Editorial

“Oh Christ. I worked in a bakery once,” says Belinda, a sex worker in Halifax. “I worked for minimum wage to be bossed around and in the end I said to her …‘You’re paying me five something an hour to sit here and listen to your fucking ignorance.’” Those words are quoted in the 2006 […]

The Tories’ “get tough on crime” policies are being 
blamed for overcrowding at the new Burnside jail—overcrowding that’s creating potentially unsafe conditions for both guards and prisoners. Union representative John Landry, a front-line supervisor at the jail, blames politicians. “They’ve got lots of new police and judges to deal with criminals,” Landry says, “but they’re […]

Joe Howe must be spinning in his dark Camp Hill grave. As a champion of liberty, Howe would surely be appalled that our main political parties are celebrating democracy in Nova Scotia by handing out thousands of toques imported from China, a Communist dictatorship, and long-sleeved t-shirts from Haiti, where Canada, the US and France […]

From the bridge on Young Avenue, the Port of Halifax looks impressive. It has plenty of docks jutting into the world’s deepest natural harbour, ready to welcome even the most gigantic container ships. There are tall red and white cranes to unload the colourful stacks of containers like Lego blocks, and trucks and trains to […]

The recent release of the GPI Atlantic report, whichasked “How Educated are Nova Scotians?” reminded me of my favourite quotation from communications guru Marshall McLuhan. “School is the advertising agency,” McLuhan wrote, “which makes you believe you need the society as it is.” I learned the truth of McLuhan’s saying during a full year of […]

With Americans craving political change, it’s been useful to see the US response to Fidel Castro’s resignation last week; the biggest change the northern hemisphere has seen in a while. Barack Obama said he would take a different approach than the trade embargo the States has maintained against Cuba since 1961, and meet Fidel’s successor […]

“You know, there’s never a nice way of losing your job,” said Marc-Noel Ouellette, a vice president at Transcontinental Media, “but in the end, I think we did the best we could in the circumstances.” Ouellette was talking over a crackling cellphone connection from Montreal about last week’s sudden and brutal closure of the Halifax […]

Back in the day, Henry Ford had a problem. The automobile inventor couldn’t find enough good workers to keep his factory churning out Model Ts. So on January 5, 1914, he unveiled another invention—the minimum wage. By paying at least $5 per day when the going rate for labour was closer to two bucks, he […]

Gen. Suharto, he dead. A penny for the Old Guy. And yes, a penny too for the Canadian leaders who aided and abetted the Indonesian dictator’s massacres and torture. A penny for Clark, Trudeau, Mulroney and Chretien. They refused to condemn Suharto’s police state, preferring instead to sell him Canadian military equipment and to subsidize […]

In a more corporate setting, the question being posed would involve the terms “management team” and “commitment.” But this is a meeting to talk about raising money for the new Seaport Farmers’ Market, so what the prospective investor asks is more like “Are you going anywhere, Fred?” Standing in front of about 20 people Thursday […]

“Health-care system near collapse,” shrieked a headline from the Halifax Herald. “Health-care apocalypse,” shouted a Daily News columnist, while a Herald scribbler howled that the NS health system is “quite a train wreck.” All this after the release last week of a turgid, 384-page consultant’s report crammed with industrial-strength jargon. The one-million-dollar communique from the […]