News
1. Home for Colored Children
Today is the deadline for former residents of the Home to drop out of the class action suit settlement agreement. If five or more residents drop out, then the province can back out of the deal. But that’s not expected to happen.
2. Catie Miller
The missing women’s family posters a North Dartmouth neighbourhood in hopes someone will recall something. It’s been over a month since she’s disappeared, but so far as I know this weekend’s CBC report was the first time it was publicly noted which street Miller’s apartment is on: Stairs Street. Why wasn’t that information released before?
3. Northern Pulp Mill
More protests over the weekend, but the Chronicle Herald interviews The Unnamed Dude At a Bar who disagrees with the protesters.
4. Wild Kingdom
The Louisbourg Shark Fishing Derby is a fundraiser for the Cape Breton Regional Hospital’s paediatric unit. Interestingly, scientists from the Bedford Institute of Oceanography ask fishers to tag the under-sized sharks they throw back, which provides ongoing data for research.
5. Mayhem and mishaps
A fire at a three-storey house under construction at 11 Armshore Drive is called “suspicious.” A man allegedly got drunk and drove his pickup truck into a bunch of parked cars on Waverley Road. Another suspicious fire this morning, in Timberlea.
Views
1. Parker Rudderham and the law
Stephen Kimber details Frank owner Parker Rudderham’s extensive legal battles. Kimber reminds us of Rudderham’s litigious history in order to bring up Rudderham’s lawsuit against a Cape Breton woman Rudderham says defamed him through a series of tweets. The suit is brought under provisions of the new cyberbullying act. Writes Kimber: “It’s not the first time a prominent, well-connected individual has invoked our new cyberbullying law against those they claim have criticized them. Is that really who the law was intended to protect?”
2. Bell Aliant jobs
Dan Leger takes the PCs and NDP to task for demanding that premier Stephen McNeil take some unspecified action to protect jobs at the Halifax headquarters of Bell Aliant, which has been bought up by Toronto-based BCE. The parties, says Leger, “are reinforcing the persistent belief that the government can create or protect jobs or ‘manage the economy.’ It can’t, past the shortest of terms, a fact that has been expensively proven many times.”
Government
City
Regional subdivision bylaw open house (7pm, four-pad arena boardroom, Bedford)—the second of three open houses to explain proposed changes in the bylaw.
Province
No public meetings.
On this date in 1930, Nova Scotia ended prohibition and the first NSLC stores opened.
On Campus
Dalhousie
Thesis defence, Interdisciplinary Studies (10am, Room 430, Goldberg Computer Science Building)—PhD candidate David Michels will defend his thesis, “Seeking the will of God: The Information-Seeking Experiences of the Leaders of Nova Scotia Churches in Transition.”
Thesis defence, Psychology and Neuroscience (10am, Room 3107, Mona Campbell Building)—PhD candidate Kristin Fossum will defend her thesis, “Examining Factors Related to Outcome in Autism Spectrum Disorder.”
Saint Mary’s
Thesis defence, International Development (9am, 227 McNally Main)—Masters student Faith Okolo will defend her thesis “The PRSP and Poverty Reduction: The Case of Nigeria (2000-2014).”
Daily Plug
Yesterday, I was musing on Twitter about the possible different meanings of the word “great’ to describe the most asinine, stupid war in all of human history, that conflagration from 1914-18. “Great” meaning simply “big” dates back to the old Germanic and before, but the secondary meaning of “excellent, wonderful” was first used in 1848.
Sadly, the First World War wasn’t the first war to be described as “the Great War.” That honour goes to the Napoleonic Wars, but wasn’t coined as such until 1887, so it’s not clear which meaning of the word “great” was implied. The Online Etymology Dictionary tells us that the phrase “World War 1” was avoided right up until Hitler’s troops rolled into Paris, because as Arnold Toynbee wrote, until the fall of France the British continued to call it the Great War “in order to avoid admitting to themselves that they were now again engaged in a war of the same magnitude.”
I bring all this up because Stephen Harper clearly wants us to think of the First World War as “great” in the “excellent, wonderful” sense of the word. “Amid the appalling loss, by any measure, Canada as a truly independent country was forged in the fires of the First World War,” Harper said at the Canadian War Museum earlier this month. Which somewhat contradicts his claim in 2012 that it was the War of 1812 that “helped establish our path toward becoming an independent and free country.”
Clearly, war excites Harper. But the truth of the matter is that unless we’re considering the violence against native peoples and the theft of their land, the nation of Canada was forged by political compromise, not war.
As for the Great War, the asinine and stupid World War 1, there is nothing to celebrate about it at all. No one comes out of it looking good, except for a handful of pacifists. There’s nothing to praise about the politicians who started the war, the patriots who fanned the fires of war, the publics who didn’t rise to object, or the soldiers who went willingly to the slaughter. The entire enterprise, from start to finish, is a damnable affair.
While going about such on Twitter, Andrew Pickett made me aware of this wonderful song from the British comedy duo Flanders and Swann, from I think 1967.
In the harbour
(click on vessel names for pictures and more information about the ships)
Arrivals
Don Juan, vehicle carrier, Southampton, England to Autoport
Maasdam, cruise ship, Boston to Pier 22
Atlantic Concert, ro-ro container ship, Liverpool to Fairview Cove West
Flinter Trader, general cargo, Viana Do Crasto, Portugal, to anchor for bunkers
Atlantic Compass, con-ro, New York to Fairview Cove East
Mainport Pine, research/survey vessel, BP Exploration to Pier 25
Mako, tug boat, with Barge 1081, Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania to McAshphalt Dock
Androusa, bulker, to anchor for CFIA inspection
Departures
Mainport Pine to BP Exploration
Cape Beale to sea
Atlantic Concert to New York
Maasdam to sea.
Of Note
• Sterling Fuels has completed its bunker tank at Eastern Passage, and Mako/1081 is likely bringing the first load of bunker fuel to the facility.
• BP Exploration is either running behind or is being expanded: The company has applied for a Coasting Trade Licence to continue to use Mainport Pine for the month of September.
Footnotes
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Are the dates on the thesis defence today’s dates?
Yes. All events are today unless otherwise noted.
Thank you for your prompt reply.
Too bad the thesis topics and dates were not posted ahead of time as some topics are very interesting
I just want to say that I am really enjoying your newspaper.
After the 300 business signatures in the Chronically Horrid I did consider cancelling the newspaper as I felt the article against the Heritage trust was very unfair and took sides. I no longer feel I get balanced news in that newspaper. However, The Arts and Life section is very good so I have decided to hang in for now.
Thankfully I now have your newspaper to get the real news.
Lynne
There are a bunch, many dozen, thesis defences coming forward, so I may have to start doing a weekly listing separately, and link to that every day. I’ll pay it some attention soon.
The Flanders & Swann song is actually a translation and English transposition of the great (in the sense of excellent, wonderful) French songwriter Georges Brassens song, La guerre de 14-18 (http://youtu.be/l2F5qaHzkj0 – for analysis / commentary in French see http://www.analysebrassens.com/?page=texte&id=77&%23 and http://www.ina.fr/video/I04076281 ).
With regards to the Great War stuff, you might like to read a bit about Major General Smedley Butler and his Book/Lecture “War Is a Racket.” It’s in the public domain now, and while it deals with a different time and place, it still has some interesting sentiments.
The completed purchase of BellAliant in full, by Bell Canada, means that it will be another disasteroud drain on jobs in Halifax. I’m sure the Liberals are doing everything they can to try to stop that from happening, but ultiamtely, they have no legal recourse to do so, and in the end, it will be another few hundred (or thousand) jobs lost in the world-class city of Halifax. /s.
FWIW, I have always understood the term “the Great War” as referring to its sheer size – the biggest war that anyone had ever seen. In the same way, I learned to refer to the 1930s as “the Great Depression”, and it wasn’t because anybody thought that era was excellent or wonderful. The problem, as you point out, is that the word “great” has two distinct meanings. I remember writing a first-year undergraduate economics paper, and when it came back, a reference to “the Great Depression” was scratched out with the professor’s notation “what was so great about it?”
I was born not long after the end of WW2, and understood “great” in the context of WW1 meant “biggest” never “glorious.” I’ve a friend who won’t wear a red poppy on Remembrance Day because she thinks it symbolizes glorifying war. I have never thought that, only see the symbolism of the blood, the inconceivable loss of human lives, the destruction of land, towns, culture. In the context of Never Forget we have to be sure that everyone understands what is being remembered because of this gradual drift in the meaning of words.