For Rana Zaman, it had been another long and not untypical day of good-doing. But as she wrote proudly on her Facebook page on Dec. 20 at 4:12 pm: “I’m happy to say, turkey dinner with all the fixings was bought and dropped off for 7 families to enjoy. Still pending is delivery of toys...
Christmas in prison
What do you think about when you think about Christmas in prison? Perhaps the image of a prisoner alone in his cell looking off into the distance and hearing the faint sounds of carollers in the local village, or perhaps the old turnkey giving his once per year show of mercy to his wards and […]
Northern Pulp: planning the future five years too late
I don’t want to criticize Stephen McNeil’s announcement Friday. It was hard to watch without feeling just how emotionally wrenching and personally difficult it had been for him. He was genuinely caught between the rock of an important and necessary promise he had made to the Pictou Landing First Nation and the hard place of knowing keeping his promise would mean the end of vital jobs for workers at Northern Pulp and beyond in the province’s forest industry. But the thing is… Should it really have come to this?
When it comes to identifying all its political, social and economic consequences and parsing the larger meaning of Friday’s history-making, future-shaking decision by Premier Stephen McNeil to order Northern Pulp to finally “stop pumping effluent in Boat Harbour,” I am grateful to defer to my smarters. Joan Baxter, Linda Pannozzo, Jennifer Henderson and Tim Bousquet […]
In Nova Scotia, pulp rules; it always has and until the forests have nothing left, it always will
Tomorrow, Premier Stephen McNeil is going to hold a news conference to announce his intentions regarding the legislated deadline for closing down Boat Harbour as Northern Pulp’s waste lagoon. In 2015, his government, with all party support, passed the Boat Harbour Act, which stipulates that the Abercrombie mill needs to have a new treatment facility […]
A case of gangrene raises health concerns at the East Coast Forensic Hospital
People in the mental health community who are close to family members of a 45-year-old man are speaking out after the man was admitted to hospital with gangrene in his stomach. The patient, who lives with schizophrenia, has been in and out of the East Coast Forensic Hospital for the past 20 years. Family members […]
‘Tis the season to say something positive
I had been hoping to say something positive about Stephen McNeil’s government — it is, after all, the season — but as soon as I could consider it, his government inevitably did one more something that was so bone-headed, so egregious, so cringe-worthy, I couldn’t help but revert to my natural nattering-nabob-of-negativism self. And yet...
I had been hoping to say something positive about Stephen McNeil’s government — it is, after all, the season of speaking positively — but as soon as I began to put electronic keyboard to computer-screen praise, his government inevitably did one more something that was so bone-headed, so egregious, so cringe-worthy, I couldn’t help but...
There’s not a good financial case for a publicly funded stadium
On Tuesday, Halifax Council will debate a staff report that recommends, among other things, contributing $20 million to Stadium Co (part of the Schooners Sports Entertainment – SSE – corporate structure) to help build a stadium for an as-of-yet announced CFL franchise on staff-hope-not-Shannon-Park lands. I have read the HRM staff report on the financial […]
Calvin Lawrence: Black Panther Party’s “unlikely cub”
His hiring as a Halifax police officer in 1969 happened only because the city feared what might happen if it didn't at least pay lip service to inclusion. But over the course of his 36-year policing career, Calvin Lawrence proved a more than worthy fighter against racism.
Calvin Lawrence remembers the life-altering moment well. It was an early summer day in 1968 and Calvin, then 19 and still a student, was hanging out at Creighton and Gerrish Streets, “one of my favourite corners,” with his good friend Ricky Smith. A big Lincoln car filled with three senior members of the black community,...
Coming to terms with the complicated legacy of Gerald Regan
How do you reconcile the contradictory facts of our 19th premier's life? You probably can’t. No matter what you write, you’re either rinsing Regan’s black heart in the cleansing stream of his passing or dancing gleefully on his grave. Most news reports I saw got it about as right as those complicated realities — and our changing times — allowed. Premier Stephen McNeil didn't.
“I think you know every Canadian knows you’re guilty. And you can take that to your grave!” Court spectator Mark Iich Shouted at Gerald Regan following his acquittal December 1998 As the author of “that book about”… I spent much of last week being interviewed by journalists, all of whom — like me — were […]
Province stalls home for disabled adults
After the 2019 Emerald Hall decision affirmed that people with disabilities have the right to adequate care in the community, and after the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities criticized how Nova Scotia is doing on housing for the disabled (Nova Scotia still has more than 1,000 people with severe disabilities […]
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