The following professions have organized themselves into professional regulatory bodies with statutory powers and duties enacted by the Nova Scotia Legislature: Agrologists, architects, barristers, chartered professional accountants, chiropractors, cosmetologists, counselling therapists, dental hygienists, dental technicians, denturists, dieticians, dispensing opticians, embalmers and funeral directors, engineering technicians and technologists, interior designers, land surveyors, licensed practical nurses, licensed professional planners, medical laboratory technologists, medical radiation technologists, midwives, occupational therapists, optometrists, paramedics, pharmacists, physicians and surgeons, physiotherapists, professional engineers, professional geoscientists, dentists, psychologists, public accountants, real estate agents, real estate appraisers, barbers, music teachers, registered nurses, professional foresters, respiratory therapists, social workers, stockbrokers, veterinarians. The following professions...

13 March, 2018

Outreach!  PayPal!  High quality content! Finally, blog posts that literally write themselves. Untold riches await....

08 March, 2018

Seventeen months after its premiere at TIFF, the Cape Breton-made feature film "Werewolf" had its New York debut last week, screening at a 2nd Avenue art house. The New York Times and the New Yorker marked the occasion with accolades of startling warmth. Times reviewer Glenn Kenney wrote that contemporary films about drug addiction often affect a tone of grim austerity, but added, "[T]he particulars of [New Waterford director Ashley] McKenzie’s approach, and the excellent work of her lead actors, bring new value to the mode." (The actors in question are Cape Bretoners Bhreagh MacNeil and Andrew Gillis, pictured above.) The performers...

04 March, 2018

View of Cape Breton Island on Friday, March 2, from 710 km. This detail, from a much larger NASA Terra satellite image, was created by hydrologist Fred Baechler. The larger image shows northern Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Cape Breton, and is well worth a look. Unusually for this time of year, the Bras d'Or Lake is largely ice-free aside from St. Patrick's Channel and the basins between Orangedale and Malagawatch. Lake Ainsley, Loch Lomand, Lake Uist, St. Ann's Harbour, Aspy Bay, South Harbour, and the Mira remain ice-covered. There's not much snow on Cape Breton, even less on the...

03 March, 2018

The template for rolling out the Glaze report showed every sign of a government determined to wrest control of education policy from the union that has dominated it for 50 years: Release the report. Announce its acceptance. Call an early legislative session to ram it through. Even the predictable union hullabaloo that followed felt oddly unthreatening. Premier Stephen McNeil had faced down the NSTU on bread-and-butter issues during the contract fight; surely he could hold firm on mere administrative reforms. It was damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead. Then McNeil blinked. [caption id="attachment_16963" align="alignright" width="500"] And the winner is...

01 March, 2018

If you comment on Facebook or Twitter in support of the Nova Scotia government’s proposed changes to education governance, a Confederacy of Denouncers will arise to smite you. The Confederacy is large, intemperate, and prone to personal attacks. It accuses any who dissent from NSTU orthodoxy of “having a hate on for teachers.” It presumes any who support the government plan must be Liberal shills. It insists its critics have no right to opine about an issue on which it is the sole authority. It betrays an incapacity for logical thought that makes one weep over Nova Scotia's antediluvian teacher-hiring methods. [caption...

27 February, 2018

Here are some surprising Statistics Canada numbers about the Nova Scotia school system. From 2003 to 2016, enrollment fell by 21.4 percent (vs. 5.8 percent across Canada). The number of full-time teachers also fell, but by only 5.8 percent. (Across Canada, teacher  numbers increased 11.8%.) Over the same period, the student-teacher ratio in Nova Scotia schools improved from 15.7 students per teacher to 13.1 students per teacher.  (The ratio across Canada is 15.1 to 1—about where we were a decade ago.) From 2003 to 2015: Government spending on Nova Scotia schools increased 52.6 percent (vs. 60.1 percent across Canada). Government spending...

22 February, 2018

  Halifax Council's Transportation Committee meets today to consider accessible transit, including accessible places on regular buses, the Access-a-Bus, and accessible taxis. City staff will make a presentation, and if past performance is any guide, they're expected to wash their hands of efforts to increase the pathetic number of accessible taxis, currently at less than three percent—and falling. Here, in graphic format, are the results to date of Halifax's failure to  discrimination by taxi companies:  ...

22 June, 2017

  When an official story doesn't ring true, a journalist with good instincts sometimes decides to tug at the loose threads—and keep tugging until the story unravels. Thank you to Bill Turpin for continuing to tug the threads of the official story about a 41-year-old Spryfield man who died in the Halifax Police lockup one year ago last Friday. Official non-story is more like it. The province's Serious Incident Response Team (SIRT) has been investigating the man's death, but neither it nor the Halifax police will say what happened—or even reveal the dead man's name. This last omission constitutes an extraordinary and protest-worthy level of secrecy. One full year after...

18 June, 2017
Show more
Loading...