Saint Mary's professor Larry Haiven thinks blaming unions for unnecessary snow days is silly: This is part of a syndrome of "if in doubt, blame the unions."  So convenient.  So wrong. A few years ago I was taking a tour of the new Toronto opera house.  We were allowed to go everywhere except on stage, even though the stage was bare, with no current production going on. One of the tour members asked the docent why we couldn't go on stage.  The tour member said he had been on tours of all the great opera houses of Europe and had never been barred...

07 March, 2010

By 7:30 a.m., today, it had stopped snowing at Kempt Head. Total accumulation: 2-5/8ths inches. Cancellations: Cape Breton Victoria School Board; Strait Richmond School Board; NSCC Marconi Campus; NSCC Strait Campus; Mayflower Mall (until noon, except for anchor stores); and pretty much every other event you could think of. Imagine! Two and five-eighth inches of snow! In February, in Nova Scotia! Gadzooks! Why hasn't the army been called? What on earth has happened to us? What has turned us into a nation of cowering, cringing, 'fraidy cats who darsn't get out of bed in the morning, lest something bad happen. Something bad might happen. Get...

17 February, 2010

CBC newsmen Rob Gordon and Craig Paisley left Halifax for Haiti aboard HMCS Athabaskan January 14, but returned home Friday without setting foot on the island. It seems the journalists were confined to the warship because their required training for operating in dangerous environments was not up to date. Both men had received the five-day course, provided by U.K.-based AKE Integrated Risk Solutions, before traveling to Afghanistan several years ago, but their accreditation has expired. As a result, CBC brass ordered the men not to leave the ship. "It's analogous to a driver's licence," said CBC's Atlantic Regional Director Andrew Cochran. "If you...

31 January, 2010

Cliff White defends Ormiston: I happened to catch both the clip of Ormiston holding the hand of, and then carrying, the little boy, and the one of  Cooper tousling the head of another. I didn't think there was any comparison. I was moved by the first and disgusted by the second. Watching Ormiston's reports over the last week or so, it's obvious she has been deeply affected by what she's seeing and reporting on. Her actions conveyed a real human warmth. It's not such a bad thing for viewers to occasionally see that reporters are not just automatons, but  are real people...

25 January, 2010

Tories knock off Bloc in eastern Quebec - Gazette Tories, NDP make gains in by-elections - Star Tories retake former Nova Scotia stronghold - Globe and Mail Byelection win will boost Tories in Quebec: MP - CBC This is likely a losing battle, but could the national press corp please stop calling the Harper Conservatives "Tories?" The Conservative Party of Canada is not simply a renamed Progressive Conservative Party. It was borne of a hostile takeover by the Reform Party, thinly disguised as a merry merger. Headline writers need short substitutes for party names — Grits, NDP, Bloc, etc. — but that's no excuse for...

10 November, 2009

Contrarian reader PC responds to our annoyance at our future king's mispronunciation of the name of Canada's 10th province: I am more troubled by the many Canadians west of the Atlantic Provinces who use the same mispronunciation, including Carol Off on As It Happens just a few nights ago.  How can someone who works for the CBC, where every national program announcement finishes with "half an hour later in ...

08 November, 2009
After hectoring us for five days about Bill, a hurricane that was actually a tropical storm, the media took an only slightly more restrained approach to Danny, a weak tropical storm that actually appears to be a half-day rain shower. CBC still wrung its hands for much of the week, but didn't cancel regular programs. Many contrarian readers responded to the hype, starting after the jump with CW.
29 August, 2009

[UPDATES appended at end] Contrarian reader SL shares our ink-stained correspondent's distaste for the Saint John Telegraph-Journal's malodorous apology to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. She wonders why departing Harper Communications Director Kory Teneycke included the precise timing of his decision to resign so prominently in his resignation talking points. The second paragraph of the CBC story reads: Teneycke said he told Harper just after Canada Day and before the G8 meeting in Italy earlier this month that he was going to step down. That would be, uh, just before the Prime Minister did or did not consume the sacramental Host at Romeo LeBlanc's...

30 July, 2009

Most economists have at least grudgingly accepted the need for deficit spending to replace economic activity lost to the worldwide economic meltdown. But when CBC Radio's The Current sought to analyze Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's miscalculation of the federal deficit, the national broadcaster's idea of balance was to match Harper booster Janet Ecker with anti-tax zealot Kevin Gaudet. Ecker is a former Ontario Tory finance minister who now toils for the Toronto Financial Services Alliance. Halifax native Gaudet is national director of the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation. With balance like that, who needs a center?...

28 May, 2009