FRIDAY FEBRUARY 24 2017
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PULSE 13
Marvelous Wonderettes Musical comedy opens at the Deep Cove Shaw Theatre
LOOK 23
World of home decor
West Van entrepreneur imports African and Japanese culture
TODAY’S DRIVE 35
BMW 750i
Luxury sedan still the ultimate driving machine NORTHSHORENEWS
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WV man gets 14 years for role in NV extortion killing JANE SEYD jseyd@nsnews.com
A 24-year-old West Vancouver man has been sentenced to 14 years in jail for his part in luring a young Chinese man to a house in North Vancouver where he was held for ransom and eventually killed in circumstances the judge described as “horrendous and very sad.”
FIRE FOLLOWUP District of North Vancouver firefighters stand by at 2601 Lonsdale Ave. after a blaze was brought under control by city and district fire crews late afternoon on Wednesday. See our full story on page 4. PHOTO PAUL MCGRATH
Tian Yi “Eddie” Zhang was handed the sentence by B.C. Supreme Court Justice Heather Holmes Tuesday afternoon after pleading guilty to manslaughter and unlawful confinement in the death of Peng Sun, a 22-yearold Chinese citizen, and extortion of Sun’s parents
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CN sues West Van over Seawalk access JANE SEYD jseyd@nsnews.com
The District of West Vancouver is fighting back against a lawsuit that would kick residents off the local Seawalk – unless the municipality agrees to pay potentially millions of dollars a year in rent to CN Rail. The dust-up between the municipality – which built and maintains West Vancouver’s waterfront Seawalk – and CN, which holds a lease on the land over which part of the Seawalk is built – recently erupted after talks about a new lease agreement broke down. On Feb. 17, CN Acquisition, an arm of the railway company,
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District challenges bid to charge $3.7M in rent per year for alleged encroachments along rail corridor filed a lawsuit in B.C. Supreme Court against the municipality, stating that the rail company had cancelled the district’s lease. The suit asks for an injunction preventing the District of West Vancouver from trespassing on the land. The lawsuit also seeks damages for the district’s use of the land and for overdue rental payments. The municipality has fired back with an application filed with
the Canadian Transportation Agency, a quasi-judicial federal agency that oversees railway operations. In that, the district has asked for an order allowing the municipality continued use of the Seawalk over the CN right-of-way, “which has been used by the residents of West Vancouver for the past 50 years” and which “forms an integral part of the system of pedestrian walkways in place in West Vancouver.” According to the application, after both a lease and rental payments lapsed for about two decades, the two parties had recently been discussing a new lease arrangement. But the municipality balked after CN asked for a multimillion-dollar payment.
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