Province accused of sweetheart dealing — Halifax Metro NDP accused of wasting cash — Chronicle-Herald Chamber: Paving bill will go up — Chronicle-Herald Road builders want government out of paving — Halifax Metro Ideology on the road -- AllNovaScotia A sophisticated lobby by the province's paving contractors appears to have hornswoggled the Halifax media. Correction: the lobby isn't all that sophisticated. Half an hour's research would have debunked the contractors' claim that socialist ideology trumped common sense in government's decision to buy and run its own paving plant. In various forums, the road-builders have argued the province can't possibly pave roads cheaper than they can. There's but...

11 March, 2011

TheAtlantic.com's tech columnist Alexis Madrigal marked the 135th anniversary of Alexander Graham Bell's US patent for the telephone by reproducing a doodle-like drawing of the device Bell submitted with his patent application: That's a fragment; see the whole diagram here. Madrigal found the image among Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers, which are stored at the Library of Congress and available online in a searchable database. Naturally, that set Contrarian searching for terms like "Telegraph House" (9 hits), "Beinn Bhreagh" (100), "Ross Ferry" and "Kempt Head" (zip and zip). A search for "Sydney" produced 47 hits, including this remarkable letter to...

09 March, 2011

Extreme Contrarian friend BT writes: I support execution for people who violate the parking ban. Humanely, of course. Deputize the plow drivers so they can haul the outlaws out of their beds on the spot and shoot them in the back of the head, Chinese-style. ("This ain't no feather-duster I'm packing.") Many Halifax drivers are smarter than coyotes, so after half a dozen or so shootings, the streets will be clear. Real clear, if you get my drift. More moderate Contrarian reader JS has paid three tickets for his son's lack of access to parking at night—the plates are still in Dad's...

08 March, 2011

Contrarian reader Jim Guild writes: In Montreal, which gets a shitload of snow (to use a complex meteorological term), I believe they still allow parking on one half of most residential streets. On odd-numbered days, drivers can park on the side of the street where odd-numbered houses are located; on even-numbered days they can park on the other side. This means that local residents don't have to rent parking for the winter, out-of-towners can visit overnight, Victor Syperek's buddies can still be designated drivers for their drinking friends, and the snow ploughs can still make the roads passable. Reader Gary Campbell...

06 March, 2011

Halifax's unaccountable parking czar Ken Reashor used his arbitrary powers yesterday to end the Halifax peninsula parking ban 26 days earlier than expected. The ban held sway for 84 days, from December 14 through March 4. I can't find actual snowfall data for that period, but the table below (sources here and here) shows average snow conditions in Halifax (the only data available to officials when they impose the ban). So in an average year, the 84-days period from December 14 through March 4 would include about 16 days with snowfall and about 68 without. Why not target the 16 days when a...

05 March, 2011

For now, the last word on Spirit Place (previous instalments here and here) will go to Jeff Scott, pediatrician, Willow Street resident, St. John's Church parishioner, and a guy I admire, having witnessed his courage and grace under pressure when we worked together to get the Sydney Tar Ponds cleaned up. As is often is the case in controversy, both parties are crying foul. The opponents of the church development feel victimized by the “holier than thou, social justice, inclusive ‘nonsense’” and fear they will “bear the burden of living with the impact of this vast structure because St. John’s United Church...

03 March, 2011

Kill the Friendly Giant. That's how Cape Breton University political science professor Tom Urbaniak describes the response of school boards and the Nova Scotia Teachers' Union when the Dexter government sought ideas for reducing the education budget. That's the tactic the CBC used a few years ago when the government announced a cut in its budget: The cuts would force it to cancel Canada's favorite children's show. Parents and children rose up, and the cuts got cut. As former education bureaucrat Wayne Fiander wrote to Contrarian recently, "the school boards and the teachers' union...

02 March, 2011

In response to my post on the Dexter government's obsessive management of routine government communications, Bruce Wark writes: When I arrived in Nova Scotia in October, 1986 as CBC Radio's National Reporter for the Maritimes, I found that the Nova Scotia government's public relations system was generally third rate. I had just come from six years covering the Ontario legislature and was used to dealing every day with a professional civil service and public relations officers who provided accurate information quickly and efficiently. In fact, I realized  during my years at Queen's Park that the Conservatives' decision to create a professional (and...

27 February, 2011

http://contrarian.ca/2011/02/13/spirit-place-how-about-atheist-heights-instead/ Contrarian readers are sharply divided about plans to build a seven-storey old people’s apartment where St. James United Church now stands. (My own misgivings here.) First the Cons: Liz Cunningham, owner of a Charles Street creperie just down the street from the proposed apartment complex, writes: Finally somebody who sees through the smokescreen, holier than though, social justice, inclusive "nonsense." St John's United Church is a developer first and foremost. They are seeking variances on lot coverage, height, density, etc, etc, etc. That is all we should be talking about. My hat’s off though to Louisa Horne and the rest of that group. They...

26 February, 2011

AllNovaScotia.com has a good piece this morning by Paul McLeod (subscribe!) detailing the obsessive control Premier Darrell Dexter's office exercises over all departmental communications, to the point that answers to even the most routine and trivial inquiries often wait hours for a nod of approval from the Central Committee. In a companion piece by McLeod,  ex-Premier Rodney MacDonald's Communications Director Wade Keller, now toiling for Labatt's, endorses the Dexter government's approach as necessary for managing the government's message. Trouble is, communications during Rodney MacDonald's brief term were atrocious—precisely because of excessive message management. As one of Keller's predecessors aptly put it, the...

22 February, 2011
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