[Video link] The presidential limo is a 1987 VW Bug. The presidential pooch has only three functioning legs. The presidential laundry hangs on the line, washed in water hauled from a well in the yard. The president himself, Jose Mujica, who won a landslide victory in Uraguay's 2009 election, carries six bullet wounds in his body, a legacy of his time with the Tupamaros guerrillas in the '60s and '70s. He also spent 14 years in a military prison, including two confined to the bottom of a well. Mujica donates 90 percent of his $144,000 annual salary to charity, bringing his effective income...

23 November, 2012

When this year's Nobel prizes were awarded last month, a Columbia University scientist offered a startling suggestion for how a country might win more of them. Eat more chocolate. Writing in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, cardiologist Franz Messerli reported his discovery that a nation's chocolate consumption is closely linked to the number of Nobel laureates it produces. Switzerland, with the highest chocolate consumption in the world, also has the most Nobels per capita. Canadian chocolate consumption turns out to be tragically modest, as is our production of nobel winners. The US easily edged us out on both counts, and still managed to fall well...

20 November, 2012

Here at last is Contrarian's searchable map of 2011 political donations in Nova Scotia: [Direct link to map] Each dot represents a donation. The dots are color-coded by party: orange (and brown) for NDP; red for Liberal; blue for PC; green for Green; and white for Atlantica. The larger dots stand for donations of $1,000 or more. Clicking on an individual dot reveals a pop-up table listing the name and address of the donor, the party to whom they donated, and the amount and type of donation. Use the + and – slider on the left side of the map to zoom...

12 August, 2012

TV producer John Wesley Chisholm,  whose Arcadia Entertainment production company is located on Halifax's Quinnpool Road, wonders why the street never quite achieves its potential as a great urban neighborhood. In some ways it’s a classic mainstreet. But it’s schizophrenic. It’s a highway with a hundred hidden driveways. It’s a shopping district and residential street. It’s six lanes wide in places, narrow in others. It’s a pedestrian arcade yet almost impossible to cross conveniently. It’s highspeed traffic and slow drag. It’s a parking lot and a thoroughfare. One thing is certain, it’s tired. The faces of the buildings are tired. The wires,...

08 August, 2012

PlaceMakingHFX is a pilot project of the Halifax Regional Municipality, co-sponsored by the 4Cs Foundation. Time lapse video by E Gordon. Music by Galen Conroy, aka DJ Nagwoode....

25 July, 2012

Yes, the blog posts have been slower this July. On those rare Nova Scotia weeks, when the sun blasts down and the temperature tops 25° for days on end, there are better things to do in than sit at a keyboard and grouse about the state of the world. In the backlog of posts I mean to get to: big developments in the Dexter Government's demolition of Talbot House (including five pending Contrarian FOIPOP requests looking for the motives behind this hatchet job); feedback from defenders of Neal Livingston and admirers of Cabot Links; and he next instalment of the Contrarian Election...

25 July, 2012

Cape Breton musicians and artists celebrated their hope for photographer Carol Kennedy Wednesday night with wonderful music and just the right words, spoken by just the right people.  Cape Breton University's Boardmore Playhouse was a roomful of love. Kennedy, in treatment for cancer, wasn't up to the drive from in from her North River Bridge home, so she listened and watched on Skype. From time to time, audience members could hear her shouted hellos and thank yous to emcee Maynard Morrison. "Angels are people who counsel from a place of love," Kennedy wrote in an email read by Joella Foulds. "I am definitely surrounded...

21 June, 2012

Join friends of Carol Kennedy, the beloved Cape Breton photographer who is grappling with cancer, for a musical and artistic celebration of hope on the Solstice. Some of Cape Breton's finest artisans and musicians will gather at Cape Breton University's Boardmore Playhouse for a benefit concert and silent auction. Tickets are $25 at the Bean There Cafe in Baddeck, Capitol Drugs in Sydney Mines, and the Cape Breton Curiosity Shop, Sydney. The auction begins at 6 p.m. ...

19 June, 2012

Scott Milsom, reporter, editor, communist, chain smoker, Red Sox fanatic, wordsmith, author, and one of the nicest guys I ever knew, died this morning from cancer of the lungs. From 1988 to 1996, Scott edited New Maritimes, an ambitious quarterly journal about the struggles and triumphs of working people in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and PEI. When a policy change at the Canada Council killed the magazine, Scott went on to publish and edit the Coastal Community News, which featured beautifully written profiles of the villages and hamlets that dot our coastline. Scott was a dedicated leftist. Although he decamped from the...

14 June, 2012
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