NEWS
1. Cellphones in schools
This week, the Ontario government announced that starting in September, students must turn their cellphones to silent when they are in the classroom. That policy follows new rules by the governments in Quebec and British Columbia around cellphone use in schools.
Now, as Jennifer Henderson reports, Nova Scotia is developing its own policy about cellphones in schools.
In Nova Scotia, the decision about whether students can use their cellphone in class is generally up to the classroom teacher. There is no province-wide policy nor do any of the eight administrative regions prescribe restrictions. But there are signs that may be about to change.
According to the Department of Education communications advisor Krista Higdon, the department is aiming to put a province-wide cellphone policy in place in time for the 2024-25 school year.
Decision-makers are currently reviewing the subject with parent-led groups, and the president of the teachers’ union has been told consultations with that group will begin once a new contract is settled. (Voting among 10,000 teachers on a new deal is taking place this week.)
“We know technology has the potential to support learning in the classroom, but it comes with risks including over-use, classroom disruption, and privacy concerns,” wrote Higdon in an email to the Examiner.
Ryan Lutes, president of the Nova Scotia Teachers Union (NSTU), told Henderson teachers would support restrictions on cellphones in classrooms, but such a policy will only be effective if it’s enforced by principals and managers at the regional education centres across the province.
Click or tap here to read “Cellphone policy coming to Nova Scotia schools.”
In our team Slack channel this morning, we had a discussion on the word cellphone and what people calls their phones: mobile, handy, telefonino, space phone, shoe phone, or just plain phone.
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2. Abortion options
“A new interactive and anonymous website launched last week is helping Canadians choose the type of abortion that best works for them,” reports Yvette d’Entremont.
The ‘It’s My Choice’ tool was developed by University of British Columbia (UBC) PhD student Kate Wahl with Dalhousie University’s Dr. Melissa Brooks, UBC supervisor Dr. Sarah Munro, and a team of researchers, clinicians, and patient partners.
A Dalhousie University media release describes it as “Canada’s first interactive website aimed at helping people identify the abortion option that best fits their values and circumstances.”
“Part of what we did when we developed the tool is find out what things differ between medication and surgical abortion that are most important to people in deciding which to have,” Brooks said in an interview.
“Some of the things would be like avoiding heavy bleeding, or having a process that feels natural, kind of like a miscarriage. Or being in a private space at home, or having their partner or some type of support person with them during the time that they’re having an abortion.”
Click or tap here to read “New online tool helps Canadians choose best abortion option.”
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3. Progress committee won’t comment on progress
Yesterday, Tim Bousquet attended the press conference hosted by the Progress Monitoring Committee and its founding chair, Linda Lee Oland. That committee was formed by the federal and provincial governments in response to recommendation #125 in the Mass Casualty Commission’s final report. The committee was originally called “Implementation and Mutual Accountability Body” but somehow, as Bousquet writes, the word “accountability” was dropped.
The committee’s terms of reference include that it would provide “general public updates on its website no less than every six (6) months.” As Bousquet writes, the committee is not reporting on the status of each of the 130 recommendations in the MCC’s final report because a “checkbox” approach isn’t appropriate as many of the recommendations are interconnected.
Instead, the committee will use “a thematic approach that would support the complexity of the Recommendations” noting it “is the most appropriate way forward.”
Bousquet continues:
That approach may make sense, but as it’s playing out, with a de-emphasis on accountability, the committee is in effect just becoming a PR avenue for the two governments and the RCMP to tell the public that they are making progress towards implementing the recommendations.
At a press conference today to speak to the Progress Monitoring Committee’s first six month update, Founding Chair Linda Lee Oland declined to assess whether progress was happening quickly enough.
“The purpose of the committee is to monitor progress,” explained Oland. “I don’t think it’s for me to say whether I, as an individual, I’m satisfied, dissatisfied, or elsewhere on that spectrum. What the committee will do is present what we have seen, and I think that it will be for Nova Scotians and Canadians to decide whether they are satisfied.” (You can read the update here, and a transcript of the press conference here.)
You should read the entire transcript between Oland, Bousquet and reporters Jean Laroche and Adrien Blanc.
Click or tap here to read “The committee created to monitor the progress of the Mass Casualty Commission’s recommendations won’t comment on the speed or effectiveness of the implementation of those recommendations, says the committee chair.”
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4. Maritime Launch descends into airport business
Alec Bruce with the Guysborough Journal has this article about Maritime Launch Service’s (MLS) plans to become “more of an airport model” for others as opposed to a spaceport. The reason? Supply issues in getting the Cyclone-4M rockets it needed from Ukraine.
Bruce interviewed Steve Matier, the founder and CEO of MLS, last week. From that interview:
“We can’t get the rockets out of Ukraine,” he said. “So, we’ve pivoted away from a customer-supplier relationship with [them] … There’s such huge demand for satellites going into orbit that there’s all these [other] rockets in development that don’t have a home. The bottleneck is really the spaceport, and that’s what we’re addressing.”
Matier said the easiest way to understand the shift is by imagining an airport.
“Think of Stanfield International, for example, it leases space to Air Canada and WestJet or United [Airlines]. They pay an annual cost for that area and gate access. Stanfield provides fuel, hospitality, lights, power, personnel and all those kinds of things.”
He added: “Now, translate that to a spaceport. Launch vehicle developers build their own rockets and pay for them. They work with their own satellite clients to fill up their rockets. We allow them to launch by leasing to them a subset of our facilities to which we provide services, such as control center, payload processing, facility gases, air-space coordination [and] Nav Canada Transport.”
Matier told the Guysborough Journal the advantages of this new plan, including “non-existent rocket manufacturing and lower site construction costs.”
Matier also said, “People love the location.”
Um, so do the people of Canso, like Marie Lumsden.
Joan Baxter and Tim Bousquet have been covering the grift story of MLS for years now. As Baxter reported in March 2023, former premier Stephen McNeil was appointed to MLS’s board of directors.
Bousquet wrote this piece about an economic study Maritime Launch paid for about how Maritime Launch is great for the economy.
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5. Titanic report
Rebecca Lau and Heidi Petracek at Global have this story on new details from a Halifax Regional Police report about the chowder laced with phencyclidine (PCP) or angel dust that was eaten by 80 members of the crew during the filming of Titanic in Halifax in 1996.
As Lau and Petracek report, the new documents don’t include names and no clear culprit. From their story:
Investigators also uncovered rumours and speculation. In the incident report, the investigator noted the movie was over budget — “a well known fact” — and said the incident “may have provided a reason to continue the shooting for an additional week with the funding coming from an insurance claim.”
“At this time none of this can be substantiated as (fact) and certainly nothing is suggested by the writer that the incident was staged as a method to increase funding for the film.”
The investigator cautioned however, that releasing such information could be detrimental.
“I am suggesting that this report remain confidential, as one could only imagine the tabloid headlines if they knew we had a source that even hinted at an insurance conspiracy behind the tampering.”
The report also said that PCP is common in Hollywood, but not so much in Nova Scotia.
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VIEWS
‘Seek joy’: The lessons people leave online, even when they’re no longer with us
A woman I’ve known since we were in Grade 1, Theresa, passed away one week ago today. She was just 52. Like many former classmates, we were friends on Facebook where she shared the adventures she took during her last years after being diagnosed with colon cancer in 2017.
Theresa and her family took trips to New York, Paris, and Florida. She also checked off plenty of to-dos on her adventure list, including learning how to decorate Christmas cookies and Ukrainian Easter eggs, and dog sledding in the winter, her favourite season. She lived and worked in Ottawa, but came back to Nova Scotia often to spend time with family and friends, go to the beach, and eat lobster rolls.
A lot of her friends on Facebook looked forward to what she’d do next. When she and friends went on a walk with alpacas on a farm outside of Ottawa, I immediately started searching for a similar experience in Nova Scotia, and found one (I’ve yet to go). Once, she and a childhood friend visited a chocolate shop on the way to Peggy’s Cove. Not long after during a drive to Peggy’s Cove, I recognized the place from Theresa’s pictures and bought (too many) chocolates for myself. I’m certain Theresa’s posts and adventures inspired many people. “Seek joy” was her motto, and that’s what she encouraged all of us to do.
Theresa also shared — but never overshared — photos and stories about her two children who I never met, but who clearly inherited their mother’s many gifts, including her kindness, smile, sense of humour, and love of books. She never seemed to miss one of her son’s lacrosse games (he’s a very good athlete). And her daughter certainly has her mom’s sense of fashion, which was legendary, even when we were in elementary school. Theresa’s style is in the jeans, so to speak.
Theresa also used her Facebook profile to advocate for earlier colon cancer screenings —she was just 45 when she was diagnosed — and screenings generally aren’t recommended until your 50th birthday.
Every year, on the eve of Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month in March, she shared a post with a photo of a cake that said, “fuck cancer. One year later #winning” that marked the first year after her diagnosis. She urged anyone who needed “a little prod (pun intended) to get their arse in for an exam.”
On Feb. 28, 2023, like every Feb. 28 for the five years before it, she wrote this:
It’s been SIX years since I was diagnosed with cancer. Weird how perspectives change. I no longer see it as winning or losing anything…it’s just not that simple anymore. There is an in-between. A living my best life, whatever that looks like on any given day. Instead I focus my energy on experiencing this precious time, this precious life that I’ve been gifted.
Four years ago, one of Theresa’s longtime friends, Karri, who grew up in a house just a five-minute walk from where I grew up, also died of cancer. She was 49. (It just seems wrong to write about people dying at 52 ad 49). It was Theresa who messaged me about Karri’s death. Like Theresa, Karri also shared on Facebook photos of her two daughters and their adventures, birthdays, grading days, Halloween costumes, soccer games, and more. She had professional portraits done of herself with her two girls not long before she passed away. I still have Karri on my list of Facebook friends. Karri died in the first month of the COVID-19 lockdowns, so there was no funeral, but people remembered and honoured her through posts and comments on her Facebook profile.
If you’re on Facebook, your list of friends may be like mine: filled with longtime classmates, friends, family, coworkers, and acquaintances who are no longer with us.
Besides Theresa and Karri, I have an uncle, Sonny, who loved motorcycles and his grandchildren. There’s Erika, an artist and community volunteer I met when I worked as a magazine editor years ago, and Michael, who was a fellow volunteer at a local community radio station. He knew a lot about The Beatles and hosted a show dedicated to their music. For a while, I had another uncle, Bud, who was on my list, who somehow was still liking some of my posts long after he died. I think it was my aunt who had access to his profile, confusing it with her own. Or maybe not …
Also on my list is Mary Campbell, the publisher and reporter with the Cape Breton Spectator, who died last week. Tim Bousquet and Philip Moscovitch remembered Mary in tributes this week.
I remember once wondering if it was weird to still have people on my Facebook who were no longer living, whose posts just stopped one day, marking an exact time online when their voices, photos, posts, and lives would no longer be part of our online feeds.
But Facebook has become an ongoing memoriam to people who were, even in some little way, a part of our lives, who left their mark on the world and others, and still do.
Once in a while, in the memory feed that shows up each day, one of these people’s comments, interactions, or photos will pop up. Facebook will now memorialize the profiles of deceased people, but I think its users were doing this anyway. Keeping people’s profiles active leaves them open to bots and AI, but at least for now, some people find solace in still seeing their friends’ memories showing up.
Theresa died just a week ago, and people have been leaving memories, photos, and condolences to her friends and family ever since. Theresa and I worked at the same downtown nightclub years ago, so it’s been fun to see some familiar names pop up on her profile where they are sharing memories of their time together and what they loved about her the most. She clearly left a mark and a lasting legacy for many, many people. She will be missed.
One of the last posts Theresa wrote on her profile was this one on Dec. 28, 2023. “I wish you peace in 2024. Everything else is just a part of it. Let it be so.”
On X/Twitter, Mary Campbell has this line in her bio: “The Campbell motto is Never Forget.” That always made me laugh because it reminded me of my Cape Breton grandmother, Elizabeth, who was a Campbell, too. She never forgot anything. Like Bousquet and Moscovitch, I wish I had known Mary better.
So, to Theresa, Mary, and all those we’ve known whose memories still live online, we will let it be so and we will never forget. I am looking forward to all the ways in which your memories will show up on my Facebook feed. We are all the better for it.
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NOTICED
Halifax town wall surveys
Dr. Jonathan Fowler, a professor of archaeology at Saint Mary’s University, started work the past week on the search for walls that were built and surrounded the city in 1752. Fowler is using ground-penetrating radar to search for remnants of the walls underground. He spoke about the work with Paul Hollingsworth at CTV earlier this week:
Fowler has been chronicling this work and other searches on his Facebook page, Archaeology in Acadie. Here’s what he wrote about the wall:
This map was hand drawn in 1755 by a French spy. We’ve georeferenced it to modern satellite imagery to give a sense of where the 18th century features might be located. Naturally, there will be errors in the spy’s map, as he had to work secretly. Most of his measurements were likely paced, but still, his map seems fairly accurate.
Note three of the early town’s perimeter forts and the line of the town wall (dotted line), a wooden palisade.
Might any traces of these early defensive features remain below ground? We’ve been chipping away at this research question for several years now, and today our Archaeological Remote Sensing Field School will have another look with ground-penetrating radar.
On Tuesday, Fowler and his team were at Royal Artillery Park in Halifax to find traces of the city’s earliest defences.
“It’s a tall order because even this apparently clear and open site was heavily built up in the past. We’re seeing lots of bits of 19th century architecture down there. Will we detect anything older? Stay tuned,” Fowler wrote on a Facebook post.
I worked a few shifts as a bartender at Royal Artillery Park in the early 1993. A colleague told me that an admiral died in that building and his ghost haunts the place.
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Government
City
Environment and Sustainable Standing Committee (Thursday, 1pm, City Hall and online) — agenda
Point Pleasant Park Advisory Committee (Thursday, 4:30pm, online) — agenda
Harbour East – Marine Drive Community Council (Thursday, 6pm, HEMDCC Meeting Space, Alderney Gate) — agenda
Province
No meetings
On campus
Dalhousie
Today
No events
Tomorrow
Global mental health and sustainable development: challenges and opportunities (Friday, 3pm, online) — Shekhar Saxena from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health will talk
Saint Mary’s
Today
No events
Tomorrow
Glenn Walton’s Great Big Concert and Film Screening at the Library (Friday, 7:30pm, Halifax Central Library) — more info here
In the harbour
Halifax
09:00: IT Integrity, offshore supply ship, sails from Pier A for Panama Canal
11:00: MSC Nuria, container ship, arrives at Pier 42
12:00: Great Eastern, oil tanker, arrives at Pier 42 from Ijmuiden, Netherlands
15:00: NYK Daedalus, container ship, arrives at Fairview Cove East from Antwerp, Belgium
21:30: MSC Nuria, container ship, sails from Pier 42 for sea
22:00: NYK Daedalus, container ship, sails from Fairview Cove East for sea
Cape Breton
08:00: Marathon TS, oil tanker, arrives at Everwind 1 from Mongstad, Norway
16:00: Algoscotia, oil tanker, arrives at Government Wharf from Halifax
Footnotes
Iris the Amazing sent me this link to a story about Galena the cat, who was hiding in a box with a purchase her owner made from Amazon. When the owner sent the item back, Galena was still in the box, and made the 500-kilometre trip from Utah to California.
Fortunately, a worker with Amazon discovered Galena, took her in the for night, and then to a vet, where they learned about her owner via a microchip. Galena is now safe and sound back at home.
Galena no doubt spent a few of her lives, plus the cost of shipping, on that adventure.
Stephen McNeil being appointed to the board of directors to a company he had regulatory control of is so typical of the glad handing, back scratching nature of the old boys in this province that it’s sickening. A former premier should be barred from any boards, even charities, and from lobbying for at least decade after serving. It’s way too much of a conflict of interest. Further, former cabinet ministers should be barred from working for industries they had regulatory control over.
Thanks Suzanne for the memorium/tribute to all the people in our lives who are no longer here. There seem to be so many losses these days. Yes to remembering to seek joy, and remembering what those gone have added to our lives.
I want to know more about this spy map!!
I liked the “seek joy” piece.