The outcome of a fill-up this morning at Spike and Margie's Irving at Boularderie Centre, NS. In my 50 years as a driver, the nominal price of gasoline has increased more than 22-fold. In real terms, after adjusting for the consumer price increase, the price has increased 2.94-fold....
A German friend who has lived in Cape Breton for the last two years took a short swim Easter Sunday afternoon at Dingwall Beach, on northern Cape Breton's Atlantic coast. Water temperature: 3 degrees. ...
Liberal MLA Kelly Regan put two questions to Community Services Minister Denise Peterson-Rafuse in the House of Assembly yesterday: MS. KELLY REGAN: Mr. Speaker, for 53 years Talbot House provided residential addiction treatment for men in Cape Breton. Talbot House recently, abruptly closed its doors and left the people of Cape Breton with a whole lot of questions. Will the Minister of Community Services lift the shroud of secrecy and tell the men and their families who rely on these services why the minister closed the doors and removed this vital service from this community? HON. DENISE PETERSON-RAFUSE: Mr. Speaker, we know...
On Sunday, I questioned the sudden closure of the Talbot House Recovery Centre, and the treatment accorded it's executive director, Fr. Paul Abbass, after a victim's rights activist apparently passed along an unspecified third- or fourth-party complaint about Abbass to the Department of Community Services. A sample of the responses follows, but please also see this clarification of my original post. A reader writes: I am a former resident of Talbot house and I am convinced the experience saved my life. At no time during my therapy did I witness any impropriety on the part of Paul Abbass or any staff member. Talbot...
In my post about the Queen-of-Hearts treatment accorded Fr. Paul Abbass—sentence first, trial later—I wrote that the Cape Breton Regional Police "said it had begun investigating allegations concerning a Talbot House employee." In fact, police spokesperson Desiree Vassallo chose her words more carefully than that. "We are looking further into [information received from the Talbot House Board] and will determine whether there’s anything that needs a criminal investigation," she said. While Vassallo didn't identify Abbass, everyone knew who she was talking about. Almost seven weeks have passed since Vassallo made that statement. If the police have determined that the information does not warrant a criminal investigation, then...
I am increasingly uneasy about the way the Talbot House crisis is playing out. In the space of three weeks this winter, a respected community leader's life was shattered, and an admired institution that had ministered to troubled individuals for 53 years was abruptly closed—all on the basis of an unspecified third-party complaint of unknown veracity that remains shrouded in secrecy two months later. [UPDATE: Fr. Paul Abbass has been exonerated. Please see Community Services Dept. vs. Talbot House] I don't know Fr. Paul Abbass personally, but I admire the grace and candor he displayed when speaking for the Antigonish Diocese during...
Playwright Bryden MacDonald adjudicates the Boardmore Theatre's Festival of One Act Plays at Cape Breton University....
Here's another placemarker for an issue I've wanted to write about for some time. I have not read any details of the Harper Governments plan to rein in federal environmental assessments, but in principle, I believe such an exercise is long overdue. It is a dirty little secret of the environmental movement that federal environmental assessments are a massive scam. They take far too long. They cost far too much. They do not focus on important issues. Everyone in the system knows this, but no one complains, because almost everyone benefits. Engineering companies get tens of millions of dollars to carry out...
When the Dexter Government's throne speech revealed plans to decentralize a few hundred of the thousands of provincial government jobs in Halifax, AllNovaScotia.com put out a bulletin that read: Bulletin II: Gov't Jobs Leaving HRM I wrote a Halifax friend and asked if that shouldn't read: Gov't Jobs Move to Rural NS My friend shot back with: Gov't Pandering To Rural NS I think my friend was joking,* but you don't have to scratch the skin of a Haligonian very deeply to discover the view that everything—everything—belongs in the provincial capital, with the possible exception of the Peggy's Cove lighthouse and the Shambhala monastery at Red River. This will...
Contrarian readers know I have no affection for the Harper Government. There are, however, occasional advantages to having hard-assed right-wingers in unfettered control. The willingness to do obviously sensible but unpopular things—like getting rid of the penny—is one of them. The penny should have been killed decades ago. Taxpayers lose money on every one we mint. Consumers and storekeepers lose 492 million hours every year handling the all but worthless chips. (Yes, I made that number up, but it can't be far off.) But...