MicCHEK

In this episode we chat with Nanaimo's Whitney Wood about what it was like competing on Jeopardy!

In this episode we get a crash-course in missing middle housing. We've asked an expert in housing development to explain what he thinks are the five biggest myths about Victoria's missing middle housing initiative.

In this episode Joe and Kyle sit down with the man who opened Santiago's in James Bay. Tim Strachan explains how he wanted to bring small-plate tapas to the city and discusses the ups and downs of running a restaurant over the years.

In this episode Joe gives us five restaurants in Greater Victoria that have impressed him over the last month or so. He'll break down what dish to try and we'll even hear from some of the restaurant owners.

In this episode we take a look at the hundreds of illegal Airbnb operators in the City of Victoria and find out why the city is struggling to regulate this industry. We sit down with Laura Brougham and Nicholas Pescod, the two digital editors at Chek who spent months digging into this issue to learn about the problem, how it's playing into Victoria's housing crisis, and what the solution to fixing it may be.

In this episode MicCHEK kicks off "Top Slice Victoria", the search for the best pizza by the slice in Greater Victoria. Listen as our panel blindly tastes, discusses, and scores the first slices in our hunt for a champion (First slice gets tastes at the 14:00 mark). Slices will be scored based on five categories: taste, toppings, crust, appearance, and value. In the end we'll have a winning pizza place for each category but remember, this is just the first ten slices. There's a long way to go until we get through EVERY slice in the region. Will the winners remain on top? Stay tuned to find out.

In this eye-opening discussion, Joe and Kyle learn about one family’s connection to the earliest days of Victoria. Fern Perkins’ ancestors were the first Métis family to call Victoria home. Her great, great, great, grandfather Charles Ross was friends with Sir James Douglas and helped build Fort Victoria for the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1843. In a surprising twist that Fern didn’t realize until later in life, her husband Mark also had ties to the early days of Victoria. Mark’s great great great grandfather was Peter Skene Ogden, the man Ogden Point is named after. In this episode we learn about Fern’s journey in discovering her Indigenous past. We also discuss reconciliation, land acknowledgements, the history of W̱SÁNEĆ First Nations, and Fern’s message to everyone during this National Indigenous History Month.

Who sells the best pizza by the slice in Greater Victoria? That's the question we're preparing to answer as MicCHEK launches its first official food ranking. The plan? To have a panel of culinary experts taste, then score every slice of pizza in Greater Victoria that can be purchased by the slice. In this episode, Joe and KC Kyle ask award-winning CBC journalist Justin McElroy (BC's #1 expert in all things lists and rankings...and just an all-around good guy) for direction and guidance on how to execute what's being called "Top Slice Victoria".

In this episode we pick up where we left off last episode with an idea for one of Victoria’s most underrated buildings that doesn’t get a lot of attention. Situated where Humboldt, Government, and Wharf Street collide you’ll find Victoria’s Tourism Centre. It used to be an auto shop and an Esso Station and if our guest had his way, it would have been home to Club Balisage, the hottest jazz club on the west coast.

It was one of the biggest events ever held on Vancouver Island and if one local architect had his way, it would've been on a barge. Actually multiple barges. In this episode we learn about the plan that helped Victoria land the 1994 Commonwealth Games. In the end though, it was just too costly and too extreme to pull off.