Arts activist and New Democrat Andrew Terris questions the province's decision to rename the Hantsport Connector after William Hall, VC, the first African Canadian, and the first Canadian sailor, to receive the Victoria Cross. The son of slaves who escaped the American south during the War of 1812, Hall earned the honor for his exceptional bravery during the Siege of Lucknow in the Indian Rebellion of 1857. On Monday, Terris wrote Premier Darrell Dexter: The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was also known as India's First War of Independence, so in essence Nova Scotia’s social democrats are memorializing a black man who helped white...

25 November, 2010

. . . . . . . That schools in the Cape Breton-Victoria School District will close is obvious. Enrolment here has dropped 22 percent over eight years, with no end to the decline in sight, while costs have risen 25 percent over the same period. That Holy Angels High tops the list of candidates for closure is equally obvious. The geriatric Catholic order that owns the school wants to unload it, and has offered it to the board for $750,000. The board estimates it would need another $8 to $10 million in repairs, while newer schools nearby have lots of space. The prospect of closure has provoked the...

17 November, 2010

Mary Cecilia "Bomber" LeBlanc, shown above with L'Arche assistant Mavis at the 2007 Cape Breton Island Film Series party for l'Arche Cape Breton, died peacefully Thursday morning in her home at The Vineyard, a L'Arche residence in Orangedale, surrounded by friends and caregivers. Death came six days before her 60th birthday, and, incredibly, hours before a provincial health bureaucrats were to meet to begin planning her involuntary removal from l'Arche, over protests of family, friends, and caregivers. Mary was a small woman with a steely will and an outsized capacity for getting her own way—and then leading a chorus of laughter about...

07 November, 2010

Yesterday, I posted about the pitfalls facing a minister who receives an official complaint from a well-known political ally, and critiqued Community Services Minister Denise Peterson-Rafuse for her navigation of these tricky waters. Reader Mark Austin offers a broader assessment of the minister: While you are right on your scoring of Minister Peterson-Rafuse on her recent public foray, I think you have to award her a few points for being willing to communicate off the cuff. She strikes me as sincere and earnest. I would give her back one point for that. So, 1-1. Last week, at the Taking...

01 November, 2010

Being a cabinet minister requires adroit balancing skills. On one hand, a minister sometimes performs duties that border on the judicial, and must do so impartially. On the other, a minister has political responsibilities to the governing party and its allies. To judge from her public comments about an impending investigation into allegations of abuse at group homes operated by the Colchester Residential Services Society, Community Services Minister Denise Peterson-Rafuse has an imperfect grasp of both roles. The Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union complained that managers of the Colchester homes had failed to react, or failed to react quickly enough, to...

31 October, 2010

Another media outlet has presented admiring coverage of the campaign by Halifax restaurateur Lil MacPherson and Halifax actress Ellen Page to oppose something one might expect environmentally conscious citizens to campaign for: the productive recycling of composted human waste as a worthy alternative to dumping it, semi-treated, in the ocean. A Contrarian reader describes today's Herald story as: One-sided journalism at its worst. Lil MacPherson is not an environmental scientist. Ellen Page is not an environmental scientist. Nowhere in the entire story is there any effort to present the case in favour of biosolids. Even the headline “Rising in defence of province’s...

28 October, 2010

Political junkies in Nova Scotia tend to keep an eye on elections in adjacent provinces, but not so much in adjacent US states. The Atlantic's James Fallows points to an interesting race for governor of Maine, where independent candidate (and Fallows friend) Eliot Cutler seemed to be coming on strong last week, rising in the polls and winning an avalanche of major newspaper endorsements. As Fallows points out, victory for an independent is not so far-fetched in the Pine Tree State, where two of the last five governors won election as independents. Viewed from a region devoid of political leadership, Cutler...

28 October, 2010

Haligonian Warren Reed objects to the thoughtlessly patronizing word choices many journalists apply to wheelchair-users and those who discriminate them. In an email to two Chronicle-Herald reporters who recently wrote about separate cases of discrimination by Metro Transit and the Nova Scotia Justice Department against wheelchair users, he complained about three sentences in their stories: "The driver even called his supervisor, who confirmed that wheelchair-bound passengers are not allowed on [Bus No.] 60." "However, Sunday morning the driver said that he could get in a lot of trouble for letting wheelchair-bound passengers onto non-wheelchair routes." "Amy Paradis, 16, is quadriplegic and...

25 October, 2010

A group of friends was planning a social gathering Thursday evening in Halifax. One demurred, saying work required her to attend Thursday's public consultation session on the proposed new central library. "If it helps," said another member of the group, "I can pre-summarize the public meeting for you." What a waste of money this — money that could be better spent on roads and health care. I can't believe the city is being so cheap with this design. A bigger new library will draw tourists from around the world. Will it block the view from Citadel Hill? Can we attach this to a new stadium? Why does Halifax...

29 September, 2010

Felix Solomon, a blogger for Reuters, proposes a Unified Theory of New York Biking that Halifax cyclists would do well to heed: Bikes can and should behave much more like cars than pedestrians. They should ride on the road, not the sidewalk. They should stop at lights, and pedestrians should be able to trust them to do so. They should use lights at night. And — of course, duh — they should ride in the right direction on one-way streets. None of this is a question of being polite; it’s the law. But in stark contrast to motorists, nearly all of whom...

12 September, 2010
Show more
Loading...