[caption id="attachment_6492" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Tanya Davis"][/caption] Sandbar Music of Charlottetown, PEI, has released a soundtrack MP3 of  the hit YouTube video, How To Be Alone. Tanya Davis wrote and performed the poetry and music at the heart of the piece; Andrea Dorfman directed the film, which had been viewed just over 600 times when featured here July 30. (Find a partial account of its viral progress toward the current 1.4 million hits here.) It's plain that, aside from one crankypants Globe and Mail reviewer, lots of people want to hear music and poetry like Davis's, and see moving pictures like Dorfman's. The traditional distribution...

08 September, 2010

Until its cave-in to Verizon last month, Google was the most prominent corporate advocate of net neutrality—but only for others, not for itself. Recently, Google has applied self-serving filters to its search results in a manner reminiscent of, say, China. Late in July, Google searches began filtering out any results for the website bestofyoutube.com, an aggregator of videos from the Google-owned video site. I can understand why Google might have a problem with bestofyoutube, which, it could be argued, infringes Google's intellectual property by poaching YouTube content. Mind you, it would be a brazen case for Google to make, given that YouTube itself...

08 September, 2010

When John "Jack" William Carew, 82, of  Shores Cove on Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula, died Saturday, his family faced the usual quandary of whether to accept flowers or request donations to a favorite charity. Mr. Carew's obituary in the St. John's Evening Telegram offered a uniquely Newfoundland solution: Blueberries and bakeapples will be accepted in lieu of flowers. A relative of yours, Stan? Hat tip: JP....

02 September, 2010

David Alexander Harley, a.k.a. Gen. J. C. Trail, reports that the Cape Breton version of the Long-Form Census has only two questions: 1.  How's she goin? and: 2.  What's your father's name?"...

02 September, 2010

Contrarian reader JS writes: Most if not all news accounts of such accidents provide no information about the factors involved. From your account it is clear that  a) slowing down during bad conditions; b) having proper approved child safety restraints; and c) operating a vehicle with a good safety rating are the right ingredients for safe driving with a family.  This account is far more valuable to the world in general than a news report that simply says a head-on collision sent five to hospital with non life-threatening injuries and the driver of a second vehicle was killed. I am a motorcyclist,...

01 September, 2010

The five occupants of this 2008 Dodge Grand Caravan — my son, daughter-in-law, and three grandchildren — survived a head-on collision on the TransCanada Highway Thursday evening. I offer the following details in hopes that other families will find it helpful to understand the factors that decisively improved their chances of survival. Shortly before 5 p.m, August 26, my family was westbound on Route 105 in Lexington, Nova Scotia, just north of the Canso Causeway, when a severe rain squall hit the area. Daughter-in-law Jenn had just slowed down when an eastbound car apparently hydroplaned and spun across the centerline into...

31 August, 2010

What's up with Queens County, Nova Scotia, and orange vehicles? Top to bottom: Ford Ranger 4x4, Charleston; Harley Davidson, White Point; Custom two-door, Liverpool....

30 August, 2010

The New York Times previews a play and a forthcoming children's book about a nearly forgotten travel guide that helped African Americans (and African Canadians) navigate the segregated accommodations that prevailed into the 1960s. A Harlem postal employee and civic leader named Victor H. Green conceived the guide in response to one too many accounts of humiliation or violence where discrimination continued to hold strong. These were facts of life not only in the Jim Crow South, but in all parts of the country, where black travelers never knew where they would be welcome...

23 August, 2010

The Herald's Pat Lee has a lovely piece about Contrarian's friend Jane Kansas, currently walking from Montana to Halifax. The layout is also gorgeous, if you can scare up a physical copy of the paper. (Previous Contrarian mentions here and here; Kansas's own blog here.)...

20 August, 2010
Show more
Loading...