Kimber’s Nova Scotia (Sept 2, 2007)
Kimber’s Nova Scotia
September 2, 2007
And they didn’t use a shredder either
Disgusted residents of MacBeath Road near Scotsburn were sifting through the rubble from an illegal dumpsite last week when they hit the motherlode. Amid the chunks of sheet rock, broken glass, food waste and toxic construction materials that had been dumped by the side of the road near a scenic brook and waterfall, the residents discovered telltale packing slips, and personal receipts linking the mess to its maker.
The residents called the Mounties who called the perpetrator. Though he or she — the cops weren’t saying — was out of town, the police did say that “some people who are sympathetic to that individual” volunteered to clean up the site.
So, while he or she — or perhaps even it — faces a $337 fine, local residents think they have a right to know the miscreant’s identity. Michelle Ferris told the New Glasgow News the public should know “someone is running a business who operates like that. I'd hate to think I would hire somebody who works that way.”
Sorry, world
In the latest round of the cat-and-mouse battle over herbicide spraying in Nova Scotia, the cat won.
Just after 6 a.m. on Tuesday, helicopters contracted by North Nova Forest Co-op doused a 22-hectare site near Roslin in Cumberland County with Vision, a controversial herbicide that has been approved for use by the federal pest management agency.
Though some residents had vowed to serve as human shields to prevent the spraying, the planned protest fizzled when only one local was on site for the early hour swoop.
Although the contractor didn’t spray in the section where local beekeeper Jerry Draheim stood — Question: If it’s so safe, why did they avoid spraying him with the stuff too? — the rest of the land was Visioned.
“We got ‘er all done,” North Nova silviculture supervisor Bruce MacLeod declared. Except, of course, for the spot where Draheim was. “We’ll probably go in and touch that up later, I’d imagine.”
MacLeod said he wasn’t surprised the protestors were a no-show. “Typically it turns out to be two or three people… I would have to guess they just didn’t get out of bed early enough.”
Local resident Dale Brown, who arrived in the middle of the action, says he’s disappointed they weren’t able to stop the spraying, but he thinks their protest got a message across. “More and more people are recognizing that we have to be more astute at protecting our own personal health and property,” he told the newspaper. “To me, it’s about morally standing up for your personal beliefs.”
Oh, no, not Shelburne again… still
There has been yet another twist in the twisted, tangled, tortuous saga that is the old Shelburne Boys School property — previously known as Shelburne Place and recently re-re-christened Bowood.
Ocean Products International has filed a law suit against Halifax developer Ralston MacDonnell and Southwest Shore Development Authority CEO Frank Anderson — and all their various associated corporate connections — alleging conspiracy and breach of trust in the bidding process that resulted in MacDonnell buying the property this spring for $550,000.
OPI, which has been involved in a separate legal kerfuffle with the development agency over property at the former Canadian Forces Base Shelburne for the past seven years, alleges Bowood — which MacDonnell incorporated after the sale — got the property for “grossly below fair market or replacement value.”
None of the allegations, as we say in the standard journalism biz boilerplate, has been proven in court.
Speaking of strange
The town council in Westville, which is still in the process of deciding whether it should even exist, is now trying to figure out whether members of the public should be allowed to speak during its meetings.
At its latest meeting, council reversed an earlier decision that would have required anyone who wanted to address its august self to submit their comments in advance, in writing, and in triplicate. (Actually, I made up the triplicate part; it just seemed to fit.)
Councillors were apparently concerned that unruly citizens were talking out of turn and upsetting the decorum of a body that its own CAO recently chastised for poor leadership.
“It’s a reality that no citizen has any right to be heard by council,” Coun. Gary MacLaughlin explained, apparently citing the book, Grassroots Democracy: Local Government in the Maritimes, as his source. It says so right here, he told his fellow councillors, adding that it’s a rule so fundamental, it isn’t even written down anywhere.
“The meeting is called to do the council's business,” he said.
And what business would that be?
Buy local, buy often
Looking to buy local this fall but don’t know how, or where, or from whom? King’s County wants to help. It’s set up a free Online Famers’ Market website — http://www.county.kings.ns.ca/cgi-bin/classifieds/classifieds.pl — where local producers can list what they have on offer (think “pesticide-free, dried yellow eye beans, which are naturally air dried for quick cooking”?),and customers can make contact with them directly.
“We’re setting up a forum,” says Coun. Chris Parker, who initially came up with the idea and sold it to his council colleagues. “It’s another way for people to buy local. We’re contacting farmers we know and people can contact us.”
Classified categories include all the usual — fruits, vegetables, cheese, dairy, poultry, pork, beef, specialty meats, fish, honey and maple products — as well as soy and organic products.
Muddying the black hole
Upper Granville residents, who had complained they encountered a “black hole” when they tried to find information about a proposed quarry in their area, may now find the situation even murkier.
Nova Scotia’s Environment Department dispatched an inspector to the North Mountain area last month after sightings of sediment in the Annapolis River. The inspector fingered the source as land owned by B. Spicer Construction Ltd, the company that had applied to develop the quarry and is now in the process of developing the land for it.
“Sufficient stabilization wasn’t in place to prevent sediment from entering the watercourse,” the inspector, Steve Sanford, told the Annapolis County Spectator in his best officialese. “Direction was given to the proponent to remediate the site…[and] install erosion and sediment control.”
Although the company’s quarry application is still in process, Sandford says the department doesn’t regulate preparatory land development, “so we don’t have a proactive means of going to land developers [to address these areas. This incident] wasn’t in contravention of an existing approval.”
That will come as small comfort to opponents of the project.
Come to pee?
There’s bad news and good news in the latest tourism statistics out of Barrington on the south shore. The Barrington Visitor Information Centre reports that the number of tourist visits plummeted a startling 47 per cent in the first three months of this year’s tourist season compared with last year.
In 2006, 3,270 visitors stopped in at the Centre from May to July. This year, that number was only 1,721.
The Pollyanna version of that? Warden Louise Halliday says at least 75 per cent of the visitors were actually interested in visiting the area. “In the past,” she said, “some visitors… have just stopped to use the washroom or the Internet.”
Perhaps the geniuses who came up with the province’s “Come to Life” tourism-hawking campaign will want to rethink the moe practical aspects of visitor luring.
And then there were three… two
Digby, which is already desperately seeking at least one new physician to take the place of Dr. Roy Harding, who retired in June, got more bad news last month when Dr. Richard Denton posted a notice in the Digby Courier that he too will be closing his practice Oct. 31 for health reasons.
Barb Johnson, a spokesperson for the South West Nova Health Authority, says the decision came as a shock, and complicates an already complicated situation.
When Denton stops practicing, the community will officially be down to just three general practitioners. The reality is even more dismal. One of the three has recently gone on maternity leave. And the retired and still unreplaced Dr. Harding carried almost twice the recommended patient load.
The latest blow, Johnson concedes, is “hard news for the Digby community,” where the local hospital’s emergency department has also been closed for much of the summer due to lack of doctors to staff it.
They wuz robbed
His local fans knew it was all over even before the results were announced. And not just because Yarmouth favourite son and Canadian Idol finalist Dwight d’Eon blew last week’s assignment to sing musical standards. (One judge gently advised the singer that crooning Paul Anka and Frank Sinatra tunes, even in cool white suit, is “not your thing.”)
But the real problem, fans complained, was with the telephone system in southwestern Nova Scotia. According to the Yarmouth Vanguard, fans were encountering inordinate problems with busy signals and other telephonic gremlins when they tried to call in their votes for D’Eon.
“Grrr… my phone is about ready to fly out the window,” one complained on D’Eon’s Facebook site. “Four votes in almost two hours….either busy, dead line or ‘this call cannot be completed as dialed.’” (There are no restrictions on the number of times you can vote for your Canadian Idol favourite.)
Meanwhile supporters of leading contender Brian Melo, a Hamilton, ON, singer, were gleefully announcing on his Facebook site that they’d had no trouble getting through — with two posters reporting they’d each been able to cast more than 750 ballots for their favourite during the two-hour voting window.
When the votes were counted, Dwight’s fans fears proved founded.
D’Eon is gone. But not forgotten in Yarmouth
Stephen Kimber is the Rogers Communications Chair in Journalism at the University of King’s College. His column also appears in Thursday’s Daily News.
SOURCES:
ANNAPOLIS COUNTY SPECTATOR, DIGBY COURIER, KENTVILLE ADVERTISER, NEW GLASGOW NEWS, SHELBURNE COAST GUARD, SHELBURNE COUNTY TODAY, YARMOUTH VANGUARD
Recent News
His novel Reparations, was shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis First Novel Award
and for the 2007 Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction.
•
His profile of Det. Tom Martin for The Coast
was selected as a "Notable Narrative" by Harvard's Nieman Narrative Digest.
•
Cardiac Unrest, his Coast cover story on heart researcher Dr. Gabrielle Horne's troubles
with the Capital District Health Authority won honourable mention in the Enterprise Reporting category of the 2007 Atlantic Journalism Awards.
Copyright 2007 Stephen Kimber
Kimber’s Nova Scotia (Aug 26, 2007)
Kimber’s Nova Scotia
August 26, 2007
Forest for the trees
Thanks to a new by-the-books building inspector, two small saw mills in Falmouth, Hants County, have had to turn away two or three contracts a week this summer and lay off six workers. Richard Neily says he and his wife have already “lost this milling season for sure” and will need to spend $5,000 of their own money to take a lumber grading course in September if they want to salvage the next one.
The problem is that the previous building inspector, who died last year, didn’t enforce sections of the National Building Code requiring lumber from local mills to be graded by a certified inspector. When the new inspector insisted the law be followed, the mill owners initially asked the local planning department to at least allow them to fill orders already on their books, but got nowhere.
“The building inspector insists he’s just doing his job,” says Neily, “but it’s the way they did it. It was inconsiderate and, after 30 years of being in business, we’re up against it.”
Is there an actual problem with the wood they sell? Stephen Barker, a local contractor, says the lumber the local mills produce is “number one grade, no question,” adds anyone questioning its quality “just needs to look at the material; it’s the best lumber you can get to build with and the prices are very competitive.”
Planner Lynn Davis couldn’t talk to the Hants Journal about why the sudden change in enforcement and wouldn’t allow its reporter to interview the new building inspector either.
Chalk one up for the bureaucracy.
Cold water on hot air
When he gets up a rhetorical head of steam about tidal power, Premier Rodney MacDonald can be harder to contain than the Bay of Fundy on a stormy day. In fact, when our premier loftily boasted during a recent Council of Federation meeting that “we will champion the effort for world tidal power innovation,” he sounded a tad too much like one of his predecessors.
During the seventies, Gerald Regan promised so much and delivered so little on his own Fundy tidal power dream wags of the day took to calling it the Great Fundy Hot Air Project.
Now, Parsborro Mayor Doug Robinson fears MacDonald may turn out to be all talk and no action too. “We’re behind the eight-ball now, as far as I’m concerned,” Robinson told the Amherst Citizen recently. “We should be moving ahead with this.”
Though the province has issued a request for proposals — inviting developers “from around the world to help us find the best technology,” as MacDonald puts it — Mayor Robinson thinks the province may be just muddying the waters.
Nova Scotia Power representatives are also considering test sites in the Parrsboro area, and Robinson says he’s getting mixed messages from the government and NSP, not to forget from the departments of environment and natural resources.
“It sounds like Nova Scotia Power has the project, but now the province is saying it’s looking for requests for proposals, so it seems like a step backwards,” says the mayor. “It is confusing… You can make all the promises you want, but politics is politics.”
No kidding.
More hot air about wind
Promoters of yet another wind farm project — this one on Nuttby Mountain south of Earltown — held an open house in North River last week to pitch their plan to local residents.
Atlantic Wind Power —already embroiled in controversy over its proposed wind power project on the Gulf Shore — and Cobequid Wind Power hope to jointly develop the 15-22 turbine project, which will cost $50-100-million and be completed by 2009.
David Smith, who owns property in Nuttby and was one of the 60 residents who attended the open house, told the Truro Daily News “I think they have a perfect location.” He says there are a lot of old, abandoned farms along the mountainside.
But Amanda McRae, who says she was “shocked” to hear about the proposal, urged caution. “Why not try a few at first ... to make sure the community’s OK with it?”
NSP is expected to make a decision on the proposal in early October.
Clear as mud
Dave Brush say he wasn’t looking to stir things up when he and his wife did some diving recently near a Port Mouton fish farm owned by New Brunswick’s Aqua Fish Farms Ltd. But what they claim to have found in waters near the fish farm — huge amounts of sediment and sludge, up to 34 inches thick — has definitely done just that.
That’s because Aqua wants to build a second plant nearby, and a local group called Friends of Port Mouton Bay wants to stop them. Friends claims the plant could endanger the local fishery.
Brush, who says diving conditions in Port Mouton Bay were the worst he’s ever encountered, believes the existing plant “seems to be devastating the area. It seems shortsighted to bring in an industry like this that could do so much damage.”
After his dive, Brush spoke with the citizens group, which didn’t help his credibility with the company.
“I can guarantee you the sludge does not extend that far,” Aqua President Ian Hamilton insisted to the Liverpool Advance. “It’s unfortunate that [the Friends] continue to whip up support against the farm.”
Stephen still likes him
South Shore MP Gerald Keddy is reaping his rewards for taking one for the team. Last week, Keddy was front and centre in Shelburne to announce that Ottawa would be spending $175,000 to help scientists figure out why lobster harvests are down — Can anyone say overfishing? — and “develop new practices that will be shared with people working on the front lines of this important industry.”
The report isn’t expected to be ready until 2012, by which time it may not matter overmuch to Mr. Keddy, who will have to face the electors sometime before that.
Keddy’s hometown Bridgewater Bulletin, which had criticized him for voting with Harper and against the Atlantic Accord in the recent budget vote, took another shot across his bow last week when it made a point of noting the not-very-surprising fact that Keddy had been left out of Harper’s reshuffled cabinet “again,” and quoted him defending himself against allegations he has “no influence in the federal government.”
Ouch.
See you later…
What if they staged an anti-spray protest and no one sprayed? That’s what happened Monday when a dozen protesters, some carrying signs and wearing gas masks, occupied a planned pesticide spray site near Roslin, Cumberland County.
The North Nova Forest Owners Co-op had planned to begin aerial spraying of Vision in the area that day.
The province’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency says the controversial pesticide is safe, but the protesters dispute that.
Rick Cheeseman, a local organic farmer, says that if you ask the manufacturers, “‘Is this product safe for people?’ they will say, ‘Glyphosate is safe.’ They will never tell you and never talk to you about the inert ingredients… Isn’t it time we started asking what the whole product is and start testing for it?”
In the end, the forest owners “postponed” spraying and the protesters, who’d vowed to remain on the property as human shields for as long as it takes, went home.
Until the next time.
Bash this
The Halifax-based owners of the former Shelburne boys school — now known as Bowood, after Lord Shelburne’s historic English estate — plan to strut their stuff for the locals at an open house on the property Tuesday.
The MacDonnell Group, which purchased the facility in a controversial deal in June, will outline their plans — which include offices, seniors and student housing, commercial businesses, a security training centre and parkland — in hopes the locals will become interested in the project.
“We want to see the whole community come out,” Sarah Vander Meer of the MacDonnell Group told the Shelburne Coast Guard. To attract them, there’ll be commercial booths, children’s entertainment and even an exhibition baseball game on the newly renovated boys school field featuring the Shelburne Bashers team.
No word on whether their opponents will be Bowood bashers.
There are still plenty of people in town unhappy with the secrecy surrounding the MacDonnell deal, and with the involvement in it of Bowood president Ralston MacDonnell. He was involved in the unpopular privatization of the now falling-down Digby wharf a few years back.
Twelve divided by two, take away the Blue…
Pictou East MLA Clarrie “Joe Six-Pack” MacKinnon isn’t happy with the Nova Scotia Liquor Commission’s recent move to eliminate six-packs of beer in favour of eight and 12-container packaging.
"I always liked to pick up a six-pack,” confesses the NDP MLA, sensing a hot-button summer consumer issue, “but then we moved to the smallest you can get is eight. Now, we're moving towards having 12 being the smallest."
He says it’s an issue of cost ("Lots of times, someone has $10 in one's pocket that they could afford to buy six beer with. That person doesn't have $20”) and consumption (“When you have 12, you're more apt to consume more than when you have six”).
You do the math.
But a spokesperson for the NSLC says the larger issue is shelf space. “If there are multiple sizes of one product, [suppliers] have to make a decision. We can't take all of them.” Besides, she adds, “if you were to buy a 12-pack instead of two six-packs, there's a volume savings.”
Again, you do the math. Or just open a cold one. How many was that anyway?
Stephen Kimber is the Rogers Communications Chair in Journalism at the University of King’s College. His column also appears in Thursday’s Daily News.
SOURCES: AMHERST CITIZEN, AMHERST DAILY NEWS, BRIDGEWATER BULLETIN, NEW GLASGOW NEWS, SHELBURNE COAST GUARD, TRURO DAILY NEWS.
His novel Reparations
, was shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis First Novel Award
and for the 2007 Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction.
•
His profile of Det. Tom Martin for The Coast
was selected as a "Notable Narrative" by Harvard's Nieman Narrative Digest.
•
Cardiac Unrest, his Coast cover
story on heart researcher Dr. Gabrielle Horne's troubles
with the Capital District Health Authority
won honourable mention in the Enterprise Reporting category of the 2007 Atlantic Journalism Awards.
Copyright 2007 Stephen Kimber
Kimber’s Nova Scotia (Aug 19, 2007)
Kimber’s Nova Scotia
August 19, 2007Wither Westville
It probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Not only did Westville’s acting chief administrative officer suggest the town dissolve itself and join Pictou County but he also took a shot at town councillors in the bargain.
“Unfortunately, the current town council seems to be more intent on dealing with non-policy issues and reacting to the many internal problems in this town,” Rick Ramsay wrote.
Ramsay is a former CAO for King’s County, who also runs a management consulting firm that has worked with troubled rural Nova Scotia communities over the years. He was hired as Westville’s CAO on a short-term contract in March after councillors had a falling out with New Glasgow, with which the town had been sharing administrative services. Ramsay’s report says merging with the county is the best way to solve the town’s escalating financial woes.
During a public meeting to discuss the report last week, councillors responded to Ramsay’s blunt assessment with a few of their own. Coun. Gary MacLaughlin, who called the report “unprofessional” and “worthless,” among other choice phrases, claimed Ramsay “took our money and ran. He'll never be welcome in this town again.”
Ramsay, added Coun. Charlie Sutherland, his voice shaking, “gave us the most one-sided piece of fiction ever presented.”
Even Town Solicitor Charles Facey got in on the act, declaring the “Ramsay Report bothered me," and questioning the accuracy of information in it.
Which prompted a sharp retort from Lynn MacDonald, one of the residents at the meeting. She said his “ad lib… [was] totally inappropriate and unprofessional,” calling it “a classic example of council not advocating in an appropriate manner.”
Strangely — who can figure these things — the New Glasgow News reports that, after all of that, council voted to approve the report!
Got any gay sex films? The mayor asked me to check…
The buttoned-down town of Truro, which gave us this summer’s gay pride flag flap, may soon be the scene of yet another sexual smackdown.
Quebec-based X-citement Video has been posting signs in windows on a Mill Street storefront touting “X-Citement Movies... And a lot More. For Adults Only.”
The only problem is that town bylaws require stores featuring predominantly adult movies to have a permit. “They made an application,” Deputy Development Officer Juanita Bigelow told the Truro Daily News, “but the development permit was refused.”
With X-citement officials refusing comment and Truro CAO Jim Langille threatening to prosecute if the shop opens, Frank Rhyno, the owner of
another adult-oriented shop, is watching from the sidelines.
Rhyno was also turned down when he applied to open a Sister Sarah’s in Truro last year, so he now caters to the chaste sexual fantasies of Truro residents from his store across the river in — wait for it — Bible Hill.
If X-citement is allowed to open in town, he says he will too.
Ah, the x-citement never ends in Truro.
Ferry, very fast
Granville Ferry residents want the Department of Transportation to install what the Spectator described as “traffic-calming devices” to slow down drivers who zip through their community at life-threatening speeds.
More than 100 people signed a petition organized by the local Neighbourhood Watch after a DOT speed recording study on the Granville Road last fall clocked drivers at speeds up to 139.9 km per hour in a 60 km zone. In one test, 87 per cent of vehicles were caught doing more than the posted limit.
Earlier this month, the residents met with officials from DOT, the RCMP and local MLA Stephen McNeil.
Joe Crowell, District Traffic Supervisor and Authority, told the residents the department isn’t keen to use stop signs, speed bumps or rumple strips for speed control but might consider repainting the lines on the sides of the road to make the road appear narrower, causing drivers to slow down.
Psychological warfare? Sounds like a plan.
The passion of the peregrine
On a cold March day in 1997, Kip McCurdy was chopping wood in St. Croix Cove when he decided to take a break and walk along the bay to ”see what was happening in the world.”
What he saw that morning first perplexed, then fascinated and finally obsessed him.
Today, thanks in no small part to his relentless passion for the two peregrine falcons he observed that day, the birds, once thought to be nearly extinct in Nova Scotia, are finally off the endangered species list. But not, says McCurdy, out of danger.
Peregrine falcons are crow-sized predators that can soar hundreds of metres into the sky and dive-bomb their prey at speeds of more than 300 km/hr, decapitating them in mid-flight and seizing them with their talons.
They were pushed to the brink of extinction in the fifties and sixties, thanks largely to the widespread use of pesticides.
McCurdy eventually persuaded skeptical biologists to come and confirm what was then the first sighting of mating falcons in the province in 40 years. They made him part of their peregrine falcon recovery team. He helped monitor the nest on behalf of the Department of Natural Resources. Between 1998 and 2005, McCurdy watched 23 chicks hatch and grow. After her mate died in 2005, Madelaine disappeared and didn’t return to the cove. Their nest is now home to another set of peregrines — McCurdy believes the female is probably Madelaine’s daughter — and other pairs have also been spotted in the Minas Basin area.
Despite that, McCurdy isn’t confident the birds are out of danger. “DDT is still used in South America where they spend the winter," he told the Annapolis Spectator. “And we continue to introduce pesticides that are contaminating the environment and their prey.”
They know how to party
The big windstorm that ripped through Nova Scotia earlier this month also shredded the Big Tent in Cheticamp’s Acadian Village. The tent was the venue for a four-nights-a-week “Acadian Kitchen Party,” one of the summer’s most popular local tourist attractions.
Clarence LeLievre, manager of operations, says they initially tried to roll up the sides of the 60’x120’ tent to let the wind blow through, but then gusts reached 139 km/hr. Eventually, one guy line snapped, and then another and another. “It was heartbreaking to see it happen and be able to do nothing,” he told the Inverness Oran.
The bad news is that the $75,000 tent and its infrastructure were completely destroyed.
The good news is that the party must go on. And it did, in a nearby arena.
The even better news for the long-term hopes of the area’s tourism industry is that Les Soirées chez Gélas (“Evenings at the home of Gélas”) — the name of the event where residents and tourists gather to enjoy music, humour, stories, songs and dance reflecting Acadian traditions — has been attracting four times as many people as projected.
It will continue. Declares general manager Paul Gallant: “We do what is difficult immediately, the impossible tasks will take an extra day.”
First we vote, then we party?
Gary MacLean and Anne Tracey were waiting with eager anticipation and more than a little trepidation yesterday as voters in Ellershouse and Brooklyn trekked to the polls to decide whether the two historically dry communities would finally allow liquor to be sold in their local corner stores.
Tracey and her husband Grant run the Ellershouse Kwik-Way while Gary and his wife Pat operate the Brooklyn Petro-Can. Both have tentative liquor commission approval to sell booze in their shops if the vote goes as they hope.
“We’ve got to get with modern times,” MacLean says hopefully. “There's not the mindset there was 30-40 years ago.”
There is certainly interest in the plebiscite, says Tracey. People are “always coming in asking where and when they can vote, and how many people they can bring with them,” she joked.
Voting more than once, of course, is a fine old Maritime political tradition. As is a little liquor treat in exchange for voting the right way, though we’re sure that wouldn’t ever happen in West Hants.
Though MacLean expected residents to vote yes, he wasn’t taking anything for granted. “The people that don’t want it will definitely turn out, but we want those that support it to come out too,” he told the Hants Journal last week. “It's up to the public now. If they want it, they've got to vote for it.”
Vote early, vote often, take two
Yarmouth residents are flexing their fingers in anticipation of tomorrow night’s edition of Canadian Idol while still muttering darkly about phone system gremlins they believe might have been responsible for almost bringing down hometown favourite Dwight D’Eon last week.
Though he survived the latest cut in the popular CTV series, D’Eon ended up near the bottom of the heap for the first time since he made it into the top 10-contestants.
D’Eon supporters suggest that may have been because they encountered more busy signals than usual. One fan told the Yarmouth Vanguard callers had been able to get through to vote 90 per cent of the time previously but only 10 per cent of the time during the most recent balloting.
Meanwhile, as the weeks dwindle down to a precious few — the new Canadian Idol will be crowned Sept. 11 — excitement is building in Yarmouth. The local Empire Theatres carries live feeds of the performances and results on one of its big screens. They’re hoping for a full house — and no busy signals — tomorrow.
Stephen Kimber is the Rogers Communications Chair in Journalism at the University of King’s College. His column also appears in Thursday’s Daily News.
SOURCES:
ANNAPOLIS SPECTATOR, HANTS JOURNAL, INVERNESS ORAN, NEW GLASGOW NEWS, TRURO DAILY NEWS, YARMOUTH VANGUARD.
Recent News
His novel Reparations
, was shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis First Novel Award
and for the 2007 Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction.
•
His profile of Det. Tom Martin for The Coast
was selected as a "Notable Narrative" by Harvard's Nieman Narrative Digest.
•
Cardiac Unrest, his Coast cover
story on heart researcher Dr. Gabrielle Horne's troubles
with the Capital District Health Authority
won honourable mention in the Enterprise Reporting category of the 2007 Atlantic Journalism Awards.
Copyright 2007 Stephen Kimber
Kimber’s Nova Scotia (Aug 12, 2007)
Kimber’s Nova Scotia
August 12, 2007Sowing the seeds
King’s County Council voted 9–2 Tuesday to reject controversial land use amendments so a local developer could transform 47 acres of prime farmland into 200 new residential housing units.
While that puts an end to Fury Farms’ plan to develop property adjacent to the Berwick Heights Golf Course property, the larger issue — what to do about increasing acres of abandoned agricultural land — will be more difficult to resolve.
Close to 50 people spoke out — most against —at a four-hour public hearing on the proposal. And then, just before council met to make a final decision, a caravan of farm vehicles — including, perhaps tellingly, a manure spreader — paraded through town bearing signs that demanded, “Keep Weston Rural,” “Farmers: The Real Heart of the Valley,” and “Give Farming a Future.”
“Saving the farmland,” local resident Leslie Wade told councillors, “is about a future for our grandchildren. It’s our valuable resource, our gold mine.”
But Warden Fred Whalen, whose district includes the proposed development and who was one of the two to vote in favour, visualized a gold mine of a different sort. The $50-million project, he said, would add $4 million a year to the county tax base, generate employment, attract newcomers and help keep local young people from heading west.
Don’t expect the larger issue to go away soon. Coun. Janet Newton, who voted against this plan, told councillors she plans to support another proposal for agricultural land rezoning in her community when it comes before council.
Sign me up
A horrific car crash near Hubbards late last month that claimed two lives has sparked renewed calls for government to twin and upgrade Highway 103, the main route between Halifax and Yarmouth. In Lunenburg County alone, the Bridgewater Bulletin reports, the highway has claimed “close to 10 lives” this year.
Last week, former Bridgewater firefighter Tim Conrad, who now lives in Halifax, created a Facebook group “dedicated to the dozens of lives lost in recent years,” and an online petition site —http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?hwy103ns — demanding Ottawa and the province fix the highway. “The people of Nova Scotia accept only action,” the petition declared, “and require it to be done by 2010.”
The petition has struck a chord. By Friday morning, close to 1,000 people — me included — had signed.
Wrote Candice Ramey of Bridgewater: “The government needs to get its priorities in order and put their money where it will save lives instead of buying cars for MPs and wasting thousands of dollars bidding on sporting events.”
As if to underscore the problem, the Bulletin reported last week that, just four days after the deadly July 30 collision, “emergency responders were called to a four-car collision, again, near Exit 6. This time, no serious injuries were reported.”
Next time…?
Don’t ask, we won’t tell
The town of Amherst has a new policy on proclamations and flag raisings, but don’t ask what it is, or whether the town will run the gay pride flag up its town hall flagpole.
“We don’t want to make an issue out of something that’s not an issue yet,” Town Manager Greg Herrett told the Amherst Daily News following the Great Truro Flag Flap of 2007. “It’s something we’ll deal with when a request is received.”
Without disclosing too many secrets, we can tell you that, under the policy, Herritt has the discretion to decide which flags will flutter and which will flounder, but he can also pass the buck to town council if he chooses.
The town will likely have to choose whether to fly or flee next spring when local gay activists plan to approach both the town and Cumberland municipality to fly the flag during pride week.
We’ll see who salutes then.
Beach blocking bingo
A landowner in Port Hood has made a lot of people angry by placing two huge cement barriers across the only access road to a popular local beach. The unnamed owner of a property next to Lawrence’s Beach was apparently miffed at the number of noisy young people using the area as a late night party place, and decided to force them at least walk to their beach fun.
But his unilateral action has not only raised questions about whether anyone has the right to interfere with a public right-of-way but also prompted concerns for safety because so many people are now being forced to park their cars along Route 19 and walk to the beach.
The local councilor, Jim MacLean, told the Inverness Oran he’d received over 100 calls about the barriers and “has worked on nothing else over the week.”
The dispute escalated last Monday when some local men moved the blocks out of the way, only to discover they’d been put back the next day.
The RCMP says “the matter is currently being researched.” Department of Transportation lawyers are on the case too, and plan to talk to municipal lawyers soon.
By the time they get it sorted out, of course, the summer beach and party season will be over.
Toothpaste, dog food and now…
Greenwood’s Aurora newspaper says a fire last fall that destroyed a home in Woodland Gardens was caused by a faulty power bar that was likely a bootleg device.
“This is a big, big problem,” the local fire chief says.
People buy the knockoffs, some made in China, he says, because they’re considerably cheaper and appear no different than the more expensive models. But they’re not certified for the kind of use they get in most households. They may even boast Underwriter’s Lab of Canada (ULC) code or Canadian Standards Association (CSA) approval tags, but “fly-by-nighters do a good job counterfeiting the tags as well.” Many retailers, the chief added, aren’t even aware they’re peddling dangerous goods.
If you have a concern about a device you’ve bought or are considering buying one, check out the Underwriters’ home page — http://www.ulc.ca/ — for consumer alerts and a news release archive.
A piece of Guysborough Township? Priceless…
The Mersey Heritage Society is trying to figure out who — if anyone — owns an invaluable piece of Nova Scotia history.
Archaeologists and members of the society have been surveying parts of Guysborough Township — no, not that Guysborough; this one is a long-gone loyalist settlement around what is now Port Mouton — since 2001.
They’ve already found a dozen home sites, stone walls and bits of ceramic from the 40-acre township that was briefly home to as many as 2,300 disbanded soldiers who arrived there after the American Revolution.
The heritage society and the Archaeological Land Trust of Nova Scotia want to protect the site, but the problem is nobody seems to know who owns it.
But even if the land turns out to be a long-lost chunk of your family inheritance, don’t expect to build condos there. It’s already protected under the Special Places Act.
This week’s doctor news
While other Nova Scotia communities wine and dine out-of-province physicians to entice them to settle in their towns, Middleton’s Soldier’s Memorial Hospital has scored a coup by hiring its new chief of staff and director of emergency services from within (almost).
The new man is Dr. Scott MacDonald, a Dalhousie Med School grad and former Canadian Forces medical officer who has spent the past two years as the senior medical authority to 14 Wing in nearby Greenwood.
That fills one big hole, but only one.
Since MacDonald won’t be setting up a private practice, the community is still looking for replacements for two longtime local doctors who have retired. Both had been seeing about double the usual recommended caseload, so that makes the task doubly difficult.
Some patients will probably end up with no family doctor, concedes site manager Lisa Salley, while others “will probably have to drive farther to see a doctor.”
Given the health care situation in rural Nova Scotia these days, they could be driving all day.
The gall of it all
Here’s something more to blame on climate change: lousy berry crops in some parts of Nova Scotia this summer.
“Some people might laugh,” John Lewis, a horticultural consultant with Agrapoint, told the New Glasgow News, “but I think [climate change] is a concern. This winter, it was very mild very late, and then boom, it was down below minus 20. I think that will become more common and maybe we need to find other ways to prepare the (berry) plant.”
While inspecting berry fields in the Annapolis Valley, Lewis says he discovered many bushes were suffering from “cane gall,” a bacterial disease he believes “has to do with the type of winter we had last year.”
Saltspring U-pick operator Al Illsley isn’t sure what caused his problem, but he is definitely seeing the result. Usually, by this time of summer, his farm fields are over-run by pickers scooping up the 3,000 pints of raspberries weighing heavy on his bushes. This year, there’s no one here.
“I didn't even open,” he says. “There were no berries. I used to get 100 pints off a row. [This year], I picked the whole thing, two acres, and got 40 pints.”
Stephen Kimber is the Rogers Communications Chair in Journalism at the University of King’s College. His column also appears in Thursday’s Daily News.
SOURCES:
AMHERST DAILY NEW, ANNAPOLIS COUNTY SPECTATOR, THE AURORA, BRIDGEWATER BULLETIN, INVERNESS ORAN, KENTVILLE ADVERTISER, LIVERPOOL ADVANCE, NEW GLASGOW NEWS.
Copyright 2007 Stephen Kimber
Kimber’s Nova Scotia (Aug 5, 2007)
Kimber’s Nova Scotia
August 5, 2007
And you think telemarketers are annoying
A Bridgewater man, who claims he’s gotten hundreds of unwanted confidential medical reports and referrals on his home fax machine over the past five years, took his concerns public last week.
The man, who asked not to be identified, told the Bridgewater Bulletin he’s been writing to South Shore Health and the Department of Health since 2002, alerting them to what’s been happening and asking that something be done. Nothing has. In one recent seven-day period, he got 40 more faxes.
The problem is that the man’s number is similar to the fax number for South Shore Health’s rehabilitation services and doctors are apparently mistakenly sending their referrals to him. Some of the referrals came from Capital Health’s rehab centre and the IWK in Halifax.
“One of the most disturbing things about this,” the man told the newspaper, “is most of it is not marked ‘Confidential.’ It’s not marked anything. It’s just sent.” The documents include patient names, health card numbers and medical diagnoses.
South Shore Health CEO Kevin McNamara says there isn’t much he can do. “I cannot be accountable for dialing somebody else's phone,” he told the newspaper.
Perhaps, but perhaps that isn’t being accountable at all.
Calling Anne Murray
An American-based company has erected two test wind towers on marshlands near Amherst as it scouts for a location to plop a new $200 million, 40-turbine wind farm.
“Everyone has said… there’s plenty of wind in the Tantramar Marsh area,” Invenergy Canada director Mark Bell explains, “and we’re here to prove it.”
Get in line.
At least two other projects are already in development. Atlantic Wind Farms wants to build a 20-27-turbine project near Pugwash while Wind Dynamics of Saint John is pushing ahead with its $60-million development on the Amherst side of the marsh.
Bell, who says his company is planning a series of community meetings, adds he isn’t worried about opposition from local residents. Developers and communities “can co-exist as long as [wind farms] aren’t shoved down people’s throats. You have to be sensitive to the concerns of local residents and meet those concerns in an appropriate forum.”
Speaking of hot air
The Gulf Shore Preservation Association has quietly dropped its planned lawsuit against the Municipality of Cumberland over the Atlantic Wind Farm project.
Last spring, after municipal council approved a new bylaw requiring wind farm projects to provide only a 500-metre buffer zone between their turbines and local residences, opponents threatened legal action and talked about taking the issue to the provincial Utility and Review Board.
But the board recently ruled the dispute is outside its jurisdiction and Lisa Betts, a spokesperson for the group, now says she believes “a non-confrontational” approach may work better. “We know council was divided on this issue and feel if we can sit down as adults and discuss this that we can come up with something that works for the county, the developer and us.”
Given that other developers are pitching even more wind farms, she says it’s important for the municipality to come up with a better bylaw.
“We’re not opposed to the notion of setting siting requirements but we have to make sure these things aren’t right up against people’s homes,” she told the Amherst Daily News. “We’re talking about people’s health here; we have to make sure this is done right.”
Fixer-upper with a view
Two Cape Breton historical societies are hoping to use an innovative revolving heritage fund to save the… wait for it… Sydney tar ponds. Well, not the tar ponds. Just the neighbourhoods around them, including as the Kolonia section of Whitney Pier, which includes distinctive company houses built near the former steel plant.
Perhaps not surprisingly, there hasn’t been a market for those properties in recent years. But a report to Cape Breton Regional Municipality’s heritage advisory committee suggests that could change as the area’s environmental cleanup progresses.
The Old Sydney Society and the Whitney Pier Historical Society want to create a seed-money fund to buy and renovate one home, then sell or lease it to provide funding for the next and so on until the neighbourhood is revitalized.
Tom Urbaniak, chair of the committee, says such revolving funds have helped refurbish older homes in down-at-the-heels urban neighbourhoods in the United States.
The project, which could be up and running within the year, could be the first of its kind in Canada — or not. Vancouver is apparently considering a similar scheme.
“They may beat us to it, but we don’t mind,” Urbaniak told the Cape Breton Post. “The more, the merrier.”
The ER as family physician
This summer’s emergency room closures are just the canary-in-the-health-care coal-mine’s much more serious crisis: a critical lack of family physicians, especially in rural areas.
That became apparent recently when officials in Digby began reviewing emergency room visits over the past year to help them develop plans for limited weekday reopening of the Digby General Hospital’s ER this fall.
Barb Johnson, a spokesperson for South West Health, says three-quarters of the ER visits were for what she described as non-urgent problems. Often, she says patients only come to the emergency room because they have no family physician of their own.
South West Health has just received provincial funding to hire several new nurse practitioners who will assist a local doctor at his primary care clinic, freeing him up to take ER shifts. Though the nurse practitioners can’t run an emergency room, they can refill prescriptions, perform pap smears, run baby clinics, order diagnostic tests and prescribe medication
Johnson says the hirings mean “we’re moving in the right direction. We will have a little more ER service as well as help for those without a family physician.”
To complicate matters, however, health authorities may need to recruit two new doctors just to take the place of Dr. Roy Harding, who closed his practice at the end of June. Harding had 2,300 patients on his active list, but most new physicians accept only 1,000 to 1,500 patients, some even fewer.
Last month, MEDIC (Medical Emergency Digby in Crisis), a seven-year-old committee established to help recruit doctors to the area, hosted its latest out-of-province physician recruit.
Spokesperson David Irvine says the doctor “was very impressed by the scenery, the friendliness of people and the number of artisans in the area,” but there’s no word yet on whether the physician will relocate.
More canaries singing
Annapolis Valley Health has announced its Outpatient Clinic at Eastern Kings Memorial Community Health Centre in Wolfville, will be closed every weekend from Aug. 11 to Sept. 3.
And South West Health says Shelburne’s Roseway Hospital ER will be closed for 24 hours next Sunday.
The most recent closures, the health authorities say “are due to lack of doctor coverage for these times.”
And so it goes.
Unfriendly fire
It’s probably not often the web site of the San Franscisco-based American magazine Mother Jones gets inundated with messages from readers in Pictou County, Nova Scotia.
But news that the left-wing magazine’s latest issue contains a graphic account of the death of a young Stellarton soldier killed in Afghanistan has prompted demands from local residents that the magazine remove the story from its website, and touched off an investigation by the Canadian military into whether the story’s author breached doctor-patient confidentiality.
The controversy centres around an article entitled Talk to Me Like My Father: Frontline Medicine in Afghanistan by Kevin Patterson, a Canadian medical officer and captain, who wrote a compelling first-person account of his stint this year treating coalition soldiers and Afghani civilians.
On Mar. 6, 2007, Patterson writes, “four Canadian infanteers run in through the emergency entrance carrying a fifth. ’Gunshot wound,’ they yell, as they heave him onto a stretcher…” The story goes on to describe in gory detail the failed effort to save 25-year-old Kevin Megeney, a corporal who’d been accidentally shot by a roommate.
The family first learned the story was being published in a letter from the magazine, offering to send them copies prior to publication. Neither the author nor the magazine had asked for permission to include the details.
That’s a no-no, according to Lynette Reid, assistant professor of bioethics at Dalhousie University Medical School. “If I read an article like this,” she told the New Glasgow News, “I would assume that the doctor had the patient's or family's permission (to use the name) and I would be very surprised if they didn't.”
Be surprised, be very surprised.
Sign of the times?
Sidnee Falkenham says she was “overwhelmed” when she was crowned the 46th annual Parsboro Old Home Week Queen last month.
Fortunately — or unfortunately — the 17-year-old may get to keep her crown.
Lloyd Smith, the chair of the Lion’s Club-sponsored pageant, says only two local girls had ofgfered to compete by the time entries closed this year, and organizers spent two weeks “scrambling” to flesh out the field to six contestants.
“I believe the Lions Club has to really look at whether the queen’s pageant is going to continue as part of Old Home Week,” he told the crowd gathered for the ceremony, “or whether we look at another avenue to fill this spot.”
As for Sidnee, she was understandably less concerned with the pageant’s future than with her present. When asked how she felt, she simply said: “Awesome!”
Stephen Kimber is the Rogers Communications Chair in Journalism at the University of King’s College. His column also appears in Thursday’s Daily News.
SOURCES
: AMHERST DAILY NEWS, AMHERST WEEKLY CITIZEN, BRIDGEWATER BULLETIN, CAPE BRETON POST, DIGBY COURIER, NEW GLASGOW NEWS, NOVANEWS.COM.
Copyright 2007 Stephen Kimber
Kimber’s Nova Scotia (July 29, 2007)
Kimber’s Nova Scotia
July 29, 2007
On your mark, get set, munch
The Hants Journal is reporting this week that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency lab failed to properly identify a sample collected near Halifax in 1990 as the dangerous-to-our-forest-industry brown longhorn spruce beetle. That gave the critter an eight-year head-start on its ongoing devastating munching march through our woodlands. The sample, in fact, remained in a sealed container in Ottawa for nearly a decade before it was finally hauled out again and compared to suspicious samples gathered around Point Pleasant Park in 1998. The comparison made it clear we’d been under foreign attack for many years.
”We were under the assumption that our trees were being killed by a native beetle,” explains Greg Cunningham, a forest pest management specialist at the agency in Fredericton.
With at least 13 infestation sites now confirmed in Nova Scotia, Cunningham says scientists are playing catch up to contain the pest. They’re considering all options — including introducing a genetically modified synthetic pheromone to “confuse the beetle during its sexually active state,” massive aerial spray programs and/or intensively logging likely target forests to at least make commercial use of trees before they become infested.
That last option has some, like Hants County woodlot owner Bernard Curry, suspecting “this is just another way for the American companies to keep on stripping everything in sight. What these people are doing to our forests shouldn't be allowed,” he complains. “They’re taking everything.”
In fact, local residents say they’ve noticed more logging trucks hauling loads 24 hours a day over the past several weeks.
Concedes Cunningham: “It could be that some companies knew the quarantine area was going to expanded and had cut logs ahead of time.”
Uh…
What me, worry?
Given his boss’s very public and messy spat with the premier of his province over the Atlantic Accord, the closure of one of his constituency’s most important employers and, oh yes, Green Party leader Elizabeth May’s persistent nipping at his electoral heels, it’s no surprise Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay has managed to carve a little time away from international globe-trotting to try to mend some political fences closer to home.
Last week, MacKay was in Pictou for a whirlwind cheque presentation — $20,000 to the Pictou Waterfront Development Committee to develop a five-year business plan because “strengthening the tourism industry in rural ports contributes significantly to the economy of communities like Pictou” — and an upbeat luncheon speech to the local Chamber of Commerce.
Pumping up the positive volume, MacKay predicted that, thanks to Ottawa’s new Atlantic Canada gateway strategy, Pictou County is poised to become the next Fort McMurray (if you consider that a positive development).
“I truly believe this is bigger than the offshore,” MacKay gushed, piling on the images. “We can be the through-ramp to the NAFTA highway if we do it right.”
What’s in that for Pictou County?
MacKay talked vaguely about all the money — the amount “to be determined in the very near future” and depending, perhaps, on who you vote for in the next election — Ottawa has set aside for the gateway project in its most recent federal budget…
Oh yes, that budget, the one that gutted the Atlantic Accord and triggered the collapse of federal Tory support in Nova Scotia. “I sometimes worry that we become a little too fixated on one subject,” MacKay mused. He preferred to stress his “very good working relationship” with Premier Rodney MacDonald, and — say it one more time — the cash that is coming to Nova Scotia as a result of the budget.
It isn’t, he acknowledged, an easy sell. “I don't think we could have got more negativity had we completely cut off equalization.”
Please, Peter, don’t suggest that to Stephen Harper.
Oops
In advance of a planned visit to Lunenburg’s Fishermen’s Memorial Hospital last week, NDP MP Alexa McDonough’s office issued a press release expressing her concerns over the lack of progress in completing the Dr. Arthur H. Patterson Centre for Restorative Care there.
“I'm confident we’ll do what we always do,” the release quoted McDonough as saying. “Roll up our sleeves, band together and get this project off the ground ourselves.”
Oops… it turns out the locals are already beginning to roll down their sleeves. As the Bridgewater Bulletin helpfully pointed out, the centre, in fact, “is nearly completed and patients are expected to be admitted in early August.
To add embarrassment to misstep, the Bulletin’s online edition includes a video of McDonough — http://www.southshorenow.ca/source/woodenboat_feature/index3.php — trying to explain away the error. The clip ends with an unflattering freeze frame of the former NDP leader looking like she is ready to swear at someone back in her office.
And well she might.
Next exit to nowhere
Speaking of summer sightings of vote-seeking politicians — we just did — and highway signage — we will — this just in from new Liberal leader Stephen McNeil’s let-me-introduce myself tour of community newspaper editorial boards.
McNeil popped up at least two newspapers last week, including the Truro Daily News, where he was asked about his strategies for boosting tourism in the province.
Among other dreams — better marketing in Europe, more focus on getting other Canadians to visit us and, of course, paving highways (he says we need tourists to “remember the sights, instead of the road they have been driving on”) — McNeil claimed credit for the erection of a new highway marker.
“I was also very pleased to be part of the new sign on the 104 that directs people to the Annapolis Valley, rather than just, ‘last exit to Halifax.’” He told the newspaper.
Hmmm. “Next Exit to the Home of Stephen McNeil” doesn’t have quite the same ring as “Home of Sidney Crosby,” but I guess the Annapolis Valley will just have to make do.
Signs of the times
In Queen’s County, the latest summertime amusement for idle — or addled — minds seems to be stealing warning signs from local construction sites. About a dozen have disappeared in the past month, most from a water and sewer project construction site in Brooklyn.
Mayor John Leefe isn’t happy with the fact his municipality will have to shell out close to a thousand dollars to replace the pilfered signs but he says he’s more concerned the lack of signage could lead to an accident.
If it did, he says, the thief could be charged not just with theft but with criminal negligence.
In the meantime, he’d rather get the signs back. If anyone happens to have one of the scalped signs sitting around in their backyard, the mayor cordially invites them to drop it off at a construction site, in front of the municipal office or outside the public works department garage.
Not in my back bay…
When the Friends of Port Mouton Bay staged a community meeting recently to discuss a proposal for a second fish farm in their area, they knew it would be well attended. Organizers set out 385 chairs to accommodate the expected crowd but, by the time meeting began, it was already standing-room only.
Aqua Fish Farms, a New Brunswick-based company that operates a small salmon farm near Port Mouton, has applied to set up a second, much larger 70-acre farm on the western side of Port Mouton island, directly across from the community’s best beach.
Ron Loucks, a member of the Friends’ scientific committee, told those attending the session that the existing fish farm is already causing the growth of algae, which may be affecting wild fish stocks.
The bay is considered a prime molting area for lobster and a spawning ground for herring, as well as a rich source of other shellfish.
Loucks says records from local fishermen this spring show fewer lobsters in fishing grounds closest to the current farm.
“It’s a great concern,” he says. “The body of scientific information establishes that the proposed fish farm should be withdrawn for consideration.”
Ottawa and the province are both still considering the proposal, with no decision expected until the fall.
Counting crows, counting damage
Berwick’s crows have developed a rubber fetish, more particularly a thing for the rubbers on automobile windshield wipers, and most especially — and perhaps dangerously — a fixation on the ones to be found on cars in the local RCMP detachment parking lot.
“I just don’t think it’s funny,” Const. Colleen Fequet, who has already had to replace two sets of wiper blades on her own car, told a local reporter. In the past month alone, the crows have eaten through four sets of wiper rubbers on one Mountie car and two sets on each of the detachment’s other two patrol vehicles. Some local staff now refuse to park their cars in the lot; others, like Fequet, are using beach towels or lengths of PVC pipe over the wipers to discourage the vandals.
“It’s damage to property, mischief,” complains a still unamused Fequet, who adds that — unlike human miscreants — “we can’t control them. At first it was funny, but it’s frustrating and expensive.”
As for what’s caused this outbreak of deviant behaviour, Fred Mills, a 32-year veteran with the Department of Natural Resources, says he’s never heard of it before. “We’ve found lots of odd things in their nests over the years, but you generally think of crows and ravens going after shiny things.”
But Mills, who suggested the high-tech “shoo away method” may be the best if most time-consuming way to keep the creatures away, seemed more amused than alarmed by the curious crow attacks.
“It always amazes me the things we learn about wildlife,” he told the King’s County Register. “They’re truly sentient creatures — and we can’t explain or ask them whey they do what they do.”
Perhaps Mills can afford to be bemused because he lives in Bridgewater, and not Berwick.
Stephen Kimber is the Rogers Communications Chair in Journalism at the University of King’s College. His column also appears in Thursday’s Daily News.
SOURCES: BRIDGEWATER BULLETIN, HANTS JOURNAL, KING’S COUNTY REGISTER, LIVERPOOL ADVANCE, NEW GLASGOW NEWS, TRURO DAILY NEWS.
Copyright 2007 Stephen Kimber
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About
STEPHEN KIMBER, a Professor of 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 seven non-fiction books.
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