellation Brands. Take a wild guess which of these names will [...]

THE NEAREST thing you can compare it to is a vast Roman mosaic. Corralled by rubber booms, millions of berries float in the flooded cranberry bog before being vacuumed up [...]

A SWELL PARTY 'View of the interior of the Pantheon, Oxford Street, showing Mr Lunardi's Balloon', from Characters of Fitzrovia by Marsha Rowe and Mike Pentelow (Pimlico, pounds 15). Before [...]

WHILE NOT diminishing the value of this informative and readable study, the title is only half right. The first 50 per cent of the book is devoted to the Western [...]

THE LONG VIEW 'Lew Alcindor, 61st Street and Amsterdam Avenue, New York City' (2 May 1963) by Richard Avedon; from Photography Past/Forward: Aperture at 50 (Thames & Hudson, pounds 29.95). [...]

Lions, from an illuminated English `Bestiary', c.1200. From Art of the Middle Ages by Janetta Rebold Benton (Thames & Hudson, pounds 8.95). The latest addition to Thames & Hudson's excellent [...]

Here's evidence of who's ahead in the great Picasso-Matisse stand-off, currently on display at Tate Modern. Taschen's beginner's guide to the Spaniard reaches the Top 10, while the comparable volume [...]

We may both be tea-sipping, island-dwelling monarchies, but there are one or two differences between Britain and Japan. Fish, for example. They're potty about seafood, while we are bizarrely indifferent [...]

Scarborough's Peasholm Park is an unlikely venue for 80 years of naval warfare. I was greeted by the surreal sight of a family of four manoeuvring a swan-shaped pedalo under [...]

Hollywood got it wrong in many ways: gunslingers were not so much preoccupied with being quick on the draw, as with being able to hit their target at all, and [...]

The history of traditional Christmas food is traced. The Elizabethan marchpane is now seen as marzipan on Christmas cakes, while turkeys came across the Atlantic as early as 1523.

The UK has relatively few native plants, with the rest having come from a wide range of sources. The Romans introduced opium poppies and white lilies, while the monkey puzzle tree came from Chile in 1793 and Morning Glory came from Mexico via Italy in 1621.

The 'Outmoded' exhibition of contemporary decorative arts at Sotheby's in London, England, is discussed. This exhibition seeks to overcome the boundaries between art and craft and between indoors and outdoors.