NEWS
1. Child care spaces
Jennifer Henderson reports that “senior managers with the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development say the province remains on track to open 9,800 new child care spaces by the end of March 2026… despite the fact only 3,800 spaces have been created in the two and a half years since Ottawa and Nova Scotia signed an historic agreement to fund $10 a day child care.”
While officials speaking at the province’s public accounts committee yesterday were optimistic, others were skeptical. Henderson writes:
There are approximately 2,500 ECEs working today. Those entering the child care field can work while studying to be certified, and the early childhood department is aiming to graduate 300 ECEs each year in order to expand the number of spaces for babies and children.
There are currently 320 licensed child care centres and 200 family home providers looking after 23,000 children in the province.
“This is going to be a marathon and we will be creating more spaces for many years to come,” Tracey Crowell, another executive director with the department, told the committee.
“I don’t think it’s going to be a marathon, I think it’s going to be a miracle if you reach 9,500 spaces in the next two years,” retorted Brendan Maguire, the Liberal MLA for Halifax Atlantic.
Click or tap here to read “$10 a day child care in Nova Scotia on track to hit 2026 target.”
(Send this item: right click and copy this link)
2. The costs of growth
“Halifax Mayor Mike Savage and councillors got a rosy outlook in a snapshot of HRM’s finances, but they’re concerned it’s the city that’s taking on the burden of costs of growth in the province,” Suzanne Rent reports.
Essentially, the mayor and councillors are arguing that people are moving to the city, the infrastructure costs money, and the province benefits without significantly covering costs.
Rent writes:
Savage said the municipality has to not only pay for future growth, but it’s still paying for growth that happened decades ago, including in subdivisions in Tantallon and Hammonds Plains where the wildfires happened in 2023.
“We are now going to have to go in and fix the egress routes that should have been provided many years ago,” Savage said.
The story notes includes possibly the best Mike Savage quote I’ve seen to date:
When people come to a city, they expect water to come out of the tap when they turn it on, they expect transit, they expect parks,” Savage said. “We’re going to have to figure some of that stuff out.”
Click or tap here to read “Halifax mayor, councillors talk cost of growth in HRM and who will pay.”
(Send this item: right click and copy this link)
3. Forestry industry impacts
Joan Baxter takes a deep dive into the impacts of industrial forestry in the findings from a new report, titled The State of the Forest in Canada: Seeing Through The Spin, which argues that the industry’s impacts on “biodiversity, the climate, forest integrity, and ecosystem services, and its potential infringements of Indigenous rights” are being vastly downplayed.
Baxter writes:
The report recommends that the federal government “transparently and comprehensively report on industrial logging’s impact.”
“We’re seeing a conversion of healthy forest ecosystems to, at the landscape level, younger managed forests, fragmented by roads,” notes Rachel Plotkin of the David Suzuki Foundation. “The cumulative impact of logging year after year is changing the face of our forests, and our government refuses to acknowledge it. “
“The federal government is risking the well-being of future generations by failing to accurately report on the degradation of forests in Canada,” adds Michael Polanyi, policy and campaign manager at Nature Canada. “How can we protect biodiversity, mitigate climate change, and ensure the future of forest-dependent communities without accurate information?”
Good question.
Click or tap here to read “Canadian governments fail to count environmental costs of industrial logging: Report.”
(Send this item: right click and copy this link)
4. Hydrogen hype
Joan Baxter tells us about a fascinating read on the origins of the hype around green hydrogen. It’s by Jesse Pinster, from the European investigative publication Follow the Money.
Baxter writes:
“The article traces much of the hydrogen hype in the European Union back to “Dutch hydrogen professor” Ad van Wijk, a “failed businessman and part-time professor who made it his mission to promote the use of hydrogen.”
This is how Pinster’s latest article begins:
Hydrogen has had a remarkable career in Europe: Until recently EU officials had never heard of hydrogen, but in just a few years the energy carrier has risen to the top of the European climate agenda. And one man in particular has been at the heart of this: the Dutch professor emeritus Ad van Wijk. His influence surged thanks to his long-standing relationship with one of the EU’s most powerful climate officials: fellow Dutchman Diederik Samsom. “Once in a while, I need that phone call from Ad van Wijk to put me over the edge and strengthen my faith,” the official said. “He was the inspiration for the Green Deal.”
“The stars are made from hydrogen, so let’s reach for the stars!”
Cringe? Yes. But when did that ever stop a good hype machine?
Click or tap here to read “Hydrogen hype’s origin story.”
(Send this item: right click and copy this link)
5. Northern Pulp bankruptcy and lawsuit
Joan Baxter has reported extensively on Northern Pulp’s creditor protection proceedings (it owes its, er, owners too much money), and the company’s $450 million lawsuit against the province for enforcing its own environmental rules.
Two of these stories are now out behind the paywall, so non-subscribers can read them.
Click or tap here to read “Northern Pulp wants bankruptcy hearing kicked down the road again, to June 2024.”
And click or tap here to read “Northern Pulp’s $450 million lawsuit looming over Nova Scotia.”
(Send this item: right click and copy this link)
6. Charges laid in Shelburne County wildfire
This item is written by Jennifer Henderson.
The Department of Natural Resources and Renewables has charged a man under the Forests Act in connection with the start of a wildfire on May 26 in Barrington Lake, Shelburne County.
That fire burned 23,379 hectares and was the largest in provincial history. It remained out of control until June 13. Dalton Clark Stewart, 22, of Villagedale, Shelburne County, is charged with:
•lighting a fire on privately owned land without permission of the owner or occupier
•failing to take reasonable efforts to prevent the spread of a fire
•leaving a fire unattended.
The department announced the charges in a media release Thursday morning. Stewart is scheduled to appear in Shelburne provincial court on March 7. People convicted under the Forests Act can be fined up to $50,000 and/or face up to six months in jail.
Under the Forests Act, the Department of Natural Resources has two years from the date of an alleged offence to lay charges. Charges are only laid if the department, in consultation with the Public Prosecution Service, believes there is sufficient evidence for a conviction.
According to the news release, “the Department continues to pursue all leads related to the wildfire in Tantallon last spring. While the Department has gathered considerable information, there is a high bar for what can be used as evidence in court.”
The Tantallon fire began May 28 and burned 969 hectares.
(Send this item: right click and copy this link)
7. Open Mic House: another little bastion of weirdness gone
Suzanne Rent reports on the heritage advisory committee’s approval of a mixed-use development on the site of the Open Mic House on Agricola Street. The house was registered as a heritage property in 2020. The house was a hub for the local arts and music scene, and got its name from weekly open mics that helped a raft of Halifax musicians get their starts.
Rent writes:
“The new commercial use, in conjunction with the second-storey balcony, will enable the property owners to reinstate the building’s culturally significant function as a live music venue,” [Heritage planning researcher Carter] Beaupre-McPhee told the committee.
“While the new rear mixed-use addition will enable the property owners to rehabilitate the heritage building and maintain it on an ongoing basis.”
Beaupre-McPhee said the design of the new addition, including its setback, roofline, and colours, makes it compatible with the heritage property while also allowing that property to be the most prominent feature of the development.
Committee member Coun. Pam Lovelace said the proposal is “living the Centre Plan” by adding to density on the peninsula while keeping the heritage of the house in place.
“I think this is a great way to move forward with a modern city that supports and maintains our heritage,” Lovelace said.
Click or tap here to read “Halifax heritage committee approves proposal for Agricola Street’s Open Mic House.”
I want to say a few words about this.
On the one hand, sure, this development makes sense. The building appears to be quite rundown, and we need more density on the peninsula. (As Coun. Shawn Cleary has noted, density on the peninsula is currently lower than in 1961.)
On the other hand, it seems to me symbolic of some of the things we lose when neighbourhoods gentrify: affordable places to live, and the weird quirky local landmarks that give places character. Austin, Texas has traded on the slogan “Keep Austin weird” for decades, but I’ve seen folks who live there say the city’s pretty much gotten rid of all the things that made it weird in the first place. You can move to the North End for the hip and artistic cachet — once you get rid of a lot of the artists.
Also, are you really protecting heritage buildings when you wrap architecturally incoherent developments like this around them? This seems barely a step up from the horrible facadeism that was popular in the 80s and 90s.
Of course, this is the way cities go. But I do think it’s worth remembering what the Open Mic House once was.
I said many musicians got their start there, but really it was something of an incubator for North End culture generally. It was home to the eponymous open mics, many hosted by Ben Caplan, along with backyard concerts, art projects, poetry readings, and even a spelling bee. (One of my kids used to live at the Open Mic House, and I participated in the spelling bee, hosted by two women dressed as pirates; I came second, losing in the final round to a King’s Foundation Year Program student.)
One winter, the yard was dominated by a snow cave that residents slept in. Later, there was a junk tower that you could climb up to get to the roof. Not unreasonably, the landlord insisted it come down.
The feel of the place was somewhere between hippie commune — with kombucha fermenting in large jars, junk art in corners, and instruments everywhere — and drop-in centre. At an outdoor summer music party, you would not be surprised to see someone pull out a set of needles and start offering impromptu tattoos.
Brad Hartman, who makes delightful pop-up cards of iconic Nova Scotia locations, including the Canso Causeway at the “Welcome to Cape Breton” sign, the Public Gardens, and Maud Lewis’s house, created a limited edition of Open Mic House pop-up cards. (There’s a drawing of my kid in the cards.)
Here’s what Hartman says about the cards, and the house:
For over 10 years this unassuming green house on Agricola Street hosted the BEST open mic in the city and I should know because I attended most of them! I’ve got so much love for this place and I’ve harnessed that love into this very special Deluxe Pop-up.
You can peek through the front window to see who’s inside and then turn the house around to hang out on the back deck.
Then unlatch the rear panel to reveal a packed house! While there were far too many wonderful humans in attendance over the years for me to include in this piece I have managed to fit a tiny fraction of some of the faces that you might happen upon inside.
I pitched a story on the Open Mic House to a local publication some years ago, and at the time, I wrote:
Although it’s become something of a north end hipster haven, the future of the house is now in question. Julia Feltham was sort of the den mother who helped keep it together, and she’s moved to New Brunswick. Meanwhile, as the neighbourhood goes more upscale, the landlord is thinking of selling — which would mean the end of the Open Mic house in its current form… [It’s] something of an underground institution that’s now at a crossroads as the neighbourhood around it changes.
The future I was imagining in that pitch is here. Maybe a sign of the end coming was when BuzzFeed ran a photo of people playing music on the street in front of the building, as part of a listicle on why Halifax was a hipster city. (Yeah, my kid was in that photo too.)
Of course, the Open Mic House has not been that same cultural hub for awhile. But this is, as they say, the final nail in the coffin.
(Send this item: right click and copy this link)
8. Sign of the (warming) times
Halifax announced yesterday that it’s ending its ice thickness testing program. In previous years, city staff would measure the thickness of ice on local lakes, and publish the results online, so skaters could know if it was safe to head out onto the ice.
But, the city says in an announcement on its website, climate change has led to “a decline in the number of days available for skating.”
In his newsletter to constituents, Coun. Sam Austin notes:
Last year, there wasn’t a single day where testing found safe conditions for outdoor skating anywhere in HRM. It’s not a good use of money ($24,000) or staff resources to test ice that is rarely, if ever, safe to skate on. Parks and Rec will redirect the cash and staff time into clearing snow and ice on park paths.
For anyone that still might be doubting the reality of climate change, consider that Dartmouth was once a place where ice was harvested, hockey may have been invented, and where the lakes were an integral part of winter recreation, even supporting horse and car races. Those days are well behind us now. Winter isn’t what it was.
Ice testing used to take place at 70 lakes.
The timing of this announcement seems odd. As one of my Examiner colleagues noted in conversation yesterday, we are entering the only stretch of the winter so far where skating on lakes might be feasible. The forecast shows temperatures well below zero for the next seven days, including nights going down to -10 and -11 degrees.
The city urges people to be safe if they want to go out on the ice, and advises on what the minimum safe thickness is (15 cm for skating alone, 20 cm for group skating, 25 cm for snowmoblies), but short of taking your own core samples, there is no way to know the ice thickness, is there?
Sidenote: I live near a lake I thought was part of the testing program. I was surprised and delighted when I discovered this, and would check the report on the city’s website before going out for a skate. It was only a year or two ago that I learned HRM has another lake of the same name, in a different part of the municipality, and that’s the one the city was testing.
(Send this item: right click and copy this link)
9. Bike lanes coming to Peggy’s Cove Road
Tantallon and area’s monthly community newspaper the Masthead News reports that bike lanes are (finally) coming to Highway 333:
Shoulders will be levelled and widened, and bike lanes will be added, with work expected to be completed by 2025.
[MLA Danielle] Barkhouse says this project will improve safety for everyone who uses that road.
“Yes, this is about bike lanes and supporting active transportation and cyclist safety,” says Barkhouse. “But it’s also about the 13-year-old child who needs to be safe going a few doors down the road to see a friend, or someone being able to walk their dog safely.”
Bike lanes and wider shoulders should have been added more than a decade ago, when the entire road was resurfaced, but better late than never, I guess.
I wrote about cycling on the Peggy’s Cove loop and bicycle tourism back in 2019:
If we were serious, the Peggy’s Cove loop — one of the most popular tourist routes in the province — would not be a risk-your-life proposition for people on bikes.
We would mandate widening shoulders to accommodate bikes when we repave. We would have more provincial funding for trails.
Of course, this is Nova Scotia, where our motto should be “We do it half-assed,” so the new bike lanes and widened shoulders will only run between Glen Haven and Tantallon. Because most people will want to ride to Glen Haven, surely, and not bother with Peggy’s Cove.
I live on the 333, and yes, I ride my bike. It’s always been a somewhat frightening experience. The attitudes expressed towards people biking on the road that I saw in a local Facebook group (which I’ve since quit) were terrifying.
The last straw was a reasonable plea from a cyclist saying he rides the road to get to work, and it is only a minor inconvenience for people to slow down and leave room while passing. This generated a huge amount of vitriol, including folks arguing cyclists should not be on the road at all, and others making comments along the lines of well, if I come around a corner and hit you with my truck, it’s not my fault. Yikes!
One person decided that because the community is “on its knees” from fires and floods, cyclists should not wear spandex shorts. Another said bikes on the road are “upsetting” to drivers.
Bike lanes aren’t going to change those attitudes. The folks who said bikes should be banned because the roads are unsafe for them are not suddenly going to welcome the bike lanes that will make them safer.
(Send this item: right click and copy this link)
Government
City
Community Planning and Economic Development Standing Committee (Thursday, 10am, City Hall and online) — agenda
Active Transportation Advisory Committee (Thursday, 4:30pm, online) — agenda
Youth Advisory Committee (Thursday, 5pm, City Hall and online) — agenda
Province
No meetings
On campus
Dalhousie
Today
Panel Discussion on Decolonizing Health (Thursday, 5:30pm, online) — with Teresa Macias, Vincent Agyapong, Kristen Basque, Sasan Issari, and Marion Brown; AI-generated captions; more info and registration here
Tomorrow
Dal Innovates Breakfast Speaker Series: Health (Friday, 10am, Room 2600, Killam Library) — with Rafaela Andrade and Lynette Peters; free breakfast; more info and registration here
Saint Mary’s
Today
No events
Tomorrow
Anthropology: Honours Progress Report Presentation (Friday, 10am, McNally Main 223 and online) — more info here
In the harbour
Halifax
11:00: Lake Wanaka, car carrier, sails from Autoport for sea
11:30: Oceanex Sanderling, ro-ro container, moves from anchor to Autoport
12:00: CSL Tacoma, bulker, arrives at Gold Bond from Houston
12:00: STI Pontiac, oil/chemical tanker, moves from Anchorage 5 to Irving Oil 3
13:00: ZIM Atlantic, container, sails from Fairview Cove for sea
16:30: Oceanex Sanderling, ro-ro container, moves from Autoport to Fairview Cove west end
17:00: Acadian, oil tanker, arrives at Irving Oil Woodside from Saint John
Cape Breton
12:30: Otis, oil tanker, arrives at Everwind 1 from Palanca, Angola
22:22: Sanmar Sarod, oil tanker, arrives at anchor from Sikka, India
Footnotes
As Mr. Bousquet occasionally says, I got nothing.
We use to live just off the 333, and we found that it was not safe for tourists to drive to Peggy’s Cove because of the many in-a-hurry folks that were not going to give an inch to tourist trying to admire the sights along the way. I tried to walk along the 333 a couple of times because I am walker and it was frightening. I hope that these bike lanes will be well barricaded.