1. It’s all white, so it’s all right! (Part 1) The new provincial PC majority government was sworn in last Tuesday, including the new Minister of African Nova Scotian Affairs, the Office of Equity and Anti-Racism Initiatives, as well as Communities, Culture, Tourism and Heritage — Pat Dunn. Premier Tim Houston faced questions and criticism […]
Guess how much it costs to eat on the beach at low tide?
Morning File, Tuesday, September 7, 2021
News 1. Mashing the reset button In his column this week, Stephen Kimber asks whether Tim Houston needs to hit reset on some of the incoming government’s attempts to reform the status quo. Kimber starts with a little history lesson on how we wound up with a slew of regional health authorities later consolidated into […]
George Elliott Clarke, the murderer, and the murdered woman
At one level, “‘Truth and Reconciliation’ versus ‘the Murdered and Missing’" was intended to be a serious academic lecture by one of Canada's most esteemed poets and social justice truth speakers. Somehow it all went wrong.
I don’t know George Elliott Clarke well, but I have known him for a long time. Back in the mid-1980s, before he became what the Globe and Mail recently called “a celebrated Canadian poet,” he was a young wannabe writer earning his actual living as a field worker for the Black United Front, a black...
Australian magpies have learned to sound like sirens
Morning File, Friday, January 3, 2020
News 1. George Elliott Clarke apologizes, but will go ahead with lecture Renowned poet George Elliott Clarke is at the centre of a controversy based out of the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, where he was slated to give the Woodrow Lloyd annual lecture, which he had titled, “‘Truth and Reconciliation’ versus ‘the Murdered and […]
All-white Donner Prize jury shortlists book by white man defending blackface
Peter MacKinnon’s book, University Commons Divided: Exploring Debate and Dissent on Campus, has been shortlisted for the Donner Prize. The selection criteria for the prize identifies three areas of scrutiny: The importance of the subject; The soundness and originality of the analysis in terms of identifying and defining the issues in question and presenting authoritative analysis […]
“Racist, Full Stop.”
In his book, Interim Dalhousie President Peter MacKinnon downplays and excuses the wearing of blackface while mischaracterizing and sidelining those who object to it. But MacKinnon ignores the vast scholarship on blackface, so let's hear from the scholars.
INTRODUCTION On Monday afternoon, Dalhousie students protested the welcoming reception for incoming president Peter MacKinnon. As Tim noted on Tuesday, “The students are particularly riled over MacKinnon’s book, University Commons Divided: Exploring Debate & Dissent on Campus.” One of the serious issues students identified in their press release is MacKinnon’s declaration in the book that blackface […]
Prisons, Refugees, Cats
1. Dorchester Penitentiary Martha Paynter was driving through New Brunswick this weekend and texted me that she saw a billboard for the Airbnb in the old Dorchester Jail. Among the attractions listed on the website are that it was the site of the last double hanging in New Brunswick (more on that in a moment), […]
Where The Emails Have No Names: Morning File, Saturday, December 16, 2017
News 1. Lucasville On Wednesday, Tim reported on the re-establishment of the boundaries of Lucasville, a historic community settled by Black Refugees. As noted in this CBC story: According to the report, the proposed boundary would mean about 500 homes would need to change their address from the community of Hammonds Plains to Lucasville. Those […]
Stand and Deliver: Morning File, Saturday, December 3, 2016
Before we get into local news coverage, Parliamentary Poet Laureate George Elliott Clarke has kindly made his poems available to the Halifax Examiner, which is the first media outlet to publish them. (See Clarke’s eulogy to Leonard Cohen here.) Translation into French has been graciously provided by Robert Paquin. An Elegy—Non-Partisan—for Fidel Castro Fidel, we […]
Eternity Expires as Eyes Close: Morning File, Saturday, November 12, 2016
News 1. Deaths in Custody, Again. This week brought another death in custody in Nova Scotia. …Paul Dauphinee Jr. was found in unresponsive in his cell at the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility in Dartmouth on Nov. 2. Dauphinee Sr. and family members made the heartbreaking decision to remove life support on Nov. 5, and […]