new myths for a new age

New myths for a new age

Margaret Atwood speaks out for a project she describes as 'the biggest simultaneous publication of anything, ever'

The Vancouver Sun

Saturday, October 22, 2005

By Kim Goodliffe

In the lounge of Vancouver's Four Seasons Hotel, Margaret Atwood passes her hands over a toy crystal ball. An electronic windstorm erupts amid computer beeps. The eyes of the four-inch Merlin inside the ball flash red.

Atwood asks him some test questions and receives celestial responses. Will I go to Calgary tomorrow? ("It's in the stars!" Merlin says in a warbling voice.) Will it rain tomorrow? ("Absolutely! Be confident!")

But when I ask Merlin if Atwood's latest project -- Knopf's series, The Myths -- will transform humanity, his powers fail him.

"Yes, the images are cloudy," says Atwood, staring into the ball with her startlingly clear blue eyes, "but what about my book?"

"Absolutely!" Merlin proclaims. "But beware of false promises!"

Atwood laughs and says, "Like all oracles, he hedges his bets."

She should know. She went to the Underworld for her contribution to the series. The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus is a clever retelling of Homer's Odyssey from the wife's and the hanged slaves' points of view.

It's being launched today at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Atwood describes the whole series as "the biggest simultaneous publication of anything, ever."

It was the brainchild of Jamie Byng, publisher of Canongate Books in the U.K. Three other publishers, including Canada's Louise Dennys, played midwife to the idea.

Worldwide, 33 publishers are taking part. All of them chose to launch with Atwood's The Penelopiad and Karen Armstrong's non-fiction book, A Short History of Myth. Those two books anchor the series.

Participating publishers could then choose from three other titles: British writer Jeanette Winterson's Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles; Israeli writer David Grossman's Lion's Honey: The Myth of Samson; and Russian writer Victor Pelevin's The Helmet of Horror: The Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.

The other myths will be published in 2006 and beyond. Confirmed authors for the series include Chinua Achebe, A.S. Byatt, Alexander McCall Smith, Ali Smith and Donna Tartt.

"The idea," Atwood tells me, "is to have myths from all around the world told by writers from all around the world.

"Remember the Add-A-Pearl Necklace? You were supposed to get a pearl for your baby girl when she was born and then add a pearl every year. This is like Add-A-Pearl. They keep adding a couple of them every season."

Asked how she came to the project, she reveals her herculean weak spot.

"Jamie Byng talked me into it at breakfast time, the time of day when I have very little resistance. So I thought I would do it and help a small publisher."

Then he went and published Yann Martel's Life of Pi, "so maybe he wouldn't have needed help." If he had asked later, "maybe I would have said no.

"But I said I would do it and my agent was quite keen on it.

"And then I couldn't do it. I worked away for a year, trying to do it, and it didn't work because I was using the wrong myths, myths that didn't work for me.

"I went so far as to actually say [to my agent], 'Do you think Jamie would really mind if I cancelled the contract?'

"She said she thought he would mind quite a lot but if I couldn't do it, I couldn't do it.

"So I said, 'Give me a few more weeks.' "

Then her German publisher started pressuring her to launch the series. Putting on a German accent, Atwood says: "'Vee are vaiting for you, Margaret.'

"Why don't you launch with someone else?"

"'No! Vee are vaiting for you.'"

Then came more pressure. She agreed to be the series' Canadian spokesperson. She'll promote her retelling of the ancient myth in Canada's major cities from now through December.

As we talk, she attempts to describe the relationship between The Penelopiad and Armstrong's book-length essay on the power and meaning of myth.

"Let me put it this way: Some pages of the Old Testament are one line of text and the rest of the page is a commentary -- what people thought it meant."

Karen Armstrong is a Londoner and a former Roman Catholic nun known for her diverse writing on religion. In her book, she explains why myth is important to our understanding of ourselves, our ancestry and our world

Myths range from the hunting myths of the Paleolithic period to the rise of scientific thought and the concomitant discrediting of myth in the last 500 years, a period Armstrong refers to as "the Great Western Transformation."

Atwood explains that "when we say 'myth,' we don't mean something that's untrue. Nor do we mean any old story. Jokes are stories; they're not myths. Fables -- fox and grapes -- they're stories; they're not myths. Certain folktales are stories but not myths.

"What do we mean by 'myth'? We mean a story that is the foundation stone of a cultural system. So, Noah and the ark, Adam and Eve, the Trojan War" all count as myths.

She says that when she began experimenting with the myth of Penelope, it was a "swift write.

"I couldn't change the plot. I couldn't change the interpretation of the plot. Whatever I did, Odysseus was gonna come back and the maids were gonna get hanged. I didn't make any of that stuff up. You couldn't make it up."

Like her novels Oryx and Crake, Alias Grace and The Handmaid's Tale, The Penelopiad is based on heavy research. But it's Atwood's inventiveness and sense of humour that bring the characters and situation to life.

When she's asked how her research on the pantheon of Greek gods may relate to current religious issues, she quips: "I don't see anyone going to a church with a sign that says 'Zeus' on it."

Penelope begins the novel generally discouraged among the dead and tired of eating only one kind of food: the white flowers called asphodels.

"Well, the Greek afterworld wasn't a fun fair," she says. "The spirits did walk around in that fashion. They did squeak a lot ... And if you were bad, there were the lower levels, where you got tortured. It's not really a lot of fun.

"Of course, hell got worse. Indeed, when the Christians brought in hell, it was worse than that. But [for the Greeks] there wasn't a heaven part, where you got to have a really good time. You could get to the fields of Elysium if you'd been really quite a good hero, but even there it wasn't a ton of fun a minute.

"You were wan. You weren't yourself. Being alive was better."

Although it's uncertain whether The Penelopiad will be made into an opera, as The Handmaid's Tale was, a staged reading will take place this coming Wednesday in London, England. Directed by Phyllida Lloyd, it will have 12 actresses playing the maids, some of them providing musical accompaniment.

Atwood will play the Underworld's new rising star -- none other than her latest protagonist, Penelope.

Vancouver writer Kim Goodliffe last profiled Margaret Atwood in 2003, when Oryx and Crake was published.

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no news like the same news

Shayne Letain illustration

Share and share alike

The Georgia Straight

Thursday, October 20, 2005

By Donald Gutstein

The evening after the British Columbia government introduced legislation imposing a contract on the province’s teachers, Michael Smyth interviewed British Columbia Teachers’ Federation president Jinny Sims and Labour Minister Mike de Jong on his CKNW Nightline BC radio show. Smyth was argumentative and surly with Sims. He accused her of not being straight with the public. When he interviewed de Jong, Smyth was respectful and attentive. He sought de Jong’s opinion; he disputed Sims’s opinion. Smyth ended the segment with a promo for his next-day column in the Province.

The column continued his attack on teachers. Smyth accused Sims of displaying “predictable moral outrage”, as if it had been fabricated for the cameras and tape recorders. He lambasted the union for its “militancy” and the NDP for its predictably “snuggly relations” with the teachers.

As for the government, Smyth informed us, Premier Gordon Campbell had to bring down the hammer because “the hammer…is the only thing the BCTF understands.” The kindly but firm father applied the punishment he knew would hurt but would be good for his unruly children.

Several days later, his column and radio show spread some of the blame for the impasse to the government. Both sides were at fault, Smyth said and wrote. Government was responsible for provoking and baiting the teachers, among other factors.

It’s as if he’s creating his own echo chamber. He shouts “teachers are militant” or “government provoked the teachers” in one direction. He shouts it again in another. It bounces back from somewhere else, as other media pundits join in. Soon the message surrounds us and we don’t know any more where it originated. The message seems to have always been out there, so it must be true.

Smyth is not alone in appearing on supposedly rival news outlets. Vancouver Sun political columnist Vaughn Palmer appears every morning on CKNW’s Morning News With Philip Till. Palmer also hosts the Voice of BC show weekly on Shaw Cable 4. Keith Baldrey, Global TV’s legislative bureau chief, is a weekly radio commentator on the “Cutting Edge of the Ledge” segment of the Bill Good Show on CKNW.

CKNW is one of 50 radio stations across Canada owned by Corus Entertainment, including four in Vancouver. Both Corus, which also owns 10 cable channels, and Shaw Cable—the second-largest cable system in the country—are controlled by the Shaw family of Calgary, whose net worth last year was $635 million.

Global TV, the Vancouver Sun, and the Province are owned by the Asper family of Winnipeg. The Aspers own major newspapers across Canada, the Global Television Network, eight cable channels, and the canada.com Web sites. This family was worth $1.09 billion in 2004.

When the Senate Communications Committee came to town earlier this year to study media concentration, it heard loudly and clearly that CanWest holds too much of the Vancouver English-language media market. The inevitable consequence, many presenters told the committee, is a reduced diversity of news and opinion available to citizens.

Now CanWest is sharing its people with Shaw and Corus. Reduce, reuse, and recycle are excellent concepts when applied to the environment; they are dangerous when practised by news media.

CTV, CHUM, and the Globe and Mail are small players in the Vancouver market. CBC radio and television are the only news organizations equal in size and scope to the giants. But after its recent labour troubles, the public broadcaster may be permanently weakened. That leaves industry leaders the Vancouver Sun, the Province, Global TV, and CKNW, and they’re increasingly speaking with one voice.

Some of the connections between CanWest and Shaw-Corus are long-standing. The premier’s brother, Michael Campbell, has had his Money Talks show on CKNW for years, and his Vancouver Sun business column is tired news. Vaughn Palmer has been doing his Voice of BC show for several years.

Others are more recent. Global TV anchor Jill Krop often hosts CKNW’s The World Today. Weatherman Phil Reimer does the weather for the Sun and CKNW.

In January 2005, CKNW began airing Adler on Line, hosted by right-wing broadcaster Charles Adler from Winnipeg. Adler does a TV segment each night on Global Winnipeg, known as “Adler on Global”, and he hosted CanWest’s Global Sunday program in Calgary for several years.

CanWest News columnist Jonathan Manthorpe is a regular guest with John McComb’s CKNW afternoon show discussing international affairs. Shell Busey writes a Sunday Homes column in the Province and hosts two weekend radio shows on CKNW.

If these exchanges were happening within one company, it would be called convergence. The late Izzy Asper once said his model in building his company was the Chicago Tribune. In the mid-’90s, the paper constructed a cable-television studio in the middle of its fourth-floor newsroom. Reporters who wrote stories in the day’s paper would be interviewed in the evening about the story and add elements not included in the print version—at no extra pay, of course. Convergence was supposed to increase revenues and reduce costs.

But the exchanges are happening between separate companies. And not only are they sharing their human resources, they’re writing and talking about each other.

On September 29, the Province ran a picture of CKNW reporter Leanne Yuzwa, who is noteworthy, perhaps, because she’s a boxer.

On September 7, Fanny Kiefer returned to work as the ubiquitous host of Shaw Cable’s Studio 4. The next day, the Province put her picture on the front page and ran a story and another picture inside. The Sun provided a long article.

A Province story about the epidemic of drug-overdose deaths in the Downtown Eastside near the end of August quoted just two sources: a police constable and CKNW. The Province E-Today section of August 12 carried a discussion about Philip Till’s suitability as CKNW’s morning-show host. Several days before that, Pete McMartin’s Sun column discussed an on-air interview he had done with Till.

And that’s just in a two-month period. Are CanWest and Shaw setting the stage for a merger that would create the largest media empire in Canada? Or are two of Canada’s wealthiest families merely obsessed with cost-cutting by laying off staff and sharing whomever is left with the other guys, a kind of contracting-out to the competition?

CanWest’s near-monopoly means that its commentators and columnists are the experts, not because they are most knowledgeable and well-informed but because they have the soapbox and no one else can compete. If another organization wants to be taken seriously, it grabs CanWest’s experts.

These practices may be good for shareholders but they do little for readers and viewers. With so few major news organizations in the city, the pool of experts is shallow. They know each other, they interview each other, and they rarely disagree. The range of opinions is narrowed even further.

Sharing employees creates other concerns for the audience. Can CanWest ever report objectively on Corus or Shaw, or Corus on CanWest, if their most high-profile people are scurrying between the organizations? Can one reporter work simultaneously for two competing media organizations? Can one reporter use the facilities of one newsroom to write for another? Where is the reporter’s loyalty when she obtains a scoop? What ethical issues might arise?

Certainly, the love-in between the two companies today is a far cry from the situation seven years ago when they were bitter rivals vying for the media empire of the late Frank Griffiths. When he died in 1994, Griffiths had assembled in Western International Communications the jewels of B.C. broadcasting: BCTV and CKNW, plus eight other television stations, 11 radio stations, interests in four cable channels, and a 54-percent interest in Canadian Satellite Communications, a satellite TV provider.

In 1997, Izzy Asper and son Leonard sat down opposite J.?R. Shaw and son Jim in a Toronto hotel to divvy up the WIC assets, but no deal was reached. Two years later, after bids, counterbids, and lengthy court challenges, a deal was finally reached—the one that had been before them all along. CanWest got the television stations; Shaw got CanCom and Corus, the radio stations, and the cable channels.

Leonard Asper became CEO of CanWest in 1999, and within a year he transformed the company from a money-spinning second-rate television network into a converged conglomerate with billions of dollars in debt after paying $3.2 billion for Conrad Black’s major city daily newspapers and a half interest in the National Post (later increased to full ownership).

Jim Shaw took over in 1998 and turned his father’s cable firm, the second-largest in Canada, into a diversified media empire of radio stations, cable channels, and Internet holdings, plus the leading Canadian animation house, Nelvana. Unfortunately, his empire was created just before 9/11, when advertising revenues tanked. Corus took several years to climb out of its hole back to profitability.

Corus compensated for lost advertising revenues by laying off as many staff as possible while still being able to run the operation. Less than a week after Corus received CRTC approval to take over the Women’s Television Network, it axed 60 jobs. This followed an earlier company move to eliminate 100 jobs across the country, except for in the radio division. The radio cuts came next: 20 of the 155 full-time employees at the four Vancouver stations and 11 more in Edmonton. With its depleted resources, Corus needs CanWest.

The end game is not yet clear. Both companies seek an end to foreign-ownership restrictions. This would allow them to cash out. But opening Canada’s media to control by people like Rupert Murdoch, who owns sham news service Fox News, is a nonstarter unless Stephen Harper and the Conservatives gain power. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission wouldn’t necessarily turn them down, because it has become so supportive of what the industry wants.

Leonard Asper and Jim Shaw are probably having too much fun moving the dominoes around the board to want to sell. So they might do a deal.

Telus says the future is friendly, but in media the future is all about controlling content and distribution. CanWest has huge content resources but no electronic distribution systems such as cable or satellite TV to deliver them. Shaw-Corus has the cable and satellites but is light on content. Together they make a world-class powerhouse, at least domestically.

Such a combination would make the Aspers and Shaws even richer. But it would be a black day for Canadians, weakening our rights to receive the information we need to be informed citizens. The echo chamber would be made permanent and we would forever lose our bearings.

Meanwhile, Jim Pattison’s AM600 pulled the plug on Rafe Mair’s talk show last week. Mair ended up on that station after his popular CKNW show was cancelled by Corus several years ago, in part because he was critical on-air of Corus’s cost-cutting measures. Who will tell those stories now?

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battle of the network stars

Shaw rolls out digital phone system

Cable TV company introduces service to B.C. in Victoria

Times Colonist (Victoria)

Thursday, October 13, 2005

By Darron Kloster

Cable company Shaw Communications has tapped into the telephone business in British Columbia, using Victorians as the initial samplers of its voice-over Internet protocol (VoIP) service and the city as a new front to wage war with Telus.

"We're breaking down the last monopoly in Canada -- the phone company," Shaw's chief executive Jim Shaw said in an interview during a red-carpet rollout at the Marriott Hotel.

"I think it's about time," he said, unveiling the new service to members of the business community and the public.

Shaw introduced its digital phone service -- which delivers voice over the Internet via its broadband network -- earlier this year in Edmonton and Calgary. Winnipeg was added in July and Vancouver is expected to be added in the new year. The Victoria service has been operating since the beginning of the month.

With Telus already bruised from a prolonged labour dispute and escalating complaints over service, Shaw's rollout couldn't have been better timed. Consumers are starting to embrace VoIP technology and newer companies and service providers who offer VoIP for little or no cost.

Shaw expects to attract its current cable customers and lure others away from Telus with a flat rate of $55 per month ($65 if you are not a Shaw subscriber). The fee provides phone service and unlimited long-distance calling in North America along with voicemail, call forwarding, call waiting, call display, call return, three-way calling and other features such as 911, directory and operator services.

For Amy Abel, a recent university graduate from Ontario, going with Shaw was a no-brainer. She has three roommates -- all recently moved from out east -- and a single bill for cable TV, Internet and telephone.

"We're all making long-distance calls, so this way we don't have to figure out who made what call. It's just one bill and we split it," said Abel. "Everything was set up at the same time. It was convenient, and we're very happy with it, too."

Shaw president Peter Bissonette said the response has so far been "overwhelmingly positive."

On its website, Shaw said 95 per cent of phone customers recently surveyed are happy with the service.

Bissonette said Shaw had more than 22,000 digital phone customers in Alberta as of May 31. An updated count with Manitoba and B.C. residents will be revealed when the public company releases its next quarterly financial report Oct. 25.

Bissonette said Shaw's phone service is a primary line that uses the company's established broadband network. Shaw considers this so-called managed IP telephony "more reliable" than other VoIP services such as PC-to-PC or PC-to-phone offered by Skype, and applications that operate over the public Internet and rendered by service providers such as Primus and Vonage. Some of the services are free or cost pennies per minute.

Telus is still testing its own residential VoIP service and has yet to announce a date for the launch.

Jim Johannsson, director of consumer marketing for Telus, said Shaw has created a "bare bones" telephone system and he cautions consumers to decide what they need before taking the plunge.

Johannsson, based in Edmonton and in charge of testing all new product for Telus, said Canada's second largest phone company is moving forward on bundling new features, price packaging and merging television, telephone, Internet and wireless products into innovative uses for Canadians.

He said Telus currently offers 20 different phone plans.

"We welcome the competition ... competition is good," said Johannsson.

J.R. Shaw, an Ontario native who founded the cable company in Edmonton in 1966, said although Victoria was a sentimental choice to launch, it had more to do with logistics, installation and testing of the system and its equipment. The elder Shaw, who still serves as chairman of the board for Shaw, owns a home on Lands End Road in North Saanich and spends many months a year here.

Vancouver is a much larger market with more lines and equipment -- and a huge capital cost.

Shaw spent more than $20 million in the Victoria region to upgrade lines, routers and power systems for the phone service. It will be available to start in Victoria, Saanich, Oak Bay and areas closer to the core. The service will eventually be moving to outlying suburbs, said Bissonette.

Jim Shaw said the company has about 140,000 cable and Internet subscribers in Greater Victoria and another 60,000 elsewhere on the Island.

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trades have a solid future

Acute shortage forecast: B.C. will be unable to fuel its growing economy in 10 years as more than a quarter of the workforce retires, chartered accountants warn

The Vancouver Sun

Tuesday October 4, 2005

By Michael Kane

British Columbia faces acute worker shortages within the next decade, which will be made even worse by an expected education gap, the province's chartered accountants warned Monday.

More than one million job openings will be created by 2015 as the economy grows and more than one quarter of the current workforce retires. But the province has only 680,000 students in kindergarten through Grade 12. If they all stayed in B.C., that would still leave a shortfall of 363,000 potential workers.

As well, 73 per cent of jobs will require some form of post-secondary education, although only 59 per cent of British Columbians currently earn a diploma beyond high school. The education gap threatens to erode the province's competitiveness in the future if it is not addressed, the CAs reported as part of the annual BC Check-Up released Monday.

One major challenge is convincing young people and their parents that there are good career opportunities in the trades. Journeymen plumbers and electricians, for example, can earn $45-$50 an hour in their early 20s, said Robert Wall, of North Vancouver's Wall Mark Homes.

With retirements accounting for 558,000 of 1,043,000 job openings between 2003 and 2015, trade careers have a solid future. Even if the province drops mandatory retirement, many workers will be physically unable to continue in trades beyond age 65.

In the short-term, conditions have improved from a worker's perspective, the reports states.

For the first time in years, the province's wage scale out-performed the rest of the country in 2004, with average real (after-inflation) hourly earnings of $18.48, largely because labour shortages drove wage hikes and overtime in construction and other industries using skilled trades.

Looking at what workers were actually paid last year, B.C. comes in second behind Alberta for salaried workers, and fourth for hourly workers behind Ontario, Alberta and the Canadian average. But prices in B.C. have only increased by about 12 per cent since 1997, while climbing by 20 per cent in Alberta, and 16 per cent in Ontario and nationally. As a result, wages in B.C. go farther, the CAs say.

In addition, 45,500 new jobs were created, a pace matched only by Alberta when compared with population gains. B.C. also had the country's second narrowest gender gap, with females earning 86.7 per cent of male wages, versus 85 per cent nationally. Manitoba leads at 89 per cent.



Women now account for 37 per cent of all managers in the province but more and more of them are also breaking down gender stereotypes by becoming welders, plumbers, electricians and equipment operators, said Bev Briscoe, chairwoman of the province's Industry Training Authority.

As job growth accelerates and retirements outpace the flow of entry-level workers, she said there is a unique opportunity for young people to find well paid and viable careers in the trades.

"Traditionally, parents have wanted their kids to go to university but we have to make sure that they are aware of opportunities in the trades, and that children can earn post-secondary credentials that will give them mobility and a career."

Unfortunately, while 59.3 per cent of the workforce has a post-secondary diploma, putting B.C. on top of the West, it continues to lag the national average of 61.6 per cent.

As well, B.C.'s employment rate (number of employed persons as a percentage of the population age 15 and over) is the lowest in the West at 60.8 per cent versus 62.7 per cent nationally. The CAs blame that on erratic job creation during the past 10 years coupled with steady growth in population.

The study released Monday is the second of three sections of the BC Check-Up. The CAs will issue their assessment of B.C. as a place to live on October 11.



B.C.'S JOB SECTOR: BABY BOOM AND BUST

1,043,000 jobs to open by 2015

By 2010 it is predicted that -- for the first time ever -- more people will be leaving the B.C. workforce than entering it.

Here's where the shortfalls are forecast to occur:

2003-2015:

• 913,000 jobs to fill through retirement and job growth
• 130,000 jobs through Olympics and related projects

The shortfall:

680,000 B.C. students in Kindergarten to Grade 12. In the unlikely event 100 per cent enter the job force here, the shortfall is still 363,000

average bungalow hits $500K

Vancouver's average bungalow hits $500,000

Cozy character comes with a price

The Vancouver Sun

Tuesday, October 4, 2005

By Derrick Penner

The average price for a Vancouver bungalow hit almost $500,000 in the third quarter of 2005, showing one of the stronger gains in value across B.C., Royal LePage Real Estate said Monday.

Royal LePage's third-quarter housing price survey shows that the price of the average Vancouver bungalow rose 8.8 per cent, year over year, to reach $499,667.

Average, according to Multiple Listing Service listings, translates to the cosy, 1,615 square-foot "character bungalow" at 1807 East Seventh Ave., priced at $499,000. The 93-year-old house near Commercial Drive boasts three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a remodelled kitchen, as well as a full basement and "mortgage helper."

Bill Binnie, president of Royal LePage North Shore, said that with population growth, mortgage rates at historic lows, wages rising, and a low inventory of listings, "the market shouldn't be surprising us."

"It just makes basic sense that if you've got a city that's growing, you're going to have more sales," Binnie said. "And we are a city that is growing in population."

He added that new buyers coming to Vancouver are picking from a limited supply. While listings have increased "marginally" compared with last year, Binnie said that in past years, the market has had two times the number of homes there are today.

The Royal LePage report said that Victoria led the country in price appreciation for the third quarter in a row, with the average price for a bungalow spiking up 18.4 per cent to $348,000. A standard two-storey house in the city rose even faster, showing a 20.3-per-cent price gain at $391,000.

Vancouver, however, remained the most expensive. Regionally, the average bungalow on the city's west side hit $775,000, topping even West Vancouver, which saw the average bungalow go up 6.9 per cent to $695,000.

The average condominium price in Vancouver went up 14.1 per cent, year over year, to reach $254,333, the report said.

Affordability is "not a huge question," according to Binnie, particularly in Vancouver, because it is a comparatively expensive part of Greater Vancouver where homeowners typically are buying and selling using equity that they've built up in properties they already own.

For a professional couple who bought a $300,000 home 15 years ago, have almost paid down their mortgage, and seen $300,000 to $400,000 in appreciation in its value, Binnie said, "a $1-million home is not out of reach."

The condominium market, he added, is a "price-point market [where] a lot of first-time buyers are finding their entry point into the market."

Victoria led the nation in price appreciation for the third quarter in a row with the average price for a bungalow shooting up 18.4 per cent to $348,000, the Royal LePage report said.

Judy Gage, president of Royal LePage Coast Capital Realty in Victoria, said most buyers in the city are Victoria residents who are "moving up, moving down, moving laterally," but a large number of newcomers from Alberta and the U.S., particularly the south, are also moving in.

For people moving in, she added, "prices compare favourably . . . with oceanfront cities elsewhere."

Prices in Greater Vancouver and Victoria are rising faster than the income growth of buyers, said Carol Frketich, regional economist for Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., but the separation is "not as out- of-line as it has been in the past."

Frketich added that between 2000 and 2004, the growth in housing prices outpaced income growth by about two percentage points.

However, during the early 1990s, that margin was eight percentage points.

Frketich noted that price increases over 2005 have been slower than during the previous two years, indicating a possible slowing of the rise, "which would be healthy."

She added that the fundamentals to support growth in the housing market -- population growth, income growth and low interest rates -- are still present, and could drive demand into 2007.

However, Frketich expects that new listings will increase in the coming months, which, combined with the completion of many new construction projects, should help ease current restrictions in supply that are putting pressure on prices.

Peter Simpson, CEO of the Greater Vancouver Home Builders' Association, said the current situation of rising prices is still "a good news, bad news story," depending on whether market participants own property or are trying to make their first purchase.

"If you're in the market looking for a house, and it's your first time in the market, it is frightening," Simpson said. "And [buyers] have told us that. But if you're already in the market and own a house, you're celebrating."

Nationally, the average price of a standard bungalow experienced the highest appreciation in the third quarter of the year, rising by 7.4 per cent from a year earlier to $265,405, followed by a standard condominium, which increased 6.8 per cent to $185,195, Royal LePage Real Estate Services said.

Most of the major price increases were in western Canada where high oil and gas prices have resulted in a booming economy and where the relative number of homes for sale was lowest, it said.

BUNGALOWS BY AREA:

Surrey
$319,000
+8.1%

Richmond
$355,000
+3.2%

North Delta
$275,000
+3.4%

North Vancouver
$495,000
+10%

West Vancouver
$695,000
+6.9%