Justice and the sad brutishness of real life

Too often, our criminal justice system is ill-equipped to deal with the sad brutishness of real life. Consider the recent case of the 43-year-old Dartmouth man convicted of an incestuous relationship with his then-17-year-old daughter. The facts are relatively straightforward. In September 2012, the young woman — who’d been living on the streets in Ontario, […]

League Misconduct

At 2:30 p.m. on July 4, 2016, Nova Scotia Minister of Labour Kelly Regan issued a news release. Athletes playing on Nova Scotia-based teams are exempt from parts of the Labour Standards Code… It was the Monday after the Canada Day long weekend, the beginning of our traditional summers-long political disengagement. This out-of-nowhere decision hadn’t […]

Berry Good

We could begin today’s globe-girdling adventure almost anywhere and at almost any time. In eastern Siberia, perhaps. Circa 1756. That’s when a Russian explorer and naturalist first identified the delectably healthful properties of a blue-ish, tart-tasting, strange-looking, oblong fruit from the lonicera caerulea plant. Or perhaps on Hokkaido, Japan’s most northern island, during the 1940s when […]

Is Halifax Needham why Stephen McNeil hasn’t called a general election?

Could the answer to the pressing-to-pundits question — why hasn’t Stephen McNeil called the much-anticipated-by-pundits fall provincial general election? — be… “Halifax Needham.” Last week, the NDP’s Lisa Roberts, a former journalist and community activist, convincingly won that north-end Halifax riding with 51 per cent of votes in a by-election. McNeil’s chosen standard-bearer, Rod Wilson, […]

Kimber to judge Canada’s richest literary nonfiction prize

Carolyn Abraham, Stephen Kimber and Emily Urquhart will judge the 2016 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize, Canada’s richest literary award for a work of nonfiction. The finalists for this year’s $60,000 prize will be announced on Sept. 28, 2016. Carolyn Abraham, a journalist and author, has twice been nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award […]

What does Sobeys really regret?

If you’d like an object lesson in how not to conduct corporate public relations, consider how Sobeys, the iconic, Nova Scotia-rooted company that operates the second largest supermarket chain in the country, bungled a racial profiling case. The story began back in May 2009 when an assistant manager at the Sobeys Hammonds Plains outlet confronted […]

University, government, CEOs: let the students pay

So this is embarrassing. For whom? Well, it should be shame-making for everyone involved. Back in April, Dalhousie University’s Board of Governors approved a three per cent across-the-board tuition fee hike — even higher for students in engineering, pharmacy and agriculture — and squeezed faculty budgets to achieve its goal of a balanced budget. At […]

The Cat, the commitment and the costly complication

“Let me be clear,” Stephen McNeil said clearly last August even after Nova Star’s cash-sucking Yarmouth-Portland ferry had taken on sinking-level financial water. “As premier I’m committed to that link to the New England States… to a ferry service from Yarmouth.” Our question today. As Nova Star’s replacement — Bay Ferries high-speed Cat — sails […]

Message from Fidel

In the weeks following their arrests in September 1998, Gerardo Hernandez, René González, Ramon Labañino, Fernando González and Tony Guerrero — the Cuban Five — were as alone as they would ever be. They were being held in solitary confinement in the Miami Detention Center. Five of the comrades arrested with them were in the […]

Trinity Law School: ‘discomforting’ our comfortable bar society

The Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society is pondering appealing July’s Nova Scotia Court of Appeals decision green-lighting graduates of Trinity Western University Law School to ply their trade in Nova Scotia. But, in a post-decision interview, the society’s president almost seemed to be making the case for the conservative Christian university, which requires students to sign […]