Dear Darrell… unsolicited advice

Dear Darrell, As you begin your second full year—summers don’t count in Nova Scotia—as premier of all you survey, allow me to offer some gratuitous, unsolicited and unlikely to be appreciated advice. (But given your government’s precipitous free-fall from electoral grace, you need all the advice you can get.) First, stop trying to be a […]

Inquiry needed into children's stories that don't end well

I’ve been writing about child protection issues since 2004 when I got interested in the story of a Halifax couple embroiled in a highly publicized, 67-hour, shots-fired standoff with police. The issue: Children’s Aid had seized their five-month old daughter, not because of anything the couple had done to the child—in fact, evidence indicated they […]

Family an obstacle—but for whom?

Nova Scotia’s Community Services Department has upped the ante: last week it severed family access to a troubled Cole Harbour teenager it had shipped off to an Ontario residential care facility last year. It will now apply to family court “to vary the current order with respect to access,” thus legalizing the elimination of the […]

What's race got to do with it?

I accept the argument. Those involved in the recent decision to provide a group of—white—residents in Lake Major with keys to an old logging road so they could avoid having to travel an extra 5.5 km through the—black—community of North Preston were providing a small but reasonable favour to those most inconvenienced by a local […]

Welcome to the rat days of summer

When did we realize we had finally entered the deeps of the news-challenged rat… er, dog days of summer? Was it when that story about the number of rats per city block in Halifax—75; You count ‘em, I’ll pass—made CBC Radio’s marquee World at Six news show last week? Or perhaps it was when we […]

Is the boy better off?

Forget dueling interviews, competing psychologists, contradictory studies, even the difference between physically assaulted and “placed in a position of control.” Ask yourself one question: is the 15-year-old Cole Harbour boy at the centre of the controversy over his care better off now than when community services shipped him off to Ontario 13 months ago? A […]

Mayor Kelly's Moses moment

What to make of Peter Kelly’s Moses memo to members of HRM Council? Thou shalt not drink to excess… Thou shalt not drive drunk… Thou shalt call 9-1-1 if a fellow councilor violates #2… Thou shalt pause and reflect… Mayor Kelly issued his I-regret-I-have-to-write-this-however-circumstances-demand-it memo July 9. The ink had barely dried before it showed […]

Our new governor general and the greasy Airbus affair

David Lloyd Johnston, our soon-to-be governor general of all we survey, is, I’m sure, a fine fellow. Even if he does fit—right up to his blue button-down—every stereotype known to boring, old white guy governors general of the pre-Adrienne Clarkson, pre-Michaelle Jean era. But hey, I’m a boring old white guy too, and it’s nice […]

We want answers; they offer hype

I don’t necessarily oppose the new convention centre proposed for that gaping hole in the heart of downtown Halifax. And I don’t completely subscribe to the too-tall, edge-of-the-wedge principal objections raised by the Save the View Coalition. The preservationist group argues the convention centre’s twin 18 and 14-storey towers will obliterate much of the iconic […]

Drink the convention centre Kool Aid

Last Friday, a group calling itself the Coalition to the Save the View held a press conference to release its analysis of four reports on the financial viability of a new convention centre for downtown Halifax. Promoters want the province to ante up one third of its $300-million cost. You may recall that when those […]