News 1. Graphed: COVID-19 in Nova Scotia The latest charts are here, and they include the 31 new cases announced yesterday. I really like these charts, showing total and daily breakdowns of new cases, hospitalizations, total tests, and so on. They provide an easy visualization to help understand how things are changing, day-by-day. They also […]
Puzzling developments with Cape Breton’s non-existent container terminal
Morning File, Monday, January 20, 2020
News 1. Walmart incident “When a young black woman accused the Halifax police of racially profiling and abusing her in connection with an alleged shoplifting incident at Walmart last week, officials did what officials do,” writes Stephen Kimber. “They obfuscated, they passed the buck, they pretended to take it seriously.” Click here to read “Can […]
Three years on a rusty ship
Morning File, Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Happy New Year’s Eve! We were going to have a quiet get-together with friends, but because the roads sound like they will be terrible, we’re staying home instead and I’m cooking dinner out of the great new Korean cookbook I got for Christmas. I hadn’t even twigged that it’s the end of the decade until […]
The Cory Taylor case: Nova Scotia’s racist context and cops investigating cops
Morning File, Wednesday, October 2, 2019
News 1. Cory Taylor decision Yesterday, Justice Gerald Moir issued a decision in Cory Taylor’s appeal of the Police Complaints Commissioner’s dismissal of his complaint that Halifax police “arrested him without cause, used unnecessary force to do so, and caused him serious injury.” Taylor is Black. At the time of the August 2017 incident, Taylor was […]
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 […]
Diminishing Dissent
Morning File, Tuesday, July 2, 2019
Today’s Morning File is by Philip Moscovitch, while Tim is in court for the Assoun hearing (see Item #2). News 1. Shelburne School for Boys Writes Stephen Kimber: Was the government’s compensation program [in response to sexual abuse at the Shelburne School for Boys] crafted out of a well-intentioned desire to allow victims to tell […]
Province amps up its unwise and discredited biofuel efforts
Morning File, Thursday, December 13, 2018
News 1. Biofuel Last year, in her article “Life After Pulp,” Linda Pannozzo showed how as the old pulp industry is collapsing, the government is chasing two other forest dreams — biomass and biofuel. On the latter, she wrote: In 2012, when the Dexter government announced the defunct paper mill would become a business hub […]
Paradise is lost, but no one much cares
Morning File, Tuesday, November 13, 2018
Subscription drive If you haven’t yet, please consider subscribing. 1. Press-conference journalism “I’ve never been a fan of press-conference journalism,” writes Stephen Kimber: It may be a marginal improvement on canned-quotes press-release journalism when it comes to public accountability, but most press conferences I’ve attended are little more than carefully staged theatre pieces designed to […]
The convention centre is running a $4 million operating deficit this year… and that’s just the beginning of the costs
Morning File, Monday, September 10, 2018
News 1. Mehta Stephen Kimber writes: Last winter, Acadia University said it was investigating [Rick] Mehta “for the manner in which you are expressing views that you are alleged to be advancing or supporting and, in some instances, time that you are spending on these issues in the classroom.” We need to parse that sentence. […]
Ships, Conservatives, turbines, gold, and forests
Morning File, Thursday, August 23, 2018
Hello, I’m Joan Baxter, Nova Scotian journalist and author, wondering how on earth Tim does this every morning. News 1. Ships start here, but when? Jennifer Henderson investigates the six-month (and counting) delay in the completion of the first ship in the multi-billion dollar Halifax Shipyard contract in a new article for the Examiner: The […]