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. […]

Questioning the developer-donation-councillor connection ‘an insult to my integrity’

(This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner April 3, 2017) Let us now insult Steve Streatch and impugn his integrity, and while we’re at it, let’s do the same to some of his councillor colleagues. Streatch represents District 1, a sprawling, suburban-rural Waverley-Fall River-Musquodoboit Valley constituency. It is far from central Halifax. Central Halifax is […]

Who has the ear of the finance minister? Hint: not you

(This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner March 27, 2017) No need to ask what the Halifax Chamber of Commerce wants to see in next month’s provincial budget. They’ve made their wish list plain enough in their own, well-chosen words: “Taxation: Reduce the tax burden by either reducing the corporate income tax rate, increasing […]

Journalism: Banking on public broadcasting

At this moment — when real journalism is often dismissed as fake news and alternate-reality U.S. president Donald Trump is decimating American public broadcasting in his new budget— there is some comfort living in Canada where our recently refinanced and reinvigorated public broadcaster is not only publishing real news but is also affecting the public […]

The way politics works — and doesn’t — in Nova Scotia

(This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner March 13, 2017) I got a call the other evening from an earnest young telemarketer person, urging me to pony up cash so the New Democratic Party could wage glorious, seat-re-gaining war in the coming provincial election, which he suggested — with even greater earnestness and urgency […]

The Lyle Howe case: ‘If you look hard enough…’

(Originally published in the Halifax Examiner, March 6, 2017.) When I was a young CBC reporter back in the 1970s, I got a tip from a source inside the department of health the RCMP was investigating a Shubenacadie doctor named Ross McInnis for MSI fraud. I didn’t realize it at first, but I would later […]

Who is Lyle Howe? And why are so many people saying such nasty things about him? (Part II)

PART II: The un-making of Lyle Howe “I have gained some valuable wisdom from this matter, and all young men should benefit from the things I have learned without going through what I have gone through. Being innocent isn’t enough. Having legal education and a good lawyer is sometimes not enough.” Lyle Howe Post to […]

Who is Lyle Howe? And why are so many people saying such nasty things about him? (Part I)

PART I: The Making of Lyle Howe “High school taught me what to think. Philosophy taught me how to think. Law school will teach me why all this thinking is necessary.” Lyle Howe Dalhousie University “Discover the Unexpected” marketing campaign 2006 “The Complaints Investigation Committee of the NOVA SCOTIA BARRISTERS’ SOCIETY gives notice that the practising […]