A sidewalk runs through it

News

1. Small communities an ocean apart are polluted by the same corporate behemoth

Joan Baxter brings us the story of the Flamants Roses de Trébon,  a group of activists in the south of France fighting pollution from a pulp mill.

Stop me if any of this sounds familiar.

The mill is owned by Paper Excellence, whose name you may recall as being attached to the  Northern Pulp mill.

Located south of Avignon in a wedge of land between two national parks, the mill (called Fibre Excellence Tarascon) has been responsible for ongoing and egregious pollution. Baxter writes:

According to [French activist Michel] Dufy, he and 150 other citizens and their lawyers took Fibre Excellence Tarascon to court in January this year because of the noxious emissions. The French State Attorney General found the company guilty of “proven and chronic pollution” in breach of the law, and asked for a minimum fine of 50,000 Euros (Cdn $76,500)…

Dufy also tells the Examiner that an inspector from the Regional Directorate for Environment, Planning and Housing (DREAL) testified in court that the director of the mill had lied about the pollution that was caused by “obsolete equipment.” He says that at times the emissions of fine particulate matter were 14 times higher than Fibre Excellence reported to the regulatory.

Pollution caused by “obsolete equipment” in a pulp mill is not unfamiliar to Nova Scotians who remember the rupturing of Northern Pulp’s aging and poorly maintained effluent pipe in 2014, which spewed 40 million litres of untreated effluent over sacred Mi’kmaw burial grounds, or the suffocating air pollution when the mill was operating and breaking production records without functioning scrubbers.

He adds:

The Tarascon mill is considered so dangerous that it is referred to locally as “Seveso,” after the 1976 industrial accident at a chemical plant in northern Italy. In 2010, Time ranked Seveso eighth on a list of the ten worst human-caused environmental disasters.

Baxter outlines other parallels between the approaches the owners of the mills have taken in both France and Nova Scotia — including threats and appeals for government handouts.

It’s a fascinating read, and I encourage you to read the whole thing.

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2. COVID-19: “We’re not out of the woods yet”

The Halifax Examiner is providing all COVID-19 coverage for free. Please help us continue this coverage by subscribing.

Jennifer Henderson provides us with the Examiner’s daily COVID-19 update, and it’s a mix of good and not-so-good news.

On the positive side, vaccination clinics are opening across the province, and nearly 30,000 doses of vaccine have been administered. Another 14,700 doses arrived this week.

On the not-so-good front, we appear to have community spread in three parts of the province, and a case in one of those clusters is confirmed to be the more highly contagious B117 variant. (I was surprised to hear Dr. Robert Strang refer to it as the UK variant yesterday, since I thought we were trying to avoid geographical terms for these new forms of the virus.)

Henderson writes:

“We need to continue to be cautious,” said Strang. “As tired as everyone is, public health measures are as important now as they were last March and April. So enjoy your friends, go out to dinner, and socialize in other ways. But I’m just asking people to slow down your social activities, spread out the frequency. We cannot have people going out multiple times in a week, each time with different people. Social activity is the main way the virus spreads. We can’t let up on the public health regulations now.”

A whole bunch of new COVID-19 advisories for potential exposure have been released, so you should take a look and follow the testing and isolating advice if you were at any of the places on the list at the time of potential exposure.

The province is also encouraging people to go for rapid asymptomatic testing. We have the capacity, and these tests provide insight into how prevalent COVID-19 is in the community at large.

All the info is here.

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3. Phyllis Rising

Episode #19 of The Tideline, with Tara Thorne is published.

Meg Hubley and Rebecca Falvey met as theatre kids at Neptune and have been friends ever since. As Phyllis Rising — that’s right, Mary Tyler Moore hive — they’re making films, plays, and are in production on The Crevice, a three-part sitcom streaming live from the Bus Stop in March. They stop by to talk with Tara about its development, their shared love of classic SNL and 90s sitcoms, and the power of close friendship. Plus: A new song from a new band.
This episode is available today only for premium subscribers; to become a premium subscriber, click here, and join the select group of arts and entertainment supporters for just $5/month. Everyone else will have to wait until tomorrow to listen to it.
Please subscribe to The Tideline.

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4. Halifax budget committee approves $175 million capital budget

Zane Woodford reports on yesterday’s virtual municipal budget committee meeting.

He writes:

Councillors tentatively approved $175.2 million in capital spending for 2021-2022 on Wednesday, and voted to consider an extra $1 million for traffic calming at the end of their budget process.

The biggest chunk of money is for paving. Sorry, “street recapitalization”. But councillors also discussed increasing traffic calming measures.

Traffic calming, essentially, is the use of design to reduce the speed of traffic. Make your street wide as a highway, and 50 km/h feels like you’re crawling. Design it differently and 50 can feel reckless.

But the effects of the money won’t be felt immediately. Woodford explains:

Coun. Shawn Cleary proposed on Wednesday to double the budget for traffic calming, moving to add $1 million to councillors’ budget adjustment list for street calming. The motion passed unanimously. That means council will receive a briefing note and consider adding the item to the budget near the end of its budget process, tentatively scheduled for April 20.

But even if council approves the extra cash later, that won’t necessarily translate to double the number of streets calmed.

“It’s really late in the game to do it when the street budget is pretty much cooked,” [public works director Brad] Anguish said in response to a question about Cleary’s motion.

“We’ll come back with the parameters of what we think we can pull off this year, however I would recommend that we go further in this note … to help council understand what we would need to put it on hyperdrive and really step up the production level for a few years.”

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5. City approves apartment building, rejects neighbours’ concerns about “overbuilt monstrosities”

Zane Woodford — seemingly always busy on a Wednesday — reports on an appeal by residents for the city to turn down a five-storey, eight-unit apartment building on Bayers Road, between Oxford and Connolly.

He writes:

During Wednesday’s meeting, the appellant, Robert Blackburn, expressed general concerns about having an apartment building in the neighbourhood.

“I’ve spoken extensively to my neighbours with small children, and they don’t want transient apartment dwellers who would be gawking off of large, oversized balconies right at the fence line, you know, looking at them and invading the sanctuary of their privacy,” Blackburn told councillors.

“The street’s family orientated and it’s not suitable for that kind of transient development lifestyle.”

For his part, developer Oliver Gorski “said the neighbours were made aware of the company’s plans on the site, but he admitted in response to questions from Coun. Tony Mancini that he never actually talked to any of them about the project.”

Councillors unanimously agreed with staff that the development should proceed, ruling against the neighbours’ concerns.

I have to say that I am always amazed by the level of rhetoric that comes out of some of these meetings. I mean, here is a drawing of the building in question (note that it has no parking, so concerns about traffic and turning do not apply):

It may not be beautiful, but is it “an overbuilt monstrosity?”

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6. Mental illness and mental health are not the same thing

The Halifax Black Film Festival is running now, and yesterday CBC had a story by Emma Smith about North Preston filmmaker Tyler Simmonds.

Smith writes;

He hopes his latest project, a short documentary film called The Search For Healing, encourages communities like his hometown of North Preston to talk about mental health.

“It’s hard talking about mental health because especially when you grow up in a Black community, you have these stereotypes and stigmas already attached to you,” Simmonds said…

In the film he interviews his own family members who are health-care professionals.

“It was really interesting because I got to speak to them about their experiences, just being a Black person working in the health-care system,” he said.

It’s a good story, and it notes Simmonds is working on his next film, on community, mental health, and inter-generational trauma, called There’s Soul in Our Soil.

I first noticed this story yesterday, when the blurb for it on the local CBC news homepage said Simmonds’ The Search for Healing was aimed at combating the stigma against mental health. Grrrr, I thought. The issue is not stigma about mental health. It’s about mental illness. The conflation of these two terms irritates me no end.

Clearly I am not the only one, because I note today that that language is gone, and a link within Smith’s story to the Mainstreet interview with Simmonds says, “Tyler Simmonds’ new film seeks to combat stigma surrounding mental illness.”

Good stuff.

(I have issues with the whole language of “stigma” but I will leave those for another day.)

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7. I’ll have The Worx

I am a sucker for small-town local history. When I was writing my book on fermentation, I used so many local cookbooks and stories from local papers on subjects like local sauerkraut-making traditions.

Anyway, a couple of things in this week’s Saltwire Hants History feature — which draws on news from editions from decades past — caught my eye.

One of them, from 1986, was about a band called The Worx — Eddie Cromwell (drums and vocals), Frank Newcomb (lead vocals), Don Morash (guitar) and Doug Newcomb (bass and vocals) — leaving town for greener pastures. ”

Carole Morris-Underhill writes:

 The musicians said they were not getting any breaks by performing locally and noted they can’t stay in the Maritimes if they hoped to make it big, pointing out that Matt Minglewood relocated to Upper Canada and has gold albums.

Does anyone remember The Worx? Did the guys come back? Googling only brings up the Saltwire story.

I also noted this, from 1971:

Fifty-two students attending Windsor Regional High School travelled to Amqui, QC, for a weekend exchange. They were accompanied by French teacher Dominique Henry. The event was sponsored by the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews to encourage bilingualism and improve relations between English and French students.

While visiting the community of 7,000, the students stayed with their billet families, were required to speak French, attend school on Friday, and do some sightseeing on the weekend.

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Views

Vaccine hesitancy and Indigenous communities

At the COVID-19 briefing yesterday, Dr. Robert Strang, Nova Scotia’s chief medical officer of health, talked about the vaccine rollout across the province. While the minimum age for members of the general population to get vaccinated is 80, vaccinations for Indigenous people in Nova Scotia start at age 55. Strang said, “Indigenous communities due to the impact of systemic racism may experience disproportionate consequences as a result of infections like COVID.”

He added that the vaccination effort in Indigenous communities would be led by members of those communities. A pilot clinic at the Millbrook First Nation opened yesterday.

This seems like a sensible and sensitive approach. A paper published yesterday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal explains some of the reasons Indigenous people may feel cautious about getting vaccinated, and why this hesitancy differs from the conspiracy-fuelled anti-vax movement. The paper, “Medical experimentation and the roots of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among Indigenous Peoples in Canada”, is co-written by Dr. Jaris Swidrovich and Dr. Ian Mosby.

Swidrovich, from the Yellow Quill First Nation, is the first Indigenous person in the country to hold a doctorate in pharmacy. His University of Saskatchewn bio says “he is dedicated to educating health care workers and students on Indigenous issues and reconciliation.” For his part, Mosby, a historian at Ryerson, has written extensively on settler colonialism and Indigenous health issues (including studying how the federal government conducted studies on starving Indigenous people rather than helping provide food).

The authors first make the case that Indigenous people are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, for a whole host of social reasons:

Study after study has shown the vulnerability of First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities to health crises like the one we are currently facing. This vulnerability is very much the product of a Canadian colonial policy regime that has guaranteed that Indigenous Peoples have reduced access to adequate health care, healthy food and clean water, while also experiencing much greater levels of overcrowded housing, homelessness and incarceration.

All of these factors increase the possibility both of contracting COVID-19 and of having severe health complications as a result.

At the same time, Mosby and Swidrovich write, there are good reasons for Indigenous people to worry that they may be used for unethical experimentation. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before.

The paper quotes former Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak Grand Chief Sheila North, who says: “Back in residential school days, [people] that are now elders, remember being used as guinea pigs or [having] vaccines tested on them when they were children without their permission or their family’s permission.”

The Parks Canada backgrounder for the former Shubenacadie Indian Residential School notes that children who attended “were subjected to harsh discipline; malnutrition and starvation; poor healthcare; physical, emotional, and sexual abuse; medical experimentation; neglect; the deliberate suppression of their cultures and languages; and loss of life.” (Emphasis added.)

Swidrovich and Mosby detail some of the experimentation to which Indigenous people were subjected, including testing of a TB vaccine:

Historian Maureen Lux has similarly documented multiple instances of medical experimentation on Indigenous Peoples, including a 12-year trial of the experimental bacille Calmette-Guérin vaccine for tuberculosis on Cree and Nakoda Oyadebi infants in Saskatchewan during the 1930s and 1940s. A whole range of experimental surgical and drug treatments were also administered to Indigenous patients, without their consent, within Canada’s racially segregated system of Indian Hospitals during the early postwar years.

And then there are the many, many stories of Indigenous people facing inequitable treatment and outright overt racism in the health-care system.

The solution, the pair write, lies in part in ensuring that the vaccine rollout for Indigenous people includes medical staff well-versed in the type of history outlined in the paper, and tailored to individual communities, with the vaccination message delivered by people who are trusted:

For a start, doctors and other health professionals need to educate themselves before going into communities to administer vaccines. Too many are unaware of Canada’s shameful histories of racially segregated health care and medical experimentation, and therefore misunderstand the nature of vaccine hesitancy.

Public health messaging about the risks of SARS-CoV-2 infection and the benefits of receiving the vaccine also
must clearly be positioned in a way that speaks to Indigenous Peoples’ historical and contemporary experiences with Canadian settler colonialism. Risk attributes must also be described individually rather than simply categorizing Indigeneity as an individual risk category.

This means jettisoning a one-size-fits-all public health messaging strategy. Pandemic messaging will be more effective if delivered directly by Indigenous Elders, leaders and health practitioners who have trust and credibility in their communities. For many communities, this means that public health messaging needs to focus not only on the health and wellness of the people receiving the vaccine, but also on the health and wellness of our families, communities, the land and the next seven generations.

Reading Swidrovich and Mosby’s paper brought to mind this excellent segment that ran on the On the Media podcast late last year. It features Rev. Paul Abernathy and his efforts to build trust in vaccination among the communities he serves in Pittsburgh.

Abernathy discusses some of the many reasons Black residents may not be rushing out to get vaccinated. And he says:

I would tell those in charge of distribution that we’ve got to find those places that are, well, trusted places in the community that can become vaccine distribution sites. I know that there’s challenges with that, I know in terms of refrigeration, there’s probably other logistical challenges. In addition to that, these efforts should really be done in coordination with community members who are essentially opinion leaders who are deputized to become champions of the vaccine. These are some of the things that I think can greatly help vaccine distribution in these communities.

Ultimately, he is hopeful:

This, to me, moment in our history represents an opportunity for precisely just that [institutions to behave equitably, responsibly, and sensitively]. And when we look at this COVID vaccine, it’s got to be about more than just COVID. It’s got to be about how we not only end the pandemic as it relates to this disease, but how we also finally heal the epidemic of racial injustice in our nation.

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Noticed

A sidewalk runs through it

The proposed viewing platform at Peggy’s Cove has gotten a lot of media and community attention. And rightly so. It will significantly transform the approach to the lighthouse and alters the traffic pattern (which was a mess) on the approach to the rocks and the Sou’Wester restaurant.

But in addition to the viewing platform, Develop Nova Scotia is making other significant changes in the community, and this work is well underway.

Since I live just a short drive from Peggy’s Cove, I drove out yesterday to take my dogs for a (windy) walk and to shoot some photos of the work being carried out.

One of the first changes I noticed was this set of traffic lights, between the DeGarthe Museum and the Visitor Information Centre. This is a spot where a lot of people cross, and it’s on a hill. I presume the plan is to have traffic travelling in only one direction at a time through the heart of the village, since these lights face only in one direction. There is another set of lights near the Sou’Wester.

I don’t know if these lights are permanent, or just set up for the duration of construction, and I don’t see information about that on the Develop Nova Scotia site. It sounds like they are going to gather more information before finalizing traffic management plans.

There is a new sidewalk, which is a welcome addition. Some summers I have driven to the cove nearly every day (driving kids to and from work) and navigating these stretches of road is no picnic — for either pedestrians or drivers.

On the left of the above photo you can see the site of the new public washrooms, behind the fence. Speaking of which…

Here are the new public washrooms under construction. Right now, the only public washrooms are composting toilets (with limited hours) beside the Visitor Information Centre.

Somewhere (Facebook? Twitter?) I saw someone saying that the province should be spending money raising the roadbed because of climate change, rather than building a viewing platform. Well, guess what? They’ve raised the roadbed.

You used to have to walk up several steps to get to the deck of the former Beale’s Bailiwick shop — the green building to the right. Now, it’s practically at the same level as the road. In 2014, tropical storm Arthur damaged the Beale’s building, shifting it off its foundation.

After the storm, the Beales and other members of the community raised funds for a concrete breakwater to help protect from future flooding. Presumably, modelling has shown that breakwater to now be inadequate, and it’s been built up with a rock wall.

Unfortunately, this means that the phenomenal swimming hole just beyond those rocks has now become much harder to get to.

The Visitor Information Centre parking lot is currently closed as it’s being expanded. An update from Develop Nova Scotia says “a small amount of materials remains on site” but it looked like more than a small amount to me.

Develop Nova Scotia does have construction updates outlining the work being done taped to a power pole by the side of the road. This one, though, is several months out of date. More recent updates are available on the website.

Speaking of the Develop Nova Scotia website, surely whoever wrote the Peggy’s Cove FAQ page can do better than phrases like this:

Places are iterated and built over time as people engage with them.

And if you’re going to refer to LiDAR data maybe it would be great to assume not everyone knows what that is.

Anyway, back to the construction.

Another change is that the road to the circle by the Sou’Wester is closed. Now you drive up into the parking lot behind the restaurant, not looping around in front of it. This is the area where, as I understand it from the architects’ renderings, the accessible viewing platform is going to be.

Don’t worry, despite all the changes, you can still take your iconic photographs.

The cove itself…

…and the lighthouse.

It seems to have been almost forgotten, but one of the early versions of the plan for Peggy’s Cove was to build a big parking lot on the barrens. I wrote about that at the time, and included several spectacular photos of the barrens taken by sometime Examiner contributor Kent Martin (disclosure: my father-in-law). Kent has a book of photos of Peggy’s Cove and the barrens coming out later this year, and I’m looking forward to it.

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Government

City

Thursday

Transportation Standing Committee (Thursday, 1pm) — live stream of audio and all PowerPoint presentations

Friday

Budget Committee contingency date (Friday, 9:30am) — if needed; live webcast, with captioning on a text-only site

Province

Thursday

Natural Resources and Economic Development (Thursday, 10am) — video conference with streamed text. Agenda: Housing, housing affordability, and economic development, featuring Catherine Berliner, Christine Gibbons, Martin Laycock, and Stephan Richard from the Dept. of Municipal Affairs and Housing; Ren Thomas from Dalhousie’s School of Planning; Welcome Housing and Support Services; and the South Shore Housing Action Coalition.

Friday

No meetings.

On campus

Dalhousie

Thursday

Novel approaches to colorectal and breast cancer treatment (Thursday, 11am) — Kirill Rosen will talk via MS Teams.

A New Beginning with President Biden: European Priorities for the Transatlantic Agenda (Thursday, 11:30am) —  an online lecture with Markus Kaim from the German Institute for International and Security affairs, Berlin.

The Road to Recovery for Atlantic Tourism (Thursday, 1pm) — livestream panel discussion with Tom Baum from the University of Strathclyde, Scotland; Melissa Cherry, Destinations International; Ross Jefferson, Discover Halifax; Michele McKenzie, McKenzie Business Strategies; and Kevin Quigley, MacEachern Institute.

Why hyperbolic space disobeys social distancing (Thursday, 2:30pm) — Alina Stancu from Concordia University will talk in the Math Zoom Room.

The fundamental gap conjecture has been proved a few years ago after quite some time. It states that for any convex domain $\Omega$ in $\mathbb{R}^n$, with diameter $D$, the difference between the first two eigenvalues of the Dirichlet Laplacian on $\Omega$ (called the fundamental gap) satisfies the inequality $(\lambda_2-\lambda_1)D^2 \geq 3\pi^2$. Soon afterwards, the exact same inequality was shown for convex domains on the sphere $\mathbb{S}^n$. Naturally, people inquired about the fundamental gap on the remaining space of constant curvature, the hyperbolic space $\mathbb{H}^n$.

In work with collaborators, T. Bourni, J. Clutterbuck, X.H. Nguyen, G. Wei and V.M. Wheeler, we have shown that for any diameter $D$, there exists a convex domain in $\mathbb{H}^n$ with diameter $D$ for which the fundamental gap can be made arbitrarily small, hence ignoring distancing. I will outline the history of the problem, focusing on the similarities and differences between its features on Euclidean and hyperbolic spaces with the aim of giving an intuitive idea of why the fundamental gap conjecture fails in $\mathbb{H}^n$.

Reflections of a First Nations librarian from the 1970s to the present (Thursday, 5:30pm) — Gene Anne Joseph will give the Dalhousie-Horrocks National Leadership Lecture online. Info and RSVP here

Friday

Krishnamurti and the Contemporary World Crises (Friday, 11am) — a weekend Zoom conference featuring Nayha Acharya, from Dalhousie University.

​The world-renowned Indian philosopher and educator J. Krishnamurti has offered some of the most novel insights into the nature of human consciousness and our conflicts. In this conference, Canadian and Indian scholars, educators, and alumni of Krishnamurti schools will engage in a cross-cultural and multi-disciplinary dialogue aimed at understanding contemporary world crises (including the COVID-19 pandemic) through the lens of Krishnamurti’s philosophical and educational ideas.

Mental Health and Criminal Courts in the Arctic (Friday, 12:10pm) — Priscilla Ferrazzi from Queen’s University and the University of Alberta will talk via Zoom. 

Saint Mary’s

Thursday

SMU in Action: “We Been Here” – SMU Black Alumni panel (Thursday, 7pm) — Zoom discussion with five Saint Mary’s University Black alumni to discuss their experiences at SMU, their professional careers, the rich histories and traditions of African Nova Scotians, and their commitment to service. Featuring Candace Thomas, Kwame Watkins, and Bria Daye; co-organized by Rachel Zellars, and hosted and moderated by Delvina Bernard, a 6^th generation African Nova Scotian who traces her roots to the the Black Loyalists of 1783 and Black Refugees of 1812.

Friday

Academic Well-Being of Racialized Students (Friday, 6:30pm) — online pre-book launch, featuring Benita Bunjun, Tammy Williams, Wayne Desmond, Isalean Phillip, Vanessa Mitchell, and Timi Idris.

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In the harbour

Thursday
05:30: Atlantic Sea, ro-ro container, arrives at Fairview Cove from Liverpool, England
07:00: Baie St.Paul, bulker, arrives at Pier 33/34 from Port Cartier, Quebec
11:30: Oceanex Sanderling, ro-ro container, moves from Pier 41 to Autoport
15:00: Dalian Express, container ship, arrives at Fairview Cove from Jacksonville, Florida
15:30: Atlantic Sea sails for New York
16:00: Fouma, container ship, arrives at Pier 42 from New York
16:30: Oceanex Sanderling moves back to Pier 41

Friday
02:30: Fouma, container ship, sails from Pier 42 for Kingston, Jamaica
05:30: Niagara Highway, car carrier, arrives at Autoport from Southampton, England
11:00: Dalian Express, container ship, sails from Fairview Cove for Dubai
11:00: Niagara Highway sails for sea
18:00: Oceanex Sanderling, ro-ro container, sails for St. John’s

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Footnotes

The dogs referenced in the Peggy’s Cove section, photographed last fall.

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