Contrarian's aviation guru, Adrian Noskwith, thinks the Porter Airlines 50%-off sale may have played a role in the weird pricing I encountered flying from Toronto to Sydney (as Joe MacKay argued), but it's not the whole story. Airline pricing is a weird science at the best of times. When Porter is whipping Air Canada's ass out of Toronto Island, as they are at the moment, this drives airline pricing executives to do even weirder things. But why is it consistently cheaper to fly from Sydney to St. Johns (via Halifax) than from Sydney to Halifax? To check this claim, I priced one-way Air Canada...

27 September, 2011

I am posting from the tarmac at Montréal-Trudeau  Airport, part way through the strangely priced Air Canada flight I wrote about here. Contrarian reader Joe MacKay offers a plausible if partial explanation for Air Canada's charging more for a Halifax-Sydney ticket than the Toronto-Sydney ticket I'm flying on, even though the Halifax-Sydney leg is the same flight on the same plane I'll be taking. I think this was a side effect of a Porter sale. Porter ran 50% off flights from the Island briefly a week or so ago. Air Canada responded (as they do) with a predatory sale on all bookings...

27 September, 2011

Contrarian needed to make a reservation yesterday from Toronto to Sydney. The fact I had to get all the way to Sydney meant I couldn't use Porter Airlines' magnificent service from Toronto Island Airport. Porter is the upstart airline known for its curious, retro habit of treating passengers as welcome guests. Leaving from the Island Airport avoids the time and money wasted getting to and from unspeakable Pearson. So I made a quick check to see if Air Canada could accommodate me from Toronto Island. To my astonishment, I found the following: $219.36 is an almost unheard of low fare. As I snapped...

19 September, 2011

For the better part of a decade, developers have successfully quashed efforts to block new office and residential projects in the city, and then failed to build them. Contrarian reader Marian Lindsay asks: What gives? Does anyone have anything to say about all this procrastination? This seems a ridiculous waste of time and perfectly good space. Does no-one in power find this unacceptable? Can no-one get these projects rolling? And, why, I ask, if these are private developers, are they dependent on government hand-outs? Has this just become the standard way of operating in this province? Yet, it seems to me, that...

15 August, 2011

Developers often portray Halifax as a place where they face a demoralizing obstacle course of preservationists and pencil pushers whenever they try to build anything. But lately, the self-styled progressives have been winning the day, vanquishing opponents  to win approval for project after project. So where are the shovels? A friend of Contrarian took a stroll around downtown Halifax recently and sent us this photo album of projects long since approved but not yet begun.   Sisters missing, not twisted This project, approved in 2007 after a long fight with its detractors, featured two buildings with vertical twists, like licorice sticks. The “Twisted Sisters” were...

13 August, 2011

Five months ago, Cape Breton Regional Police seized a computer belonging to Donnie Calabrese, a young self-employed musician, writer, events coordinator, and community volunteer. Here's his account of what followed, posted today on his Facebook page: On December 22, 2010 the police nabbed my computer. They were executing a search warrant on a case unrelated to me, in fact unrelated to anyone in my dwelling, and had to take all of our computers. Drag. The fellows who came to the house were regretful. My plight did not fall on deaf ears. "Yeah, this happens, we need to take all the...

16 May, 2011

HMS Arc Royal R07 is in stock now! Add to wishlist? Add to cart? Check out now? Alas, the fine print adds, "For items without a price please contact the supplier," Disposal Services Authority, Bicester, Oxon. Act now, and see if Peter MacKay will throw in a few junk submarines. Without torpedoes, of course. H/T: Toby Noskwith...

10 April, 2011

Filmmaker Tony Comstock goes contrarian on Contrarian: We've had a smattering of inbound links from the Dish going back to his days at Time, and our experience is that a link from Andrew Sullivan doesn't generate the volume of inbound traffic, or the cash, it used to. Not nearly. Whatever Tina paid Andy, I think he was smart to take it. I think he's selling while his stock is high, and with more downside than upside. Business is, after all, business. I'm not sure. One of the highest traffic days in Contrarian's short history came fon an inbound link from the Dish --...

24 March, 2011

In response to this, Contrarian reader Corey Clamp asks: Another question, albeit more uncomfortable: Why does it seem acceptable to most that these funds have been lost? We often hear people talking about abuses of our social assistance system: EI fraud, welfare mothers collecting our hard earned tax dollars for nothing, etc., etc. I work in community and have witnessed some of these 'frauds' that others complain of (food money being used for power? Oh my!), but I also witness every day the daunting bureaucracy these individuals must face in order to get their $514 to $850 dollars/month. We seem to worry that...

23 March, 2011

Andrew Sullivan, who writes the Daily Dish blog on The Atlantic's website, is one of these rare commentators who's fun to read when you agree with him, more so when you don't. If he weren't the sole member of the selection committee, he'd be a perennial shoo-in for his own Yglesias Award, which honors partisans willing to criticize their own side when warranted. In that spirit, I'll register my disappointment at Sullivan's recently announced decision to decamp for Tina Brown's Daily Beast, which itself recently merged with the faded Newsweek. I'm a Dish addict, but following Sullivan to the Beast will...

22 March, 2011
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