20 Feb Sunny with excessive caution

It’s a gorgeous day at Contrarian world headquarters—crisp and sunny with a few fair-weather clouds and not a hint of precipitation. Here’s the official version, courtesy of Google:

It’s the kind of day that puts Vitamin D back in our systems and makes us feel winter isn’t such an grim thing after all. Every business on the island is open.

And all schools are closed.

The Cape Breton-Victoria District School Board, known  for its hair trigger school closure protocols, has been rendered dysfunctional by the death of a high school student last week.

The accident was horrific. Two lads were engaged in horseplay when one of them slipped under the wheels of a school bus. It was the kind of event that makes every parent suck in their breath in realization that a random mishap could shatter their world in the most ghastly way imaginable.

It was horrible, but it was not weather-related. Short of closing schools at the first forecast of a snow, and reopening on Queen’s Birthday, no school closure policy, no matter how timorous, could have averted this mishap.

On the contrary, in tragic irony, this boy’s death provides the ultimate answer to uber-cautious bureaucrats who defend unnecessary school closures by reciting the mantra that, “If I can prevent one tragedy…” The fact is we cannot prevent every tragedy. We do not live in a zero-risk world, and we should not try to make our world risk free.

Although there is no school today, Cape Breton students are nevertheless receiving a powerful lesson. They are learning work is optional—it can be cancelled or skipped without consequences. No one will be downgraded. Everyone will be paid. They are learning winter is a season to be feared—a time to cower indoors and contemplate the paralyzing thought that Something Bad Might Happen.

In short, the Cape Breton-Victoria District School System is teaching exactly the wrong lesson for young Cape Bretoners in the 21st Century. And the rest of Nova Scotia’s school boards are no better.

I tried to contact School Superintendent Beth MacIsaac to get her rationale for closing school on this large day, but staff had been invited to come to work late, and the board’s phones went unanswered.

Meanwhile, at 9 a.m., just a few kilometres down the road from the school board office, Ski Ben Eoin tweeted: