John Risley, the 55th richest person in Canada with net assets of $1,388,872,703, thinks the part time gaffers, grips, extras, and assistant directors who labour in Nova Scotia's film industry are getting too sweet a deal from the provincial government. Billionaire Risley has been telling everyone who will listen that Premier Stephen McNeil, who campaigned on a promise to maintain the Nova Scotia Film Tax Credit until 2020, should break that promise, even though it will kill an industry that has attracted hundreds of creative young entrepreneurs to our province. He made the statement six days after Ottawa gave the Nova Scotia Community College $1 million...

16 April, 2015

There's a huge demonstration circling Province House this afternoon—the biggest* I've seen in 40 years of following politics here. The McNeil Government, under pressure to reduce spending in the face of a big deficit, followed narrow-minded advice from Finance bureaucrats ideologically averse to targeted subsidies, and shockingly ignorant of digital industries. The result—on display at Province House at this hour—is a cultural standoff between Old, Dying Nova Scotia and a youth-inspired creative industry that stands as one of the slender hopes for a future prosperity to be found here. Some images from the standoff: Guarding the Legislature from our children: The face of government: The corpse: "My books are very few," said Joseph Howe, "But...

15 April, 2015

Lots of reader reacted to Stephen McNeil's decision to kill Nova Scotia's $130 million film industry. An embittered film industry worker writes: I may not be one of the smartest, keenest, most creative—or even a young person, but before yesterday I had an established role in Nova Scotia, a way of practicing my profession and making a living. Thanks to MacNeil and Whalen, my options are more limited. I can spend less time living in NS and try to chase down contract work in somewhere like BC, or I can apply for a local job at Walmart. I don't believe they understand how...

10 April, 2015

From 2003 to 2013, I ran the Cape Breton Island Film Series, showing top notch independent movies to eager audiences in Sydney. A felicitous side-benefit for me is that I got to know dozens of young people in Nova Scotia's film industry. On the eve of the McNeil Government's foolhardy decision to kill that industry, I tried to reassure one of them, a young woman whose work has been celebrated in Cannes and at TIFF. "This is an old tactic," I said as we sipped craft beer in a Sydney pub. "Diana Whalen is deliberately scaring you so that when they trim the credit back a...

10 April, 2015

On the day before Easter, Contrarian reader Barry Morrison stepped out the back door of his house in Howie Centre, Cape Breton, to sip coffee and check the day. Here's what he saw: Nova Scotia readers will be relieved to see Lepus americanus struthopus—snowshoe hare—has begun its 10-week transition from winter morph (white) to summer morph (greyish brown)—all in pursuit of camouflage. In this respect, L. americanus is a damn site more reliable than the cursed groundhog. Incidentally, both hare and Morrison are crepuscular. Happy Easter, dear readers!...

04 April, 2015

Baseball season begins a week from today. This is just to get you in the mood. It may not be completely obvious to speakers of English, even those who watch to the end, but this is a Toyota commercial. H/T:  Bill Cohen, via Effectively Wild's FB page, via Jrock Radio....

28 March, 2015

NS Power and NB Power have agreed to do something sensible. They will dispatch their thermal generating plants jointly, which means the two utilities will be able to use the cheapest available electricity sources in their combined fleets at any given time. They expect savings of $20 million annually. This good news on the electricity front produced an email query from longtime energy gadfly Peggy Cameron to Tim Bousquet of the Halifax Examiner: If NSP can collaborate on grid interconnection with NB Power why aren’t we buying electricity from HydroQuebec and shutting down coal-fired generating plants? It's a good question with a perfectly reasonable answer. The transmission line that...

28 March, 2015

On March 15, I criticized Dalhousie University for forcing whistleblower Ryan Millet, as a condition of graduating and on pain of financial ruin, to undergo treatment by a psychologist of Dalhousie's choice, even though Millet suffers no psychological ailment or condition. Yesterday, a psychologist wrote that Millet was being treated not by a psychologist but by a social worker selected by Dal, adding: I cannot imagine any professional, particularly a psychologist with their stringent ethical codes, cooperating with Dalhousie’s repugnant agenda with regard to this honourable young man who has the ardent support of many clear thinking people and the gratitude...

24 March, 2015

In a March 15 post, I wrote that, in order to graduate and begin paying off his massive student debt, whistleblower Ryan Millet would have to comply with a series of humiliating requirements set down by the very university administration that brushed aside his warnings about the climate of misogynist abuse at the dental school. Among the requirements of his "remediation program," was a stipulation—as I put it— that he "undergo counselling by a psychologist chosen by Dalhousie, even though there is no evidence Millet suffers from any psychiatric illness or psychological disorder. This genteel Halifax version of the Soviet psychiatric gulag ought to disquiet...

23 March, 2015

While bellicose Haligonians spent the week fulminating over the failure of municipal politicians to make six inches of ice and three feet of snow disappear instantaneously, a flock of Bohemian waxwings settled in to feed on an unobtrusive flowering crabapple bush on the Halifax waterfront. Joshua Barss Donham captured these images Friday: By Saturday, when Joshua took the photos below, the flock had grown to more than 70 birds. The Bohemian waxwing is a starling-sized visitor that breeds far to the north and west, in northern Canada and Alaska, also in northern Eurasia. Sightings in Nova Scotia—almost always in late fall or winter—are sufficiently infrequent to mark the...

22 March, 2015
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