Citizen gadfly Madeline Yakimchuk has turned up a memo from CBRM solicitor Demitri Kachafanas advising the mayor and council that continuing include prayers at council meetings would defy the recent Supreme Court of Canada ruling and potentially expose the municipality to expensive litigation it would likely lose. The memo is dated April 17, before the April council meeting, at which Mayor Cecil Clarke made a public display of his attempts to evade the ban, and this week's meeting, which featured the text of a prayer in the agenda and a moment of "silent prayer." Both displays provoked public protests from the gallery. Here is...

22 May, 2015

In 2012, Ben Cowan-Dewar opened North America's first true links-style golf course on a coal mine waste dump wedged between the downtrodden village of Inverness and its spectacular beach. Cabot Links soon became one of the most talked about new golf destinations in the world. This year, Cowan-Dewar is adding a second 18-hole course, Cabot Cliffs, and expanding the resort's luxury hotel. Cabot Links will employ 200 Invernessers this summer, a number the owners hope will rise to 450 once Cabot Cliffs is in full operation. It's not an exaggeration to call it the most successful tourist development in Nova Scotia since the advent of Celtic Colours in...

12 May, 2015

Phone just rang. A 613 number. Man said he was calling from the Liberal Party of Canada. "Good. I want to talk to you." For the next three minutes, I berated the poor chap, decrying Justin Trudeau's craven support for Bill C-51; his betrayal of his father's greatest political achievement, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms; his pathetic excuse that if he didn't support C-51, Harper would label him "soft on terrorism." "If Justin doesn't have the leadership skills and communications chops to explain to Canadians why opposing a grossly unconstitutional intrusion on fundamental freedoms has nothing to do with being 'soft on terrorists,' then he's...

11 May, 2015

Comhairle na Gáidhlig, a.k.a. The Gaelic Council of Nova Scotia, has teamed up with Heather Smith of the Centre of Geographic Sciences in Lawrencetown to produce an interactive map of Gaelic place names in eastern Nova Scotia and Cape Breton. Clicking on the image above will take you to the interactive version. There you can hover your cursor over the tear-shaped place-markers to call up the Gaelic name of each location. Clicking the place-markers brings up the Gaelic name, the English name, the county, and a tiny sound file of the Gaelic pronunciation. Nice use of mapping.* I confess to both skepticism and ambivalence about these Gaelic road signs:...

10 May, 2015

A rare bird just doesn't stand much of a chance in Nova Scotia these days. Too many capable birders are out scouring fields and shorelines, Pentaxes and Nikons in hand, for a Crested Caracara, Eurasian Kestrel, or Eastern Towhee to escape notice for long. At 8:30 Sunday morning, Peggy Scanlan spotted a Glossy Ibis feeding at Waterside Beach Provincial Park. Normally resident in Florida and the Caribbean, the bird has vagrant status in Nova Scotia—meaning it's a very occasional summer visitor. Peggy's Ibis was soon joined by eight others. When she posted photos on the Nova Scotia Bird Society's Facebook page and the Nova Scotia...

04 May, 2015

On distribution maps for the Eastern Towhee, the summer range runs out about halfway up the Maine Coast. But for the last few days, a rare spring visitor has been hanging around Point Pleasant Park in Halifax. My man Joshua sent me this image. A furtive bird of the undergrowth, the towhee [pronounced: TOE-hee] has been scrounging for sunflower seeds under a feeder in the park. It's best found in the early morning, just past the grassy knoll. Fittingly for a Nova Scotia visit, the towhee's call is often onomatopoeically transcribed as "Drink your teeeea!" or simply, "Drink!" Summer will come....

30 April, 2015

University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist is Canada's best-informed commentator on communications and technology law, but in his Toronto Star column yesterday, he stepped outside this field to opine on Nova Scotia's Film Tax Credit fiasco. Citing an unreleased Ministry of Finance study that delivered, "a sharply negative verdict" on Ontario's film tax credit, Geist argued Nova Scotia is doing the right thing by scuppering its credit—a move that will gut filmmaking in our province. Geist is a brilliant guy, and his surveillance of internet law does the country a great service. But he's been snookered on this issue. Discovering that finance bureaucrats oppose film tax credits is like discovering codfish oppose factory freezer trawlers. These credits...

21 April, 2015

Last week I drafted a speech Stephen McNeil might use to extract his government from its unnecessary and destructive film tax crisis. Labour lawyer and New Democrat Ron Stockton took issue with my offering, and in the process made a point that deserves more consideration: The arts industry—it somehow seems wrong to call it an industry, because it reduces it to economics—is different than manufacturing airplane parts or providing call centre services. Civilizations have existed and thrived without manufacturing industries and service centres, but as best we can tell, humankind probably started making art as soon as our ancestors stood...

20 April, 2015

I can't resist posting this video, which brings together two of my favourite Cape Bretoners: videographer Jason LaFrense of Seaside Communications (where I often work), and hop-farmer-turned-craft-brewer Jeremy White of Big Bruce Brewery in Nyanza—in my untutored opinion, the best of Nova Scotia's fabulous new boutique breweries. The Big Spruce Brewery sits just off the TransCanada 105 on the Yankee Line Road, 15 km. south of Baddeck. If you visit in growing season, the organic hop farm, just up the hill from the brewery, is a wonder to behold. The flagship brew is Kitchen Party Pale Ale, which conforms to the Bavarian Purity Law....

17 April, 2015

This is the speech Stephen McNeil should give at his earliest opportunity: Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak about the budget provisions affecting the Nova Scotia Film Tax Credit. As both the One Nova Scotia Commission and the Broten Report have warned in the clearest of terms, Nova Scotia is on an unsustainable economic path. Our accumulated provincial debt and the relentless impact of demographics will render us incapable of providing the health, education, transportation, and human services our citizens expect and deserve unless we change course. As we prepared the 2015-2016 budget, we were focused on this challenge. We were determined to...

17 April, 2015
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