News 1. $450 million “Three months before Mountain Equipment Co-op went to the British Columbia Supreme Court for creditor protection in 2020, Northern Pulp — a Paper Excellence company — together with five affiliates and its immediate owner 1057863 B.C. Ltd, had already done so,” reports Joan Baxter: In June 2020, Northern Pulp et al. […]
Project Ploughshares fails to critically interrogate proposed Nova Scotia spaceport
Morning File, Monday, May 2, 2022
News 1. Housing Trust “The Housing Trust of Nova Scotia is changing up its strategy, moving to sell its property on Maitland Street and buy hundreds of existing affordable rental units,” reports Zane Woodford: The trust, a nonprofit founded by developer and consultant Ross Cantwell in 2009, used to own two nearby properties between Gottingen […]
Anaconda Mining joins the gold rush on Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore
Part 1. What do we know about its plans for a new open pit mine in Goldboro (and haven't we been here before)?
Gold exploration and mining companies are lining up to get at Nova Scotia’s gold, as the province undergoes a fourth gold rush. In 2017, Atlantic Gold opened the province’s first-ever open pit gold mine in Moose River, with plans to open three more along the Eastern Shore, in what it peddled to investors as its […]
Bus Stop Theatre gets half a tank
Morning File, Wednesday, June 5, 2019
News 1. Bus Stop Theatre gets half a tank At its meeting yesterday, Halifax council nearly unanimously (Matt Whitman was the only contrary vote) agreed in principle to $250,000 in assistance to the theatre. The money will be used to help the theatre buy the Gottingen Street building it operates in. There’s something of a […]
A mega development on Lake Banook shows that the Centre Plan is a cruel joke
Morning File, Wednesday, April 10, 2019
News 1. Mercury, Canso Chemicals, Northern Pulp Mill Facilities associated with Northern Pulp Mill’s proposed effluent pipe are immediately adjacent to a mercury-contaminated toxic waste site left over from the Canso Chemicals operation. Joan Baxter explains: The Canso Chemicals plant opened in 1970, and for the next 22 years used large amounts of mercury to […]
The Trudeau government’s tax subsidy for journalism puts the Halifax Examiner in an impossible situation
Morning File, Friday, March 22, 2019
News 1. Holly Bartlett Last night, I went to a special preview of the first episode of AMI TV’s six-part series on Holly Bartlett (I wrote about the series here). It’s as good as I expected. I like that we can see where Holly lived, and how the police theory of her death makes no sense […]
What’s a little unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine among friends?
Morning File, Wednesday, August 29
I’m Philip Moscovitch, filling in for Tim Bousquet this morning. Tim is editing from a diner at an undisclosed location. News 1. Spaceport concerns Last month, Maritime Launch Services — the people who say they want to run a spaceport out of Canso —submitted a 159-page environmental assessment for the project. Federal and provincial government staffers […]
How a mom got caught up in the Ivany Report’s contradictions: Morning File, Wednesday, February 28, 2018
News 1. Spaceport I’ve been fascinated by the proposal to launch rockets from Canso. A spaceport is of the ilk of flashy megaprojects that through the decades have been sold to Nova Scotians as the route out of their economic malaise and into riches, but which oh so often have just dragged the province further […]
Just how safe are those rockets proposed to be launched from Canso?
A fuel called UDMH has a worrisome health record, and some scientists say it presents a danger to Nova Scotia and ocean creatures.
Sometime over the next few months, the top two municipal officials with the District of Guysborough will travel to Vandenburg Air Force base in California to watch a rocket launch. Municipal council voted to pay for a fact-finding trip — which includes an equally important visit to rocket fuel company United Paradyne — by CAO...
Did Stephen McNeil even read the audit he reacted so badly to? Morning File, Tuesday, December 19, 2017
1. The Pickup-McNeil war I was supposed to interview Auditor General Michael Pickup yesterday for this week’s Examineradio podcast, but Pickup cancelled for personal reasons. Shit happens, so it goes. We’ll get back to him in the new year. But in preparation for the interview, I read Pickup’s audit of Family Doctor Resourcing, and I came […]