On the evening of Jan. 3, 2017, Lionel Desmond, a 32-year-old former Canadian soldier, murdered his 31-year-old wife, Shanna, their 10-year-old daughter, Aaliyah, and his 52-year-old mother, Brenda, in their home in tiny Upper Big Tracadie, N.S. Then, he turned the rifle on himself. In the immediate aftermath of that horrific quadruple murder-suicide, we as...
Why people ignore warning signs
Morning File, Tuesday, July 28, 2020
News 1. Witness told police that mass murderer “builds fires and burns bodies, is a sexual predator, and supplies drugs in Portapique and Economy” Tim Bousquet is on vacation, but still reported on documents related to the RCMP’s investigation in the mass murders of April 18/19, which a Nova Scotia judge ordered redacted. And there’s […]
HRM: 5,490 square kilometres, 20 public toilets
Morning File, Wednesday, July 8, 2020
News 1. Council needs to step up on fighting anti-Black racism, says Senator Wanda Thomas Bernard In a half-hour presentation to council yesterday, Senator Wanda Thomas Bernard called on the city to go beyond statements and act on combating racism, Zane Woodford reports: The presentation, titled “Unpacking Anti‐Black Racism in the HRM: Creating Sustainable Change […]
From cop to survivor
Cary Ryan is a survivor of domestic abuse. She's also a former cop who says she was harassed in the workplace because of her mental illness. Now, she studies how cops respond to domestic violence.
Cary Ryan is a survivor of domestic violence. She’s also a former cop who left her job on the police force because of harassment due to her mental illness. Ryan asked the Examiner not to name the police force she worked for or include the names of her abusers in this article, but she says […]
Not only the lonely are lonely during COVID-19
Morning File, Wednesday, June 17, 2020
News 1. Dead Wrong on Uncover Tim Bousquet’s podcast Dead Wrong, on CBC’s Uncover, is now live and you can listen to the first couple of episodes here. Everyone at the Examiner knows how hard he’s worked on this podcast for the past several months, but, of course, his work on the Dead Wrong series […]
Bad bosses and cranky customers
Morning File, Tuesday, June 9, 2020
News 1. Report: Canadians plan to avoid restaurants ‘for the foreseeable future’ A recent survey shows 52% of its respondents will be avoiding dining in at restaurants for “the foreseeable future.” Yvette d’Entremont spoke with Sylvain Charlebois, a Dalhousie University professor and the lead author on the survey from Dalhousie University and Angus Reid. Says […]
“Bubble families” unlikely for Nova Scotia
The Halifax Examiner is providing all COVID-19 coverage for free. It will be sometime next week before Nova Scotians get a glimpse of how restrictions will be eased once the province has gone two weeks without a new case of COVID-19. The Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Robert Strang, said he expects to be […]
The mass murder isn’t “senseless” in a culture that excuses the violence of white men
Why can't we understand how the impunity with which white men are allowed to threaten, to follow around, to fixate and to harm connects to how GW was able to move in silence until it was too late? Our culture continues to give white men a pass and then act shocked in the aftermath.
After she wrote an article naming “white male terrorism” in the Nova Scotia mass shooting and other mass killings in Canada, Robyn Bourgeois, a woman of Cree heritage, predictably woke up to death threats from white men. Of the many things we were told it was “not the time” for in the wake of the […]
Daily COVID-19 update: Three more Northwood residents have died from the disease
The Halifax Examiner is providing all COVID-19 coverage for free. Three new COVID-19-related deaths were announced by the province on Tuesday, all having occurred at Northwood long-term care home in Halifax. That brings the total number of deaths to 27. The province also announced 15 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, bringing Nova Scotia’s total to […]
Male violence: “A pandemic in its own right”
Not long after Sunday’s mass killings, signs started emerging that the tragedy may have started with an act of domestic violence. Those who knew the killer said he was jealous and had a complicated relationship with his girlfriend. On Friday, RCMP confirmed that a woman the killer had been in a relationship with was either […]