Don’t say that again: Morning File, Thursday, March 8, 2018

Hi folks. Erica Butler here again, filling in for Tim while he’s off preparing the next edition of Examineradio.

News

1. Abdi deportation proceeding paused until March 21

Abdoul Abdi is one step closer to having a Federal Court consider his future instead of the Immigration and Refugee Review Board (IRB), reports the CBC’s Anjuli Patil.   On Wednesday, the IRB adjourned a deportation hearing which threatens to strip Adbi’s permanent residency and send him to Somalia, a country he left when he was six years old.

Patil reports:

According to Ben Perryman, Abdi’s lawyer in Halifax, the court’s decision could upend the deportation case because it will consider aspects of the case that the IRB cannot, including Abdi’s experiences in the Nova Scotia childcare system and his bleak prospects in Somalia.

Perryman said earlier he expected his client would be ordered deported if the IRB hearing went ahead.

The IRB have adjourned the hearing until March 21, while Abdi’s Federal Court date is set for May 29.

2. Racism in Nova Scotia schools

Anti-Black and anti-Mi’kmaq grafitti and threats reported on social media caused the closure of the East Antigonish Education Centre/Academy on Wednesday, and the chief of the Paqtnkek Mi’kmaw Nation has recommended that roughly 100 students from the First Nation stay home for the rest of the week in light of the incident, reports the CBC’s Paul Palmeter.

In Halifax, the CBC’s Sherri Borden Colley reports on young Black students’ experiences at elementary and middle schools in Hammonds Plains, where casual racist comments and slurs seem to be the norm. Borden Colley spoke with Kristina Partington, mother of a Grade 9 student at Madeline Symonds Middle School who has been experiencing racist language and behaviour since Grade 3, when she attended Hammonds Plains Elementary. Borden Colley reports:

Partington said she had hoped the racial incidents would stop once Sarah started Grade 6 at middle school. She said they didn’t. She recalled yet another incident when a boy called Sarah the N-word as they played a Scrabble game in class.

The teacher, she said, turned around and asked ‘Who said that?’ Sarah spoke and named the boy, her mother said.

“And the teacher looks at the student and says, ‘Don’t say that again,’ and then continues with her class,” Partington said in an interview. “There’s a problem there.”

The CBC’s Jack Julian has taken a look at the stats from Nova Scotia’s school boards, and found there were 460 documented incidents of racial discrimination across the province in 2016-17, up from 396 the year before. Presumably those documented incidents do not include incidents like the one described by Kristina Partington.

3. And a happy International Women’s Day to you, too

There are a number of events happening around town in celebration of IWD 2018, including this Time is Now: Indigenous and Racialized Women in Leadership event at Halifax City Hall happening until noon, and featuring a keynote address from North Preston teen Kardeisha Provo and a panel led by Sherri Borden Colley.

4. The new Viola Desmond $10 Bill launches today

The Bank of Canada is launching a new $10 bill featuring Nova Scotian entrepreneur and civil rights icon Viola Desmond. Brett Bundale reports for the Canadian Press:

At about 12:30 p.m. AT today, a new $10 bill featuring Desmond will be unveiled by Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz.

Desmond will be the first black person — and the first non-royal woman — on a regularly circulating Canadian bank note.

I am a huge fan of Desmond and her remarkable life story and have written about her before. That said, I hope that featuring Desmond on the $10 bill will draw some deserved attention to the civil rights trailblazers of the time who helped Desmond make her legal case and publicize it, like publisher Carrie Best, community activist Pearleen Oliver, and other members of the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

5. Salt Marsh Trail

In a phenomenon that happens every three to four years, thousands of plastic shotgun waddings washed up along Cole Harbour’s Salt Marsh Trail starting in late January, reports Natasha Pace for Global News. The waddings likely come from a local skeet shooting club, the Dartmouth Clay Target Association.

The Nova Scotia Department of Environment have asked the company to “make sure it doesn’t happen again,” reports Pace, who also interviewed Michael McFadden, chair of the Cole Harbour Parks and Trails Association, who organized the trail clean up.

“If there were over 7,500 on the trail, you have to wonder how much of that plastic is actually in the harbour itself,” said McFadden.

Volunteer recently collected more than 7,500 plastic shotgun shell waddings from the #SaltMarshTrail #ColeHarbour #Dartmouth pic.twitter.com/v4S86SYdEh

— Natasha Pace (@NatashaPace) March 7, 2018

Views

1. A personal goodbye to Wray Hart

There’s been plenty of outpouring of grief and sadness over the death of Wray Hart, a downtown Halifax fixture loved by many for his kindness, generosity, and smile.  In the Globe and Mail, Halifax journalist Maggie Rahr writes one of the more beautiful and deeply personal tributes to Wray.

Wray didn’t miss a thing. Just after my first son was born, three and a half months prematurely, I saw him on the street. I was a broken shell of a human.

“Where’s the baby?” he’d asked. I burst out crying and fell into the puffy shoulder of his jacket. It smelled of tobacco and oil. He stood there, holding me. I don’t know if it was five seconds or five minutes.

We talked about it years later. “It was too soon,” he’d said, when I asked him how he knew.

2. Sandy Lake at risk

Karen Robinson of the Sandy Lake Conservation Association writes about the tenuous future of Sandy Lake in the Chronicle Herald:

Nearly 50 years ago, the Sandy Lake area was selected as one of seven unique “jewels in the crown” of Halifax-Dartmouth that should be protected for their ecological richness and for community education and recreation. 

But despite a public acquisition of about half the land needed to create a regional park or protected area, the future of Sandy Lake is at risk in part due to delays to the completion and approval of the city’s Green Network Plan. Land bordering Sandy Lake was clearcut in 2013, and Robinson concludes:

Citizens and the Town of Bedford have worked since before 1970 to keep it safe and to acquire 1,000 acres — the halfway point of a magnificent park plan. Time is running out because development has been on a parallel path and is close to overtaking the park goals. Delays to the Green Network Plan are putting places like Sandy Lake at risk. We need to see concerted action from HRM to enact the Green Network Plan and ensure that jewels like Sandy Lake will be preserved for generations to come.

3.  Frankie the bike dog comes out in favour of South Park protected bike lane

Reddit user Frankie_Bike_Dog_HFX adds a little cuteness to the bike lane debate over at r/halifax with this photo, captioned, “Frankie and his beagle buddy are looking forward to the new South Park bike lane! It’s a great route to the park.”

Government

City

Thursday

Community Planning and Economic Development Standing Committee(Thursday, 1pm, city Hall) — the United Way is presenting on its Anti-Poverty Strategy. Importantly, the United Way has signed on to efforts to create a Living Wage, and the organization itself does good work on that front. But sometimes I think we all overthink this. We can solve poverty by getting more money to poor people. That means living wages, increases to the minimum wage, and increasing social assistance payments, for starters. Everything else feels like window dressing.

Design Review Committee (Thursday, 4:30pm, City Hall) — they’re trying to make the Maritime Centre less ugly. Good luck with that.

Province

Thursday

Legislature sits (9am–midnight, Province House)

On campus

Dalhousie

Thursday

Dal Law Hour (Thursday, 12:30pm, Room 105, Weldon Law Building) — Nancy Rubin, who practices media and entertainment law, will speak.

Elon Musk, President of Mars? (Thursday, 1pm, Lord Dalhousie Room, Henry Hicks Building) — Michael Byers, author of Intent for a Nation and Who Owns the Arctic?, and regular contributor to the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, and Ottawa Citizen, will speak.

The Art and Science of Origami (Thursday, 2pm, Great Hall, Dalhousie University Club) — Erik Demaine from MIT will speak. Register here.

Blow-up Algebras of Monomial Ideals (Thursday, 2:30pm, Room 319, Chase Building) — Kuei-Nuan Lin from Penn State University, Greater Allegheny, will talk about her work.

Readings in Honour of Marina Glazov’s 80^th Birthday (Thursday, 2:30pm, Room 2022, Marion McCain Building) — the Dalhousie Russian Department will celebrate the achievements of retired colleague and Russian poet, Marina Glazov.

Fair Pricing for Journals: Public Consultation (Thursday, 4:15pm, MacMechan Auditorium) — from the event listing:

The “big deal” as a model for purchasing scholarly journals is no longer sustainable for mid-sized universities like Dalhousie. The five largest bundles we subscribe to have increased in cost by 78% since 2010. One bundle costs $850,000. In another bundle, fewer than 40% of the titles are being used by Dalhousie researchers, scholars and students. We subscribe to dozens of bundles. This year, we are examining over 7,000 titles in six bundles that are up for renewal. We want your input. Attend a public consultation and select which journals are important to you at: https://fairprice.library.dal.ca

Learn more:  https://libraries.dal.ca/about/collection-management/budget-and-planning.html

Three-minute Thesis Competition (Thursday, 6:30pm, McInnis Room, Student Union Building) — Twenty Dal grad students get 180 seconds each to explain their research.

Detail of Spring 2003 from Water Flowing to the Sea Captured at the Speed of Light, Blast Hole Pond River, Newfoundland 2002-2003, by Marlene Creates. Image courtesy of the artist.

Marlene Creates: Places, Paths, and Pauses (Thursday, 7pm, Dalhousie Art Gallery) — opening reception for an exhibition of work by the Newfoundland-based environmental artist and poet.

The Security Implications of Climate Change: Instability, Conflict, and Adaptation (Thursday, 7pm, Ondaatje Theatre, Marion McCain Building) — Emily Robinson, Strategic Analyst at Defence Research and Development Canada will speak.

Friday

Thesis Defence, Civil and Resource Engineering (Friday, 9:30am, Room 3107, Mona Campbell Building) — PhD candidate Naznin Sultana Daisy will defend her thesis, “Microsimulation of Activity Participation, Tour Complexity, and Mode Choice Within an Activity-Based Travel Demand Model System.”

Piano Recital (Friday, 11:45am, Room 406, Dalhousie Arts Centre) — students of Peter Allen and Lynn Stodola will perform.

Cross-electrophile Coupling: Principles and New Reactions (Friday, 1:30pm, Room 226, Chemistry Building) — Daniel J. Weix from the University of Wisconsin-Madison will speak.

The Colten Boushie case (1:30pm, Room 105, Weldon Law Building) — Schulich School of Law Professors Stephen Coughlan, Richard Devlin, and Naiomi Metallic comprise a panel to discuss the case, while Dean Camille Cameron will moderate. Properly speaking, I think, it’s the Gerald Stanley case.

Professional Anxieties: 18^th Century British Military Engineer William Booth in Gibraltar and Nova Scotia, 1774-1789 (Friday, 3:30pm, Room 1170, Marion McCain Building) — Bonnie Huskins from the University of New Brunswick will speak.

Neural Mechanisms of Age-dependent Memory Loss: Depends on Where You Look (Friday, 3:40pm, Room 5260, Life Sciences Centre) — Carol Barnes from the University of Arizona will speak.

IDEALaw 2018: Law’s Human Impact (Friday, 5pm, Room 105, Weldon Law Building) — register here.

Belong Forum: Senator Murray Sinclair (Friday, 7pm, POSTPONED, Ondaatje Hall, Marion McCain Building) — Senator Murray Sinclair will speak. Register here.

Guitorchestration (Friday, 7:30pm, The Music Room, 6181 Lady Hammond Road) — Dalhousie’s guitar students and faculty perform works by Bach, Beethoven, Miles Davis, and many more.

In the harbour

7am: Oceanex Sanderling, ro-ro container, moves from Pier 36 to Autoport
9:30am: East Coast, oil tanker, sails from Irving Oil for Saint John
11am: ZIM Alabama, container ship, arrives at Pier 42 from Algeciras, Spain
11am: ZIM Ningbo, container ship, arrives at Pier 41 from New York
11am: Roald Amundsen, Norwegian military ops ship, arrives at Dockyard
11:30am: Viking Destiny, car carrier, arrives at Autoport from New York
11:30am: Oceanex Sanderling, ro-ro container, moves from Autoport back to Pier 36
Noon: Atlantic Sail, ro-ro container, arrives at Fairview Cove from Liverpool, England
9:30pm: ZIM Ningbo, container ship, sails from Pier 41 for Kingston, Jamaica
11pm: Itea, container ship, arrives at Fairview Cove from Norfolk

Footnotes

You all had to go and welcome spring, didn’t you?  I hope you’re happy.