The venue is a virtual “town hall” meeting with leadership Conservative candidate Peter MacKay. It’s hosted by the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights (CCFR), which calls itself “Canada’s most effective and recognizable firearm rights organization,” and the “public relations experts in the firearms community.” MacKay, dressed for the occasion in a plaid shirt and dark […]
The racist (and dumb) iconography of the anti-gun control zealots
Morning File, Monday, June 15, 2020
News 1. Black Lives Matter “We have been watching the Black Lives Matters protests and the conversations about police violence,” write a group of people in a federal prison. “We have been taking part in our own conversations with prisoners of all races. We would like to share some of our conversations and conclusions with […]
Pro-gun doctors’ group disbands amid accusations of racism
Doctors for Firearms Safety & Responsibility is no more.
On June 8, the Halifax Examiner reported on the role of doctors in the debate over gun control in Canada. Quoted extensively in that article was Dr. Michael Ackermann, a family and emergency physician in Sherbrooke, Nova Scotia, who is national vice president of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association (CSSA), and co-founder of Doctors for […]
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 […]
Gunning for change: doctors in the gun control debate in Canada
When Dr. Rod Wilson first heard about the mass shooting that started in Portapique the night of April 18, and ended the next morning when police finally caught and shot the gunman in Enfield at the end of a 13-hour rampage through three counties in Nova Scotia, painful memories flooded in. “It took me back […]
Opposition critics on the Advisory Council on the Status of Women call for an inquiry into mass murder, but McNeil government demurs
A provincial public inquiry into the April mass shooting that resulted in the deaths of 22 people in Nova Scotia is “absolutely a must,” says Karla MacFarlane, Progressive Conservative MLA for Pictou West and critic for the Advisory Council on the Status of Women. In recent weeks, as more questions arise over how the RCMP […]
“He was a psychopath”
A former resident of Portapique says she called the RCMP to tell them the future gunman assaulted his domestic partner and that he had illegal weapons. The police took no action.
This article contains graphic descriptions of assault. “That son of a bitch is dead.” That was the first thing Boe thought when she heard on April 19 that the RCMP had killed a man who on gone on a murderous rampage across Nova Scotia, leaving 22 dead. The murder spree started in the village of […]
Welcome back, Peter
I’ve spent a good chunk of my columnist’s career mocking Peter MacKay without ever having spent time in his company. And then I did. He seemed generous, thoughtful, far more complex than I'd given him credit for. But then he got back into politics. And became 'that' Peter MacKay again.
Is it the person or the persona? The person or the party? The campaign or the campaigner? Does it really even matter? I’ve spent a good chunk of my columnist’s career mocking Peter MacKay without ever actually having spent time in his company. MacKay was always just a dependable target, a talking contradiction, inevitably doing...
Trigger Warning
The ban on assault style weapons comes in the wake of the Nova Scotia shootings, but it is just one cautious step in a decades-long debate over gun control.
Ross Faulkner, owner of The Gun Dealer, “Atlantic Canada’s largest firearms dealer,” gets more and more strident the longer the phone interview goes on. He makes his points over and over again, as if not convinced I can understand, and sometimes he speaks as if there were a full stop after each word, which gives […]