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Our subscription drive continues this week. It’s been a busy week covering the wildfires and that work continues, of course, but there are many other stories out there to cover, and we will get those to you, too. Just this morning someone sent me a lead on a story, so I will dig into that as soon as this Morning File is out. I want to thank you all for continuing to support the team sharing these stories.

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NEWS

1. Fire update and emergency alerts

This item is written by Tim Bousquet.

Firefighting efforts in Nova Scotia have been greatly helped by a change in the weather — more than 90 millimetres of rain fell on the southwest part of the province Sunday and Monday, with some areas receiving 120 millimetres. 

The Barrington Lake fire, however, remains technically “out of control,” which means a perimeter has not been established around it. Still, the fire has not grown, said Eddie Nickerson, Warden of the Municipality of the District of Barrington, at a press conference Monday afternoon. 

Due to safety concerns, Highway 103 in Shelburne County remains closed. Of particular concern is the construction and demolition dump at 1138 Highway 103, which is the site where residents will bring fire debris — but the dump itself is on fire.

There are still 143 Department of Natural Resources personnel working on the Barrington fire, but because of the rain, the water bombers chartered from Montana can’t operate. Those planes have been lent to the the province of Quebec, which is dealing with its own fires, and will return to Nova Scotia when they can operate here again.

Meanwhile, the response at the Tantallon Fire has been stepped down considerably — there are now just 25 DNR personnel on the ground, and the municipality’s firefighters were stepped down, although they remain ready to return, if needed.

Evacuation orders continue to be rescinded, most recently (after the above map was released) for most of Upper Hammonds Plains. Hammonds Plains Road reopened to traffic this morning. The core evacuation area, where the 150 houses were lost (the pink area on the map above) will likely remain under an evacuation order for another week.

I’ve been concerned about the heavy use of the Emergency Alert system.

Don’t misunderstand me: activating the Emergency Alert system as the fires raged out of control on Sunday, May 28 was entirely warranted — and very likely saved lives. It’s astonishing that no one was killed in the firestorm, and the Emergency Management Office should be congratulated for taking quick, decisive action to alert the public.

The use of the Emergency Alert system was the subject of a roundtable discussion at the Mass Casualty Commission, which included world renowned experts who have studied and implemented such systems. Over the past couple of days, I reviewed their testimony and the documentation related to it. 

One of the experts was Michael Hallowes, who built an alerting system in Australia. One of Hallowes’s slides spoke to “When to use Emergency Alert,” which listed a number of “decisive conditions,” as follows:

But the very next slide, titled “For what purpose,” introduces a conflicting message, including “closure” of the incident:

At issue in the Tantallon emergency is the recision of the evacuation orders. 

As progress has been made on containing the fire, and as a very welcomed rainfall reduced risks, the evacuation orders for neighbourhoods on the periphery of the evacuation zone have been rescinded, but in a piecemeal fashion — first one neighbourhood is released back to the public, then maybe a half day later, a second one, and so forth. Each of these recisions is accompanied by its own emergency alert.

As I understand them from Hallowes’s testimony before the Mass Casualty Commission, emergency alerts should be issued in cases of imminent threat to life, but then perhaps contradicting that, also again when the threat is removed. 

This makes sense in the case of, say, a mass murderer raging across the province shooting people randomly: an emergency alert should have gone out outlining the known situation, more alerts as circumstances and the threat changed, and then finally when the gunman was killed in Enfield, to let people know that the immediate threat is over.

I wonder, however, if it was envisioned that the lessening threat could take place incrementally, over many days, as is the case with the fire evacuation orders being rescinded.

My worry is about alert fatigue — my own phone has been screaming at me so often with the evacuation recisions that I’m tempted to just ignore the alerts. At what point does this itself become a public safety threat? What if, dog forbid, there were another, unrelated threat to life as the flurry of evacuation recisions was coming through, say another mass murderer on the loose?

Some people suggest that a second tone be added to the alert system for lesser alerts that don’t directly relate to potential loss of life, but this contradicts the testimony of the experts, who said that the alerting system should use just one easily recongnizable and nationwide sound.

Additionally, once the alert system gets watered down with warnings about things that aren’t imminent threat to life, I worry about “alert creep” — such that the public is warned about ever lesser threats to life until we get to the point of alerts about shoplifters and lost dogs. 

It is imperative, I think, that the alerting system be used exclusively for the very most urgent and imminent threats to life, and I don’t think the evacuation recisions meet that criteria.

I’m writing this not as criticism, but (I hope) as a starting point for more discussion.

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2. Phoenix rising

“In order to rise from its own ashes, a phoenix must first burn.” Set against the backdrop of the Nova Scotia wildfires, I was struck anew by the line from The Parable of the Talents, an acclaimed novel by the Afrofuturist author Octavia Butler (1947-2006),” writes Evelyn C. White.

Published in 1998, the narrative details a society ravaged by climate catastrophes, racism, gender violence, and religious zealots. As Butler told it, the path out of despair rests in the ability of people to embrace our common bonds as a human family; as in the support that has been showered on Nova Scotians impacted by the fires and those toiling tirelessly to quell the flames.

For me, Butler’s reference to a phoenix rising from ashes also evoked the woman born Anna Mae Bullock in Jim Crow Tennessee and who died, last month, in Switzerland, as the singer revered around the globe as Tina Turner. She was 83.

As such, Turner had bested the average life span for Black women by seven years. Shortly before her death, she attributed her blessings to her Buddhist practice and to the devotion of her second husband, Erwin Bach, from whom she’d received a kidney transplant in 2017.

Turner’s split from her monstrous first husband, Ike Turner, and the evolution of her romance with Bach has been widely documented, notably in the riveting 2021 film TINA by Daniel Lindsay and T. J. Martin.

White has a beautiful way of weaving together her own stories with larger issues that affect us all. In this case, it’s wildfires, Tina Turner, the life of one of her friends, and the ways in which we give back to others. You can click here to read “Phoenix rising: the fires that bond.”

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3. Wildfire risk high for Canada

According to federal data, the wildfire season across Canada will be a very busy one. That’s according to this story from CBC:

“Our modelling shows this may be an especially severe wildfire season throughout this summer,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a news conference.

“This is a scary time for a lot of people, not just in Alberta, but right across the country, including in the Atlantic, the North and Quebec, too.”

Government data shared with reporters Monday shows 413 fires spanning multiple provinces and the North were burning as of Sunday afternoon, leaving about 26,206 people under evacuation orders in British Columbia, Alberta, Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan, Quebec and Nova Scotia.

More than half of those active fires are considered out of control, said Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair.

Mike Norton, director general of the Northern Forestry Centre at the Department of Natural Resources, told reporters Monday morning that seeing so many fires across the country at this time of year is not normal.

Blair said about half of those fires were started by lightning, but said that Canadians should take “extreme care” about starting fires themselves with tossed cigarette butts, ATVs, and so on.

Trudeau, meanwhile, said Canada should have enough resources to fight those fires, if they happen.

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4. Toxic smoke

Over the last week, I’ve seen a few stories like this one about smoke from wildfires across Canada that is wafting into the U.S.

Smoke from wildfires in several Canadian provinces, including Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia, led to air quality alerts throughout several states in the Midwest, mid-Atlantic and Northeast. Additionally, fires in Michigan and New Jersey have created dense fog and heavy smoke.

Inhaling toxic smoke and ash from wildfires could cause damage to the body — including the lungs and heart — and even weaken our immune systems, experts said.

“Wildfire smoke itself is quite a complex mixture and it’s made up of fine particles … and a number of other gases, which are toxic, mainly due to the fact that wildfires burn everything so more toxic than household fires because everything has been burned,” Dr. Kimberly Humphrey, a climate change and human health fellow at the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told ABC News.

Fine particulate matter known as PM2.5, which is 30 times smaller in diameter than a human hair, is of particular concern.

Also from that story:

This is especially concerning for vulnerable groups including children, pregnant people, older adults and those who are immunocompromised or having pre-existing conditions.

“Lower socioeconomic neighborhoods are at a higher risk as well,” Humphrey said. “Often they don’t have the ability for financial reasons, predominantly, and also social reasons to get away from wildfire smoke, they may not be able to shelter inside, they may not be able to afford the equipment to protect their lungs from the smoke.”

Yvette d’Entremont wrote about the wildfire smoke and lung health in this interview from last week. d’Entremont spoke with Dr. Meredith Chiasson, who gave advice on how to protect your lungs.

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5. Wind farms

“The Nova Scotia government is about to ask the wind power industry if it is interested in putting offshore wind turbines in waters under provincial jurisdiction, CBC News has learned — including Chedabucto Bay, St. Margarets Bay and Mahone Bay,” reports Paul Withers at CBC.

The Houston government is also planning to issue seabed leases inside provincial waters as early as 2024.

A draft Nova Scotia offshore wind road map — released to some stakeholders late last month — says the province will issue a “request for information” from developers this year followed by a call for bids in 2024 for seabed leases in waters under exclusive provincial jurisdiction.

In the road map, those waters are identified as Bras d’Or Lake in Cape Breton, St. Georges Bay in Antigonish, Chedabucto Bay, St. Margarets Bay, Mahone Bay and St. Marys Bay.

“The request for information would provide insights into areas within provincial jurisdiction that are of interest to potential offshore wind developers,” Natural Resources and Renewables spokesperson Adele Poirier said in a statement to CBC News. “So far, no specific areas have been designated by the province.”

The solicitation raises the incongruous prospect of wind turbines close to an international landmark like the Peggys Cove lighthouse in St. Margarets Bay, or within sight of the Town of Lunenburg, a UNESCO world heritage site.

CBC obtained documents about the wind farms in Chedabucto Bay and concerns from residents and fishers there. Withers writes:

Fishing representatives from Guysborough and Richmond counties met with local MLAs Greg Morrow, Trevor Boudreau and Fisheries and Nova Scotia Aquaculture Minister Steve Craig on Friday to talk about their concerns.

“We absolutely do not know what the footprint is and the province doesn’t know itself as the regulator, because that part of the project has not been identified,” says Ginny Boudreau, a longtime manager with the Guysborough County Inshore Fishermen’s Association.

As Withers points out, the province has granted environmental approvals for two proposed green hydrogen plants, Ever Wind and Bear Head, in the Strait area. Joan Baxter has written about those projects, including here and here.

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VIEWS

The cost of exclusion is far greater than the cost of getting school support workers back to the classroom

We are now in week five of the strike of 1,800 school support workers in Halifax. I started writing this Views bit last Sunday when I realized it was the start of Access Awareness Week in Nova Scotia, a week at the end of May, beginning of June each year that’s dedicated to promoting accessiblity and inclusion in the province. There are similar events across the country. And then, well, last week happened, so this bit got pushed to the side.

But those support workers were still on strike last week and in some cases they redirected their focus to collect donations for Nova Scotians who were displaced by wildfires. Those workers remain on strike today fighting for a living wage. Access Awareness Week is over, but the issue, of course, isn’t. Hundreds of students who are supported by those workers remain out of classrooms, too. Someone, somewhere didn’t get the “awareness” part of last week’s event. I did see comments from parents asking that events for Access Awareness Week be called off entirely. I don’t know if that happened.

As far as I know, no talks are scheduled between the province and support workers. A group calling themselves HRM Supports Education Workers is hosting a rally at Grand Parade today. Still, it’s baffling that no talks seem to be in the works. We are in the last month of school. Is someone waiting until the school year ends, thinking people will forget about the issue over the summer?

Back in April, I wrote this story about people living with disabilties and inclusive workplaces. In that story, Joanne Bernard, president and CEO at Easter Seals Nova Scotia, said it was the law to be accessible and inclusive. From the story:

In 2017, the provincial government passed the Accessibility Act, which has the goal of making Nova Scotia more inclusive and barrier-free by 2030. The province is working with people with disabilities, as well as public and private sector organizations, to develop standards that will apply to goods and services, information and communication, transportation, education, the built environment, and employment. Bernard said employers should do the work now to become more inclusive for people with disabilities, including in hiring staff.

Develop standards to apply to education. That doesn’t seem to be working out right now.

Over the last few years, people like Milena Khazanavicius have been teaching me a lot about accessibility and inclusion. In Khazanavicius’ case, that means bringing down barriers for people who are blind and partially sighted. But there’s diversity in disability and as someone once said to me, accessibility is more than putting a ramp up to your door.

If you’re able-bodied, maybe you don’t think about accessibility and inclusion very often. Yet any one of us, at any time, could become disabled through illness, accident, or old age, and suddenly we’d be facing barriers we never thought about or even noticed before. Wouldn’t you fight the fight to break those barriers down, too? Making the world accessible to people living with disabilities doesn’t make it inaccessible to anyone else.

Back to the ramp at the door: Accessibility is about more than redesigning and retrofitting the built environment. Accessibility also means having other people on hand to guide and assist people living disabilities. That’s the case with the school support workers, including educational personal assistants (EPAs). This story by Yvette d’Entremont illustrates that well. d’Entremont spoke with Kerri and Mick Scarff whose young son, Cohen, is one of the children out of school right now. The Scarffs spoke about Cohen’s EPAs and the support and inclusion they provide:

The Scarffs have nothing but praise for the EPAs who make it possible for Cohen and other children with disabilities to attend school. 

“We want to make sure that they know we think they deserve everything and more,” Kerri said. “These EPAs care about these kids. They consider them their kids. That’s how most of them look at them.”

Cohen made great progress this past year. He had a job delivering breakfast bins by himself to different classrooms every morning, something his parents described as “huge.” He was also enjoying music and staying for the whole class. Cohen was even playing instruments because of his EPA’s support.  

“What they give him is more than just getting him to do maths and work and all that sort of stuff. It’s confidence,” Mick said. “It’s the social part. It’s feeling included. It’s all the little things that he probably doesn’t even realize.”

Yvette d’Entremont also wrote this story about the wages EPAs receive; they’re lowest wages in the country. The wages even surprised me and I try to keep on eye on these things. In many ways, EPAs and other support workers are caregivers in our schools and for these students. And we’ve long underpaid caregivers, many of whom are women, because we think they should do this work for free. Is that the sticking point in the talks on this?

EPA Tylor McDuff broke down the costs in a letter he wrote to Premier Tim Houston. McDufff spoke to d’Entremont about his work as an EPA and what it would actually cost to get support workers back to the classroom. d’Entremont wrote:

While he used the $1 figure to make his case, McDuff said he’d personally take less. He said a $1 per hour increase for each striking member would amount to — at most — $40 extra a week for 1,800 people. That’s a total of $72,000 a week. 

Some school support workers only work 35 hours while others only work 50% or 80%, so that figure would likely be less. But using $72,000 per week over 50 weeks, the annual total would be $3.6 million. 

“That seems like a lot of money but many staff are only paid for 40 weeks and have their pay stretched out over the full year so it’s likely not that high,” he wrote. 

Tim Bousquet spoke with EPA Allana Loh, who also broke down the financial issue. She makes just $24,000 a year working 28 hours a week. She told Bousquet she often pays for professional development workshops out of her own pocket.

I wonder about the message that’s being sent out about these hundreds of students and their support workers that goes well beyond this strike. Are we saying these students don’t deserve accessibility elsewhere either? These young students will grow up and deserve to take part in the workforce, in recreation, in, well, everything. And many parts of the world still are inaccessible to them, too. Keeping support workers out of schools might be sending a message to employers and a lot of other people they don’t need to make other spaces inclusive and accessible either. Given that we’re only seven years away from that goal of making Nova Scotia fully inclusive and accessible, that’s not a message we want to put out there.

When I wrote that story about workplaces and people living with disabiltiies, I spoke with Eric Daponte, the operations manager at 2 Crows Brewing Co. Daponte hired Liam Johnson, who I also spoke with for the story, to work on 2 Crows’ production and packaging line. After that story was published, 2 Crows shared this tweet:

If any employers +/- brewery production folks ever want to chat about building a more inclusive work environment through hiring folks with disabilities, please reach out!

Our production and packaging team is now 50% folks with intellectual or developmental disabilities, and it is by far the best it has ever been.

For the story, Daponte told me that employers should “make the jump” to be more inclusive for people with disabilities. Employers, he said, will have to make changes to how they do things, including training practices, but said it was all worth it. Daponte said:

“Once everything fell into place, we haven’t looked back. Internally and customer facing, it’s been a good move for us, and it’s been awesome to just see the growth of all three of these employees, how they flourished. I think that’s priceless at the end of the day.”

Maybe the province should get together with Daponte over a beer to talk about being an inclusive workplace. When will the province make that jump for our schools, students, and support workers, too? Because as Daponte said, the benefits of inclusion are priceless, indeed.

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NOTICED

El Jones

Last night at the Nova Scotia Book Awards, El Jones won the Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award for her book, Abolitionist Intimacies, which was published by Fernwood Publishing.

Here’s a bit about the award:

The Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award was established in 1977 to honour the work of non-fiction writers in Nova Scotia. It is named for Evelyn Richardson (1902 – 1976), who won the 1945 Governor General’s Non-Fiction Award for We Keep A Light, her memoir of life in a family of lighthousekeepers on Bon Portage Island, Shelburne County.

Congratulations, El!

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Government

City

Today

Halifax Regional Council (Tuesday, 6pm, City Hall and online) — agenda

Tomorrow

Public information meeting – Case HRTG-2023-00650 (Wednesday, 6pm, City Hall) — formerly Case H00561, application for demolition of a Registered Heritage Property at 1259 South Park Street

Province

Today

Community Services (Tuesday, 10am, One Government Place and online) — update on Standing Together to Prevent Domestic Violence; with representatives from the Department of Community Services

Human Resources (Tuesday, 1pm, One Government Place and online) — Review of School Breakfast Programs; and Agency, Board and Commission Appointments; with representatives from Nourish Nova Scotia, the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, and Calvin Presbyterian Church

Tomorrow

Public Accounts (Wednesday, 9am, One Government Place and online) — 2023 Report of the Auditor General – Follow-up of 2018, 2019 and 2020 Performance Audit Recommendations Re: Chapter 1, May 2019 Report of the Auditor General – Diversity and Inclusion in the Public Service; with representatives from the Public Service Commission, Department of Agriculture, Department of Community Services, and Department of Justice

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On campus

Dalhousie

Today

No events

Tomorrow

Engaging on Aging Tour (Wednesday, 11am, Dentistry Room 4116 5981) — discuss the future of aging with Dr. Jane Rylett; info and registration here

Saint Mary’s

The Sense Archive: This Body of Work (Tuesday, 11am, SMU Art Gallery) — exhibition by Ruth Douthwright, Sally Morgan, and Jessica Winton, presented by Eyelevel Gallery; runs Tuesday-Sunday until June 18.

Mount Saint Vincent

Portals (Tuesday, 11am, MSVU Art Gallery) — From the listing:

This exhibition of new work by Kayza DeGraff-Ford showcases their recent digital experimentation in virtual reality programming. Part of an ongoing story within DeGraff-Ford’s practice, this immersive installation features a cosmic aqua-portal via the humble entry point of bathroom plumbing. Channelling the literary genre of Magical Realism and exploring African diasporic and trans experiences, Portals takes the viewer through a healing wormhole in time.

Tuesday-Sunday until September 1, opening reception Saturday June 10, 1pm.

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In the harbour

Halifax
07:30: One Cygnus, container ship (146,694 tonnes), arrives at Pier 41 from Colombo, Sri Lanka
10:00: Scotia Tide, barge, and Atlantic Fir, tug, move from Pier 9 to Dartmouth Cove
12:00: Tropic Lissette, container ship, sails from Pier 42 for Palm Beach, Florida
12:30: AlgoScotia, oil tanker, arrives at Pier 27 from Corner Brook
21:00: AlgoScotia, oil tanker sails for New York
23:30: East Coast, oil tanker, arrives at Irving Oil from Saint John

Cape Breton
10:30: Seven Seas Navigator, cruise ship with up to 550 passengers, arrives at Sydney Marine Terminal from Halifax
15:00: Sheila Ann, bulker, sails from Aulds Cove quarry for sea
15:00: CSL Tarantau, bulker, moves from Pirates Harbour anchorage to Aulds Cove quarry
18:30: Seven Seas Navigator sails for Charlottetown

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Footnotes

When I heard the premier tell Nova Scotians not to “flick a dart” into the woods, I thought, “Why would a dart cause a fire?” Then 24 hours later, I thought, “Oh, a dart is a joint.”

Last night, my kid told me a dart is a cigarette.

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