I see by the CBC that Nova Scotia Power wind turbines have laid waste to a Digby Neck emu farm, decimating a family's livelihood in the process. Twenty of Debi and Davey VanTassel's 27 emus succumbed to the lethal noise produced by NS Power's murderous machines in the three years since they began slicing the salt air over Digby. Or maybe it was 30 of their 38 birds—the CBC story gives both sets of figures. In any case, the emus were as hapless as they were flightless, no match for the death-dealing, green-power monsters. How do we know this? Because Debi Van Tassel, voice choked...

18 November, 2013

“Life is like a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along,” wrote E.M. Forster, in Room With A View. I don't know much about life, but getting fired, unexpectedly, publicly, certainly feels like that. Having gone through it, I'm always interested to see how others handle the experience. Hours after Rogers Media sacked him and 10 other News Radio 95.7 staffers, right-wing talk radio host Jordi Morgan posted "A note to Maritime Morning listeners" on his Facebook Page. As you may have heard I will no longer be hosting Maritime Morning on News...

06 November, 2013

[See correction and clarification at end.] Two months ago, Atlantic journalists James and Deborah Fallows began traveling around the United States in a small plane, visiting relatively obscure cities in a quest to find out what makes some thrive while others struggle. They spent much of last week in Eastport, Maine, hard up against the New Brunswick border. Jim's initial blog posts bespeak a community well on the way to recovery, populated by leaders determined to go the distance. Since Eastport shares much in common with struggling Atlantic port communities, Maritimers might want to perk up their ears. In a post last...

28 October, 2013

On Thursday, I criticized local news organizations for credulous reporting of an Abacus poll, commissioned by the Company of Canadians and two local anti-fracking groups, purporting to show overwhelming public opposition to fracking. In reality, the only question the survey asked was framed in such a way as to insure that result. David Coletto, CEO of Abacus Data, disputes my use of the term "push poll" to describe the survey. He has a point. The poll question was not a push poll. Push polls are used by campaigns to influence or change the opinion of respondents under the guise of a survey. As...

25 October, 2013

Our curmudgeonly friend drew my attention to a Canadian Press dispatch listing the factors Premier-to-be Stephen McNeil will have to consider when choosing his cabinet before he gets to competence or talent. This led me to a momentary reverie about the sort of government we might have if ability were the only factor in picking the government. Contrarian reader Tim Segulin writes: You never know, McNeil may just run the government out of his office the way Harper does and Dexter apparently did. That way important decisions don't really get made by ministers who are implied to not be up to the job,...

21 October, 2013

Many of those who responded to my posts on the Dexter government's mistakes and accomplishments (here,  here, here, and here) were disappointed New Democrats. To my complaint that a small cadre of apparatchiks in the premier's office exercised far too much central control, a party supporter employed in the administration offered this colourful label: [A] group of too-young, nasty, disconnected, Harper-style assholes. Another longtime party supporter on the party's left flank wrote: One of the most disappointing failures of the government was not bring more talented, knowledgeable, and competent people into the government and the party. In every area the government claims to be interested in improving—the environment, poverty,...

04 October, 2013

Unintended Consequences Dept.: If next week's election turns into a Liberal sweep, as seems increasingly likely, there will be many, many new faces at Province House. All those new members will be required to find fully accessible constituency offices within one year, or forego reimbursement of their office expenses. Returning members have three years to comply. AMI, the accessible cable channel, has a nice video on the new rules: These consequences aren't completely unintended, of course, but at the time the new rules passed the House of Assembly Management Committee, few realized how many freshman MLAs might be arriving later this month....

02 October, 2013

Don Mills sounds nervous. Nova Scotia's best known pollster has been conducting a rolling poll for the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, and over the last week, his numbers have pointed to an historic rout. For the last five days, he has shown Stephen McNeil's Liberals holding steady between 55 and 57 percent of decided voters—enough to propel him to a lopsided majority. "We're under a lot of scrutiny here," he told Contrarian. Here's the latest edition, published Tuesday morning: To understand how unusual such an outcome would be, I looked at every Nova Scotia election since 1960. Over those 15 provincial votes: The winning party got more...

01 October, 2013

From a September 9 Facebook post by David Rodenhiser, marquee columnist for the Halifax Daily News until its demise in 2008, now toiling for Nova Scotia Power's communications group. In the Obituaries section of the Chronicle-Herald there are notices for no fewer than six veterans of the Second World War: Joseph “Bunny” McLaughlin, army, who brought home a war bride in 1946 Jaleel “John” Laba, army, who later owned and operated Laba’s Discount on Gottingen Street for many years Stanley Cairns, merchant mariner George Haliburton, army Adele Healy, RCAF secretary Walter Shaw, army, wounded in Germany in 1945 There’s also an obituary for Cecile d’Entremont, who passed away...

11 September, 2013
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