I received a polite phone call this morning from Chief Electoral Officer Richard Temporale, acknowledging that the Nova Scotia Elections Act would not support a conviction against me on the alleged offence of photographing and tweeting my ballot. In other words, what I did is not against the law. They are dropping the case. We already suspected as much, because the one-year time limit for laying a charge under the act expired October 5. I am grateful to Jason Cooke, an outstanding young civil litigator at Burchells, who sent Elections Nova Scotia a brief last January, pointing out that the Act did not outlaw my actions. The support I...

21 October, 2014

You can be forgiven, dear Contrarian reader, for not knowing that a hearing last week in the Ontario Divisional Court sought to determine how far wrongdoers can go to suppress the freedom of those they have wronged to speak about the wrongdoings. And for not knowing that the wrongdoer in the case is Canada's national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, or that the person wronged was once its most celebrated columnist, Jan Wong. You can be forgiven because, in an revelatory display of unanimity, the Canadian news industry has suppressed coverage of the court battle. The sole exception* is a bilious piece of character assassination by National Post columnist Chris Selley, the sort of journalist...

20 October, 2014

Barry Morrison went out to look at the surf along the Lighthouse Point Trail, Louisbourg. ...

20 October, 2014

Remember when the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary strolled about their daily rounds with no sidearms? It's not that long ago. Until June 14, 1998, the RNC required members on normal duty to keep firearms locked in the trunks of their cruisers, deploying them only with permission from the chief. What a difference 16 years makes. Take a gander at the latest RNC recruitment video, released just this month. Writing in the Newfoundland and Labrador Independent, Jon Parsons decried the paramilitary fantasy evoked by the video: This video, and the recruitment campaign of which it is a part, dangerously speaks to a particular kind of potential recruit. The heroic, militaristic drumbeat, the...

20 October, 2014

My son Joshua, who took this photo of a katydid near Halifax's Frog Pond (part of The Dingle Park in Armdale) on October 12, writes: Notice the pits in this creature's front legs, which are its sound detection organs. They are situated as far apart as possible for females to better determine the direction of the mating call of males. Roald Dahl described this phenomenon is in James and the Giant Peach, when the Old Green Grasshopper tells James of his cousin, whose ears are on her legs. I'm sure there's a political metaphor lurking in this somatic curiosity, but I'll just turn...

17 October, 2014

If you are anywhere near Halifax Friday evening, I hope you will join me to hear a talk by Ian Brown, author of The Boy in the Moon, followed by a panel discussion about the inexplicable power vulnerable people have to teach the rest of us about life. The event is part of a weekend of celebrations of the 50th anniversary of L'Arche, an international federation of more than 130 communities around the world, where men and women with developmental disabilities live and work with people who choose to share their lives. The philosopher and theologian Jean Vanier founded L'Arche in 1964 when he invited two men with developmental disabilities, Raphael...

16 October, 2014

When astrophysicist Brian Schmidt won the 2011 Nobel Physics Prize for co-discovering dark energy—the mysterious factor that causes the universe to expand at an increasing rate—his grandmother wanted to see the medal that came with the prize. So he took it with him on his next trip to Fargo, ND, where she lives. The trip was uneventful, "until I tried to leave Fargo with it, and went through the x-ray machine," Schmidt told Scientific American editor Clara Moskowitz. "I could see they were puzzled. It was in my laptop bag. It’s made of gold, so it absorbs all the x-rays—it’s completely black...

12 October, 2014

Saturday's edition of Tim Bousquet's Halifax Examiner features a list of sites that aggregate the often witty repartee that permeates many newsrooms: Reporters think about themselves too much, which leads to sometimes funny, sometimes sad, stuff. In no random order [sic], there’s Shit Reporters Say, Overheard in the Newsroom, and the moribund Bureau Chiefs, who were behind the sadly no-longer-funny (what happened?) Fake AP Stylebook. [caption id="attachment_14356" align="alignleft" width="180"] Charlie Stough[/caption] This brought to mind the defunct-but-not-forgotten Burned-Out Newspapercreatures Guild Bulletin, "BONG Bull" for short, a creation of longtime Dayton Daily News copy editor Charlie Stough, who produced it from the early 1990s until 2007. Although BONG...

12 October, 2014

[caption id="attachment_14344" align="alignright" width="200"] SEO bait: First cat photo ever on Contrarian[/caption] The Nova Scotia government yesterday introduced legislation requiring anyone selling a cat to obtain a Veterinarian's certificate of health. A vet's office in Sydney told me a certificate of health for a healthy cat, "would probably just be the examination fee, which is $65 plus tax" (or $74.75).  Selling a litter of cats will presumably require a litter of certificates, though perhaps there would be a bulk discount. Agriculture Minister Keith Colwell is defends the legislation as a measure to combat animal abuse and abandonment. I know animal protection is as important to Nova Scotians...

10 October, 2014

Last week I marvelled at the sophistication of the music that plays when the Nova Scotia Legislature's video feed pauses for bells summoning members to a vote. The 11 tunes that bided time for the vote on second reading of Bill 1 ranged from modern jazz to classical to some of Nashville's greatest instrumentalists. "Who programs this legislative mix-tape?" I wondered. An email from Neil Ferguson, Chief Clerk of the House of Assembly, supplies the answer: [T]he music is chosen by the Manager of Legislative Television Broadcast and Recording Services, Mr. Jim MacInnes, and his staff at Leg TV. The selections are stored on a computer drive, and are...

07 October, 2014
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