So that didn’t take long. It will be three weeks tomorrow since Nova Scotians voted in a provincial general election. You may remember that election: the one in which Stephen McNeil’s Liberals came within a few hundred votes here or there of losing their majority status, the one in which more than six out of...
Wade Smith’s unfinished legacy: “It’s up to us…”
“For me to sit here and tell you why we need [an Africentric school] is for you to explain to me why we don't need it... I don’t understand why I’d have to explain to you why the enhancement of culture in the educational setting would be good. It’s about improvement, growth, it’s about self-esteem, all the things I thought education was about, for me personally.”
“Maybe we need to look at an all-black school or other alternatives.” It was April 2006 and Wade Smith, then the vice principal of St. Patrick’s High School in Halifax, was musing to former-student-become-CBC-journalist Maggie Rahr about a recently released report on the province’s progress — or lack thereof — in implementing the recommendations of...
Four more years… What might have been
Just as Stephen McNeil walked on to the stage to acknowledge his new minority government reality, CBC news announcer Sandy Smith cut in. There’d been yet another change in the party standings, he said, and Stephen McNeil’s Liberals were now in “majority territory.”
For me, the sweetest, saddest moment of last Tuesday’s election night lasted not much more than a moment. And it didn’t happen until the tail end of the first hour of Wednesday morning. Sometime after midnight, I gave up on the TV broadcast. At that point, the CBC decision desk still couldn’t say for certain...
Since none of the above is not on the ballot…
During last week’s CTV leaders’ roundtable, Jamie Baillie issued a direct appeal to voters: “For those people who are undecided or leaning to the NDP, I am asking them to take a look at us because we share the same goal.” The same goal, yes… The same values?
Who would you like to see win tomorrow’s provincial general election? Who should win tomorrow’s provincial general election? If you answered none of the above to either — or both — of the above, welcome to the club. And perhaps welcome too to that more select group — the none-of-the-above-but-definitely-not-Stephen-McNeil club — which Progressive Conservative...
Are election campaigns places to discuss serious issues?
In theory, this election could have been an ideal opportunity to debate the kind of society we want for the future. That’s because, for perhaps the first time in 20 years, one political party appears to be offering an alternative to more of the same.
Election campaigns are no place to discuss serious issues. That’s what Kim Campbell — Canada’s now-you-see-her-now-you-don’t, first-and-only-female prime minister — infamously declared in 1993 in the middle of her one and only federal election campaign as a party leader. Though I was among those who mocked her at the time, I now believe she was […]
The younger French president, his older wife and… Amy Hood. Quelle difference?
Emmanuel Macron is 39. His wife Brigitte is 64. ‘It’s like a breath of fresh air in this country,‘ writes Franco-British journalist and historian Natacha Henry, who writes about gender parity in politics and sexism in popular culture. But then... what about Carolyn Amy Hood?
One of the many fascinating, if beside le larger point, storylines to emerge from the recent French presidential election is the one about the relationship between that country’s new president, Emmanuel Macron, and his wife, Brigitte — more specifically about the gender-bending, woman-bites-man difference in their ages, and even more specifically, the generally positive French public...
Will the next government finally end the 15-year persecution of Dr. Gabrielle Horne? Time to ask…
What is the one, otherwise unlikely-to-be-the-subject-of-official-party-platform-or-public-pronouncement issue you would like to ask your candidate to respond to. I know what mine is.
Elections offer opportunities. If you have a question, or concern, or if there is some specific issue bugging the hell out of you, the upcoming election gives you the chance to raise it, face-to-doorstep, so to speak, or email-to-email, with the candidate of your choice, and have a reasonable expectation the candidate will respond —...
Havana, Halifax and the state of democracy
This ultimately may be the real problem with our democracy: It is impossible for the average voter to believe anything any politician promises.
I confess. I spent a quiet weekend that my Nova Scotia journalist colleagues no doubt filled to the almost end with feverish when-will-he/will-he pull the plug media speculation about the date of our next provincial election. That’s because I spent my weekend in the relatively un-suspense-filled and almost completely Nova Scotia-free world of Havana, Cuba....
Lyle Howe and the bar society’s Plan B
If the panel hearing the professional misconduct charges against Howe decides he is guilty of any, some, or all of the original seven charges against him, he could be disbarred. If, on the other hand, the panel decides he isn’t guilty of all — or most — of those charges... well, what then?
If you fear you might not succeed on your first try, you should have a Plan B already neatly tucked in your back pocket. In advance. Just in case. That would seem to be the way the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society is now approaching “IN THE MATTER OF the Legal Profession Act and the Nova...
Can Mark Lever succeed where far smarter, far more experienced minds have failed? No
In Mark Lever’s alternate-facts reality, the reality that his audacious scheme makes no business, journalistic, or common sense probably makes it make perfect sense to him.
So Mark Lever — a twice failed, never succeeded businessman who has already managed to turn the Halifax Herald into the palest imitation of a newspaper by eviscerating its newsroom and alienating its readers while the Internet chows down on what’s left of his lunch — has managed to borrow millions he doesn’t have against...
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