[See update below.] Don't miss the Cabot Trail Writers' Festival in Tarbot and St. Anne's. The creators of this annual event, now in its third year, have put together a fantastic program this year. On Friday night, last year’s Halifax Poet Laureate, Shauntay Grant, will premiere five spoken word pieces, commissioned for the festival and inspired by five sculptures by North River blacksmith Gordon Kennedy. Several of the festival participants will present workshops Saturday, and the evening program includes readings by Nova Scotia native and Giller-prize winner Johanna Skibsrud, Inverness-born short story writer Alexander MacLeod, and music by the jazz quartet The Synchronics. A...

28 September, 2011

I don't know which is more disturbing: The NDP Government's success in persuading a Supreme Court justice to impose a $5,725 fine on a man found innocent of the crime with which he had been charged; or Finance Minister Graham Steele's crowing about this 'victory" in a news release. [caption id="attachment_8539" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Acting Justice Minister Graham Steele [not exactly as illustrated"]"][/caption]CBRM's finest didn't have the goods on John Joseph Reynolds.They raided his Sydney Mines apartment last February, seized a bit of pot and and some hidden cash, but they couldn't prove he was selling marijuana, and they knew it. So they withdrew...

22 September, 2011

There's a ton of reader reaction to Contrarian's dustup with Nova Scotia's Chief Electoral Officer Christine McCulloch (my original post here; McCulloch's response here). I intend to post a selection shortly, but what with having been out late last night, and having to wrangle opening night at the fall season of the Cape Breton Island Film Series later today, it will have to keep. But why wait any longer for this? Within eight hours of my original post, one resourceful Contrarian reader managed to crack McCulloch's digital locks and return the 2010 donations list to the traditional open pdf format, one that permits...

08 September, 2011

Yesterday I complained that Nova Scotia's Chief Electoral Officer, Christine McCulloch, had impaired the usefulness of her annual tally of political donations by rendering them impossible to search electronically. Ms. McCulloch responds: I make no apology for doing our utmost to protect the privacy of Nova Scotians while meeting the obligation of full disclosure of political contributions required under the Members and Public Employees Disclosure Act (MPEDA). The purpose of the disclosure provision of MPEDA is to provide everyone with access to the identity of contributors to recognized parties and candidates and how much they have contributed. That is met in our...

06 September, 2011

Before the end of June, each year, Nova Scotia law requires the Chief Electoral Officer to a publish all the political contributions made in the previous year. For the years 2007, 2008, and 2009, Christine McCulloch complied with the law, posting the information to the Elections Nova Scotia website in a manner that was accessible, searchable, printable, and even, with effort, downloadable to a citizen's own database. This gave every citizen the tools to determine whether contractors who won big roadbuilding contracts, storeowners who won liquor commission franchises, or communications consultants (like me!) who were selected for Communications Nova Scotia's Standing...

05 September, 2011

The International Symbol of Accessibility (ISA), more widely but less correctly known as the handicapped sign, is evolving. The original symbol (far left), designed by Susanne Koefoed in 1968, was pretty much just a stylized wheelchair. The International Commission on Technology and Accessibility (ICTA), a committee of Rehabilitation International, humanized the it by adding a head (second from left). This is the icon we are most familiar with. Critics complain that its static nature stigmatizes the wheelchairs as instruments of helplessness and passivity.  In 2005, VSA, an international organization on arts and disability, produced a more active icon implying self-propulsion (third from left). At least one store,...

05 September, 2011

Back on the last day of June, CBC Radio's Information Morning program put Justice Minister Ross Landry on the hot seat for the Dexter Government's embrace of the Civil Forfeiture Act, a right-wing scheme to short-circuit the presumption of innocence. More accurately, the program's listers put him on the hot seat. The act lets cops seize property from suspects as long as they can convince a court the assets probably came from criminal activity. No proof needed. Just probability. As a standard of justice, it's more Queen of Hearts ("First the verdict; then the trial") than Justice Blackstone  ("Better ten guilty...

15 August, 2011

Here's a bit of contrarian sporting news that escaped my attention when it happened April 18:  The 20 fastest finishers in the men's 2011 Boston Marathon had one thing in common: All raced in wheelchairs. Our friend Warren Reed highlights this remarkable (but largely unremarked upon) fact in an article for the Journal of Medical Ethics decrying the use of outdated terms about disabilities in scholarly writing by medical researchers. It's a point Reed has gently chided Contrarian about in the past. In an informal search of half a dozen medical journals, Reed found 8,680 articles in which the word "wheelchair" was...

11 August, 2011

Civil Rights activist Warren Reed took the time to read the complex documents setting forth the Dexter Government's furtive plan to slash medical benefits for residents of special care homes. The documents were posted here last night. The Dexter Government shelved the plan, which would have required residents making less than $2,000 per year to pay for needed medical supplies, dental treatments, vision care, and certain drugs including, in some cases, insulin and anti-seizure medication. The unannounced cuts, developed without consultation, were to have been implemented Canada Day, but were put on hold late Thursday after the Canadian Press wire...

01 July, 2011

The Nova Scotia Department of Community Services (DCS) backed off a clandestine plan to cut medical services for disabled Nova Scotians living in special care homes late Friday Thursday afternoon, hours before it was to take effect. The province had planned to implement the unannounced cuts over the Canada Day long weekend, but shelved the plan hours after the Canadian Press News Agency sought comment from DCS Minister Denise Peterson-Rafuse. Operators of special care homes were told the policy was "on hold" in late afternoon emails from frontline care coordinators. The policy would have curtailed coverage for a wide range of medical...

30 June, 2011
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