The sound of stories not being told…

Russell Walker, Chair of Halifax’s Board of Police Commissioners, isn’t happy with me. It has to do with my comments two weeks back about his lack of comment on the city’s startling number of unsolved murders. I’ll save the specifics of Walker’s complaints for another column. Today I want to talk about something Walker said, […]

NDP's first six months: very well but….

Nova Scotia’s new New Democratic Party government isn’t so new anymore. A week from tomorrow, it will have been in office six months. How well has it performed? At one level, the answer would have to be very well. Darrell Dexter’s government has demonstrated a level of calming, policy-wonkish competence sadly lacking during the chaotic, […]

Police Commission… What Police Commission?

Quick now. Can you name the chair of HRM’s Board of Police Commissioners?…. No? OK… Can you at least tell me what the board does?… Did you even know we had police commissioners? Perhaps that’s the problem. According to city bylaw P-100, the board—six members appointed by regional council, one by the province—is supposed to […]

She was someone’s daughter

On Monday, the Chronicle Herald carried an In Memoriam advertisement for Kimber Leane Lucas, a young woman who died on November 23, 1994 at the age of 25. The notice featured a photograph of a strikingly attractive, smiling young woman above a message that read, in part: “You will never be forgotten. Forever loved and […]

Truth, lies, the NDP and us…

They were lying. We knew they were lying, even while they were still telling them. We voted for them anyway. Some of us may have secretly hoped—for our children’s children’s sake—that, not only were they lying but also that they understood they were lying so they wouldn’t then feel obliged to translate their little lies […]

Past time for Nova Scotians to honour Viola Desmond

Damn. Missed it. Again. I’m not the only one. Which is unfortunate. For everyone. Last Sunday marked the anniversary of an event that symbolizes—or should—the beginning of the modern civil rights movement in Canada. On November 8, 1946, a 32-year-old black beautician named Viola Desmond was driving from Halifax to Sydney when her car broke […]

Courts no place for the mentally ill

A few years ago—for reasons that don’t matter here—I ended up sitting through a full day of routine arraignment proceedings at the Spring Garden Road court house. Guilty pleas, not guilty pleas, bail hearings, trial schedulings, 30-days-to-pay-your-fine, you’re-released-on-your-own-recognizance, you’re-back-to-jail… Somewhere in the middle of it all, a small human drama unfolded. I’m no longer sure […]

Child porn as thought crime

Last week, David Scott Hammond and James Cory Hammond, 20-year-old twin brothers from New Glasgow—who were described in court as “fairly introverted” and “most un-streetwise”—were each sentenced to three months in jail for possessing child pornography. What makes their case interesting—and troubling—is that the images the young men were accused of downloading onto their home […]

Time for Liberals to crawl out of the muck

Pity Stephen McNeil. The NDP wants to stop his Liberals from continuing to tap a tainted $2.37-million party trust fund to pay its bills. “The motive… is political,” McNeil complained to reporters after the government introduced the bill this week, adding plaintively: “You’d have to ask them why they would specifically go after us.” Uh… […]

They say it’s your birthday

Earlier this month, she turned 19. She is now officially an adult. Not that she ever had a childhood. I’d tell you her name, but I can’t. Besides, it wouldn’t mean anything to you. This might. In the fall of 2006, when she was just 16, she was, briefly, a media sensation when she landed […]