A roll call of Cape Breton musical greats gathered at the Dubinsky Family farm in Englishtown Sunday to celebrate the 70th (!) birthday of songwriter Leon Dubinsky (Rise Again; Josephine, She's Got Her Diamond; Workin' at the Woolco). Pictured here are Angelo Spinazzola, Ronnie "Drive'er McIvor" MacEachern, Fred Lavery, Scott MacMillan, Evie Dubinsky Carnat, and Leon. Singer Max MacDonald and keyboardist Ralph Dillon, original members of Buddy and the Boys, were also on hand. The party, which also drew generous representation from Cape Breton's dwindling Jewish community, included tributes to Leon and Evie's father, ship chandler Newman Dubinsky, whose legendary summer...

04 July, 2011

[caption id="attachment_8330" align="alignright" width="301" caption="Director Ashey McKenzie confers with cast member"][/caption] A few years ago, two Dal SMU students from New Waterford showed up at one of my movies and offered to help. Within a few weeks, they were organizing film selections for the following season, and doing a better job of it than I ever had. In their spare time, Ashley McKenzie and Nelson MacDonald organized the Coastal Arts Initiative which borrowed a basement room in former convent, transformed it into a cool exhibition space, and put on a series of innovative shows by a bunch of young New Waterford...

02 July, 2011

Civil Rights activist Warren Reed took the time to read the complex documents setting forth the Dexter Government's furtive plan to slash medical benefits for residents of special care homes. The documents were posted here last night. The Dexter Government shelved the plan, which would have required residents making less than $2,000 per year to pay for needed medical supplies, dental treatments, vision care, and certain drugs including, in some cases, insulin and anti-seizure medication. The unannounced cuts, developed without consultation, were to have been implemented Canada Day, but were put on hold late Thursday after the Canadian Press wire...

01 July, 2011

The Nova Scotia Department of Community Services (DCS) backed off a clandestine plan to cut medical services for disabled Nova Scotians living in special care homes late Friday Thursday afternoon, hours before it was to take effect. The province had planned to implement the unannounced cuts over the Canada Day long weekend, but shelved the plan hours after the Canadian Press News Agency sought comment from DCS Minister Denise Peterson-Rafuse. Operators of special care homes were told the policy was "on hold" in late afternoon emails from frontline care coordinators. The policy would have curtailed coverage for a wide range of medical...

30 June, 2011

Everyone knew the NDP, once in power, would have to put some water in its red wine. In fact, Darrell Dexter began the process long before winning the 2009 election, and most voters approve the moderating effect of incumbency. But there's a difference between moderating extreme views and abandoning core democratic principles as the Dexter Government has done in its embrace of the Civil Forfeiture Act. The act gives police and prosecutors a way around the presumption of innocence that has guided civilized countries for centuries. Simply put, it lets police set aside the bother of building a criminal case and proceed,...

30 June, 2011

Nova Scotians could be forgiven for feeling confused about prospects for shale gas fracking in the province. Is shale gas a sensible short-term approach to reduced carbon emissions? Or an environmental calamity waiting to happen? Those who stand to profit from shale gas, and governments desperate for energy solutions that won't cripple the economy, are predictably bullish on our shale gas reserves. Many environmentalists oppose fracking with the unreassuring obduracy they bring to every issue (see: the nonsensical flap over biosolids). I have no idea who's right about shale gas, but today's New York Times offers a massive dump of insider documents purporting to...

26 June, 2011

With the coal mining neighborhoods of Sydney Mines, Florence, Bras d’Or, and Alder Point, and the unionized workforce at Marine Atlantic in North Sydney, Cape Breton North ought to be fertile ground for the NDP. Instead, except for a single election in 1978, it has brought the party nothing but heartache. In a 2001 by-election, it put an early end to Helen MacDonald’s term as leader, passing her up in favor of Cecil Clarke, who insisted the riding needed a member on the Hamm government’s side. In the 2009 NDP, it stopped 165 votes short of joining the massive NDP tide....

26 June, 2011
When Hugo Lindgren took over as editor of New York in 1997, he found the magazine’s staff grieving over the firing of his predecessor, Kurt Andersen, now a best-selling novelist. Now top dog at the New York Times Magazine, Lindgren reports that Andersen unwittingly left behind a gift.
Tacked to the bulletin board in the office I took over was a single page titled “Words We Don’t Say.” It contained, as you might surmise, words and phrases that Kurt found annoying and didn’t want used in his magazine.
The list [pdf] stands up pretty well, but I’ll bet Contrarian readers could nominate a few submissions. I would allow indie, and nominate the following additions:
Journey (except meaning “long trip”) The rest, as they say, is history Speak to [a topic]
After the jump, the original list:
26 June, 2011

In 2000, the Jazzland amusement park opened on filled-in swampland at the eastern edge of New Orleans. Purchased and re-branded two years later by the giant Six Flags amusement park chain, the park closed in 2005 as Hurricane Katrina bore down on it, and never reopened. Various photographers have infiltrated the site and produced eerie photos of the defunct place of fun, 75 of which form a phantasmagorical display at the lovethesepics website. Wrote one photographer: I spotted the haunted lines of its empty roller coaster from the Ninth Ward off Interstate 510 while playing tourist in 2009 and begged a friend...

26 June, 2011

The reliably sage Jim Meek comes a cropper this morning with a column plucking nits off Canada's medical marijuana policy. The occasional Herald columnist, Nova Scotia's best, professes shock that the number of Canadians with federal permission to smoke dope for medicinal purposes has swelled to 10,000. Well, that's 0.03 percent of Canada's population, or about the number who support Elvis for Prime Minister—not exactly a blown floodgate. Nor is the other number Meek decries, the 1,400 Canadians who received permission to grow the drug after Ottawa proved incompetent to deliver reliable quality. Along the way, Meek finds one grower who...

25 June, 2011
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