On October 8, 2013, the New Democratic Party of Nova Scotia suffered a humiliating defeat. Barely one Nova Scotian in four voted NDP, marking the first time in 131 years that Nova Scotia voters failed to give a government a second term. Instead, they reduced the NDP from 31 seats to 7—and to within 4,000 votes of having no seats in the house at all. Premier Darrell Dexter lost his seat to an unknown. Deputy Premier Frank Corbett came within 158 votes of losing the seat that has, for the last half century, voted NDP more than any other riding. It was...

06 April, 2014

The Chronicle-Herald quotes Port Hawkesbury Mayor Billy Joe MacLean as saying tolls should be restored to the Canso Causeway, as part of an apparently forthcoming federal-provincial deal to improve maintenance on the 59-year-old structure. This is a bad idea. Until they were abolished by Donald Cameron's Progressive Conservative government in 1991, the Canso Causeway tolls ranked as one of the least efficient taxes in Nova Scotia history. I don't recall the precise numbers, but the cost of operating toll booths around the clock swallowed up more than half the revenue they generated. It was a thinly disguised make-work project, and a...

03 April, 2014

A smart Nova Scotia native who turned down professional opportunities elsewhere to make her career here, and who recently returned to university to take an advanced scientific degree, writes: Last Friday, the Liberal government announced they were eliminating interest on the provincial portion of student loans. Education Minister Kelly Regan said: [caption id="attachment_13413" align="alignright" width="160"] ReganPaying Paul[/caption] We know that every dollar counts when graduates are beginning their careers, and we hope this provides some relief to young people as they build their lives in Nova Scotia. Today, the other shoe dropped. In her 2014-2015 budget, Finance Minister Diana Whelan eliminated the Nova Scotia Graduate...

03 April, 2014

My friend  and once-upon-a-time brother-in-law Peter Barss of West Dublin has a habit of getting swept away on wings of artistic invention. His projects often have humble beginnings that somehow spiral out of control. Two years ago, Peter stumbled onto a homemade wooden airplane at Value Village—the sort of thing a boy's grandfather might have made. He snapped it up for $2.75. Also at Value Village, he found a beat-up wooden chest:  $7.75. He fixed them both up, then got the idea of filling the chest with retro, non-digital toys for his grandsons. For more than a year, he visited thrift stores and antique shops. As...

02 April, 2014

Does this scene ring a bell? It's Contrarian's Google Street View recreation of one of the most viewed images in human history: the default home screen for the Window's XP operating system. I pumped the colours a bit, but so did Microsoft, when it adopted the Chuck O'Rear photograph, called "Bliss," from the then fledgling stock photo service Corbiss, founded by Bill Gates and subsequently purchased by Microsoft. In four days, Microsoft will officially stop supporting what some regard as the last best version of its Window's operating system. In honour of the event, Lexy Savvides wrote an interesting account of the photo's backstory...

02 April, 2014

There is a reason why NSGEU president Joan Jessome always wants a new public sector bargaining cycle to begin with nurses. The public adores nurses. When Gallop or Angus Reid ask the public to rate the level of respect they hold for various professions, nurses always come out on top. Here's what Angus Reid found when he asked that question in Canada, the US, and Britain in 2012: Ninety-six percent. The Gallop Poll got similar results asking the public to rank the honesty and ethics of various professions. So in pushing nurses to the head of the bargaining queue, Jessome is simply leading...

31 March, 2014

I have not seen it stated more aptly than this: [T]he symbolic politics of the Obama presidency — the same factors that drive right-wingers crazy — are exactly what liberals and progressives like about it. I mean, what other explanation is there? Here we have an administration conducting a worldwide drone war that has killed unknown numbers of innocents, managing an ultra-secretive surveillance state beyond Dick Cheney’s wildest dreams, paying lip service to the existential crisis of climate change while doing nothing about it, and protecting and nurturing exactly the same cabal of bankers who brought us to the brink of...

30 March, 2014

Kendra Eash published a funny poem in McSweeney's about how big companies use stock video and portentous but vague voice-overs to create feel-good ads about their corporate brands. Then a stock footage company with a sense of humour set the poem to, well, stock footage. Explained the company, "The minute we saw Kendra Eash’s brilliant 'This Is a Generic Brand Video' on McSweeney’s, we knew it was our moral imperative to make that generic brand video so. No surprise, we had all the footage." Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is a case of commerce imitating art imitating commerce imitating emotion. H/T:...

26 March, 2014

I have vented previously, here and here, about the quiet acquiescence of municipal and provincial leaders to the destruction of Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation. Why haven't the Premier, the Minister of Economic Development, the Leader of the Opposition, and other provincial leaders spoken out against the elimination of an institution, enshrined in an Act of Parliament, whose dismantling will cost Cape Breton tens of millions of dollars a year for the foreseeable future? Cape Breton is still part of Nova Scotia, after all. My purpose in this post is not to belabour the point, but to direct readers' attention to a striking...

24 March, 2014
Show more
Loading...