Later today, St. Francis Xavier University will sign a memorandum of understanding with Maritime Launch Services. For a company with some disreputable partners, and which is still searching high and low for investors to bankroll its proposed spaceport in Canso, to be hooking up with a reputable Canadian university looks like quite a PR coup […]
Halifax heritage: Disappearing from the top down
Morning File, Friday, January 10, 2020
News 1. Northern Pulp We have two articles about Northern Pulp this morning. The first, by Jennifer Henderson, looks at Northern Pulp’s announcement that it will continue to operate as a business in Nova Scotia and is continuing with the environmental assessment for its proposed effluent pipe into the Northumberland Strait. As well, Henderson looks […]
Ukrainian corruption and the Canso spaceport
Morning File, Tuesday, November 12, 2019
November subscription drive I was going to write a long thing this morning in support of our subscription drive, but got pulled away trying to make sense of the Ukrainian space industry. So I’ll keep it short. We need your money. Thanks. News 1. Waiting for Fitch “Bob Dylan didn’t need a weatherman to know […]
Maritime Launch Services and its private/public servants
One government bureaucrat sent a nasty email to a CBC reporter. Others had rude things to say about the Halifax Examiner. And Stephen McNeil met with MLS and it Ukrainian "partners" even though they aren't registered as lobbyists.
It’s not the first time I’ve waded through many hundreds of pages of correspondence released by a government under a FOIPOP (Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy) request, but it is the first time that reading the correspondence made me feel slightly queasy, like a voyeur witnessing unhealthy relationships developing between uncritical and subservient […]
Truly, no one much takes this supposed climate emergency seriously
Morning File, Monday, November 4, 2019
November subscription drive Through the Halifax Examiner’s first couple of years, I wrote Morning File every day. Then, the Examiner started hiring guest writers for Morning File when I was on vacation or out of town. More recently, other writers have become such a regular feature that we no longer call them “guests” — they’re […]
Halifax CAO Jacques Dubé is raising money for charity; this is a problem
Morning File, Tuesday, August 6, 2019
News 1. Spaceport “I hadn’t even made it into Canso when I happened upon the first person willing and eager to speak her mind on the proposed spaceport that Maritime Launch Services wants to construct in the picturesque community at the very end of Highway 16,” writes Joan Baxter: In a charming restaurant a few […]
Opposition to Canso spaceport grows
“The government of Nova Scotia and the government of Canada are partnering with a dubious, nearly-bankrupt Ukrainian company using Cold-war technology," says Michael Byers, an expert in space law.
I hadn’t even made it into Canso when I happened upon the first person willing and eager to speak her mind on the proposed spaceport that Maritime Launch Services wants to construct in the picturesque community at the very end of Highway 16, an area that boasts spectacular coastline, one ocean-side provincial park and another […]
Bus Stop Theatre gets half a tank
Morning File, Wednesday, June 5, 2019
News 1. Bus Stop Theatre gets half a tank At its meeting yesterday, Halifax council nearly unanimously (Matt Whitman was the only contrary vote) agreed in principle to $250,000 in assistance to the theatre. The money will be used to help the theatre buy the Gottingen Street building it operates in. There’s something of a […]
The Trudeau government’s tax subsidy for journalism puts the Halifax Examiner in an impossible situation
Morning File, Friday, March 22, 2019
News 1. Holly Bartlett Last night, I went to a special preview of the first episode of AMI TV’s six-part series on Holly Bartlett (I wrote about the series here). It’s as good as I expected. I like that we can see where Holly lived, and how the police theory of her death makes no sense […]
What’s a little unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine among friends?
Morning File, Wednesday, August 29
I’m Philip Moscovitch, filling in for Tim Bousquet this morning. Tim is editing from a diner at an undisclosed location. News 1. Spaceport concerns Last month, Maritime Launch Services — the people who say they want to run a spaceport out of Canso —submitted a 159-page environmental assessment for the project. Federal and provincial government staffers […]