Once upon a time—back when he was running for mayor of the amalgamated municipality—Peter Kelly couldn’t get enough of commuter rail. He banged the drum for a high-speed link from his Bedford home base to downtown, talking about it at every chance and staging photo-ops on trains. Then, as silently as his two Metro election victories have been resounding, the commuter train disappeared from the city’s agenda. In its place, a ferry.
At Tuesday’s regular council meeting, the plan for a high-speed ferry was approved in principle (we’ll move forward if Ottawa and the province will help pay). Two boats, costing $8 million each, zipping downtown in less than 15 minutes. Rob Gair, the consultant who prepared the plan, said the ferry could be running by early 2008. He also said the cost of a one-way trip would be $5, a hefty rate which raised concerns from councillors.
“Lowering the fare to $2.50 would mean more people could take the ferry,” Gair reportedly replied. “But the ferry would not be able to hold that many people and some would be turned away.”
People get turned away from buses, trains and ferries all the time—it’s called waiting for the next one—which means the real agenda is to limit the ferry’s accessibility. In the shift to water, we’ve traded a transportation vision for the rich person’s dream: an exclusive yacht where you can escape the masses, even if it is for less than 15 minutes.
Doctors without orders
The latest twist in the twisted saga of Gabrielle Horne, the pioneering cardiac researcher who can’t conduct research because of an apparent personality conflict with another doctor at the QEII Health Services Centre: The hospital says she’s free to work in the clinic where she’d been banned for four years and, oh, by the way, she’s been free to do so for seven months. Huh?
Hospital spokesperson Geoff Wilson, who made no mention of any “policy change” when The Coast questioned him in April and May, now says the decision was made last December, and Horne would have been informed.
Not so, says Horne, who discovered her changed circumstances two weeks ago when she got a page to see a patient in the heart function clinic. She was told the ban had been “reinterpreted,” but her privileges weren’t actually reinstated.
Horne, who’s been through a Kafkaesque ordeal—as Stephen Kimber reported in the May 4 feature “The trials of Dr. Horne,” the hospital board even reneged on a settlement agreement its CEO signed—isn’t taking any chances this time. She’s waiting for the outcome of a formal hearing scheduled for next month to find out if the ban is really over.
Desperate measures
Arjun Thaker arrived on Saturday. He’s the eight-year-old from Calgary who became a local sensation when word got out that he picked Halifax for his annual vacation, over such destinations as Hawaii and Disneyland. Promises of special treatment for Thaker came from luminaries including the mayor (offering a personal tour of city hall) and the King of Donairs (offering a taste of Pizza Corner). Great for the kid, but not a show of strength in the tourist economy. If tourism is so slow that everyone freaks out over one visitor, we need to reconsider how much effort should go into pleasing outsiders. And let’s do that quickly, before we get committed to the Commonwealth Games.
Mike Fleury returns next week, but you can email him news tips now: [email protected]
