November subscription drive
Back in October, Tim Bousquet wrote this Morning File headlined “Hard to believe, but reporters are human.”
I am now thinking about that human element on the last day of our November subscription drive.
A few months ago, I was having a tough time personally. I won’t share the details here, but I did let my colleagues know about it, almost a year after those struggles began.
Then one day, Bousquet sent me an email suggesting we go out for lunch, just to get away from computers, writing, and routine of the workday.
Again, I won’t go into what we talked about, but basically he told me everything would be okay. This was a very human interaction that I very much appreciated. And, fortunately, things are better, and getting better each day.
The Halifax Examiner is a human-run and human-focused operation.
Our subscribers are human, too, of course (right?), and I enjoy the times when I get to meet them, when they send me story ideas, and so forth. I am working on a story now about an idea sent to me by an Examiner reader, a human reader!
My other colleague, Philip Moscovitch, often writes about artificial intelligence (AI) and how that technology may affect the media industry. I’ve learned a lot about AI through his articles, but I’m not too worried about it. AI won’t change the way I write for the Examiner, and the empathy, understanding, and humanity we bring to all of our reporting.
If you appreciate the human element of our work — in our stories and behind the scenes — please subscribe here.
Thank you!
NEWS
1. Affordable housing
“Finding emergency shelter for people sleeping outside as temperatures dip below freezing was on the mind of Liberal leader Zach Churchill during Wednesday’s Public Accounts committee meeting on affordable housing investments,” reports Jennifer Henderson.
Churchill quizzed newly appointed Community Services Deputy Minister Melissa MacKinnon for answers about when the 200 pallet homes the province ordered this fall will be available for occupancy. MacKinnon said the department was aiming to have them “up and ready” this winter.
“It’s a pilot. No other province has done it and we are working through some very important issues. They are communities we want people to live in and be well supported,” MacKinnon said.
“We’re working with Public Works to identify pieces of land that are serviceable. We need water for washrooms and kitchens and the homes also need to be attached to a community service provider. Pallet has its own dignity standards which we must meet.”
Henderson reports that there’s a delay in those pallet shelters that are to be set up in HRM and across the province. And the public accounts committee got into a discussion over the definition of affordable housing.
I noticed on Wednesday the province announced that 2,060 new homes will be built in subdivisions in West Bedford. Will those be affordable?
Is anything in West Bedford affordable?
Click or tap here to read “Nova Scotia opposition pushes for answers about affordable housing.”
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2. Board approves police budget, with amendments
“The Board of Police Commissioners approved Halifax Regional Police’s request for more cops for its 2024-2025 budget, but with some changes,” I reported this morning.
As we reported in October, police chief Don MacLean gave a presentation requesting 24 new cops at a cost of $4 million. Twelve of those officers would serve as patrol cops.
But at Wednesday’s board of police commissioners meeting, some changes were made to what roles those cops would take on. Ultimately, the police will get the same number of officers, but an amendment from chair Becky Kent will see some of the roles change.
From today’s story:
During the board’s meeting on Wednesday, board chair Becky Kent moved an amendment to the department’s request, suggesting taking two of the patrol officers from the 12 the department requested to work instead on community safety for a minimum of three years. So, 10 officers would work on patrol with two working on community safety.
Kent said her amendment would recognize that many reports, including those from the Mass Casualty Commission, the defund the police report, the Policing Transformation Study Recommendation report, and the Wortley report, all called for changes in policing.
“We have so many things at play that are suggesting that changes are upon us,” Kent said. “Changes require good models, different models… this is what this is intended to get us to. I think this would be welcome to the public certainly, and council consideration.”
Click or tap here to read “Halifax police budget gets approval from board, with changes.”
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3. Pickleball
On Tuesday, during Halifax regional council’s regular meeting, Coun. Kathryn Morse put forward a motion about pickleball in her district. Specifically, Morse wants a staff report on how to reduce noise levels from the pickleball court in Castle Hill in Rockingham.
Apparently, pickleball is a loud sport and the people living in condos near the court aren’t very happy.
Other councillors shared the same concerns about the noise from pickleball courts in their districts, too. I had no idea pickleball was so loud (this does sound annoying).
Paul Palmeter at CBC had this story on Morse’s request for a staff report on the Castle Hill court and spoke with residents, players, and Morse. From the story:
Cathy Targett and her husband live next to Castle Hill Park near Kearney Lake Road in Halifax where the municipality converted tennis courts at the park into three pickleball courts. Once games started up on the newly transformed courts, Targett knew it wasn’t going to be good.
“It’s gotten to the point that I can no longer go outside into my backyard,” said Targett. “I can’t open my windows in my house in the summer anymore, the noise is just ruthless.”
Targett said most days in the summer there would be several games being played at once. She said the noise of paddles hitting the balls is entirely different and much louder than the sounds they heard when only tennis was played on the courts.
As Palmeter reports, pickleball is a very popular sport, and more people are taking it up all the time.
Note to self: Don’t move close to a pickleball court.
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4. Judge Alain Begin
“Nova Scotia’s top court has delivered a strongly worded rebuke to a provincial court judge who tried to withdraw remarks he made in open court,” reports Blair Rhodes with CBC.
The case involves a man, identified in court records by the initials K.J.M.J., who was convicted by provincial court Judge Alain Begin of sexual assault, invitation to sexual touching and sexual touching. The charges involve the man’s stepdaughter.
“The astonishing behaviour of the trial judge in this case requires a salutary reminder of the duty of all judges privileged to hear and decide cases in court,” Justice Peter Bryson wrote on behalf of a three-member panel of the Court of Appeal.
“It is not merely of some importance but is of fundamental importance that justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done,” he added.
In his appeal of his convictions, K.J.M.J. cited comments Begin made during the trial, including the following:
“Is he swimming at angels and totally innocent? Absolutely not. Does he have issues and invited some young child to do stuff to him? Absolutely. Zero doubt in my mind. He’s got issues. Yeah, I’m looking at you. You’ve got issues, sir,” the court transcript quotes Begin as saying.
Begin said those comments were “initial impressions” and “off the record” and asked they not be part of the official transcript.
But the transcriptionist, after asking the Crown, did include them.
As Rhodes reports, Begin also called K.J.M.J. a “sexual deviant” and said he had “no doubt” K.J.M.J. was guilty of the sexual touching charge.
“In the end, the Court of Appeal quashed K.J.M.J’s convictions and ordered a new trial,” Rhodes wrote.
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5. Carters Beach
Carters Beach on the South Shore will soon become a provincial park. From a press release:
Under the designation, which will also include several islands near the Queens County beach, the area will be managed as a natural environment park so its unique environmental and cultural heritage can be protected and appreciated for generations to come.
…
The area features some of the highest dunes in Nova Scotia, as well as salt marsh. It provides habitat for colonial nesting birds, the endangered piping plover and at-risk lichen, moss and orchids.
The park will get a new parking lot, a new trail leading down to the beach, accessible vault toilets, and garbage cans. Also, signs will be put up to explain the park’s cultural and ecological feature.
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VIEWS
What is a woman? Anything she wants to be. Yes, really
There’s no such thing as a dumb question, we often hear, so I decided to try to answer one question that’s been making the rounds recently: “What is a woman?”
Now, as a woman, I have some expertise on this. I put the word some in italics for a reason.
We hear this question most often around discussions about trans women. I don’t know what it’s like to be a trans woman as I’m a cisgender woman, meaning my gender expression matches the sex I was assigned at birth.
The discussions around the “what is a woman?” question are fuelled by a lot of hate, transphobia, and violence. While trans women are facing most of the vitriol and danger, online and off, these discussions really are about all women’s roles in society.
For centuries, someone, somewhere had a say on what a woman is and what she should do in the world. Men, religion, education, and even other women, have tried to define the meaning and role of women in society.
Much of the current debate around what a woman is seems to focus on women’s organs and those organs’ functions.
“Real women have menstrual cycles, wombs, and can have babies,” is how some people will answer that “what is a woman?” question.
But many women don’t have menstrual cycles, wombs, or babies. Are they not women? I mean, I am at the age when I soon won’t have a menstrual cycle. Will that make me less of a woman or not a woman at all? (The answer is no). Women are far more than the sum of their parts and their functions.
Here’s the short of the debate for me: I am not losing out as a woman when other women, including trans women, are given rights and feel safe in this world.
Besides, I never hear the question “what is a man?” although men suffer because of the boxes society forces them into (that’s another essay).
When we are younger, we hear the phrase “girls can do anything!” But we don’t catch the whispers of conditions said by those people with their fingers crossed behind their backs because they don’t really mean that girls can do anything.
“Girls can do anything, but make sure you get married, have babies, put everyone else’s needs before your own, and make less money than a man. Oh, and be sure to smile!” A woman, by this definition, is what is needed and wanted by everyone else.
Then there is the rage against inclusive language: using persons instead of women. So, pregnant people, people who menstruate. Aren’t women also people?
Didn’t we in Canada have this “persons” discussion before, you know, in 1929 and that famous Persons Case?
“What is a woman?” Well, a woman is a person is one answer.
Sometimes discussions around trans women and cisgender women revolve around women-only spaces, notably washrooms. Here’s a personal story:
Back in the 1990s, when I worked at a downtown bar, the doormen would ask me to go into the women’s washrooms to see what was happening that needed to be checked out. On one occasion, they asked me to tell the local drag queens who were in the washrooms that they needed to use the men’s washrooms instead.
I asked why. Certainly, I’ve seen people do far worse in that bar washroom than pee, freshen up their makeup, and have a chat and some laughs, which is what those drag queens were doing. I didn’t feel unsafe having them in the washroom.
A man doesn’t have to put on makeup and a dress to go into a washroom to harm women. Women are harassed on the street, online, and at work.
Hell, women don’t even have to leave their homes to be killed by men, yet such violence against women in all spaces is epidemic. For decades, it was considered a private matter. Now we have a word for it: femicide.
A grassroots women’s organization in Toronto called Aura Freedom created a national awareness campaign around femicide that uses an image of a pink body bag with the text “The Body Bag for Her.”
“We’ve been screaming from the rooftops for decades,” Marissa Kokkoros, the founder and executive director of Aura Freedom told CTV last week. “No more. The lives of women and girls hold inherent value to society and every community.”
Women’s movements have a history of leaving some women out. White women feminism has long left out (and still does) many other women: poor women, Black women, women of colour, immigrant women, disabled women, and now trans women.
Danish-British writer, comedian and broadcaster Sandi Toksvig had this to say about anti-trans moral panic:
“I am so distressed by people who call themselves ‘radical feminists’ but are anti-trans. I could weep. I don’t get it. It’s beyond me,” she said. “When the feminist movement started in the 60s and 70s, lesbians were often excluded, because we were told that we would make the movement less palatable. I have been excluded myself, so how could I do that to someone else? It fills me with rage.””
This moral panic feels familiar.
Back before July 2005, too many people were in a tizzy about the thought of same-sex marriage, which they were sure would ruin the entire institution of marriage.
Almost 19 years after same-sex marriage became legal in Canada, straight people still get married, and same-sex marriage didn’t make those marriages less legitimate.
This “what is a woman?” question is the same.
I don’t know how a trans woman feels. But I also don’t know how a Black woman feels, or how a gay woman feels, or how an elderly woman feels. I don’t even know how Shania Twain’s “Man, I Feel Like a Woman” woman feels or how Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman” woman feels. We are a diverse group of people with many talents, experience, and far more than what’s on the outside.
In 1977, Dolly Parton sat down for an interview with Barbara Walters in which Parton wore a powder blue suit and a blonde wavy wig with a matching blue flower in it.
“You don’t have to look like this,” Walters asked, wondering if Parton felt her appearance was a “joke.”
Parton shut down Walters with humour and class, telling Walters how she looked was her own choice, a way to get attention, and that the joke was on everyone else.
“I’m very real where it counts and that’s inside, my outlook on life, and the way that I care about people, and the way I care about myself,” Parton said.
“I am sure of myself as a person. I am sure of my talent… I’m very content. I like the person I am. I can afford to piddle around, do-diddle around with makeups and clothes and stuff because I am secure with myself.”
At the time of that interview, Parton had already written hundreds of songs, including two of her most well-known, “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You,” which she wrote in the same day, no less.
The king himself, Elvis, wanted to record the former, but Parton refused when Elvis’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, said Parton would have to hand over half the publishing rights.
Parton wrote “I Will Always Love You” as a tribute and farewell to Porter Wagoner, whose show she decided to leave to pursue a solo career.
What a queen.
Forty-six years after that interview with Walters, Parton, who will be 78 in January, performed at the halftime show last week, dressed in a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader outfit.
“Woman is not a costume” is a line I once read from an author whose name I won’t write here.
No, it’s not, but it sure is nice to dress up anyway you like, no matter how anyone feels about it.
I don’t know how every woman feels. I know how I feel about myself, my life, my work, and like Dolly said, it’s all far more than what’s on the outside. I’m a woman who has a wonderful kid, loves to write stories, goes horseback riding, sings in her car, and takes selfies with animals.
Or as Dolly would say, “I am sure of myself as a person. I am sure of my talent… I’m very content.”
I am more than what’s on the outside, and so is every woman.
So, what is a woman? Anything she wants to be, and that truly is a wonder.
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NOTICED
Cornwallis Street to Queen Street
It looks like Lunenburg is renaming its Cornwallis Street, but the choice of the new name didn’t happen without some heated debate among town councillors.
Jesse Ward, editor-in-chief with the media co-op, The Lunenburg Barnacle, has this detailed story about Lunenburg council voting on Nov. 28 to change the name of Cornwallis Street to Queen Street. That new name was one of several names included in a survey sent out to residents. The other options were several Mi’kmaw terms that were relevant to Lunenburg, as well as Reconciliation and Queen.
Ward reports:
Lunenburg residents, and interested parties from out of town, were invited by the Town to complete a survey in February offering nine possible options for renaming Cornwallis Street (plus an additional “Other” write-in-option”). “Queen Street” was one of the options.
Out of the nine options: seven were Mi’kmaq terms relevant to Lunenburg, one was “Reconciliation”, and the ninth was “Queen.”
The “Strategic Plan Relevance” listed in the Town’s report on the renaming survey results lists these intended aims:
- Expand heritage recognition beyond European colonial landscapes to include
perspectives of Nova Scotia’s First Nations and Black communities, and other cultural groups.- Build relationships with local Mi’kmaq community members and organizations and Black Nova Scotian community members and organizations, to inform how best to broaden the historic narrative and commemoration of Lunenburg through an anti-racism and decolonization lens.
Three councillors and the mayor voted to go with Queen Street, while two councillors and the deputy mayor voted against the name change. Here’s what Deputy Mayor Ed Halverson said about renaming the street to Queen Street:
“I can’t reconcile naming a street, where we remove the name of someone who was a representative of the Crown, for tremendous acts, and then proposing to rename it after the Crown he was representing. It makes no sense, so I think we need to take Queen Street out of consideration.”
“I think it’s a slap in the face, frankly, to our Indigenous neighbours,” said Halverson.
Ward writes that Mayor Jamie Myra said he would consult with Chief Deborah Robinson of the Wasoqopa’q (Acadia) First Nation before renaming the street, but that meeting never happened.
Ward chronicles how residents voted in favour of the name Queen Street as opposed to the other options. Council received pie charts with data that I can’t even breakdown and explain here, so it’s best to read the story.
Halifax had two surveys where residents could vote to change the name of Cornwallis Street, and I don’t recall any confusion over that process.
In a ceremony last month, Cornwallis Street in Halifax was renamed to honour residential school survivor Nora Bernard. In an interview after the ceremony, Natalie Gloade told CBC that Bernard “was an activist. She was a warrior. She was a matriarch … and we loved her dearly.”
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Government
City
Appeals Standing Committee (Thursday, 10am, online) — agenda
Province
No meetings
On campus
Dalhousie
Today
From Chemometrics to Pedometrics: The Pathway Towards Modernizing Canada’s Soil Data Infrastructure (Thursday, 11:30am, Milligan Room, Life Sciences Centre) — Brandon Heung will talk
Difficult Discussions in Global Politics (Thursday, 12pm, Room 1412, Hicks Building) — with Bridget Brownlow and Daphna Levit from Saint Mary’s University, and Catherine Baillie Abidi from Mount Saint Vincent University; more info here
Panel Discussion On Debunking Ableism (Thursday, 5:30pm, online) — with Hannah Parks, Rose Singh, Cameron McKenzie, Sarah Norris, and Ifeyinwa Mbakogu; info and registration here
Mese Mariano by Umberto Giordano and La chanson de Fortunio by Jacques (Thursday, 7:30pm, Dunn Theatre) — mainstage production by DalOpera; $15/10
Tomorrow
When earthquakes go slow motion (Friday, 11:30am, Milligan Room, Life Sciences Centre) — J. Kirkpatrick will talk
Maintaining vision in zebrafish (Friday, 11:30am, Room 3156, Dentistry Building) — Curtis French from Memorial University will talk
Guitar Noon Hour (Friday, 11:45am, Strug Concert Hall) — selections from students’ repertoire
Piano Noon Hour (Friday, 11:45am, Room 406, Dalhousie Arts Centre) — selections from students’ repertoire
Residential Reform: The Era of (Un)-Equal Opportunity (Friday, 3:30pm, Room 1170, McCain Building and online) — Stephanie Slaunwhite from the University of New Brunswick will talk
NSCAD
a score to perform (Thursday, 3pm, Anna Leonowens Gallery) — performance featuring Lauren Runions, Jacinte Armstrong, and Colleen MacIsaac
In the harbour
Halifax
17:00: Oceanex Sanderling, ro-ro container, moves from Autoport to Anchorage 7
18:00: Atlantic Star, container ship, arrives at Fairview Cove west end from Norfolk
21:30: One Apus, cargo, Hazard A, sails from Pier 41 for sea
Cape Breton
16:00 Barnacle, cargo, through transit north to south, heading for Saint John
16:30: Arctic Lift, barge, with Western Tugger, tug, arrive at North Station
18:00: AlgoScotia, oil tanker, sails from Government Wharf for sea
Footnotes
- If you want to listen to a fascinating podcast about Dolly Parton, check out Dolly Parton’s America by Jad Abumrad and Shima Oliaee. It’s so good I’ve listened to it a few times.
- I want to send out a hello to Mr. Sherry, who was my Sunday school teacher in junior high. He’s a real human Examiner subscriber, too.
- I also want to send a shout-out to Edwina, the server at the restaurant I went to Friday night. She recognized me from when I worked at the downtown bar I mentioned in my “What is a woman” essay above. Edwina worked at a 24-7 restaurant across the street from that bar. I’d go to her restaurant for breakfast at 4am when my bar shift ended. We had a time reminiscing about working downtown those late, late nights.
Thank you for sharing that video clip of Dolly Parton and Barbara Walters. The podcast is next.
Yes, women can be anything they want, but it’s still a hard road. I am the same age as Dolly Parton, so I understand what she’s saying. I have been fighting sexism most of my life, and I will have to keep fighting the same things until I die. What’s needed is more intense education at a lower level [junior high], and for every one of us to call out sexism wherever we see or hear it.
Thank you Suzanne,
That was an excellent expose on Womanhood. I am happy that you included transwomen too.
Excellent essay re womanhood. Any opinion piece that references Dolly Parton and Sandi Toksvig has got to be worth reading.