As we are learning that the Halifax police willfully acted to keep an innocent man in prison, the politicians responsible for civilian oversight of the police department are deafeningly silent. Meanwhile, unelected bureaucrats and lawyers at City Hall have attempted to keep the police misconduct hidden by a publication ban. According to his lawyers, police […]
Policing the Radical Imagination
Since January 2015 I’ve had the great privilege of organizing the Radical Imagination Film and Discussion Series at the Central Branch Library in downtown Halifax. This series emerged out of the Radical Imagination Project, a social movement research project that began in 2010 with the goal of working with social movements to stimulate and circulate […]
Shelburne School for Boys: Good intentions gone wrong? Or…?
Was the government's compensation program crafted out of a well-intentioned desire to allow victims to tell their story “without a public spectacle” that would re-victimize them? Or in a desperate attempt to keep the public from ever learning the real story behind the abuse of children in care?
While pursuing something else entirely yesterday, I was reading through back copies of The 4th Estate, the lefty Halifax newspaper of the 1970s, and stumbled upon repeated references to the Shelburne School for Boys. —Tim Bousquet “Morning File” June 27, 2019 I was a reporter then. And there. But I’d forgotten — forgotten that...
The Sackville-Cobequid byelection: seeking meaning in the meaningless
It is way too early to read anything of significance from a single constituency byelection in the muddling middle of any government’s mandate. But let's give it a shot...
“Steve Craig won the byelection for MLA in Sackville-Cobequid… The district has long been solidly NDP, so a PC victory is notable, but I wouldn’t read too much into it.” —Tim Bousquet June 19, 2019 Tim is right, of course. It is way too early to read anything of significance from the political leavings in...
What if we just gave Americans cash to come to Nova Scotia?
Crazy? Is it any crazier than pouring more millions of dollars into an American ferry, American docking facilities, American customs officers...?
Say, here’s an idea. My idea isn’t quite the Chase-the-Ace, get-us-on-national-TV, fun-and-games scheme Tim suggested a few months back. “Simply toss 20 dollar bills from a helicopter above downtown Yarmouth,” he proposed as his own common sense alternative to pouring still more millions of our tax dollars into that bottomless ocean that is our from-nowhere-to-no-way-not-now...
The Archaeology of Loss
How industrial logging in the Mi’kmaq heartland is destroying a lot more than trees
“We were in wonderful moose country now.” At least this is how Albert Bigelow Paine described the Nova Scotia landscape he and three others journeyed through in his 1908 book The Tent Dwellers. The book tells the true story of a June trout fishing trip led by two guides, Charlie Charlton and Del Thomas, who […]
Studenting While Black: another example of calling the cops on Black people for simply existing
Despite the outsize media coverage devoted to the idea that universities are filled with Black and brown people oppressing the free speech of white men, in fact, universities remain overwhelmingly hostile to Black people.
On June 2, Black graduate student Shelby McPhee was accused by two white women of stealing a laptop while he was attending the Black Canadian Studies Association session at the 88th annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences held at the University of British Columbia. The white women, Congress attendees, asked to see proof that […]
And promises to break…
Stephen McNeil promised us the most open and transparent government ever. He lied. Now as our information and privacy commissioner retires, the premier's wannabe replacements will talk a good game. Should we believe them?
I have no reason to doubt Catherine Tully when she told the subscriber-based business website allnovascotia.com last week she would have retired from her job as the province’s information and privacy commissioner this summer even if Premier Stephen McNeil had offered to extend her five-year term. She didn’t ask his plans before announcing her own....
Crisis? What crisis? Just a(nother) ‘new (lack of) direction’ for healthcare
Last week's "mutual" firing of the province's deputy health minister shows just how unwilling our premier is to acknowledge our healthcare crisis — let alone do something about it.
Last week, when Premier Stephen McNeil “mutually” agreed to fire Denise Perret — the deputy minister of health he’d hired just two-and-a-half years ago — he explained it was because “we’re now re-setting and moving in a new direction.” He did not explain what he was re-setting from or to, or in what new yellow-brick-road...
City Hall tried to crawl through a loophole on gender discrimination
When last week's human rights commission hearing on gender discrimination in Halifax's fire service began, lawyers for HRM tried to get the complaint tossed on a technicality. The good news is that they lost. The bad news is that they tried.
In lawyer terms, it probably made sense. Scrounge in the legal underbrush for a technicality, a loophole to crawl through to derail potential litigation against your client. Save your client some unwanted publicity, maybe even a little — or a big — cash settlement. All good, all standard-issue Litigation 101. Unless, of course, your client...
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