We need to talk about Edward

Between playing a key role in putting down the Jacobite uprising at the Battle of Culloden in 1746 and being named Governor of Gibraltar in 1761, British Lieutenant General Edward Cornwallis served a three-year stint as the first Governor of Nova Scotia and, in the process, became the de-facto founder of Halifax, my hometown. For […]

Racism’s crime: ‘devaluing of self and others’

Where to begin? With the too-soon deaths of three young black men murdered in separate incidents within a week last month? Or with last Monday’s announcement the provincial government is restructuring — which is to say eliminating — a community-based program in North and East Preston, Cherry Brook and Lake Loon that had been helping […]

Stephen McNeil thinks we need electoral reform; just don’t ask him to do anything about it…

There is something rich — and richly ironic — hearing Stephen McNeil fret about the number of voters who didn’t bother to cast ballots in last week’s three provincial by-elections. McNeil, after all, chose the date. He could have called the by-elections for late spring when voters might conceivably have been more engaged. Instead, he picked […]

Stephen McNeil declares health care victory… and runs

What better time to declare victory and slink off to bind your wounds than just before cocktail hour on the Friday afternoon before school March break and the eve of another Sunday nor’easter? (It’s no coincidence two of the top four Google News search terms modifying “Nova Scotia” Saturday morning were “weather and “storm;” “health […]

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 […]

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
sk15admin
3 Comments

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
sk15admin
2 Comments

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 […]

06/09/2014
sk15admin
No Comments

Gas taxes, political hot air and the real questions

Given last week’s gas price gusher that propelled pump sticker shock beyond even the last record-breaking penny point set in 2012, it’s little wonder Premier Stephen McNeil rushed for the cover of a sort-of pledge to cut Nova Scotia’s portion of the harmonized sales tax it currently tacks on to the top of the taxes […]

Mandela, Rocky and the whitewashing of heroes

What a difference a few decades make. The world has spent the last week rightly celebrating the life and legacy of Nelson Mandela, a man one letter writer to The New York Times summed up as a “universal champion of freedom, humanity and equality, and as an ardent proponent of tolerance, compassion and forbearance.” Last […]