The dog days of summer: Morning File, Tuesday, July 28, 2015

News
Views
Government
Noticed
In the harbour
Footnotes

News

1. Maritime nice

“Joanne Bernard, the minister responsible for Community Services and Nova Scotia’s first openly gay MLA, says the hate speech is still routine, nearly two years after she was elected,” reports CTV:

“I have had vile and filthy language spewed at me through the Internet, and quite frankly, it’s disgusting,” Bernard said.

“Not threats per se, but certainly derogatory and filthy language used at me not based on my ability, not based on my gender, not based on my decisions as a minister, purely based on the fact that I’m a lesbian,” she said.

Meanwhile, “Images of bound and gagged Indigenous women make up part of Bathurst, New Brunswick, festival,” reports Miles Howe.

A police release to reporters this morning:

At 10:39 hrs [Monday night] Halifax Regional Police responded to the 2100 block of  Barrington Street, in Halifax, for an assault. Officers located the victim with burns to his face and neck area. The suspect a 25-year-old male from Halifax had poured hot water on the sleeping victim. The suspect then fled the area, officers could not locate him. The victim was transported to the QE2 where he was treated. The investigation is continuing.

And the kids in Fall River are all about the swastikas and plain old-fashioned sexism:

2. King’s County bus

“The Municipality of West Hants has decided to sever ties with the Kings Transit Authority, just a few months after the Town of Windsor council did the same thing,” reports the Kings County News:

Kings Transit has been in partnership with the Town of Windsor, the former town of Hantsport, the Municipality of Kings County, and the Municipality of West Hants since December 2007. During that time frame, there have been a number of modifications, including route changes, in an attempt to drum up increased ridership.

The most recent route change began in November 2014, and CAO Cathie Osborne told council it didn’t have the desired affect.

“Ridership is down 50 per cent from where it was last year. The daily counts that are coming through range from 47 to 53 people. The average is 49 a day,” said Osborne.

3. Summer

The high temperature today, July 28, is forecast to be 20 degrees.

Views

1. Ice cream

Stephen Archibald goes for ice cream.

2. Alexander Weatherbee

I read the Inverness Weatherbee every week, but skip the obits. Too bad. This one, sent by a reader, appeared last week:

3. Cranky letter of the day

To the Chronicle Herald:

What’s going on with our gas prices? Oil is under $50 a barrel and we are still paying almost $1.20 a litre.

When the price of the barrel of oil was high, it was to blame for the high gas prices. Now that the barrel price is low, it doesn’t impact gas prices. Come on! This is the true meaning of gouging.

The oil companies now have a new excuse: refinery costs. I just don’t get it. I guess they make up whatever suits their needs — no, I mean whatever lines their pockets.

Janet Kay, Lake Echo

Government

City

This week’s city council meeting has been cancelled because everything’s just fine at City Hall.

Province

Human Resources (10am, Room 233A, Johnston Building)—appointments to agencies, boards and commissions.

Noticed

There are two events I’d like to plug.

The first is “Connecting the Dots: Confronting Environmental Racism in Nova Scotia,” a forum 6pm this evening at the Central Library. Panelists will include Ingrid Waldron, an academic who works on environmental racism; Dorene Bernard, from Indian Brook; Mary Desmond, from Lincolnville; Irvine Carvery, a former resident of Africville; Carolann Wright-Parks from Halifax Partnership; and Lenore Zann, the NDP’s critic for Aboriginal Affairs.

I interviewed Ingrid Waldron for last week’s Examineradio podcast, which you can hear here:

[iframe style=”border:none” src=”http://html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/3694637/height/100/width/480/thumbnail/no/theme/legacy” height=”100″ width=”480″ scrolling=”no” allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen]

Reporter Moira Donovan will cover the event for the Examiner.

The second event is Thursday, also at the Central Library, at 6:30pm. Author Philip Slayton will be discussing his new book, “Mayors Gone Bad“:

“It occurred to me one day, ‘God, there’s a lot of these mayors who seem to be messing up in a variety of ways.’ You always expect that there has to be one or two here and there. But there seemed to be a very large number of them. And I began to wonder, ‘Why is that?’

“It wasn’t just the Rob Fordthing that did it.”

He does, to be sure, review the dubious stewardships of Ford in Toronto, and Susan Fennell in Brampton, and Joe Fontana in London, and Larry O’Brien in Ottawa, and Peter Kelly in Halifax, and the roguish chief magistrates of Montreal and Laval, Que., and other such municipal luminaries.

In the harbour

Overseas Kimolos, oil tanker, Corpus Christi to Imperial Oil
Atlantic Cartier, ro-ro container, arrived at Fairview Cove this morning
Oceanex Sanderling, ro-ro cargo, St. John’s to Pier 41, then to Autoport, then sails back to St. John’s

Fritz Reuter sails to sea

Footnotes

Homepage image is from here.