Four more years… but what might have been instead

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner on June 5, 2017. For me, the sweetest, saddest moment of last Tuesday’s election night lasted not much more than a moment. And it didn’t happen until the tail end of the first hour of Wednesday morning. Sometime after midnight, I gave up on the TV […]

Since ‘none of the above’ is on the ballot…

Who would you like to see win tomorrow’s provincial general election? Who should win tomorrow’s provincial general election? If you answered none of the above to either — or both — of the above, welcome to the club. And perhaps welcome too to that more select group — the none-of-the-above-but-definitely-not-Stephen-McNeil club — which Progressive Conservative […]

Are election campaigns any place to discuss serious issues?

Election campaigns are no place to discuss serious issues. That’s what Kim Campbell — Canada’s now-you-see-her-now-you-don’t, first-and-only-female prime minister — infamously declared in 1993 in the middle of her one and only federal election campaign as a party leader. Though I was among those who mocked her at the time, I now believe she was […]

Making our economy ‘more human’ may be utopian, but it’s also necessary

(From the May-June 2017 issue of Atlantic Business Magazine) If you do a quick Google search of the following starkly precise sentence, “Eight men now own the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the world”—955 results will pop up on your computer screen in .63 Google seconds. That single incendiary sentence shows […]

The younger French president, his older wife and… Amy Hood. Quelle difference?

(This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner on May 15, 2017 .) One of the many fascinating, if beside le larger point storylines to emerge from the recent French presidential election is the one about the relationship between that country’s new president, Emmanuel Macron, and his wife, Brigitte — more specifically about the gender-bending, […]

Will the next government finally end the 15-year persecution of Dr. Gabrielle Horne? Time to ask…

(This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner on May 8, 2017 .) Elections offer opportunities. If you have a question, or concern, or if there is some specific issue bugging the hell out of you, the upcoming election gives you the chance to raise it, face-to-doorstep, so to speak, or email-to-email, with the candidate […]

Havana, Halifax and the state of democracy

(This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner on May 1, 2017 .) I confess. I spent a quiet weekend while my Nova Scotia journalist colleagues no doubt filled theirs to the almost end with feverish when-will-he/will-he pull the plug media speculation about the date of our next provincial election. That’s because I spent my […]

Lyle Howe and the bar society’s Plan B

(This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner on April 24, 2017) If you fear you might not succeed on your first try, you should have a Plan B already neatly tucked in your back pocket. In advance. Just in case. That would seem to be the way the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society is now approaching […]

Can Mark Lever succeed where smarter, more experienced minds have failed? No

(This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner April 17, 2017) So Mark Lever — a twice failed, never succeeded businessman who has already managed to turn the Halifax Herald into the palest imitation of a newspaper by eviscerating its newsroom and alienating its readers while the Internet chows down on what’s left of […]

The judge and the child abuse registry case: common sense among the Catch-22s

(This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner April 10, 2017) During a week filled with chemical attacks and cruise missile strikes in Syria, and a government’s cynical, Saul-like conversion to compassion on the way to an election closer to home, we must savour any small spark of common sense where we can find it. […]