No offence intended, Mr. Rudderham

One shouldn’t mess — litigiously speaking — with Parker Rudderham. The Cape Breton businessman who owns Frank Magazine — a publication with its own storied courtroom history — sometimes seems as (in)famous for his legal battles as his business successes and philanthropic donations. On October 30, 2012, to cite but one recent example, his hometown […]

Northern Pulp, the Sobeys and the lessons unlearned

Nova Scotia is a small, interconnected, even inbred political, economic and social ecosystem. So it was intriguing last month to hear former Empire CEO Paul Sobey publicly rail against the dense “haze of emissions” spewing forth daily from Pictou County’s Northern Pulp mill, stinking up the community in which he lives and in which his […]

Was Darrell Dexter right?

Metro/Jeff HarperThen Premier Darrell Dexter answers questions in this file photo. Perhaps Darrell Dexter was right. I mean the circa-2009 Darrell Dexter who — flushed with electoral victory and oozing political hubris — unleashed his freshly anointed pocket-calculator brigade on the question whether to keep propping up the Yarmouth-Portland ferry. The number of passengers had […]

Nova Scotia Power, Arthur and the review: the unasked questions

Last week, the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board laid out the parameters of the first phase of its planned review of Nova Scotia Power’s “state of preparedness and response” to hurricane-turned-post-tropical storm Arthur. While the review is welcome, it is also clear the scope of at least this phase of the review, its tight […]

NSP and the convention centre: failures to communicate

What we have here, suggested Nova Scotia Power President and CEO Bob Hanf, is a failure to communicate. Lack of manpower? Don’t worry. Storm-unhardened infrastructure? Be happy. Despite close to a week to prepare for the Hurricane Arthur that had whooshed into a post-tropical shell of itself by the time it made landfall, NSP’s communications […]

Heritage Trust v Joe Ramia and the Be-Bolders

So Joe Ramia, developer of Halifax’s new, significantly publicly financed $500-million convention-centre-hotel-office-residential-retail behemoth, is suing Heritage Trust and its 27 volunteer directors for what could be tens of millions of dollars for their “persistent efforts to quash downtown development” — especially his. Last week, 300 of Halifax’s self-anointed finest—“just rattle your bracelets,” as John Lennon said—cheered […]

07/07/2014
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Peter MacKay: the columnist’s gift that keeps on giving

Peter MacKay is the columnist’s gift that keeps on giving. Even on the edge-of-summer, eve of a national holiday when newsmakers worth their spin doctors know better than to do anything newsworthy… Peter MacKay never lets us down. You may remember Peter, he of the “I solemnly swear” never to merge the Progressive Conservative Party […]

06/30/2014
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Lyle Howe, David Sparks and the race question

Let me begin with this. I don’t believe Lyle Howe was convicted of sexually assaulting a 19-year-old woman because he was black, or that “those that represent the white power structure” conspired to put down an uppity black lawyer. David Sparks does. Sparks is spokesperson for a group planning a rally outside the law courts […]

06/23/2014
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Jamie Baillie, Chuck Porter and the issue that matters more

In the end, of course, Baillie’s management style may turn out to be less significant than his discredited, thoughtless, cut-public-sector-jobs-reduce-corporate-taxes-leave-it-all-to-the-private-sector political philosophy.

06/16/2014
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The Liberals, the NDP and the Home for Colored Children settlement

Credit where credit is due. When he was still the opposition leader, Stephen McNeil met with former residents of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children. He listened to their claims that, as mostly black and often orphaned children, they’d been subject to physical, sexual and psychological abuse at the hands of their mostly black […]