My netizen pal Angela Mombourquette makes a good case for the proposed seven story housing project that has stirred opposition in the otherwise low-rise, middle-income neighborhood where church elders want to build it. Venerable St. John's United Church, which currently occupies the lot at Windsor and North in a residential neighborhood of Halifax's West End, has reached its best-before date. The congregation proposes to replace it with a building, called "Spirit Place," that will house both a place of worship and an independent living facility for old people — all wrapped into a seven-storey structure. Furthermore, St. John's specifically promotes Spirit Place...

13 February, 2011

Our old friend Ivan Smith, retired teacher and citizen Internet pioneer, takes up the suggestion that distance education could play a big part in reforming Nova Scotia's unaffordable education system: Identify a topic in grade 4 math (or grade 3 or 5) that currently is particularly troublesome for students. (This topic should be something that can be covered properly in not more than three or four class periods.) Identify four teachers, two male and two female, who have substantial experience in teaching this topic, and who have had results significantly better than average. Arrange for each teacher to teach this topic in...

31 January, 2011

Many assume the Dexter Government made a mistake when it asked school boards to consider—and report back on—the consequences of a hypothetical 22 percent cut in their budgets. They say this gave the boards and the NSTU a license to frighten voters, and thus rally support for their comfortable status quo. Contrarian reader (and retired Education Dept. bureaucrat) Wayne Fiander puts the case vividly: Having served two premiers in this province, I can say with some confidence that a real education "right sizing exercise" is necessary to preserve public education. No government has yet tackled this issue correctly. They start...

31 January, 2011

Readers have responded quickly to my challenge for new ideas to deal with the real crisis in provincial education funding, and the dominant theme so far is school size. Stephen Moore wants to eliminate small schools: My suggestion, though it will likely be unpopular, is to close smaller schools. There are many schools with extremely small classes sizes (and some instances of miltiple grades in one room). I agree that small classes can be beneficial and that small schools are a resource for rural communities; however, these are communities with declining enrollments and an aging demographic....

27 January, 2011

Speaking on CBC Cape Breton last week, former Conservative Education Minister Jane Purves offered a rare, even-handed take on Nova Scotia's education funding debate: The government is genuinely looking for savings in education. I think it has been very good at promoting the truth that the syste has cost way more over the last 10 years but there are far fewer students. However, I’m wondering if in retrospect it was wise to floaat this 22 percent because they should have known what was going to happen: And what’s going to happen is that every board is going to come up with...

27 January, 2011

My parking ban post and Bruce Wark's rebuttal has sent readers to their keyboards. The ban enrages North End Halifax homeowner Cliff White: The rage is prolonged by the following sequence of events. Eventually it snows either during the day or during the night. If it's during the day and it's a modest amount the street may get plowed during the same day, with cars parked on both sides of the street. If we are lucky the plow might return in the next few days and do the street again, and if very lucky this will happen at night and some...

26 January, 2011

Bruce Wark, writing from an HRM neighborhood where the ban on overnight parking is not enforced, critiques my critique of the ban: [Y]ou use "reasonable accommodation" as though you have proved it. It is as though you are saying that your assertion in the first paragraph is sufficient to support what you're saying in the second. The rules of logic say that he who asserts must prove. Furthermore, your assertion that "traffic tsar" Ken Reashor "evinces no interest in reasonable accommodation" is a neat, but logically unconvincing way of first, labelling Reashor as a Russian dictator, then glossing over necessary proof...

24 January, 2011

Dartmouth Cole Harbour MLA Andrew Younger has pulled off something remarkable: He has outflanked the most populist politician in the province on an issue of populism. Earlier this week, Younger challenged Transportation Minister Bill Estabrooks to use his ministerial powers to lift HRM's hated overnight winter parking ban, implemented last month by fiat of the city's unelected, unaccountable traffic tzar. The response from Estabrooks, normally one of the most adroit and citizen-connected politicans in Nova Scotia, sounded uncharacteristically  stuffy: I'm not going to interfere in the winter parking ban," he said. "I'm going to wait to see what the councillors advise me and...

22 January, 2011

Citizen-artist and longtime culture critic Andrew Terris likes the realignment of culture portfolios in Tuesday's cabinet shuffle. In addition to explicit cultural entities, the new Department of Communities, Culture, and Heritage will be responsible for the Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management, and the provincial library system. It will administer the offices of Acadian Affairs, Gaelic Affairs, and African Nova Scotian Affairs. Over the years, culture has regularly been batted around within the bureaucracy, often ending up with dubious partners. First there was Culture, Recreation and Fitness (we used to call it Cult, Rec and Fit), then Tourism and...

13 January, 2011

Perhaps this post deserves elaboration. By any measure, dredging Sydney Harbour is a dubious use of public funds. It may yield modest increases in commercial shipping, but dreams of a container terminal here are but a fantasy. Despite the massive boom in world shipping that characterized the 2000s, the two container piers in Halifax continue to limp along at half capacity. Plans for a third pier at Melford are years ahead of those for Sydney, where a putative terminal proponent seems to have vanished. Yet the Cape Breton public has been massively oversold on the concept as the only possible salvation of...

10 December, 2010
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