Graham Steele used his CBC column this week to muse on the frequency of journalists going to work for government. The hook was Premier Stephen McNeil's recent appointments of Chronicle-Herald reporter David Jackson, CTV reporter Jackie Foster, and former CTV Ottawa Deputy Bureau Chief Laurie Graham to various positions in his office. Along the way, Steele paused to raise an eyebrow at Graham's salary of $160,000 as the premier's principal secretary: That's a higher salary than the premier's chief of staff, who is ostensibly her boss — and more than any cabinet minister. What Steele knows perfectly well, but didn't say, is that hundreds of provincial government employees make more than cabinet...

18 March, 2016

"I saw a sign of spring today at Point Pleasant Park," writes Saturday bird guy Joshua Barss Donham. "The Red-breasted Mergansers were performing their courtship display. The male stretches his neck upward and forward, opens his bill, and then drops his body forward dipping his chest and lower neck in the water."     OK, that shows the lovestruck merganser's neck extended, but now watch Joshua's video for the whole display:   [Video link]...

11 March, 2016

If you're ever inclined to doubt the wonders of biology, consider the reproductive policies of freshwater mussels, a subject I learned about Wednesday night when CBU instructor Kellie White spoke to the Cape Breton Naturalists' Society about freshwater mussels, muskrats, and "what they have to say about each other." White has a special interest in the yellow lamp mussel, Lampsilis cariosa, one of 10 freshwater mussels found in Nova Scotia. Until 2014, the Canadian population of Lampsilis cariosa was thought to exist only in the Saint John and Sydney River systems. (It lives along the US East Coast as far south as Georgia.) Its recent discovery in two Cape Breton...

10 March, 2016

Last week, the union that represents striking Halifax Herald journalists posted an unflattering photo of Mike Savage on its Facebook page, together with a paragraph condemning the mayor for breezing past the strikers' picket line. Can this be true? I thought. Did Savage really cross the picket line and enter the Herald Building? It was not true. The line Savage crossed was nowhere near the strikers' workplace. It was a secondary picket of a downtown hotel where the Greater Halifax Partnership, a business promotion organization of which Savage is a director, was holding an awards ceremony. The newspaper was a co-sponsor of the event, and CEO Mark Lever had been scheduled to present...

09 March, 2016

[Video link] It's carrying snow from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Anchorage, for the start of the annual Iditarod dog sled race. Anchorage, it seems, didn't have enough snow to cover its streets for the start of the race, which runs 1,500 km. to Nome. No snow in Anchorage in March. But climate change is nothing but leftist myth. At least they have  railway....

07 March, 2016

A pair of eider, North America's largest duck, swimming off King's Landing in Dartmouth. The mostly black and white bird in the foreground is the drake; his ruddy companion, the female. Every winter, large rafts of eiders form up off the coast of Nova Scotia to bulk up for the breeding season. The female, who will go entirely without food during the more than three weeks she will incubate her eggs, stocks up on King's Landing mussels in the photo below. Although not formally designated as endangered or threatened, declining eider numbers have raised concerns for more than a century. The January 1914 issue of The Auk, a journal...

06 March, 2016

I'm inclined to agree with the Chronicle-Herald's striking Province House reporter, Michael Gorman, writing in the Local Xpress website, that Gary Burrill's victory was the best outcome for the Nova Scotia New Democratic Party. Some Liberals and Conservatives have spun the result as a "hard left turn." It's true that Burrill, a United Church minister and committed social democrat, was the candidate furthest from the middle-of-the-road approach taken by Darrel Dexter. His selection may even open up some room for Stephen McNeil, how has governed hard right, to move to the centre in advance of the 2017 election. It could also allow Jamie...

28 February, 2016

Some of you know my grandchildren include Josh and Jacob Barss Donham, identical twins with Down Syndrome, who also fall somewhere along the Asperger's spectrum. These two are apples of my eye, and I treasure the time I get to spend with them. Saturday was a special night for Josh, as his father, Silas Barss Donham, explained in a Facebook post: Most anyone who knows Josh knows his affection for the opening tune of Spring, by Vivaldi. He loves exploring the demo mode on his keyboards, and that was a tune he always rooted out and played on any device that had it....

28 February, 2016

Justin Trudeau usefully observed that gender parity in public affairs should be a foregone conclusion by now, not an opportunity for backslapping congratulations. Likewise, when Nova Scotia establishes councils and commissions to consider broad policy issues, the province usually takes care to include Mi'kmaq representatives and (somewhat less diligently) African-Nova Scotians. But what about people with Disabilities? At his James McGregor Stewart Society blog, disability rights advocate Gus Reed has tallied up the gender, race, ethnicity, and disability status of the 48 directors of the Ivany Commission, Engage Nova Scotia, the OneNS Coalition,* and the Greater Halifax Partnership, organizations attempting to re-envision Nova Scotia's economy. The results are dismal....

28 February, 2016

Kris Bertin, author by day, Bearly's beer-slinger by night, launches his long-awaited collection of short stories, Monday night at 7, at the House of Blues and Ribs, 1269 Barrington St., Halifax. This just might be the 2016 Nova Scotia event you'll want to brag about having attended 30 years from now, when Bertin is a celebrated Canadian of letters. Bad Things Happen is edited by Alexander MacLeod, published by Biblioasis, and celebrated in the Toronto Star, which named Bertin one of 10 young Canadian writers to watch. Quill & Quire singles out "Bad Things Happen" and “Your #1 Killer,” the first and last stories in the collection, for...

28 February, 2016
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