Chickenburger, the iconic Halifax restaurant chain, recently opened a new outlet in a renovated building on Queen St., just off Spring Garden Road. Despite the requirements of the NS Building Code Act, the renovations did not include wheelchair access. No one who uses a wheelchair can eat at Chickenburger. No one who uses a wheelchair can work at Chickenburger. How can this happen in 2012? How can a community-spirited businessman like Mickey MacDonald thumb his nose at potential customers and employees who use wheelchairs? More importantly, how did the city allow this to happen? HRM is one of the most over-regulated cities in...

31 July, 2012

Spoken word artist and social advocate Ardath Whynacht won't be taking part in the public consultations  MT&L and Myrgan Inc. are conducting to smooth the way for Joe Ramia's controversy-plagued Nova Centre in downtown Halifax. Her post at the Halifax Media Co-op website didn't mince words: To engage a single demographic in an orchestrated PR stunt, letting them believe that Joe Ramia and his development cronies will actually entertain the idea of having an after-school drop in centre in their luxury hotel is a crime against democracy. It is a lie. Consultation without a commitment to listen to the citizens is a PR...

26 July, 2012

Sydney Mines native John Hugh Edwards is a life-long New Democrat, the kind of party stalwart who mans phones during election campaigns, works polls on voting day, and faithfully attends NDP rallies and conventions. Twice, the longtime St. Francis Xavier extension worker ran as the party's federal candidate in Cape Breton - The Sydneys, mounting a respectable challenge to Liberal MP Mark Eyking. Don't miss his letter to the Cape Breton Post about Community Services Minister Denise Peterson-Rafuse's treatment of Talbot House: For decades, the staff and volunteers at Talbot House have provided Cape Breton with incredible service to those among us...

24 July, 2012

The Sydney Tar Ponds cleanup is proceeding apace. The final section of the North Pond is now undergoing solidification and stabilization, a process that increases the bearing capacity of the sediments, and reduces their (already low) water solubility. Capping has been completed in the South Pond and large sections of the North Pond. Seeding and sodding are underway. Here's how the South Pond looks from soon-to-be-reopened Ferry Street: Here's the North Pond, viewed from the Ferry Street Bridge, with the former Sysco crane, now operated by Provincial Energy Ventures, in the background, and Muggah Creek meandering gracefully through the property: When it reopens...

20 July, 2012

The background: On June 11, Community Services Minister Denise Peterson-Rafuse agreed to suspend her department's tender call to replace the addiction services formerly provided by Cape Breton's Talbot House Recovery Centre, and pledged to personally lead direct negotiations with Talbot's board for a new contract to deliver those services. Just 25 days later, without holding a single meeting with the board, Peterson-Rafuse told Talbot House she would not meet with them after all, and would instead proceed with the tender call. Talbot's board chair, Sydney psychologist John Gainer, issued the following statement Wednesday: The Board of Directors of Talbot House was informed in a letter dated...

19 July, 2012

For four months this spring, Community Services Minister Denise-Peterson Rafuse blindly defended her department's slandering of an innocent priest, and its incompetent intervention into the operation of Talbot House, a much-admired, 53-year-old community-built addiction recovery center forced to close after the department engineered the removal of its executive director on specious grounds. Then in June, when she finally deigned to meet with the Cape Breton institution's board of directors, she had a momentary and welcome change of heart. As I wrote then: Contrary to expectations expressed here Monday, today’s meeting between Community Services Minister Denise Peterson-Rafuse and the Directors of Talbot...

18 July, 2012

When information is presented in a format computer programs can read, as opposed to a static, telephone directory-style list, fresh insights spring from the data. Contrarian friend Gus Reed prepared a compendium of revelations arising from Elections Nova Scotia's annual political donations report—once we liberated it from the cloistered format favored by the former Chief Electoral Officer. Some examples: Does Nova Scotia have a party of the rich? Not according to the donations made in 2010. When Gus plotted the proportion of donations against their size, all three major parties showed a remarkably similar distributions: Vote tallies for the three major parties in...

22 June, 2012

In a series of posts last September, Contrarian revealed that Nova Scotia's Chief Electoral Officer had degraded the format used to report political donations over $50. For the first time, she released the file as a scanned PDF that cannot be searched or readily copied to other formats. Helpful Contrarian readers promptly hacked* McCulloch's degraded files, enabling us to republish the data in the searchable, text-grab-friendly format used in previous years’ reports. Today's long overdue follow-up provides the data in two new, even more useful and interesting formats: An Excel spreadsheet readers can view, parse, and re-use in ways limited only by their imaginations and...

21 June, 2012

Contrary to expectations expressed here Monday, today's meeting between Community Services Minister Denise Peterson-Rafuse and the Directors of Talbot House brought the two sides closer together, and may lead to the reopening of Talbot House under the leadership of a vindicated Fr. Paul Abbass. Peterson-Rafuse, persistently criticized here over the last two months, took a crucial step back from the brink. For now at least, she has cancelled her department's plan to issue a tender for the addiction recovery services formerly provided by Talbot House. The two sides will negotiate terms for Talbot's reopening with government funding. The Cape Breton Post's...

12 June, 2012

Community Services Minister Denise Peterson-Rafuse will finally sit down with the Talbot House board of directors Tuesday, but only after her department's shrewd mandarins have pre-empted any actual purpose the meeting might serve. The Talbot board asked for the session months ago, seeking a peaceful resolution to her department's reckless assaults on the half-century-old, community-built addiction recovery center. Peterson-Rafuse readily agreed to the meeting in principle, then bobbed, weaved, and stalled until her officials rendered it meaningless. First she couldn't meet because the legislature was sitting. Then she postponed again, just long enough for the department to announce the RFP* it hopes...

12 June, 2012
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