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News
1. Naricho Clayton
Police have identified the man killed on Gottingen Street Tuesday night as 23-year-old Naricho Clayton of Dartmouth.
Police say they have a suspect in the homicide.
“[Police spokesperson Dianne] Woodworth said Clayton, who is known to police, was also known to Tyler Richards, the 29-year-old former university basketball star who was shot to death in Halifax’s west end Sunday night,” reports Ian Fairclough for Local Xpress:
She wouldn’t comment on whether the two were friends or not.
“I don’t think we’re going to elaborate on their connection,” she said.
The other victim of the Gottingen Street shooting, a 31-year-old Halifax man, remains in hospital. His injuries were initially described as life-threatening, but his condition has since improved. But Woodworth said investigators have not been able to speak with him because of his medical condition.
Woodworth said police aren’t naming their suspect at this point. She said investigators believe someone may have knowingly or unknowingly helped the suspect, and would like them to come forward.
She said those people should know about the suspect just through interactions with him and things he may have said, but that they shouldn’t approach him.
The suspect is a local man but Woodworth wouldn’t specify where he lives.
Last night, Ceasefire, an anti-violence group, rallied at the corner of Gottingen and Falkland Streets, the scene of Tuesday night’s shooting. A march against violence is planned for Sunday, beginning at 4pm on the corner of Novalea and Duffus Streets and heading to Grand Parade.
2. Health care
Photo: Stewpendous / Flickr
“The replacement for the decrepit Centennial Building at the Victoria General hospital site in downtown Halifax will take five to seven years to complete, but changes to the province’s health-care system will begin this year,” reports Michael Gorman for Local Xpress. “Premier Stephen McNeil made the announcement in Halifax on Thursday.”
Gorman gets into the details of the announcement, which include moving organ transplants and some other surgeries to the Halifax Infirmary, the expanding of Dartmouth General hospital (already in the works), creating an outpaitent centre somewhere in the suburbs, reopening an operating room at Hants Community Hospital, among others:
A website was rolled out Thursday to allow the public to track the progress of the project (QE2redevelopment.ca). Assuming things go according to plan, relocating of services will begin late this year, with decommissioning to begin in 2020 and demolition to begin in 2022.
“We’re going to be on time and on budget,” said McNeil.
Of course, there isn’t a final budget yet. The opposition took issue with that. While planning might not be complete, Tory health critic Chris d’Entremont said there should be a ballpark number the government can use to prepare the public.
“You’ve got to have some real dollars attached to this,” he said.
There’s also talk of using P3 arrangements for some of the facilities.
3. Lil MacPherson
Lil MacPherson
Lil MacPherson has announced she’s running for election as mayor. MacPherson is the co-owner of the Wooden Monkey restaurant and an activist on issues related to climate change.
“I just see all these massive opportunities and what’s coming at us, and we’re not ready as a city,” MacPherson told The Coast:
“We are so far behind the ball, we’re almost at a standstill. Everyone else is running, sprinting towards all this wonderful innovation.”
[…]
There’s a “tsunami of green jobs” about to be created, MacPherson says, and it would be socially irresponsible of HRM not to seize those opportunities.
“I just can’t stand by and watch us flail around and miss this massive green economy that’s going to come — where people won’t come and settle here because it’s too hard to open a business.”
4. “2 lbs of Baloney in a 1 lb Bag”
Mother Canada™
Mary Campbell filed an Access to Information request to Parks Canada for information about the proposed (and now aborted) Mother Canada™ colossus, and received 811 pages of documents. “I have two things to report,” she writes:
1. By businessman Tony Trigiani’s own account, it was Cape Breton Highlands National Park (CBHNP) Superintendent Helene Robichaud who suggested the controversial Green Cove location for the monument.
2. Parks Canada has no policy on memorials or monuments.
Robichaud first suggested, in 2010, that the statue be placed at Louisbourg or at Cape Rouge, near Cheticamp, but by 2011 she had offered up Green Cove. Trigiani and his business manager Bob Davey went to visit the site, and then Trigiani sent a gushing email back to Robichaud:
I am honestly not trying to be melodramatic here in anyway [sic] but we both felt that the site/location itself (‘or whatever’) seemed to actually know our reasons for being there and was somehow or in some fashion reaching out to us in a sympathetic, moving and convincing manner of bonding with our thoughts, add freely and strongly to our emotions and very much join and encouraging us in our dreams and hopes of what could be, or better still what should be, built there for the respect and acknowledgement of those lost generations of war, and of course, for the many, many generations yet to come!”
Campbell notes dryly that Trigiani, whose “prose style…relies heavily on ellipses, emojis and exclamation points,” kept redesigning the proposed monument, to the point that even he was worried about its size. As he wrote in one email:
My deepest fear is that what I have been proposing for some time now, may indeed be the equivalent of trying to put…. “2 lbs of baloney in a 1 lb bag” or in other words, what is being suggested to everyone from the Prime Minister down, will not fit on the existing site……Period!
While circumstances eventually led to Trigiani’s Mother Canada™ fantasies being unfulfilled, Campbell says that “while we dodged that bullet, Parks Canada, as far as I know, is still without a policy on memorials and monuments. If the next Tony Trigiani who wants to pave paradise and put up a parking lot is a more accomplished fundraiser, he could succeed.”
5. Teaching refugees
CBC reporter Diane Paquette talks with some of the Syrian refugees attending Halifax West High School and their teachers. It’s an interesting look at the challenges and hopes involved in transitioning to a new life:
The students are eager to learn, [substitute teacher Nicole Whiteway] said, including 19-year-old Mujtaba Sayed, who is in Grade 11.
“I learn math now and I’m very happy,” Sayed said. “It’s very good for me because I want to study in university or college, so I need math. It’s very good that I take extra help — and the teacher is very friendly.”
Sayed said he isn’t sure what kind of career he’d like to pursue, but he mentioned engineering or becoming a pilot — two jobs that require math.
6. Chronicle Herald strike
Photo: Halifax Examiner
Along with striking Chronicle Herald journalist Pam Sword and Sobey School of Business prof Judy Haiven, I’ll be a panelist at a Solidarity Halifax forum this weekend arranged to discuss the strike. The event is at 2:30pm Sunday at the Spencer House Seniors Centre, 5596 Morris Street. More details here.
Views
1. Cranky letter of the day
Can The Coast please write an article about what a garbage can is used for and how to recognize one? Based on the amount of litter in our area, the general public is sadly lacking in this knowledge.
Carolyn Pineau, Cole Harbour
The Government and On Campus sections are compiled by Kathleen Munro.
Government
Province
Legislature sits (9am-6pm, Province House)
On Campus
Biomedical Engineering PhD Defence (1pm, Room 3107, Mona Campbell Building) — Florentin Wilfart will defend his thesis “Development and Assessment of a New Solution for Carbon Dioxide Removal from Anaesthesia Rebreathing Circuits”.
Earth Day Lecture: Nova Scotia’s Future is a Green Economy (7:30pm, Room 101, The Atrium of Saint Mary’s University) — In the spirit of Earth Day, Tony Charles, the director of the School of Environment, will discuss how our province can have a positive and lasting impact on the planet:
The Ivany Report from a couple of years ago emphasized the reality that Nova Scotia is at a crossroads. We need to take action to create the economy of the future to serve the needs of the province. Immediately following the Ivany Report, a public presentation by Dr. Tony Charles put forward a vision of an economy in Nova Scotia — a ‘green economy’ — that matches our values by reflecting Nova Scotian’s profound interest in both a healthy environment and a healthy economy. This year, on Earth Day 2016, Dr. Charles will discuss the progress we have made toward a green economy in Nova Scotia, and explore the directions needed for an environmentally sustainable future. A key ingredient of this lies in effectively drawing on the many strengths of Nova Scotia’s people and communities.
In the harbour
The seas around Nova Scotia, 8:30am Friday. Map: marinetraffic.com
Friday
7:20am: Dinkeldiep, general cargo, Saint-Pierre to Pier 42
9am: Metis Leader, car carrier, Emden, Germany to Autoport
4:30pm: Dinkeldiep, general cargo, sails for Saint-Pierre
8:30pm: Metis Leader, car carrier, sails to sea
Saturday
3am: Cap Lara, oil tanker, Arzew, Algeria to anchorage
4:30am: NYK Demeter, container ship, New York to Fairview Cove
6:15am: Maersk Penang, container ship, Antwerp to HalTerm
1pm: Doric Pioneer, oil tanker, Beaumont, Texas to Imperial Oil
Footnotes
Great job Mary Campbell!
Re Mother Canada and Parks Canada
There is a policy of sorts, the National Parks Act. There is not way under the Act that this monument could have legally been built.
Bring on fresh faces for the mayor and council. If any council needed new faces ours is it.
Half the council needs to be replaced.
Oh that all of them would take Jennifer Watts decision not to reoffer to heart. As the disgraceful salary “debate” illustrated the majority are not in it for public good but rather their own vanity and pocketbooks.