Kimber’s Nova Scotia (May 27, 2007)
Kimber’s Nova Scotia
May 27, 2007What have they got against curling?
Liverpool town councilors might want to re-think their recent decision not to install surveillance cameras downtown. Last Sunday between midnight and 4 a.m., vandals painted the town red.
The back wall of the curling club was covered with what one observer called “child-like drawings and text in mostly red paint demonstrating a hatred for the RCMP… praise for drugs and sexual descriptions.” Other targets included the heritage cemetery wall, a dumpster, the bridge and area businesses.
“We wouldn’t call it graffiti anymore,” says local RCMP Staff Sergeant and art critic Bruno Deveau. “Sometimes, they have tasteful designs; these ones are tasteless.”
Liverpool Curling Club President Greg Thorbourne — who “had to take the kids to Sunday school and it was, like, ‘hide your eyes, kids’” — believes his group will either have to repaint the whole side of its building or replace the siding.
Although Mayor John Leefe reported to council last week that “the idiots … who seek to mar our community with graffiti are people with feeble minds,” he once again rejected the idea of installing cameras to keep watch on the downtown.
The cameras, he said, wouldn’t have captured much of the latest damage because of where it was done.
And so it was done.
Machiavelli alert
Is it possible Stephen Harper’s Tories are so calculating they cut summer student funding to dozens of worthwhile projects just so their MPs could get credit for saving them?
Last week, the story was the cuts. This week it’s what a wonderful job local Tory MPs are doing looking out for their constituents.
Take the Lansdowne Outdoor Recreational Development Association, for example. Last week — thanks to Ottawa’s cuts — “we were facing closure [and] there were nights I never slept,” Dave Leese, the park director, told the New Glasgow News.
This week, Leese is sleeping better because his local Tory MPs, “Peter MacKay and Bill Casey, were instrumental in achieving our goal of staying open.”
Stephen Harper? Calculating? Nah…
Let us compare qualifications
At first blush, defeated former provincial cabinet minister Kerry Morash’s appointment to the National Roundtable on the Environment and Economy by current federal Tory Environment Minister John Baird might seem another example of our business-as-all-too-usual, good-old-boy political patronage.
But Morash is a good choice for the position. He served as the province’s environment minister for three years and also did a stint as chair of the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment. Under his watch, Nova Scotia implemented its first green plan, designated two new wilderness areas and set aside four new nature reserves. In 2006, the non-profit Canadian Council on Ecological Areas presented him with a Gold Leaf Award for his efforts.
What’s more he actually applied for the job. “I’m very excited,” Morash told the Liverpool Advance. “It’s really an honour to be able to take part in something like this.”
And, wonder of wonders, he has some ideas about what he hopes to do. He wants to focus on our role as the “tailpipe of North America,” the jet stream destination for American and Canadian air pollution.
I tell you all of this so you can compare his appointment with that of a recent provincial environmental appointee — Heather Foley Melvin as the head of Conserve Nova Scotia.
Foley Melvin, you may remember, was in the middle of being fired from her short-lived job as Premier Rodney MacDonald’s chief of staff when Rodney offered her the oh-by-the-way consolation prize of running some energy conservation agency that didn’t yet exist. Which fit. Foley Melvin’s environmental credentials were equally ethereal. As were her non-existent plans for what to do once she got the job she didn’t apply for.
Which raises the question: if the premier was so keen on the environment, why didn’t he offer the job to someone like Morash who was not only an unemployed Tory in good standing but someone who also knew something about the issue? Could it be that Morash supported the wrong candidate during last year’s Tory leadership race? Just asking.
Mike? Are you listening? Mike…
Strait Regional School Board member Mike Brown thinks members of the Antigonish Women’s Resource Centre — who run a program called Inspire in Antigonish and Guysborough county schools — are a bunch of “glorified welfare recipients” who are wasting valuable school time that should be used to prepare students for testing.
Testing, he told a board meeting last week, is the only standard by which students and schools are judged.
Ironically, the issue came up during a presentation by the board’s director of programs and student services, who said the program — in which members of the women’s centre talk to adolescent girls about everything from nutrition to sexuality — had been a success, with much positive feedback.
In fact, Lucille Harper, the director of the centre, told the Port Hawkesbury Reporter the program has worked so well other schools have requested the group organize additional programs, and one school even asked them to develop a comparable program for young boys.
Perhaps they should consider creating a program for out-of-touch school board members.
More than just hot air
You may not need a weatherman “to know which way the wind blows,” as Bob Dylan once famously explained, but it helps to have a wind map if you want to translate all that air into useable energy. That’s why the province recently hired a University of Moncton researcher to draw a wind map of the province.
But Yves Gagnon’s map, expected to be completed early this fall, will also almost certainly fan the flames of controversy in Cumberland County. That’s because Gagnon, who completed a similar study in New Brunswick that suggested the area along the border between the two provinces is ideally suited for wind farming, expects to find similar “favourable conditions” on the Nova Scotia side of the Tantramar Marsh and in other parts of Cumberland County as well.
Cumberland County currently has two large-scale wind farming projects in the planning stages and is already embroiled in a messy fight with Pugwash area residents over a new bylaw governing how far turbines have to be located from residential areas.
Still, Gagnon says the idea of a publicly accessible wind map will be good for everyone. While large companies have the resources to create their own maps, he points out, “what Nova Scotia is doing is making the information open to everyone. It’s good for developers who want to build wind farms and it’s good for municipal groups who will know where the best winds are in Nova Scotia.”
What about landowners who don’t want wind turbines for neighbours? Even then, suggests Gagnon, it will help to at least know about potential wind resources on their land so they’ll be in a better negotiating position when approached by a developer.
How much do you need to know to say no?
Colour them purple… again
Less than two weeks after canceling its latest “code purple” alert, South West Health declared yet another one — its fifth since October — because of overcrowding in district hospitals.
Code purple is health-care talk for what happens when there are no beds available in a hospital’s normal nursing units, meaning patients needing beds end up warehoused in emergency departments, labour-delivery rooms, kiddie play rooms, rehab spaces or patient TV lounges.
South West Health says it has been “experiencing increased pressure,” largely because there are 56 people currently occupying hospital beds who should be in nursing homes. The problem is that there are no beds available for them there.
Although the department of health recently agreed to fund five beds at Roseway Hospital for patients awaiting nursing home placement, those beds immediately filled up.
Paging Dr. Rodney…
Is anyone else curious about how our premier can be so concerned about the effects of a recent one-day strike by nurses at the IWK that he’s ready — even eager — to legislate away their right to strike? And yet, when it comes to a real health care crisis his Tories have known was coming for at least seven years, his government has been so slow to react and so inept when it does?
Where’s Stone Cold Steve Harper?
A few months ago, the pundits were predicting we’d be in the middle of a federal electoral cage match by now. But the polls — and the sorry performance of the federal Tories — have put an end to that hoped-for bit of spring mud wrestling fun.
Which means the real thing is now the only game in town.
Which brings us to this week’s live event alert.
Tonight, MainStream Wrestling, a low-rent version of the glitzy World Wrestling Entertainment soap-opera smackdowns, returns to the Middleton and District Arena as part of its current tour of Newfoundland and small-town Nova Scotia.
“The tour just keeps getting bigger and better and the fans are more and more excited,” says MSW owner and promoter Devin Chittick, who wrestles as “X-Ray” Kyle Kruze.
Doors open at 7 — opening bell at 7:30.
Featuring a grudge match between Battling Bulldog Scotty Brison and Peter “Doghouse” MacKay… No, really…
SOURCES:
AMHERST DAILY NEWS, KENTVILLE ADVERTISER, LIVERPOOL ADVANCE, NEW GLASGOW NEWS, PORT HAWKESBURY REPORTER, YARMOUTH VANGUARD.
Kimber’s Nova Scotia (May 20, 2007)
Kimber’s Nova Scotia
May 20, 2007
How many politicians does it take to screw up?
OK, how many free light bulbs will it take to cover the cost of gassing up the SUV for the 300-plus km drive from New Glasgow to Halifax and back?
That’s the question Pictou county residents were asking themselves last week after the dim bulbs at Conserve Nova Scotia grandly announced they had teamed up with Home Depot to provide every Nova Scotian with two free new energy-efficient light bulbs as part of its campaign to promote the government’s please-save-the-environment-so-we-don’t-have-to campaign.
The only problem? There are no Home Depot depots in Pictou County. Since you have to go to the store to get your free light bulbs — it is a Home Depot promotion after all — residents who want to take advantage of the time-limited offer from their friends at Province House will have to drive all the way to Halifax by close of business today.
And pay for the extra gas.
In order to save money on their electric bill.
This does not compute.
What did she say?
It began as an eagerly anticipated would-she-or-wouldn’t-she? moment and ended as yet another did-she-or-didn’t-she? episode of Karen confusion.
When Education Minister Karen Casey showed up at Yarmouth Consolidated Memorial High last Friday and summoned students and staff to the gym for a special assembly, everyone assumed the minister would announce plans to convert the high school into a junior high. It’s part of a grander proposal the school board submitted to the province last year, whose ultimate goal is a new high school.
The speculation seemed warranted. After all, Cash-Carrier Casey has been traipsing around the province of late, showing up at other schools with good-news announcements of capital projects like Yarmouth’s that had somehow gotten left out of the provincial budget.
But then Casey seemed to waffle. She carefully described her speech as “an update and a message.” Instead of announcing the green light for a new school, she used weasel words: “a recommendation I am prepared to take to my colleagues in cabinet to ask for their consideration to make that happen.”
Uh, does that mean you’re going to build the school, Karen?
Officials sharing the stage, who were effusive in their praise of Casey’s “announcement,” certainly thought so.
But when Yarmouth Vanguard columnist Tina Comeau asked the minister directly whether the “recommendation” constituted an announcement, she became even less clear and more muddied.
“I wouldn’t say it’s an announcement,” Casey explained, “but it’s an update and a message.”
Oh yeh, right. Message received.
Sign here…
A federal student jobs program that traditionally provides summer jobs for 1,000 young people in industrial Cape Breton will generate just one-tenth that number this year, thanks to what Liberal MP Mark Eyking calls a “mean-spirited” attack on the island’s economy, culture and students.
Guess who he’s talking about?
The Stephen Harper Tories not only sliced $11.6 million out of the former Liberal government’s Canada Summer Jobs Initiative — which is specifically supposed to create summer jobs in areas of high unemployment — but they also changed the ranking system for deciding which public, private and non-profit employers get funded, and which don’t.
The result is that such highly profitable, well-heeled organizations as the Sydney and Whitney Pier day cares, the Glace Bay Miners’ Museum and Miner’s Memorial Manor, along with the United Way, the Cape Breton Regional Municipality and dozens of other worthless public groups and private employers — many of whom depend on subsidized student employment to survive — have been told they don’t qualify for funding this year.
“I was totally shocked,” says the United Way’s executive director, Allister Taylor, who adds pointedly that he’s heard of local employers being told they can’t hire a single student while “there are organizations in Halifax receiving five students for the summer. It puzzles me.”
Three guesses again, Mr. Taylor.
Cary MacDonald, general manager of Sydney’s Saf-Way Auto Parts Ltd., which had been using the federal program to hire summer staff for the past four years but got rejected last week, is more than puzzled. He’s angry. He’s written a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, telling him just how serious the cuts will be for students. “Perhaps you can co-sign their student loans in the fall,” he added bitterly.
Three guesses on the answer to that one too. We don’t think you’ll need them all.
So will they demolish the airport too?
Call them disappearing signs of changing transportation times.
Kentville Town Council recently voted in favour of demolishing its historic railroad roundhouse.
Originally built in 1912, the roundhouse — now the last of its kind in Nova Scotia — once serviced and repaired up to 10 steam locomotives at a time. During the golden age of rural rail, in fact, the old Dominon Atlantic Railroad employed one-third of Kentville’s entire workforce, most of them in its roundhouse.
Which is one reason the Nova Scotia Railway Heritage Society wants the town to support its bid to get Ottawa to declare the roundhouse a heritage property. They believe it should be renovated for contemporary uses; similar structures have been turned into everything from arts centres to microbreweries. But a consultant hired by the town says such a makeover would cost way too much.
Meanwhile in Liverpool, one of Nova Scotia’s last remaining old-style twenties’ gas stations is also facing the wrecker’s ball, probably within months.
Municipal council had agreed last year to give a citizen’s group time to negotiate with Petro Canada, which owns the now empty building, in hopes of turning the building into a car museum, but the company turned down the idea, and the building’s future appears to have finally run out of gas.
Now there’s a surprise
The consultant representing the still unnamed developer for the soon-to-be renamed Shelburne youth jail says his unidentified employers plan to change the name — as well as the uses — of the former youth detention centre.
As Ralston MacDonnell obliquely explained it all to Shelburne residents during a municipal budget meeting last week, “sometimes history has a way of defining the future.” Given the controversy over allegations of abuse at the school, MacDonnell suggested the facility needs “a substantial image makeover.”
Given the secrecy surrounding the development project, the property may not be the only thing in need of a substantial image makeover.
Where’s the fire?
A former — please note the former — Digby firefighter was handed a suspended sentence and ordered to pay $2,500 restitution last week after taking the department’s Rescue Six F250 Superduty pickup truck for a wild late night joyride last fall.
Ryan Chayko totalled the $60,000 vehicle — fully fitted out with sirens, light bar, strobe lights, radios, cap, winch, striping, sliding cargo bed and portable pump and generator — after losing control while trying to negotiate a turn at the end of Digby Neck. Oops.
The fine covers the deductible on the department’s insurance for the vehicle, which has since been replaced.
In his victim impact statement, Fire Chief Robbie Morgan described the incident as “a big inconvenience and an insult, and embarrassing to have one of our own people steal something from us.” That may explain why he asked the court to also order Chayko to turn in any department gear he might still have. “The members were all agreed they didn’t want to see him around town wearing something that would indicate an association with us.”
Perhaps they should call Ryan
There’s more heat than light in Cumberland County this week as the county council and Westchester fire department squabble over how much the volunteer department should contribute to the cost of its new pumper.
In 2004, the department had asked the county to share the expense of a new vehicle, but that proposal was shelved and, according to a spokesman for the firefighters, council “wouldn’t talk with us” afterward, even though it provided other departments with fire trucks at no cost at all.
Now suddenly, the county says it wants Westchester to pony up $50,000 as its share of a new vehicle. The firefighters say the elected officials should get real.
“We are a volunteer department and are on call for our community,” Greg Bushen, the assistant deputy chief, said in a letter to the municipality.
County council privately agreed last week on its reply to Bushen’s letter, but Warden Keith Hunter won’t say what it is. “All we agreed to do in the open council session was to send the letter,” he explained to reporters. “We didn’t discuss what the letter would contain.”
Watch for the smoke signals.
They give prizes for this?
The town of Stellarton has a new distinction; it is now a member in good standing of the Cast Iron Pipe Century Club.
Say what?
A group called the Ductile Iron Pipe Research Association presents these coveted Oscars of the plumbing netherworld to municipalities that have cast iron pipes, which are still in service 100 or more years after they were installed. Last week a representative appeared before town council to officially present it with a framed certificate marking the milestone.
In case you needed to know, Stellarton, which began using these particular 10-inch iron pipes to do whatever it is they do way back in 1893, is the 28th municipality in Canada to win the award.
Congratulations… we think.
SOURCES: AMHERST DAILY NEWS, CAPE BRETON POST, DIGBY COURIER, KENTVILLE ADVERTISER, LIVERPOOL ADVANCE, NEW GLASGOW NEWS, SHELBURNE COAST GUARD, YARMOUTH VANGUA
RD.
Kimber’s Nova Scotia (May 13, 2007)
Kimber’s Nova Scotia
May 13, 2007
The puck-buck starts here
Terry Hines believes he knows how to “reclaim Windsor as the birthplace of hockey.”
No, the former president of the town’s Hockey Heritage Society hasn’t discovered the “smoking puck” at the bottom of a pile of smelly gear in some musty basement that will finally, definitively, once and forever prove the first hockey-not-hurley game in North America was played right here in Windsor, and not in French—… oops Montreal, or Kingston, or Dartmouth, or whatever other community unfairly claims the distinction that rightly belongs to Windsor.
Unfortunately, Hines’ plan to reclaim the bragging net for Windsor is more bureaucratic. He wants to merge the town’s visitor’s centre with its hockey heritage centre putting them under one roof in a new high-traffic development that would reduce costs, open up more display space for shinny artifacts and naturally stream visitors from the information centre to the hockey museum next door.
Although the 12-year-old hockey heritage centre is an important town tourist attraction “that has brought thousands of hockey purists to the area since Windsor was identified as ‘the birthplace of hockey’ almost two decades ago,” the centre is… uh, closed these days for lack of volunteers to run it.
Despite all of that, planning is going ahead for yet another local puck project, this one called the International Hockey Heritage Centre, which officials insist “should complement… not compete” with the local centre.
For visitors? Or volunteers?
Who let these guys out of the legislature?
First it was Rodney MacDonald wandering the byways of Cape Breton, promising your tax dollars to school projects his officials hadn’t intended to green-light until the premier saw the whites of student protestors’ eyes and counted the black “X’s” of their parents’ ballots. He was followed by his education minister, Karen Cash-Carrier Casey, doing much the same from Middleton to Riverside, dissing-with-faint-praise student protestors even as she handed their schools money.
Last week, Environment and Labour Minister Mark Parent’s took his turn as the government’s designated rural vote chaser. The King’s North MLA announced plans to patch and repave that “vital transportation corridor” between Kentville and Port Williams, and spiff up Route 221 from Blackhole Road to Route 359 between the “dynamic communities of Sheffield Mills and Centreville.”
Not to be forgotten, the official opposition has also now set out on the pre-next-year’s election trail (will it never end?).
Darrell Dexter, the leader of the Halifax-based socialist hordes, showed up recently as the guest speaker at the annual meeting of— wait for it — the Digby Area Board of Trade.
Dexter, the first NDP leader ever invited to address the local business group, criticized the MacDonald government for failing rural Nova Scotians..
A few days later, Dexter was in the traditionally NDP-unfriendly Annapolis Valley, touting the possibilities of agriculture, fishing and forestry.
“There are opportunities for wealth creation in the traditional industries,” Dexter told a gathering of party supporters in Kentville, noting that growing concern about the environmental costs of trucking produce from faraway places offers opportunities for local farmers to profit from the concerns of small-g green, city socialists who want to do the right thing. “Most people understand that buying local will return to the producer, strengthen the sector and invest in the farm,” he said.
Dexter isn’t the only citified New Democrat venturing into that “other” Nova Scotia these days.
On Friday, NDP MLA Percy Paris was scheduled to put in an appearance in Joseph Bishara’s Grade 5 class at Yarmouth Central School. As part of a “newspaper exploration” project, the students had written letters to Paris, the province’s only black MLA, talking about issues such as racism, inclusion and equity, and inviting him to visit their school.
“I can’t begin to tell you how moved I was to receive your package of letters,” replied Percy, who recently made headlines after he criticized some of his fellow MLAs for making him feel unwelcome at the legislature. “These notes speak volumes about [your] understanding, kindness and generosity… In short, you made my day!”
And a double-double for my friend Casanova
Robert Chetwynd celebrated the end of six months’ house arrest with a coffee. Well, more than one. Last week, Chetwynd set out on horseback for a celebration-protest tour of southwestern Nova Scotia Tim Hortons outlets.
On Tuesday morning — after an earlier stop in Yarmouth — Chetwynd and his horse Casanova trepidatiously trotted up to the takeout window at the Barrington Tims — also known as… the scene of the crime.
Three years ago, the courts ordered Chetwynd to stay away from the coffee shop. And then, the next year, he was arrested and charged with close to two dozen different offences in connection with a bizarre incident in which police used pepper spray to subdue him after he rammed a police cruiser with his horse when police tried to arrest him for violating the order.
Chetwynd, known locally as Jell-O Head, explains he staged his latest protest because he wanted the Barrington Tims to lift its ban against his use of a nearby rest spot and hitching post, and apologize to him for its past sins. But the local owner-operator, David Arenburg, says there’s no ban as far as Tims is concerned, and he doesn’t know what all the fuss is about. “We have gone out of our way to try and accommodate him,” he told the Yarmouth Vanguard, “and have reached out to him on numerous occasions.”
In fact, there were no hassles — just plenty of stares — when Chetwynd rode up to the takeout window on his horse and ordered a large coffee. Although he held up the proffered cup in triumph, his exultation appeared to be short-lived. He didn’t even drink the coffee, giving it to a friend instead.
“This has all cost me a lot of money,” he declared as he rode off into the day.
Shelburne Place, Chapter 87A…
Just when you thought the twisted tale of Shelburne Place couldn’t get any more twisted, there’s another turn of the loose screw.
Shelburne Place, as you may know, is the name for a new but still secret redevelopment project proposed by a still unnamed developer for the already named former youth detention centre facility in Shelburne… if you can follow all of that. But Team Shelburne, the inter-municipal agency set up to mastermind its transformation, is bogged down in infighting and arguments over who knows the name of the developer, the secret handshake and other matters of momentous moment.
Well, if that wasn’t enough, last week Ocean Produce International gave notice it plans to sue Team Shelburne, alleging “the fraudulent conveyance of the lands and premises locally known as Shelburne Place.”
Rewind. Shelburne-based Ocean, which is the world’s largest producer of an algae used in neurological research, has been in a legal battle with Team Shelburne’s municipal partners in the South West Shore Development Authority for seven years. Apparently, it doesn’t want proceeds from the sale of Shelburne Place going anywhere until its own $4-million damage claim is dealt with.
Paging Howard Windsor
The Port Hawkesbury Reporter described the air at a recent Strait regional school board meeting as “thick with tension” after board members emerged from an hour-and-fifteen-minute closed-door session to discuss “sensitive matters,” and tried to begin the public portion of their meeting.
While much of the ensuring discussion “remained vague and cryptic,” it seemed clear enough — from the questions they asked staff and the comments of one member — that there are “issues” between the board and some staff members.
During the public portion of the meeting, in fact, board member Brenda Gillis asked superintendent Phonse Gillis to look into reports a senior staff member had been heard making disparaging remarks about an elected board member.
Not nice.
After the meeting, Gillis tried to put the best face on it all. “Overall,” he said, “I think if you look at how the board is moving forward, I think we are making progress.”
Isn’t that what members of the Halifax school board said just before the education minister fired them all?
Speaking of dysfunctional relationships
The Chignecto-Central regional school board isn’t winning friends at Pictou county council.
Since January, council has been trying to schedule a meeting with board officials to get an update on how they’re spending the council’s money.
The board twice declined Pictou council’s invitation for a face-to-face session, inviting it instead to a general meeting in Truro on May 23 with all of the other councils that contribute to its budget.
That doesn’t sit well with Pictou councillors. “It blows me away they want to meet at 3:30 p.m. on a Wednesday,” Leonard Fraser told the New Glasgow News. “They must think we make a living on doing council work, and that’s just not true. We’re paying them a big cheque through the year and the least they can do is come here.”
Council has decided to write board officials again, asking them to attend one of its own meetings this summer. Perhaps it will be third time lucky?
How long before this turns up in an ad?
Cameron O’Brien, an autistic seven-year-old who couldn’t previously form words into a coherent story, has been “saved” by the bright lights, noisy toys and new technology at Sydney’s Wal-Mart store.
“He told me 20 things he loved about Wal-Mart,” his resource teacher Lisa Kelly explained, “and then we bought a typing program which talks back to him, so he spent two weeks writing the letter and listening to it as he wrote it.”
Last Tuesday, Cameron read his one page story about his love for the store to a group of 25 Wal-Mart employees. Afterwards, the store manager presented Cameron with an employee name tag and a gift certificate.
SOURCES
: CAPE BRETON POST, DIGBY COURIER, HANTS JOURNAL, KENTVILLE ADVERTISER, NEW GLASGOW NEWS, PORT HAWKESBURY REPORTER, SHELBURNE COAST GUARD, YARMOUTH VANGUARD
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About
STEPHEN KIMBER, the Rogers Communications Chair in Journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax, is an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster. He is the author of one novel -- Reparations -- and eight non-fiction books.