Springtime roadside giveaway

Cape Breton musician Victor Tomiczek's ode to Heavy Garbage Day: There's our old mattress, that we shared for years Wet from the rain, or from her tears Guitars, vocals: Victor Tomiczek; Bass: Donny Calabrese; Photos: Lindsay Uhma; H/T: Ashley McKenzie.  ...

Stirrings

A lazarus seabird expands to Nova Scotia

The canonical list of Nova Scotia birds got a new entry this month when ornithologists aboard a US research vessel south of Cape Sable Island spotted the first Bermuda Petrel ever observed in Canada. Michael Force and Nicholas Metheny, both contract Seabird and Marine Mammal Observers aboard the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration ship Gordon Gunter, spotted the endangered seabird while cruising across George's Canyon, on the eastern edge of George's Bank, in Canadian territorial waters. Fun facts about the Bermuda Petrel: On Bermuda, the once abundant nocturnal bird is known as the Cahow, a name derived from its eerie cry, a sound so haunting it...

The best way to encourage organ donation

Nova Scotia's organ donation community is in a dither over Health Minister Leo Glavine's out-of-the-blue announcement that government will consider legislation to require citizens to opt out if they don't want their organs and tissues to save lives after they die. There exists a vexing gap between intention and action on organ and tissue donation. When asked, nine out of ten Nova Scotians support donation, but only about 55 percent get around to registering their status as donors on their health card.* As a result, hundreds of people whose lives could be saved, or greatly improved, languish on waiting lists—or die—while useful organs and tissues rot in cemeteries. [caption id="attachment_13488" align="alignright" width="300"] Useful...

Alistair MacLeod, OC (1936 – 2014)

"I turned and he was not there." News of Alistair MacLeod's death left me disoriented, the way you might feel after a sudden hard blow to the stomach. It's how I felt when Pete Seeger died. If the sensation is familiar, it might be because Alistair wrote about it, perfectly, in "The Boat," a story from his collection, The Lost Salt Gift of Blood. The narrator is a son who has abandoned his schooling to fish lobster and groundfish in the Gulf of St. Lawrence with his aging father. Together they have pushed the season far into a frigid November. And I stood at...

I lived in a yellow house

River Bennet photographer Leebly Brown made this moving short about his grandmother, Ellen Greta Brown, who died in January. H/T: SP...

Short memories

A friend who is visiting Lisbon, writes: [W]e came upon this rare site, which in itself speaks volumes. I couldn't help remembering a time not so long ago when such a site would have been common.  And when I hear the outrage about Muslim head dress I marvel at the shortness of human memory. Sister on the left doesn't seem all that thrilled to have her picture taken....

Nurses, N-Dips, & humble pie — readers react

On Monday, I suggested that, having had their hats handed to them by voters in the last election, surviving New Democratic MLAs would do well to show a tad more humility than they evinced in the the dustup over essential services legislation. Many readers reacted. An Ontario lawyer took issue with my describing the nurses' one-day strike as "unnecessary." I'd say that the workers in question are the ones best able to determine whether or not a strike is necessary or not, no? I could have phrased this better. The strike was unnecessary—and pointless—in the sense that legislation to force the nurses back...

They don’t call it the deeps for nothing

If the deep ocean pings reported by search vessels turn out to be coming from missing Malaysian airliner MH370, the wreckage is in very deep water indeed. How deep?  Check out this amazing graphic from the Washington Post. Be prepared to scroll down. And down. And down. Here's a preview from two-thirds of the way to the bottom: ...

A different take on Fort Mac

I learned this week that Mabou-reared cartoonist Kate Beaton, whose wonderful work we have featured before, has another very Cape Bretonish entry on her resume: she once worked at a mine site in Fort McMurray, Alberta. I learned this because Beaton has just produced a five-part graphic novella about her Tar Sands experience. Ducks centres on an incident in 2008 when 500 waterfowl touched down on a Syncrude tailing pond, killing all but five of them. Greenpeace responded four months later by blocking, or attempting to block, a discharge pipe that flowed into the tailing pond. Syncrude was eventually later fined...