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...

25 April, 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...

20 April, 2014

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

16 April, 2014

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....

13 April, 2014

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...

10 April, 2014

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: ...

09 April, 2014

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...

09 April, 2014

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
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