NEWS
1. Sidewalk snow clearing, green bin collection
Councillors have opted not to consider cuts to sidewalk snow clearing and summer green bin collection,” reports Zane Woodford.
During their committee meeting on Wednesday, councillors approved the proposed $104.7-million Public Works budget.
Along with that budget, staff presented a list of options to save money through cuts and increased revenue. Councillors have been looking to those cuts to bring down the increase to the average tax bill.
One of those options was a move to cut green bin collection during the summer months from weekly to biweekly. That would save HRM $900,000, but councillors decided the added headaches for residents aren’t worth the savings.
Coun. Shawn Cleary moved to add the cut to the budget adjustment list for consideration at the end of the budget process in late-March.
“I just want to see how serious you guys are about saving money,” Cleary said.
Cleary also moved to consider cutting sidewalk snow clearing on Priority 3 residential streets, saying residents would be better off clearing their own sidewalks.
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2. John and Percy Paris
“The first African-Canadian coach of a professional hockey team and his brother will serve as opposing coaches in an annual hockey game this weekend in Dartmouth to commemorate the former Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes,” reports Matthew Byard.
Along with Black Ice Society, Hockey Nova Scotia is co-hosting Saturday’s game. It’s running an online petition to get John Paris Jr. into the Hockey Hall of Fame and credit him with a series of firsts: the first Black coach in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL); the first Black scout in the NHL; the first Black general manager in professional hockey; and the first Black coach in professional hockey.
“Given the significance of this historic rematch we are thrilled to have honorary coaches John Paris Jr. and Percy Paris behind the benches,” Dean Smith, diversity and inclusion Chair with Hockey Nova Scotia, said in an interview.
“The Halifax Eurekas and the Dartmouth Jubilees first met for a rink game in February of 1895. The result of that game was a one-one draw with a promise of a return match. We found no record of that return match, so this rematch is… 128 years in the making.”
John Paris’ brother Percy Paris said Hockey Nova Scotia reached out to them and requested they be opposing coaches for Saturday’s game.
“I think I’m coaching the Halifax team and I think he’s coaching the Dartmouth team,” Percy Paris said in an interview.
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3. Brenda Lucki
Brenda Lucki is stepping down as RCMP Commissioner.
The news was announced on Wednesday. As this story from Catharine Tunney at CBC says, Lucki’s decision to step down was a personal one.
“This was not an easy decision as I love the RCMP and have loved being the 24th commissioner. I am so incredibly proud to have had the opportunity to lead this historic organization and witness first hand the tremendous work being done each and every day by all employees from coast to coast to coast and internationally,” she said.
Lucki, who was sworn in on April 16, 2018, said the national force has made “some great progress” in meeting the expectations of Canadians, communities and policing partners.
Her last day in the job will be March 17.
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Lucki insisted she has “accomplished a lot” with the senior executive team and RCMP employees, including modernizing the force and addressing internal challenges.
“I’m so proud of the steps we’ve taken to modernize – to increase accountability, address systemic racism, ensure a safe and equitable workplace and advance reconciliation with Indigenous peoples,” she said in the statement.
“I leave knowing I did my best and take comfort that the RCMP is well placed to shine in its 150th year.”
Tim Bousquet wrote this column, “The view from 10,000 feet: RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki must go,” after the second day of Lucki’s testimony at the Mass Casualty Commission. Bousquet wrote that Lucki started her testimony that day with “the stark acknowledgement that she has no understanding of the police response to the events unfolding in Portapique.”
To be sure, the RCMP is an enormous organization. But Portapique was not a obscure detail that doesn’t need her attention. Twenty-two people were killed, including an RCMP constable. As a result of the policing failures, there is a crisis in confidence in the RCMP. And most importantly, it is of utmost importance that the policing failures be addressed forthwith so that they not be repeated come the next terrible event. Lives are at stake.
If anything deserves Lucki’s attention, it’s Portapique.
The leader of any large organization can’t be fully involved in all details of an organizational failure, but they most certainly can have more than passing knowledge of the event.
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4. Recruiting bilingual mental health care workers
A group that works to ensure Acadian and francophone Nova Scotians have access to safe and affordable health care just received money from the province to help recruit bilingual mental health care professionals.
In a news release from Wednesday, Réseau Santé – Nouvelle-Écosse will get $73,000 from the new Office of Healthcare Professionals Recruitment Community Fund to help build a website in French and English that will include testimonials from French-speaking health care workers in the province, as well as details on what it’s like to live and work in Nova Scotia.
“In mental health, language has a crucial impact on accessibility, quality and safety of care. This project is at the heart of a multi-partner strategy to attract new bilingual mental health professionals to Nova Scotia,” said Blair Boudreau, President, Réseau Santé – Nouvelle-Écosse
. “The project will not only help fill vacant positions but also increase the availability of French-language health services for the Acadian and francophone community.
“
According to the news release, 28 groups across Nova Scotia applied to receive up to $100,000 money from the $2 million fund. Those groups will learn in the next few weeks if their applications have been accepted.
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5. Weddings are expensive
Victoria Welland at CBC has this story about couples in Nova Scotia who are looking for low-cost alternatives to more expensive traditional weddings.
Welland spoke with Tiffany Adams who got married last August. She and her husband wanted to have their wedding on a boat, but most of the quotes they got ranged around $25,000. So, they decided to have their wedding on a private whale watching tour with a dinner at a restaurant in Digby for guests afterward. The price? $4,000.
It seems a lot of couples have been trimming down their wedding plans. Jennie Sanford told CBC about the business she and a friend started in 2019, Elope Halifax, which took off during the pandemic and has been going steady ever since.
Welland also interviewed Caitlin Gray who is a wedding planner and said the average cost for a wedding in Nova Scotia is $40,000 (YIKES), but she added their are budget-friendly options out there.
“Maybe you don’t get flowers on every table. Maybe half of the tables have flowers, half of candles, little things like that,” Gray said.
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VIEWS
Fake it until you make it: do you have imposter syndrome or are you just a normal human being?
Last week, I was catching up with someone I’ve known a while now. I asked how she was doing, she told me she was struggling with imposter (also impostor) syndrome.
Now, dear readers, this person is highly competent, talented, educated, and works hard. I was shocked to hear she was experiencing self-doubt and was feeling like a fraud.
Imposter syndrome is a term I’ve heard before, usually via social media posts where someone is confessing to dealing with it. I haven’t given imposter syndrome much thought until this person told me she was struggling with it. “Doesn’t everyone doubt their abilities or feel like they don’t fit in every once in a while?” I wondered. I mean, if you never screw up, are you even alive?
So, I spent the last week learning more about imposter syndrome and thought that I’d write about why ya’ll need to feel better about what you’re doing.
The term imposter syndrome started out as the term imposter phenomenon and was coined in an article from 1978 called “The Impostor Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention” by Pauline R. Clance and Suzanne A. Imes.
Their study focused on high achieving women in academics and professional industries and defined imposter syndrome as “an internal experience of intellectual phoniness.” Despite their many achievements, the women Clance and Imes interviewed often worried they’d be outed as frauds, that they didn’t really fit in. Clance went on to publish a book on the phenomenon in 1985.
As good timing would have it, when I started reading more about imposter syndrome, last week, The New Yorker published this in-depth piece, “Why Everyone Feels Like They’re Faking It,” by Leslie Jamison. Jamison connected with Clance and Imes about their work on imposter phenomenon and writes:
Almost fifty years after its formulation, the concept has achieved a level of cultural saturation that Clance and Imes never imagined. Clance maintains a list of studies and articles that have referenced their original idea; it is now more than two hundred pages long. The concept has inspired a micro-industry of self-help books, ranging in tone from #girlboss self-empowered sass (“The Middle Finger Project: Trash Your Imposter Syndrome and Live the Unf*ckwithable Life You Deserve”) to unapologetic earnestness (“Yes! You Are Good Enough: End Imposter Syndrome, Overthinking and Perfectionism and Do What YOU Want”). “The Imposter Syndrome Workbook” invites readers to draw their impostor voice as a creature or a monster of their choosing, to cross-examine their negative self-talk, and to fill a “Self-Love Mason Jar” with written affirmations and accomplishments.
Clance and Ime’s early work also looked at the family dynamics of the women they spoke with who had imposter syndrome.
Clance and Imes’s original paper identified two distinct family patterns that gave rise to impostor feelings: either women had a sibling who had been identified as “the smart one” or else they themselves had been identified as “superior in every way—intellect, personality, appearance, talent.” The pair theorized that women in the first group are driven to find the validation they didn’t get at home but end up doubting whatever validation later comes their way; those in the second group encounter a disconnect between their parents’ unrealistic faith in their capacities and the experience of fallibility that life inevitably brings. For both types of “impostors,” the crisis comes from the disjunction between the messages received from their parents and the messages received from the world. Are my parents right (that I’m inadequate), or is the world right (that I’m capable)? Or, conversely, are my parents right (that I’m perfect), or is the world right (that I’m failing)? This gap gives rise to a conviction that either the parent is wrong or the world is.
I don’t disagree with this. Young girls often hear messaging that says one thing, usually don’t be too bossy, or my personal fave, you have too much spirit. All of this has the goal of getting girls to fit into a small box of how girls and women should be. Yet when those girls grow up, they hear another, completely different, message: you can have it all. But the same people encouraging these women to have it all don’t support the systems to help them to even get through a week.
As I was thinking and reading about imposter syndrome, I tweeted out how surprised I was that so many women deal with this at all. And a number of women chimed in to share their thoughts.
One of those who commented was Michelle McCann, a digital marketer in Truro who started her own business almost 10 years ago. McCann is great at her work and it’s no small feat to keep a business going for a decade. On Twitter, McCann tweets about work, her dog Roxy, and has a pretty good sense of humour. In my Twitter thread, she mentioned recently doing a presentation for the Colchester branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association on mental health and business ownership that included a bit about imposter syndrome. So, I decided to talk with McCann about it all. We chatted over Zoom on Tuesday. McCann has a good sense of humour about imposter syndrome, calling it “mental indigestion” or a “big circle of poop in your head.”
“Things will give you indigestion,” McCann told me. “Sometimes we know what they are; sometimes it’s a surprise. But you take your Tums and sometimes you go back and eat that taco again. And sometimes you don’t. It’s a thing that happens. You deal with it and try not to live in it.”
McCann told me that since she does her business online, that’s often where the imposter syndrome is triggered.
“That’s where a huge part of [imposter syndrome] comes from. You’re seeing, oh, that person has a business like mine. Why aren’t I doing that? My mantra is ‘comparison is the thief of joy’ because I’m doing great! I don’t necessarily share it all the time and when I see other people sharing it, I think, ‘oh, maybe I’m not doing great because look at how great they’re doing.’ But I know for a fact, that they are having a horrible day.”
McCann said you have to remember that what people share online or even at networking events are their “highlight reels.” You know, just the good stuff that’s going on. And seeing that can have her making comparisions with what she’s doing.
“I have some days when I say I know nothing, I can do nothing. I should just stop doing this right now,” McCann said. “I have other days when I think I’m amazing and can tackle the world. But it’s just remembering we’re all in the same boat. No one is perfect. No one is out there living the life that you see online.”
So, what does she suggest others do when they’re dealing with imposter syndrome?
“Know that someone is looking at your stuff and feeling the same way,” McCann said. “They’re looking at your business and you and anything you do. I’m important to remember that you’re going to feel that way. If you don’t feel that way, I wonder about you.”
Back to Jamison’s article in The New Yorker. She spoke with Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey, who like Clance and Imes, collaborated on their research on imposter syndrome. They co-wrote this article, “Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome,” in Harvard Business Review. Apparently, the article has been translated and published all over the world and it’s one of the most shared articles in the history of Harvard Business Review.
That article starts with a story about Talisa Lavarry who was demoted from a job leading and organizing a big corporate event where Barack Obama was the keynote speaker. Lavarry, who was the only Black person on the team, said the bullying of her colleagues made her question every decision, leaving her experiencing imposter syndrome. Reading it I thought Lavarry just had insecure, petty, and racist colleagues.
So, what are Tulshyan and Burey’s thoughts on all of this talk of imposter syndrome? The issue is not a lack of confidence in women, but rather a systemic one of racism and sexism in workplaces:
The impact of systemic racism, classism, xenophobia, and other biases was categorically absent when the concept of imposter syndrome was developed. Many groups were excluded from the study, namely women of color and people of various income levels, genders, and professional backgrounds. Even as we know it today, imposter syndrome puts the blame on individuals, without accounting for the historical and cultural contexts that are foundational to how it manifests in both women of color and white women. Imposter syndrome directs our view toward fixing women at work instead of fixing the places where women work.
So all women feel like imposters when it’s really the systems weren’t designed for them, but for white men. Instead of changing the systems, the blame for feeling inadequate was turned back onto the women and given the name imposter syndrome. Tulshyan and Burey continue:
Imposter syndrome took a fairly universal feeling of discomfort, second-guessing, and mild anxiety in the workplace and pathologized it, especially for women. As white men progress, their feelings of doubt usually abate as their work and intelligence are validated over time. They’re able to find role models who are like them, and rarely (if ever) do others question their competence, contributions, or leadership style. Women experience the opposite. Rarely are we invited to a women’s career development conference where a session on “overcoming imposter syndrome” is not on the agenda.
The label of imposter syndrome is a heavy load to bear. “Imposter” brings a tinge of criminal fraudulence to the feeling of simply being unsure or anxious about joining a new team or learning a new skill. Add to that the medical undertone of “syndrome,” which recalls the “female hysteria” diagnoses of the nineteenth century. Although feelings of uncertainty are an expected and normal part of professional life, women who experience them are deemed to suffer from imposter syndrome. Even if women demonstrate strength, ambition, and resilience, our daily battles with microaggressions, especially expectations and assumptions formed by stereotypes and racism, often push us down. Imposter syndrome as a concept fails to capture this dynamic and puts the onus on women to deal with the effects. Workplaces remain misdirected toward seeking individual solutions for issues disproportionately caused by systems of discrimination and abuses of power.
Last week, I discovered this hilarious newsletter from a writer named Irene. It’s called “Maybe It’s Not Imposter Syndrome, Maybe You’re Inadequate.”
Irene writes about Harry Styles who won album of the year at the Grammys last week, an honour Irene said should have gone to Beyonce, who’s never won that particular and most coveted Grammy. In his acceptance speech, Styles said, “This doesn’t happen to people like me very often.” Irene writes: “Harry Styles is exactly the type of person this happens to — every year, every day, everywhere.”
And there are people like Harry Styles everywhere. Irene talks about a former white colleague of hers in the television business named Bradley who she said was “the most incompetent person I’ve ever had the displeasure of working with.”
I recall a brief conversation where Bradley pointed out how good the other coworkers were at their jobs, and said that sometimes he feels like he has imposter syndrome, and that he felt was nowhere near as good as them. I wanted to shout, “Because you’re not!”. Bradley remained at this job for several months before he was let go, and then promptly hired on a larger tv show. A few months later he was let go again — Reader, he was then hired on an even bigger tv show.
The worst thing about this is that Bradley doesn’t even want to work in television. Bradley was taking space from people who genuinely wanted to work in the industry, and he was consistently hired despite his inadequacies. His ‘imposter syndrome’ was his own conscious (sic) telling him that he did not deserve to be there.
We’ve all known at least one Bradley in our lifetimes. That’s the thing about imposter syndrome; highly competent people are out there questioning their abilities while some others are falling upward toward success they haven’t earned or don’t deserve. But that’s because the system is designed to support the Bradleys of the world and make the rest of us feel inadequate.
When I was reading up on imposter syndrome, I found this tweet that said about 82% of people experience imposter syndrome. If most people experience it, then why is it a syndrome at all? And what is up with the other 18% of people who don’t experience it? Maybe we should worry about them.
For what it’s worth, I think you’re all great! If giving your feelings a name like imposter syndrome helps you deal with them and move on, that’s great. But pathologizing normal emotions, even the uncomfortable, negative ones, is not necessary.
We’re all faking it in some ways, but we’re all more than fine in others. You’re not an imposter; you’re just human.
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NOTICED
Older women kick butt in the gym, but there aren’t many photos of it
Back in June 2020, Philip Moscovitch wrote this Morning File about the lack of diversity in stock photos and how some organizations are making their own stock images to reflect reality.
As Moscovitch wrote then, we here at the Examiner use stock images on occasion. It’s always interesting to see what you will find — or not find — when looking for a photo on a particular topic. Moscovitch wrote:
Some stock photography is great, and some is ridiculous, which becomes particularly evident when you gather a bunch of images of a particular trope in one place (in this case women laughing while eating salad).
But stock photography is also a kind of cultural barometer too, showing trends in what we think represents particular people or circumstances.
So, when Iris the Amazing sent me this article, “You don’t have to be young to build muscle: how women are breaking fitness taboos,” by Zoe Williams in the Guardian, I was intrigued. Williams interviewed Anna Jenkins, the founder of We Are Fit Attitude (Wafa), who said she was annoyed that when she searched for stock photos of older women exercising, she found images of women with grey hair lifting tiny weights as if they couldn’t handle much more (Williams mentions the photos of white women laughing while eating salads, too, showing just how frustratingly pervasive that image is on stock photo sites).
Jenkins knew that wasn’t the reality in her gym, so she organized to have better stock photos taken.
One Saturday, at a class in Merton, south London, they decided to create a new set of photos, repopulate the ecosystem of stock photographs, so that when you search for “older women exercising”, you will be able to see what that really looks like. “These are proper weights,” says Annette Hinds, 60. “We’re not pussyfooting about.”
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The photographer documenting today’s class, Jason Alfred-Palmer, is the son of one of the Wafa women, Hilary Palmer, 61. Methodically, unobtrusively, he catches the kettlebell swings, the slam balls in action, the planks, the radically enthusiastic press-ups. There is another cliche that is unlikely to survive this photoshoot: that middle-aged women are somehow less competitive than everyone else, happy to retreat to the sidelines.
I actually searched “older women exercising” in Unsplash and Pexels, two of the sites we use for stock photos, and didn’t find much variety. The photos were mostly of younger women, and even some men, working out. So, I’m glad to see someone is out there taking the photos themselves.
Besides the issue of representation of older women exercising in stock photos, this is a good article about the misconceptions about women of middle age and older and fitness. We’re still strong, still competitive, and still up for a challenge, even though we live in a society that wants us to disappear.
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Government
City
Today
Community Planning and Economic Development Standing Committee (Thursday, 10am, City Hall, and online) — agenda
Youth Advisory Committee (Thursday, 5pm, Power House Youth Centre) — agenda
Tomorrow
Budget Committee (Friday, 9:30am, City Hall) — agenda
Province
No meetings
On campus
Dalhousie
Today
Prozac is a transgenerational neuroendocrine disruptor of stress, behaviour and reproduction in a fish model: is it time to raise the warning flag for human health? (Thursday, 11:30am, 5th Floor Biology Lounge, Life Sciences Centre) — Vance Trudeau from the University of Ottawa will talk
From SWELL to PAC: discovery of novel chloride channels (Thursday, 12pm, online) — Zhaozhu Qiu from Johns Hopkins Medicine will talk
Worried Earth (Thursday, 4:30pm, Room 1028, Rowe Management Building) — panel discussion: “Talking about eco-anxiety, entangled grief, and life in an age of climate catastrophe;” affiliated art exhibition features work by Connie Chappel, Luke Fair, Laura Findlay, Natalie Goulet, Maureen Gruben, Jenine Marsh, Kuh Del Rosario, and Xiaojing Yan. More info here
Panel Discussion and Conversations on Teaching While Black (Thursday, 5:30pm, online) — with Obiora C. Okafor, Uzo Anucha, Charles Gyan, Nimo Bokore, and moderator Dominic Silvio; info and registration here
Tomorrow
Housewives, Breadwinners, and Students: Gendered Elements of the War on Tuberculosis at the Nova Scotia Sanatorium, 1904-1969 (Friday, 3:30pm, Room 1107, Marion McCain Building, and online) — Courtney Mrazek from Saint Mary’s University will talk
Saint Mary’s
Zen Conquests: Buddhist Transformations in Contemporary Vietnam (Thursday, 12pm, Room LI135, Patrick Power Library) — Alexander Soucy discusses his latest book; info and RSVP here
Autobiographical Reflections on Geography, Wholeness, and Meditative Inquiry (Thursday, 2:30pm, Science 221 and online) — Ashwani Kumar from Mount Saint Vincent University will talk
Sport and Settler Colonialism: An Autoethnographic Journey (Thursday, 4pm, Atrium 340) — Jason Laurendeau from the University of Lethbridge will talk
Mount Saint Vincent
Today
No events
Tomorrow
Changing Military Culture Through True Stories (Friday, 4:30pm, McCain 105/106) — Kelly S. Thompson will talk, in the Transforming Military Cultures Network’s first annual symposium, Feb. 17-20, titled Military Culture Change Beyond the Checkbox
In the harbour
Halifax
09:00: Seaspan Loncomilla, container ship, sails from Pier 42 for sea
11:30: Nolhanava, ro-ro cargo, arrives at Fairview Cove from Saint-Pierre
15:30: Atlantic Star, container ship, sails from Fairview Cove for New York
Cape Breton
14:30: AlgoScotia, oil tanker, sails from Government Wharf (Sydney) for sea
17:00: Shelia Ann, bulker, arrives at Point Tupper Coal Pier from Baltimore
Footnotes
I have interviews arranged for a series I’m working on. I hope to have those stories out in the next few weeks.
It always blows my mind how much people are willing to spend on weddings. Seamaiden and I got married for well under $1K, we recycled her grandmother’s engagement ring, bought our rings 2nd hand at a coin shop in Barrington Lanes, got married on the wharf at Nathan Green park outside on a gorgeous day, and had our reception at the Hart & Thistle in which everyone bought their own lunch. Our biggest expense was the JP. One of my co-workers was horrified at our rings talking about how much he’d spent on rings, losing sight of the fact that the ring is just a symbol, what’s important is the commitment.
My wife & I had a potluck for our wedding and spent our money on more important things.
Great idea!
One of the other things we did was to say we didn’t need presents but if guests wanted to gift us something then they could give us gift cards for building supply stores. We had everything we already needed but we had just moved into our house so those were very welcome!
Great Morning File as always, Suzanne!
Yeh the whole wedding industry is a scam. When my wife and I got married we decided to DIY it as we realistically decided that we’d rather have the money to do house renos as opposed to paying off 10’s of thousands of dollars in bills for 1 day. I’m not even sure how much we ended up spending, but including our rings, it was south of $2500. We made all the food and decorations ourselves, a friend made the wedding cake, another friend did the photos, another friend loaned us a tent (in case of rain), another loaned us chairs, and we did it in our backyard. It was fantastic and OURs.
Also, I can 100% guarantee guys also suffer from imposter syndrome. I’m sitting here at my desk working away at my fancy science job and thinking that I don’t feel qualified compared to my colleagues.
Right on about older women and exercise! That’s why I signed up for Heather Dennis’s online movement education classes, specifically aimed at women over 50. Take a look at her website if you want to see what an older woman “kicking butt” looks like, while giving the rest of us the education about our aging bodies we never got in gym class.