News 1. COVID-19 numbers As of Tuesday’s Nova Scotia government update, we know that for the first time in Nova Scotia, someone has died from COVID-19. A woman in her 70s passed away in hospital in the health authority’s Eastern Zone. We also learned there are: 17 new known positive cases in Nova Scotia (4.05% […]
How many different ways can you say “short term gain for long term pain”?
Morning File, Wednesday, February 5, 2020
News 1. How can we convince you that gold mining is golden? “It looks as if someone is getting a little nervous about the growing backlash to the latest gold rush in the province,” writes Joan Baxter today in the Examiner. So far, two people have contacted me with concerns about a phone survey being […]
Winter picnic in the park
Morning File, Monday, February 3, 2020
News 1. Complicated legacies “Was Lionel Desmond a victim of his war demons?” asks Stephen Kimber. “Or was he a villain, a perpetrator of domestic violence who murdered his own family? Or both? We may never know.” Click here to read “Complicated legacies.” This column is for subscribers only. Subscribe here. 2. The danger of […]
Minimum wage increase is both too much and not enough
Morning File, Friday, January 31, 2020
News 1. Northern Pulp Joan Baxter reviews the new ministerial orders requiring environmental monitoring of the pumping of wastewater from Northern Pulp Mill into Boat Harbour as the mill winds down operations. Baxter finds that the orders are appropriately stringent, however: As the Halifax Examine reported here, in October 2018, the pipeline sprung a large […]
How the proposed Summer Street parking garage fits into province’s plan to replace the Victoria General Hospital
The largest infrastructure project in the province’s history got the once-over from the legislature’s Public Accounts Committee yesterday. It will be at least the end of 2026 before the patients putting up with what some doctors have described as “third world conditions” in the leaking Victoria General Hospital will be moved out. The bad news...
The cruelty of a cashless society
Morning File, Wednesday, January 29, 2020
News 1. City HR department lies about progress in implementing recommendations to address racism and discrimination A staff report that came to council yesterday says the city drastically overstated progress being made on implementing the recommendations of a 2016 report on the racism faced by Black municipal workers. Zane Woodford reports: A few months after […]
Parking in the park: Halifax council wants public presentation on controversial Halifax hospital parkade
After the provincial government released a tender for its controversial hospital parkade, regional council wants a presentation on the plan to build on the city’s land. The province wants to build a seven-storey, 900-space parkade next to the Museum of Natural History on Summer St. as part of the QEII Hospital project. The new parkade...
Here’s the best map of Cape Breton
Morning File, Tuesday, January 28, 2020
News 1. Lionel Desmond inquiry “Two days before former soldier Lionel Desmond used a rifle to fatally shoot three members of his family and then kill himself, his wife Shanna told him to leave their home in rural Nova Scotia after a heated argument, a fatality inquiry heard Monday,” reports Michael MacDonald for the Canadian […]
Truly, no one much takes this supposed climate emergency seriously
Morning File, Monday, November 4, 2019
November subscription drive Through the Halifax Examiner’s first couple of years, I wrote Morning File every day. Then, the Examiner started hiring guest writers for Morning File when I was on vacation or out of town. More recently, other writers have become such a regular feature that we no longer call them “guests” — they’re […]