Dal’s dentistry scandal: one more footnote in a seismic social and gender transformation

For me, the most intriguing section of Friday’s 65-page “Report from the Restorative Justice Process at the Dalhousie University Faculty of Dentistry” is the one that documents the evolution of the now-infamous “Class of DDS 2015 Gentlemen” group. The Facebook group caused a scandal and resulted in the suspension of 13 male students after sexist […]

Some assembly required

Betty, my trusty backyard barbecue — barbecues should have names — has officially become one more innocent victim of 2015, Halifax’s Winter Without End… joining my car’s front windshield (ice-cracked), front fender (ice-whacked) and underside (salt-slimed, rusting). But I digress… I only discovered its demise after the winter’s geologic layers of snow and ice had […]

Principle v power and the NDP: discuss

So here’s the one-term wonder question. Why did Darrell Dexter’s New Democrats, who won so convincingly in Nova Scotia in 2009, lose even more convincingly in 2013? For NDP partisans, that question is more than academic. As they gear up to choose a new leader next February, they must divine what went so right we […]

CBC Nova Scotia’s Halifax election financing database: lessons learned

Do you know how many of the donations to winning candidates in the 2012 Halifax municipal election came from companies “involved in development?” Do you know how much money your district councillor received from this dog’s breakfast of “involved” developers, construction companies and real estate firms, each with self-interests in sundry proposals, projects and permits […]

Marco… meet John and John; AIMS… meet hypocrisy

“The business of government is not to prop up businesses,” harrumphed Marco Navarro-Genie, president and CEO of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies (AIMS), the Halifax-based right-wing think tank that rarely encounters a government program (or government for that matter) it does not think should shrivel up and die. “The real point,” he continued, “ought […]

The film tax fandango: saving pennies, losing the future

Last week’s provincial budget shows how governments can be tough-talking, penny-pinching wise and what-were-they-smoking, real-world foolish, both at the same time. Exhibit A: the evisceration of Nova Scotia’s film tax credit. Finance Minister Diana Whalen argued the credit was too generous, went to filmmakers whose films weren’t shot in Nova Scotia and to companies that […]

Ambulance chasing in the public interest?

At what point does lawyerly risk-taking in the public interest become crass ambulance chasing? Before we consider today’s case — personal injury law firms hovering over last week’s late-night crash landing of Air Canada Flight 624 — let’s layer in some context. In 2013, the Halifax law firm McInnes Cooper won an $887-million class action […]

The rise and fall of Andrew Younger

I’ve known Andrew Younger since the summer of 1998. I was director of the King’s School of Journalism. He was on the waiting list for our one-year Bachelor of Journalism class. He wasn’t near the top of the list, but he was persistent. He maintained what seemed like daily contact, just letting us know how […]

Continuing Canada’s tragedy of terrors

This week, the Harper government will extend and expand our supposedly no-boots-on-the-ground, six-month military mission in Iraq. The purpose, according to Foreign Affairs Minister Rob Nicholson, is to “degrade and destabilize this gang of thugs [Islamic State], and in doing so, strip [it] of its power to threaten the security of the region, or to […]

Two good guys. Two good journalists. RIP

They were different men at different stages of their personal lives and professional careers. No matter. With last week’s too-soon deaths of Allan Rowe, the longtime Global television anchor turned MLA, and Matthew Wuest, the former Halifax Metro sports journalist and founder of the legendary Capgeek hockey insider’s website, the local journalism community is a […]