So what’s an un-built McMansion really worth? $119 million?

So… $119 million. That’s how much the Annapolis Group says the city owes it for refusing to bow down to its dream to pave over parts of the Blue Mountain Birch Cove wilderness area for what critics have described as “McMansions and McCondos.” Last week, the company gave notice it will file a lawsuit against […]

Parker Donham, ‘Halifax lefties’ and the Chronicle Herald strike

I hesitate to respond to Parker Donham’s curmudgeonly contrarian Facebook rant (see below), but since he’s included me in his attack on “Halifax lefties,” I can’t help myself. Parker suggests “interventions” from the likes of me, former NDP cabinet minister Graham Steele and Halifax Examiner editor Tim Bousquet “may have encouraged” the union to prolong a […]

Police street check data (also) shows we need more journalists, more news organizations

On October 24, 2016, CBC Halifax journalist Phlis McGregor happened to hear an interview on As It Happens about a York University research study that analyzed two years of Ottawa police data. Between 2013 and 2015, the report said, police there pulled over nearly 82,000 drivers for mostly routine checks. The data showed Middle Eastern […]

CEO Compensation: Oops, you’ve been lapped again… and again

You’ve been lapped. While you were tossing out the tree and packing up the last of the Christmas ornaments for next year, that whirring whoosh of wind you heard was one more of Canada’s highest paid CEOs zipping past you, Flash-like, on the cash fast-track through 2017. By 11:47 a.m. on January 3, the first […]

Who is Joseph Boyden, and does the answer matter?

“A small part of me is indigenous, but it is a huge part of who I am.” — Joseph Boyden. How small? How about not at all? If that is true, what does it say about Joseph Boyden… author of a prize-winning trilogy of native-themed novels (Three Day Road, 2006 Writers Trust Nonfiction Prize; Through Black Spruce, […]

Portrait of a picketer

Elissa Barnard, who has spent more than 30 years as a reporter and editor at the Halifax Chronicle Herald, is one of Nova Scotia’s best known and most respected arts and entertainment journalists. “My identity,” she says simply, “has been tied up in my job.” Today, she is carving out a new identity — […]

What would Graham say?

As a bitter strike at Atlantic Canada’s largest and most storied daily newspaper heads into its second year, both sides frequently invoke the memory of the Halifax Chronicle Herald’s late publisher to justify their competing arguments. But the more important question now is, will Graham Dennis’s 170-year-old newspaper even be around for anyone to remember […]