Indie Profile: Five Minutes With MGB Principal Michelle Biggar

Michelle Biggar is an Australian interior designer who has made her home in Vancouver. She is a principal at mcfarlane | green | biggar  ARCHITECTURE + DESIGN INC, better known as MGB. Gathering 11 years of international experience, Michelle has worked professionally in Australia, the UK and in Canada on a vast range of projects from multi-residential interiors to fashion retail, offices, and restaurants. Some of her recently completed Vancouver projects include Giovane café, bakery + deli and Oru restaurant (both in Vancouver’s new Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel), Obakki’s flagship store in Gastown and an office and gallery for Bob Rennie in Chinatown.  She believes in beautiful, timeless solutions born of intelligent design. Her aesthetic is clean, modern, and contemplative. Her calm and clement manner, while indispensable on multi-million dollar projects, comes in handy at home, where she is the proud mother of Max Lucy Biggar, born February 6th, 2009. Read more

Fifteen Minutes With Singer & Band Polymath Marissa Johnson

Photo by Andrew Dennison

Meet Marissa Johnson. She comes from a very musical family. Originally from Courtenay, where there obviously weren’t enough bands to keep her busy, Marissa moved to Vancouver in 2004. She plays and sings with four Vancouver based bands: Weathered Pines, No Kids, Bad News Babysitters and Dizzy Eyes. When she’s not working or at band practice, she can be found singing karaoke, listening to records, or watching episodes of Pee Wee’s Playhouse….

Weathered Pines’ debut album, entitled “The Sky Between the Buidings”, will be released on January 25th at the Biltmore Cabaret on Dejlig Records. And when we say ‘album’ we are talking old-school vinyl…not CD…but it does include an mp3 download of the entire album for us digital types. We caught up with Marissa in between band practice to ask her a few questions… Read more

Mystery: How Does A Man This Mellow Deal In Coffee All Day?

Each week, Scout poses 60 questions to a local who has made life in BC that much more interesting. They pick and choose. The minimum response is 20 answers (a Rorschach test, for sure). Barrett Jones answered all sixty. The mellow man tastes coffee for 49th Parallel Coffee Roasters, organizes people who want to open cafes, and stands fast as the gatekeeper who decides whether you give a shit or should be better served by a different roaster. Read more

14½ Minutes With Anne Pearson Of Main St’s Vancouver Special

If you’ve wandered by Main Street’s Vancouver Special you’ve likely found yourself lured inside pretty quickly. The ‘design concept store’ opened in April 2008 at East 20th Ave in the heart of Vancouver’s up and coming Mt. Pleasant neighbourhood. It’s aim is to promote the idea that good design can be accessible, affordable, and of high quality while bringing pleasure to daily life. The product mix is carefully curated and constantly evolving with offerings ranging from furniture, design objects and household accessories to a large selection of photography, design, and architecture books. The owner, Anne Pearson, holds an Honors B.A. in Art History and a Masters of Architecture degree from UBC. Prior to opening the store, she worked for an architecture firm in Vancouver. She has a passion for art, design and retail and has researched and traveled extensively to find innovative and unique local and international products and designers. Scout caught up with Anne recently and asked her a few questions… Read more

Eighteen Minutes With Dayton Boots CEO Stephen Encarnacao

Stephen Encarnacao has served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Vancouver‘s Dayton Boots for the past 2 ½ years. Before taking the helm at Dayton, Mr. Encarnacao was Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer for Reebok International (during Reebok’s meteoric growth phase when Reebok grew from less than $50 Million in annual sales to nearly $1 Billion and usurping Nike’s position as the #1 Brand in the U.S Footwear Market). But even cooler than that is that he served as Senior Vice President Marketing at Converse and Chief Operating Officer at Puma USA. Impressive pedigree. But he’s here now, and here is what he has to say about life in Vancouver. Read more

The Man Who Went From Being A Mountie To Hanging With Jimi…

I was first introduced to Canadian broadcast icon Terry David Mulligan a couple of years ago in a Whistler hotel room. He wasn’t a stranger to me. Like most Canadians under 50 with an interest in music, I grew up watching him on TV interviewing great musicians and introducing the music videos that have become part of the long slideshow of my memory. It was really cool to get a chance to share a bottle with someone who was as much a part of my personal cultural architecture as Donkey Kong, John Hughes or Stan Smyl. I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy a few meals with him since. It’s always great fun just being in his company. Read more