As 2009, the year of the ox (solid, stolid and steady) gives way to 2010, the year of the tiger (fiery, ferocious and fearless), it’s time to review last year’s predictions, then gaze into my crystal ball once again. I hate to brag, but all of my 2009 predictions were 100 percent bang on. Remember […]
Politics
Posted inArts + Music
Gregor Ash’s passion
When Gregor Ash was a kid in Newfoundland, he and his fellow film junkies would head to the Caribou Lounge Saturday mornings, where they’d endure the stench of cigarettes and stale beer for a chance to catch flicks that weren’t on CTV and CBC, their only two channels. Despite the smell, the Atlantic Film Festival’s […]
Posted inArts + Music
Billy Bragg stays true to rights
A deft lyricist with a warm and compassionate voice, 51-year-old Billy Bragg has never been one to duck the inevitability of romance or the importance of protest. “I’m trying to provide people with different perspectives on things, but not just one particular thing,” he says by phone. “The people that I worry about are the […]
Posted inLove the Way We Bitch/Love
Canada’s gotta wake up!
This is a bitch to the creepy dude from Alberta who is ruining our country… oops! I mean “running” our country. Who the heck voted for you and when are you going to go away. I’m sick and tired of you and your bad policies and there has got to be a way to pull […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
How to listen to citizens
Matt Hebb, the 2009 campaign manager for the Nova Scotia New Democrats, injected some humour into his presentation last weekend at the federal NDP convention in Halifax. His talk was about how the NDP managed to pull off a majority government in the June provincial election. “One of the secrets of winning is to get […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Natal Day means even less council info
I’ve gotten so used to this, I haven’t even commented lately on it: Another long weekend and another bigger-than-usual head start for Halifax regional council over the public. That’s because city hall watchers interested in municipal happenings at regional council on Tuesday must wait for the release of agenda documents until that day. Due to […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Nova Scotia needs a new deal
Kyle Shaw: Not long after the global financial meltdown started last September, Nova Scotia’s then-premier Rodney MacDonald announced that he had formed an Economic Advisory Panel to help steer the province through these troubled times. The names on his list were the usual suspects of Nova Scotia business, representing the major companies literally doing business […]
Posted inLifestyle
My summer: Megan Leslie, Halifax MP
Leslie, born and raised in Kirkland Lake, Ontario—“I’m not from Upper Canada, I’m from Rupert’s Land,” she explains—has been a Halifax resident for seven years, travelling to the province to study law at Dalhousie and having every intention of only staying for the three years of school. Though she found at the end of law […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Election campaign moves along right on script
Every election needs its defining moment—its too-big-foot-in-too-small-mouth moment, its searing, snapshot flash-of-insight moment, its accidental, incidental larger-than-life moment that suddenly careens the campaign off in an unpredictable direction toward some unknowable destination. So far, we have not, needless to say, had any such moment in this blandest of beige provincial election campaigns. There certainly have […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Contributions to city candidates
1. Forms 40 and 41 are the campaign contribution reports legally required of all candidates running in municipal and school board elections; Form 40 is for money given to a candidate directly, while Form 41 is for money given to a candidate’s campaign association, a group working on the candidate’s behalf. Not all candidates have […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Bush whacked
George WTF Bush spent the last few weeks of his failed presidency on a public relations campaign, trying to paint his time in America’s highest office as something other than a failed presidency. His main tactic was to portray himself as a war president—the tireless leader of a nation dragged into battle by the September […]