Comhairle na Gáidhlig, a.k.a. The Gaelic Council of Nova Scotia, has teamed up with Heather Smith of the Centre of Geographic Sciences in Lawrencetown to produce an interactive map of Gaelic place names in eastern Nova Scotia and Cape Breton. Clicking on the image above will take you to the interactive version. There you can hover your cursor over the tear-shaped place-markers to call up the Gaelic name of each location. Clicking the place-markers brings up the Gaelic name, the English name, the county, and a tiny sound file of the Gaelic pronunciation. Nice use of mapping.* I confess to both skepticism and ambivalence about these Gaelic road signs:...

10 May, 2015

A rare bird just doesn't stand much of a chance in Nova Scotia these days. Too many capable birders are out scouring fields and shorelines, Pentaxes and Nikons in hand, for a Crested Caracara, Eurasian Kestrel, or Eastern Towhee to escape notice for long. At 8:30 Sunday morning, Peggy Scanlan spotted a Glossy Ibis feeding at Waterside Beach Provincial Park. Normally resident in Florida and the Caribbean, the bird has vagrant status in Nova Scotia—meaning it's a very occasional summer visitor. Peggy's Ibis was soon joined by eight others. When she posted photos on the Nova Scotia Bird Society's Facebook page and the Nova Scotia...

04 May, 2015

On distribution maps for the Eastern Towhee, the summer range runs out about halfway up the Maine Coast. But for the last few days, a rare spring visitor has been hanging around Point Pleasant Park in Halifax. My man Joshua sent me this image. A furtive bird of the undergrowth, the towhee [pronounced: TOE-hee] has been scrounging for sunflower seeds under a feeder in the park. It's best found in the early morning, just past the grassy knoll. Fittingly for a Nova Scotia visit, the towhee's call is often onomatopoeically transcribed as "Drink your teeeea!" or simply, "Drink!" Summer will come....

30 April, 2015

University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist is Canada's best-informed commentator on communications and technology law, but in his Toronto Star column yesterday, he stepped outside this field to opine on Nova Scotia's Film Tax Credit fiasco. Citing an unreleased Ministry of Finance study that delivered, "a sharply negative verdict" on Ontario's film tax credit, Geist argued Nova Scotia is doing the right thing by scuppering its credit—a move that will gut filmmaking in our province. Geist is a brilliant guy, and his surveillance of internet law does the country a great service. But he's been snookered on this issue. Discovering that finance bureaucrats oppose film tax credits is like discovering codfish oppose factory freezer trawlers. These credits...

21 April, 2015

Last week I drafted a speech Stephen McNeil might use to extract his government from its unnecessary and destructive film tax crisis. Labour lawyer and New Democrat Ron Stockton took issue with my offering, and in the process made a point that deserves more consideration: The arts industry—it somehow seems wrong to call it an industry, because it reduces it to economics—is different than manufacturing airplane parts or providing call centre services. Civilizations have existed and thrived without manufacturing industries and service centres, but as best we can tell, humankind probably started making art as soon as our ancestors stood...

20 April, 2015

I can't resist posting this video, which brings together two of my favourite Cape Bretoners: videographer Jason LaFrense of Seaside Communications (where I often work), and hop-farmer-turned-craft-brewer Jeremy White of Big Bruce Brewery in Nyanza—in my untutored opinion, the best of Nova Scotia's fabulous new boutique breweries. The Big Spruce Brewery sits just off the TransCanada 105 on the Yankee Line Road, 15 km. south of Baddeck. If you visit in growing season, the organic hop farm, just up the hill from the brewery, is a wonder to behold. The flagship brew is Kitchen Party Pale Ale, which conforms to the Bavarian Purity Law....

17 April, 2015

This is the speech Stephen McNeil should give at his earliest opportunity: Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak about the budget provisions affecting the Nova Scotia Film Tax Credit. As both the One Nova Scotia Commission and the Broten Report have warned in the clearest of terms, Nova Scotia is on an unsustainable economic path. Our accumulated provincial debt and the relentless impact of demographics will render us incapable of providing the health, education, transportation, and human services our citizens expect and deserve unless we change course. As we prepared the 2015-2016 budget, we were focused on this challenge. We were determined to...

17 April, 2015

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
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