News 1. Premier calls for criminal investigation of cops “Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil wants police acts in the Glen Assoun wrongful conviction case referred to the Serious Incident Response Team (SIRT) for a possible criminal investigation,” I reported yesterday: At a post-cabinet meeting scrum with reporters [Thursday], I had the following exchange with McNeil: […]
Keep the travel restrictions
Morning File, Tuesday, September 15, 2020
News 1. Forest health Linda Pannozzo writes: Instead of improving the state of the province’s forests, the Nova Scotia government conducts a survey about improving The State of the Forest reporting. The Halifax Examiner takes the survey. Pannozzo methodically walks us through why it’s wrong to repeatedly ask the public to take part in surveys […]
Clear as mud: How the government’s reports on Nova Scotia forests obfuscate and confuse the data
Instead of improving the state of the province’s forests, the Nova Scotia government conducts a survey about improving The State of the Forest reporting. The Halifax Examiner takes the survey.
In recent days you might have received an email from the Department of Lands and Forestry (DLF) inviting you to answer a survey about its State of the Forest report (SOF), first published in 2008, and updated in 2016. Using data collected by the DLF, the document purportedly describes the changing condition of the forest,...
The Borealization of Acadia
Due to climate change, warm weather-friendly trees should be dominating our forests; instead, cold-weather species are taking over. We now understand why — thanks to a phone call from the Irving company to lean on a professor's dean.
A new study shows that since European settlement, the rich mix of deciduous and conifer trees in the temperate forest — known by settlers as “Acadian” forest — of the Maritimes, New England, and southeastern Quebec has undergone “borealization,” meaning there has been “widespread replacement of temperate tree species by boreal species,” which are common […]
The Archaeology of Loss
How industrial logging in the Mi’kmaq heartland is destroying a lot more than trees
“We were in wonderful moose country now.” At least this is how Albert Bigelow Paine described the Nova Scotia landscape he and three others journeyed through in his 1908 book The Tent Dwellers. The book tells the true story of a June trout fishing trip led by two guides, Charlie Charlton and Del Thomas, who […]
The Donner Prize is part of a larger effort to reimagine Canada as a right-wing American Libertarian fantasy
Morning File, Monday, April 8, 2019
1. Donner Prize “Peter MacKinnon’s book, University Commons Divided: Exploring Debate and Dissent on Campus, has been shortlisted for the Donner Prize,” writes El Jones: In an article I wrote for the Halifax Examiner about MacKinnon’s defense of blackface, I identified how MacKinnon’s arguments lack a scholarly basis. He frequently does not quote or misleadingly quotes […]
“We are down to our last month’s rent”: naturalists say clearcutting is accelerating
“I worked at the Bowater-Mersey mill for 38 years, and our provincial government makes Bowater look like an environmentalist!” said Brian Muise. Muise, a member of the Queens County Fish and Game Association, made his comment at the annual meeting of the Nova Scotia Federation of Anglers and Hunters in Truro on Saturday. Muise is […]
Turning protesters into pets
How Nova Scotia's forestry regulators are already undermining the Lahey Report, and what we can do about it.
Cover photo: a clearcut adjacent to the Old Annapolis Nature Reserve. The forest to the right of the clearcut is now being proposed as a second clearcut, which would create a total clearcut area of roughly 150 acres. Photo courtesy Mike Lancaster. In her eloquent and thought-provoking 2014 book, Capitalism: A Ghost Story, Arundhati Roy […]
We’re about to learn just how subservient Nova Scotia is to the forest industry
Morning File, Tuesday, December 4, 2018
1. Clearcutting “The McNeil government is promising less clearcutting on crown lands through new ‘interim’ harvesting guidelines introduced yesterday in response to a comprehensive report on forestry practices prepared by University of King’s College president Bill Lahey last August,” reports Jennifer Henderson: It’s unclear how much the controversial practice will be reduced until after permanent […]
Government takes tentative first steps to reduce clearcutting
The McNeil government is promising less clearcutting on crown lands through new “interim” harvesting guidelines introduced yesterday in response to a comprehensive report on forestry practices prepared by University of King’s College president Bill Lahey last August. It’s unclear how much the controversial practice will be reduced until after permanent guidelines are introduced by the...