The Sydney Tar Ponds cleanup is proceeding apace. The final section of the North Pond is now undergoing solidification and stabilization, a process that increases the bearing capacity of the sediments, and reduces their (already low) water solubility. Capping has been completed in the South Pond and large sections of the North Pond. Seeding and sodding are underway. Here's how the South Pond looks from soon-to-be-reopened Ferry Street: Here's the North Pond, viewed from the Ferry Street Bridge, with the former Sysco crane, now operated by Provincial Energy Ventures, in the background, and Muggah Creek meandering gracefully through the property: When it reopens...

20 July, 2012

The background: On June 11, Community Services Minister Denise Peterson-Rafuse agreed to suspend her department's tender call to replace the addiction services formerly provided by Cape Breton's Talbot House Recovery Centre, and pledged to personally lead direct negotiations with Talbot's board for a new contract to deliver those services. Just 25 days later, without holding a single meeting with the board, Peterson-Rafuse told Talbot House she would not meet with them after all, and would instead proceed with the tender call. Talbot's board chair, Sydney psychologist John Gainer, issued the following statement Wednesday: The Board of Directors of Talbot House was informed in a letter dated...

19 July, 2012

Tim Bousquet, pugnacious news editor of the Halifax news and entertainment weekly, The Coast, responds to Contrarian's chiding of local media for failing to cover issues surrounding The Old Mill's closure. Hardly a week goes by that someone isn't asking me — usually angrily — "Why isn't The Coast covering issue X???" There are a variety of reasons. The Coast — which is basically me, plus whatever freelancers I can lure with a minuscule budget, and the occasional intern — isn't covering an issue. Sometimes the issues are too far afield, out of our distribution area, so aren't a priority. Sometimes other media...

18 July, 2012

For four months this spring, Community Services Minister Denise-Peterson Rafuse blindly defended her department's slandering of an innocent priest, and its incompetent intervention into the operation of Talbot House, a much-admired, 53-year-old community-built addiction recovery center forced to close after the department engineered the removal of its executive director on specious grounds. Then in June, when she finally deigned to meet with the Cape Breton institution's board of directors, she had a momentary and welcome change of heart. As I wrote then: Contrary to expectations expressed here Monday, today’s meeting between Community Services Minister Denise Peterson-Rafuse and the Directors of Talbot...

18 July, 2012

Saturday's guest post about the closure and pending demolition of The Old Mill, a seedy Wyse Road bar housed in the only surviving part of Dartmouth's historic Rope Works, criticized peninsular Halifax heritage buffs for not trying to save the building. Our correspondent also said a new Sobeys supermarket on the site would lead to closure of the community Sobeys in Woodside, making life harder for impoverished mothers and seniors. Beverley Miller, a member of the Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia board of directors, responds: Preservationists can only do something if they know about a pending demolition...

18 July, 2012

A couple of years ago, a friend and I travelled to Inverness for a celebration honoring the wonderful author and columnist, Frank MacDonald. On the off-chance alcohol might be consumed, we sought lodging at one of the town's two motels. Our choices were Grim and Grimmer. Inverness had many charms — spectacular setting, fascinating history, unique culture, magnificent beach — but no economic engine since its coal mines shut down in the 1960s. Boarded up storefronts and seedy hand-painted signs for the few surviving businesses offered silent testimony to the community's entrenched gloom. Into this sad civic concoction came Ben Cowan-Dewer and Allie...

15 July, 2012

It's easy to overlook the loss we've suffered as traditional news outlets contract in Nova Scotia and elsewhere. This message from a former Halifax journalist, unpublished for four years, shows he has lost neither the itch nor the knack: My wife, a friend and I went to the Old Mill tavern Thursday night to have a beer and laugh at a Dartmouth dive on the eve of its destruction. What we discovered, instead, was a fascinating story of history, community, and class. The huge wooden beams running across the pub’s ceiling – six of them, at least 16 inches on the side,...

14 July, 2012

Dávur í Dali, a social sciences student at the University of the Faroe Islands, offers this friendly correction to our post about how Paul Watson's TV attack on the Faroese pilot whale hunt backfired: I am writing to you to correct a small misunderstanding in one of your posts on the Faroe Islands pilot whale hunt. Your post implies that we actively hunt whales, as someone would hunt deer or similar game. This is not correct. The whale hunts are not prepared or planned events. They happen when we sight a pod of whales swimming through our fjords or in general vicinity...

14 July, 2012

Phishers aren't just Nigerian schoolboys any more. They're getting reasonably sophisticated: Three factors almost hooked me: I actually am a CIBC (credit card) customer. Always delete any "security message" from a financial institution where you don't have an account. The URL (in dark blue text) looks like a genuine CIBC website (www.cibconline.cibc.com/...

14 July, 2012
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