In a post last week, I argued that the 24-metre* war memorial statue of "Mother Canada" proposed for Green Cove in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park flew in the face of sound public policy. Many readers weighed in, mostly against the project. Today, a passionate supporter of the monument takes the floor. Jason writes from Ingonish: Upon reading your view on the monument, it is hard to believe the joy newspapers and news broadcasts get out of, once again, stirring up controversy on a subject you really don't know about. While you make points about the project itself, and its artistry, you leave out the fact...

16 November, 2014

The gigantic statue of "Mother Canada" discussed here yesterday has many detractors and few admirers among Contrarian readers. Here's a sample from the flood of comments received: Barry (#1): Non-supporters of this project need to stand up and hopefully have this cancelled. Martha: If some people in Ingonish or elsewhere see economic benefit to this statue, perhaps the focus should be on finding a different place for it—say at Ingonish. While Ingonish is one of my favourite places on earth, I could accept a (somewhat less intrusive) statue there, because there is already a certain degree of man-made tourism in the area. The irony of Green...

12 November, 2014

In case you missed it, Cape Breton journalist Joan Weeks was on CBC's The Current Tuesday morning with an even-handed account of the controversy over plans to honour Canada's war dead with a colossal statue at Green Cove in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park. Like so many initiatives of the Stephen Harper government, the project offends good public policy in several ways. Accountability and Transparency: The project was conceived and designed in secret. It was presented to, and approved by, the Harper cabinet without public input or discussion. The belated exercise now underway, touted as a public consultation, has been limited to a pair of meetings in the tiny, economically depressed village of Ingonish,...

12 November, 2014

The morning after Democrats suffered humiliating defeats in midterm elections, a Massachusetts friend who is a lifelong, liberal Democrat, licked his wounds in a Facebook post: I would so like all the talking head experts to point out that this election was all about who voted and who did not. It was not a "wave election." Numbers matter. Look at three critical states: In North Carolina the Republican Tillis received 1.4M votes, [Democrat] Hagan 1.3M. In 2012 Obama received 2.1M and Romney 2.2. In Colorado, the winning Republican received 922,977, [Democrat] Udall 843,103. Two years ago Obama won with 1.2 M votes to...

05 November, 2014

Well, perfect as an ad for a right wing Republican senatorial candidate can be. Tomorrow's mid-term U.S. elections seem all but certain to produce Republican majorities in both houses Congress—even as more citizens vote Democratic than Republican. This ad is funny, pointed without being mean-spirited, and it hits hot-button emotions in a way that is like to connect with Iowa voters. I grew up in the US, and once spent most of a year travelling in a Democratic presidential candidate's campaign plane, but the hateful right-wing turn politics has taken in that country often seems bewildering and incomprehensible. Ads like this are part of what...

03 November, 2014

West End Halifax Hallowe'en statistician Dan Conlin has updated his 18-year record of ghouls, goblins, and octopi with this year's totals. The numbers continue to sneak upward from their 2012 trough. The little sugar fixers began arriving at 5:58 p.m. and peaked around 7:30 p.m., with the tardiest monster straggling in at 9:50 p.m. All these times are later than usual, probably due to the pagan ritual falling on a Friday. There were "no surly, un-constumed teenagers — once a late night constant.” Conlin’s Best-costume honours went to a Giant Eyeball with its bloody optic nerve dangling. Honourable mentions to a homemade octopus with working arms,...

03 November, 2014

In 2007, the L'Arche community in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, known as L'Arche Homefires, embarked on an expensive, long-term project to move its work programs from various ill-suited, inaccessible locations to a single, safe, fully accessible building that would also house its administrative office. As a first step, Homefires purchased the former Anglican Parish Hall on Main Street in the centre of town. Halifax architect Syd Dumaresq donated the design for the renovation. The new facility will let wheelchair users with intellectual disabilities take part in L'Arche day programs that are currently inaccessible. It will free up space in two L’Arche houses, so the community can add new Core Members. As of this September,...

02 November, 2014

You may not want to eat them after seeing this, but oysters have a prodigious ability to filter polluted harbour waters. Watch what the laboratory oysters in this time-lapse video accomplish in just 90 minutes: Federal and state agencies in the US, together with non-profit groups and academic researchers, are enlisting oysters in their efforts to restore the badly degraded waters of Chesapeake Bay, between Virginia and Maryland. Oysters were once abundant in the bay. As young oysters settled and grew on the shells of old, they formed extensive reefs. In the 19th Century, researchers estimate, oysters could filter the entire volume of the...

02 November, 2014

In response to Friday's post deploring the purchase by HRM Police of military-issue, semi-automatic assault guns, and the department's ill-advised use of these guns in response to a burglary, a reader who knows his way around HRM politics writes: A properly functioning Board of Police Commissioners would have asked questions at budget time about what equipment was to be provided through the budget. Or perhaps this was discussed "in camera"  for "reasons of security." You won't find this in the minutes. A reader in British Columbia writes: Couldn't we demilitarize police uniforms? Get rid of the combat boots, bloused trousers, ball caps, and maybe, by the way, ditch the badass shades...

01 November, 2014

Earlier today, my friend Audra was looking for information about residency restrictions on Canadian First Nations reserves. As she began typing a search term into Google.ca, the autocomplete feature, which offers suggestions based on popular search terms, proffered the following: Still think we don't have a problem with racism in Canada?...

31 October, 2014
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