This Saturday, I took a guest speaker to Africville. Black people across the world have heard of the destruction of the community, and they always want to make a pilgrimage to bear witness on the land. After visiting the sundial with the names of families who lived in Africville, we drove to the museum, where […]
Northern Pulp owes the province $85 million
Morning File, Monday, November 18, 2019
Philip Moscovitch told me yesterday that I buried the lede when I announced a couple of weeks ago that I’ve been hired by the CBC to write and host a podcast series about the wrongful conviction of Glen Assoun. So here it is right in the lead (let the lede v lead wars begin): I’ve […]
Child care workers go round and round with bus complaints
Morning File, Friday, September 20, 2019
News 1. Blackface Writes El Jones: When the furor over Trudeau’s Blackface photos dies down, to be referred to as an “embarrassing incident” or “controversial,” Black people like Abdilahi Elmi will still be facing deportation. Muslim Canadians will still be on the no-fly list. White nationalist editorials will still be commissioned by major newspapers under […]
Board looks to expand police data collection to identify race-based patterns in all police stops
Morning File, Tuesday, September 17, 2019
News 1. Police data collection The police board has approved a motion to ask Halifax Regional Police for a plan to implement a Wortley report recommendation that would see racial data collected on all police stops, including traffic stops. Currently, that data is only collected for street checks, and shows that Black Haligonians are six […]
Redesigning the Windsor Exchange: if we get it right, it could be great
Sometimes government makes an announcement, and even though you know it’s ages from reality, and will probably be announced and re-announced many times hence, you simply can’t help but get excited at the possibilities. Such is the case with the announcement by Transport Canada earlier this month that the federal department will help fund a...
Phillip’s story: “They told me it could be a lifelong job. And instead I got a lifelong addiction.”
Phillip Izzard has been trying to get someone to listen for 37 years. I interview Phillip in his home in Uniacke Square. The day I meet him, I have just come from an event at the Black Cultural Centre exploring the impact of the city’s apology for Africville. “Africville is still happening,” residents at the […]
Africville in Black and White: “hybrid performative piece” about Africville premieres tonight
I was heartened to spend time this summer with Black scholar Chana Kai Lee who arrived in Halifax to conduct research on, among other topics, Africville. Now home, the associate professor of history and African American Studies at the University of Georgia recalled her experience at the Africville Museum. “My visit affirmed my appreciation for […]
“Whose Explosion is it, anyway?”
Our collective memory of the Explosion has shifted over time.
“Whose Explosion is it, anyway?” asks Martha Radice. She’s a social anthropologist who has lived here for eight years. Unlike many Haligonians, she doesn’t focus on the horrifying statistics of the century-old disaster (11,000 people maimed or dead). She doesn’t describe how sparks from the collision of the Imo and Mont Blanc set drums of […]
Reparations raises the racism disconnect
"I wasn’t around when slavery existed and I’m not responsible for it, so why should I have to pay reparations? The past is past, things are better now, so let’s just move on…" It’s a comforting argument, but it pre-supposes we, as whites, haven’t benefited from centuries of slavery and racism, or that our black fellow citizens aren’t still suffering its after-effects. It also assumes the economic, educational, judicial, and social scales are now in perfect colour-blind balance. Neither notion is correct.
On Sept. 25, the United Nations Human Rights Council discussed a report on Canada by its Working Group of Experts on Peoples of African Descent. The report, which shone its white-hot light on our country’s sordid history of slavery and racism in virtually every sphere of life — from education to justice to the environment...
Wankers in our midst: Examineradio, episode #119
Halifax rarely makes the national news unless it’s for something reprehensible, whether that’s cross-burnings, racial profiling, or entrenched systemic racism. Now, the city has a local chapter of the pro-European, anti-masturbation Proud Boys to call their very own. Also, Globe & Mail writer and editor, as well as host of the popular podcast Colour Code, […]