A record number of four Black MLAs have been elected to the Nova Scotia legislature. For the Liberals, incumbent Tony Ince and newcomers Angela Simmonds and Ali Duale were elected in the 41st provincial election that saw Tim Houston’s PC’s win a majority government. NDP newcomer Suzy Hansen won in the riding of Halifax Needham. […]
Reckoning with racism
Following the death of George Floyd, the Nova Scotia Barristers' Society joined much of the rest of the world in declaring itself against anti-Black racism. But the society now must grapple with its own recent history and what lawyer Laura McCarthy calls the "discrimination dirt still under their rug."
On June 3, 2020, the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society released an unremarkably remarkable statement. It happened 10 days after cellphone cameras captured white police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota gruesomely killing an unarmed Black man named George Floyd by kneeling on his neck. His death had triggered protests in cities across North America and prompted a...
Take this volunteer “job” and shove it
Morning File, Thursday, July 2, 2020
News 1. The casino crapshoot Rob Csernyik has an incredible investigative piece on the casinos in Nova Scotia and how locals, not high-rolling tourists, became the big spenders. Csernyik looks back before the first casino opened by ITT Sheraton in the summer of 1995. A poll from 1993 showed that 57.7 respondents were against the […]
The racist (and dumb) iconography of the anti-gun control zealots
Morning File, Monday, June 15, 2020
News 1. Black Lives Matter “We have been watching the Black Lives Matters protests and the conversations about police violence,” write a group of people in a federal prison. “We have been taking part in our own conversations with prisoners of all races. We would like to share some of our conversations and conclusions with […]
Councillors cancelled the tank contract. Good. Now what?
We are in a moment. It has forced us to rethink what we mean by policing, and by public safety, and to begin to reimagine a world in which public safety does not necessarily mean a cop with a gun killing someone with whom he is supposedly conducting a “wellness check,” or six cops with guns subduing an unarmed 23-year-old woman navigating two kids through a Walmart because someone thought she might be shoplifting because... well, because she’s Black.
Is this “a moment?” It depends. On what we do next. And the next after that. It has been a stunning week in a shocking month in a stranger-beyond-strange year. And it is only the middle of June. On Tuesday, our city councillors voted 15–1 to overturn a decision they’d made by a vote of […]
Show us you’re a true hero, Sid: refuse to attend the White House. Morning File, Monday, September 25, 2017
1. The future on the Port of Halifax Former CTV reporter Rick Grant writes: If the Port of Halifax is going to compete in a post-Panamex world, it will need a new, larger container terminal. But a Port Master Plan is delayed, and myriad difficulties are posed by potential new sites for a terminal. That […]