Take a look at some of the excursions that our Activities team prepared for this week.   On Wednesday, May 30th, they will take you for a tour around Granville Island. The meeting point will be on the Seymour street entrance of LSC/ EC Vancouver at 4PM. On Friday, June 1st you can participate in an exciting hiking around Deep Cove. Meet the group at 1:15 on Waterfront Station and have fun!

Hi, I’m Sung Hwa. I’m from Korea. It has been 3 weeks since I arrived in Vancouver, Canada. My first impression of Vancouver was that the weather was too cold and rainy. But now, I am a lot happier because of EC/LSC Vancouver. I heard many bad things about Vancouver before coming to Canada. From what I heard, people in Vancouver dislike foreign exchange students, and exchange students dislike each other, but that is not true at all! I am good friends with my classmates from all over the world, and I love my teachers and host family. I can share my deep feelings with my friends that are not from Korea. EC/LSC is a good place for students to study English for many reasons. First, the location is excellent; it is close to the sky train station. Second, the school has excellent facilities, such as Student Resources Centre, many classrooms, computers, and student lounges where students can relax comfortably. Also, EC/LSC’s has excellent curriculum and many choices for courses. Students can changes courses easily. I learned a lot at EC/LSC and can speak English a lot better than I used to. Too bad I cannot study longer at EC/LSC. I really wish I could stay here longer.

  If you are leaving the school on May 25th, please sign up to take the Exit Test. This is a great opportunity for you to know how much you’ve learned during your stay at EC Vancouver. The next exit test will be on Tuesday, May 22 at 2:10 P.M. Sign up at the front desk!

  Welcome to Higher Score, IELTS preparation!     My name is Nickola and I have been teaching English to language learners for close to 15 years. I have had many different teaching and learning experiences and am excited to introduce our program to you.  I enjoy teaching this class for a lot of different reasons. One of the main reasons is the great mix of students. Some of you are dedicated to getting the highest score possible on the exam to get into university or college while others want to immigrate to a new country. Some of you are just bored with traditional ESL classrooms and are here to experiment with a new way of learning. Whatever your motivation, I can guarantee that through our course materials, specialized program and amazing teachers, we will be able to challenge you to improve your language. It’s not always going to be easy, but you’ll be supported and will even have some fun!  Thanks for your interest and we hope to see you soon!

  Jitneys started appearing on the streets of Vancouver and other cities during World War I. They were cars that operated like buses, with fixed (yet flexible) routes, multiple passengers, and a flat fare of five cents . Not surprisingly, the monopolistic BC Electric Railway Co. (forerunner to TransLink and BC Hydro) was none too happy with the phenomenon because it forced them to compete with low fares and convenient service, not to mention a reduced ridership. Initially BCER made the case that jitneys were not  economically sustainable once maintenance, depreciation, and liability costs were accounted for. To test this theory, they secretly operated three jitneys in the winter of 1914-15, but found that a jitney operator could eke out a living comparable to a factory worker. Still, the profitability of jitneys was whittled away by taxes, licencing and other fees gradually imposed by the City, and were ultimately banned altogether. Jitneys played a role in industrial relations. The head of BCER blamed a 1917 street car worker’s strike squarely on competition from jitneys, which, he said, destabilized the streetcar industry and made it impossible to meet wage demands. During the 1919 general strike, jitneys were used  to mitigate the impact of striking streetcar workers and thus undermined the strike. In 1933, Mayor Taylor averted yet another strike by threatening the head of BCER that the ban on jitneys would be lifted unless they got back to the bargaining table and started making some concessions to the union. Although they looked like taxis, jitneys were in fact the forerunner to the city bus. The BCER eventually incorporated modern streetcar-style buses into their system and phased out streetcars altogether in the 1950s.   From: vancouverisawesome.com