News

1. The poor ultra-rich

Finance Minister Bill Morneau

Stephen Kimber writes:

There is no doubt the Liberal tax reform proposals are only a baby step in the right direction — and there are lots of other ripe targets for reform — but we need to begin somewhere.

Click here to read “Beware businesses bearing bleats.”

This article is behind the Examiner’s paywall. Click here to subscribe.

2. Examineradio, episode #131

Justin Ling, editor at VICE

I spoke with Justin Ling, Canadian features editor at VICE News, a couple of weeks ago while I was visiting Toronto. Justin was part of the team that looked at the water crisis in Indigenous communities around Canada.

“The more we looked into it, the more we realized this is not just a matter of throwing money at the problem. This is a … structural bureaucratic mess, it’s a problem of underfunding, it’s a problem of bad training, it’s an attitude problem.”

It’s a fitting conversation for Right to Know Day, which happens during, you guessed it, Right to Know Week.

Plus, Terra and I discuss media coverage around the opening of the Ikea store, Rogers acquiring the naming rights for the outdoor plaza at Nova Centre, land titles for African-Nova Scotians, and Sidney Crosby going to the White House.

And make sure to check out the excellent work of Erin Moore and her students at the NSCC. Their website, Untitled, lays out the problem of why many African-Nova Scotians don’t own the land they’ve lived on for generations.

[iframe style=”border:none” src=”//html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/5790126/height/100/width/480/thumbnail/no/render-playlist/no/theme/legacy/tdest_id/259399″ height=”100″ width=”480″ scrolling=”no” allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen]

(direct download)
(RSS feed)
(Subscribe via iTunes)

3. Meet Mary Campbell

Mary Campbell

On Friday, the Cape Breton version of CBC’s Information Morning interviewed Mary Campbell, publisher of the Cape Breton Spectator.

Click here to listen to the interview.

As with the Examiner, the Cape Breton Spectator is subscriber supported, and so this article is behind the Spectator’s paywall. Click here to purchase a subscription to the Spectator, or click on the photo below to get a joint subscription to both the Spectator and the Examiner.
White space

4. Vapid women on Spring Garden Road

I guess the theory behind this promotional video for the Spring Garden Road shopping district is:
1. Let’s appeal to the vapid women who are our targeted demographic;
2. Even though the ad is horribly stereotyping and insulting, people will disparage the ad and spread it around on social media and news websites will post it on their morning re-caps, and so viewership will soar and we’ll get lots more views than a simple non-stereotyping and non-insulting ad;
3. ?
4. Profit

YouTube video

Views

1. Terry from the Pier with the stupid fucking haircut

2. Cranky letter of the day

To the Cape Breton Post:

I am writing today to see if I can get an answer to my question.

For years I’ve hunted in Cape Breton with my grandfather but I’ve never been able to apply for an antlerless deer stamp. I’m 28 years old and the last time they had a draw I wasn’t old enough to even hunt.

I understand that this is a deer management zone but if you ask any hunter in zone 111 the antlerless deer are so plentiful you never see one their always in numbers. In backyards close to town, there’s antlerless deer in any place you name.

Why hasn’t the province opened the draw up to zone 111 in years? How many deer have to come back until we hunters who pay a considerable amount to hunt can get a doe tag where we live?

Please don’t tell me the antlerless deer are still in low numbers here because it’s simply not the case. Even if they had a tag draw in low numbers or every second year.

Clayton Smith
North Sydney


Government

City

Monday

Open House – Gottingen Street – Transit Priority Corridors (Monday, 6pm, George Dixon Centre)

Tuesday

Halifax Regional Council (Tuesday, 1pm, City Hall) — here’s the agenda.

Province

Monday

Legislature sits (Monday, 4pm, Province House)

Tuesday

Legislature sits (Tuesday, 1pm, Province House)


On campus

Dalhousie

Monday

Canadian Blood Services (Monday, 12pm, Room 409, Centre for Clinical Research) — John Blake will speak on “Inventory and Logistics Research at Canadian Blood Services.”

Tuesday

Food Production (Tuesday, 12pm, Room 1009, Kenneth C. Rowe Building) — a panel discusses “Farms, Fisheries and Food: Canada’s Next Generation of Food Production.”

Geometric Spaces in a Tangent Category (Tuesday, 2:30pm, Room 319, Chase Building) — Geoff Crutwell from Mount Allison University will talk about his work with Rick Blute and Rory Lucyshyn-Wright. The abstract:

A connection on the tangent bundle of a smooth manifold arises frequently in differential geometry, and gives as a consequence associated notions of curvature, parallel transport, and geodesics. In this talk, we look at how to define such connections in the abstract setting of a tangent category, calling an object equipped with such a connection a “geometric object”. We look at three different aspects of this theory of such objects: (1) how one can define maps between such geometric objects, giving a new tangent category, (2) what it means for such connections to be “flat” and “torsion-free”, (3) how to characterize flat torsion-free connections as “connection-preserving connections”. The last result appears to be new in differential geometry. 

Marijuana — Is Canada Ready? (Tuesday, 5pm, McInnes Room, Student Union Building) — a panel discussion with Anne McLellan, Dalhousie University Chancellor and former deputy prime minister of Canada; Darrell Dexter, former Nova Scotia premier; and Archie Kaiser, Sylvain Charlebois and Eileen Donovan-Wright from Dalhousie.

Community-based Rehabilitation (Tuesday, 5pm, Theatre A, Tupper Building) — Rachel Thibeault from the University of Ottawa will speak on “Could Community-based Rehabilitation Provide Tools for Connecting University Students to Communities?”

Natural History Museum

Geological Survey of Canada (Monday, 7:30pm, Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History) — Stephen Locke from the Geological Society of Canada will speak on “A Proud History of the Geological Survey of Canada: On the 175th Anniversary.”


In the harbour

The seas around Nova Scotia, 9am Monday morning. Map: marinetraffic.com

7:15am: Norwegian Gem, cruise ship with up to 2,873 passengers, arrives at Pier 22 from New York
8am: Veendam, cruise ship with up to 1,350 passengers, arrives at Pier 20 from Bar Harbor
9am: Sharpnes, bulker, arrives at anchorage for bunkers from Valencia, Spain
1pm: Sharpnes, bulker, sails from anchorage for sea
4:30pm: Veendam, cruise ship, sails from Pier 20 for Sydney
5:45pm: Norwegian Gem, cruise ship, sails from Pier 22 for Saint John
10pm: Blue Moon, Dick Duchossois’s yacht, sails from Museum Wharf full of race horses (actually, although Duchossois is still alive — he turns 96 Wednesday — and still watches the ponies run, his yacht is nowadays mostly leased out to other super-rich dudes)
11pm: Atlantic Sun, container ship, arrives at Fairview Cove from Liverpool, England


Footnotes

I don’t know what to do with that horrific news from Las Vegas.

Tim Bousquet is the editor and publisher of the Halifax Examiner. Twitter @Tim_Bousquet Mastodon

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12 Comments

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  1. The SGR ad reminds me of the circa 1992 garbage man ads that were put out by either the Metropolitan Authority or the Resource Recovery Fund Board (likely the former) in which the workers were depicted as uneducated greasers from the 50’s. They were meant to support recycling. I remember one sporting a white t-shirt with a pack of smokes tucked in the sleeve. There was quite a backlash against them and I believe they were pulled.

    I have long wanted to show those in my seminars as an example of how not to promote environmental programs. If anyone has a copy or knows where to find one I would appreciate some direction.

    Focus group testing is so important. But not always fool-proof.

  2. Should the panel “Marijuana — Is Canada Ready?” indicate that Dexter is (or at least was) a lobbyist for the industry now?
    “http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/darrell-dexter-marijuana-lobbyist-1.4005376

  3. That Spring Garden ad is gonna have everybody running as fast as they can to get away from here. Spring Garden Business Assoc being pranked? That is the only possibility or this place is further gone than I thought.

  4. Any chance of an update as to the joint subscription? Is it helping Mary up in Cape Breton? I may not live there but it’s good to hear a strong voice from that region.

  5. That stupid-ass Shop on Spring Garden ad will have the AMAZON people flocking to “world-class” Halifax. What a sexist, sophomoric, lame, idiotic piece of shit. The ad company and whoever the hell paid them should be hanging their heads in shame.

    Are the “civic officials” of Halifax addicted to humiliation?

      1. It sure looks like a spoof. What I want to know is how they got the sidewalks so empty, everything so clean and no sign of destruction /construction.

      2. I hope it’s a spoof, too. My goodness, that’s horrible. The only good thing I can see from that is that two local actors worked in it. I hope they were paid a decent wage to do that.