News 1. Weather There’s going to be weather today. This is a terrible time for people living on the streets. 2. NSGEU members reject offer Civil servants represented by the NSGEU voted 94 per cent to reject the provincial government’s contract offer. 3. Teachers back at table At 2:21pm yesterday, the province sent out a press release […]
Archives for December 2016
How Halifax city council screws working people: Morning File, Wednesday, December 14, 2016
News How Halifax city council screws working people Two issues of note were discussed by city council yesterday. The first was a plan to award “density bonusing” to developers who include a few units of “affordable housing” in their new buildings. I’ll return to that momentarily, but first I want to speak about the second issue […]
The Port of Sydney grift continues: Morning File, Tuesday, December 13, 2016
News 1. Prison violence Michael Tutton reports for the Canadian Press: It’s 26 seconds of brutality — and lays bare the emerging reality of a growing number of beatings in Canada’s jails. Inmate Dwayne Wright, watching television with his feet up, is suddenly sucker-punched from behind by another inmate. A video of the attack shows […]
Everything is an emergency: Morning File, Monday, December 12, 2016
News 1. El Jones On Saturday, The Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission awarded Examiner contributor El Jones the Dr. Allan Burnley “Rocky” Jones Individual Award for her prisoner advocacy work. The full list of recipients is: Youth Award • Samuel Gregan, Halifax, Grade 9 student at Gorsebrook Junior High, honuored for his work as an LGBTQ advocate Dr. Allan […]
Teachers: light at the end of the tunnel? What tunnel?
In my role as a university professor, I occasionally visit classrooms to talk with students. Those brief forays into the P-12 school system have given me some modest appreciation for the incredible work the best of our teachers do, and the increasingly difficult circumstances in which they do it.
It’s been a full week since the Liberal caucus revolt Stephen McNeil insists never happened; since Education Minister Karen Casey’s 180-degree, we-must-close-all-the-schools-right-now-to-protect-student-safety/no-we-will-reopen-all-the-schools-tomorrow-to-protect-our-government’s future; since the government called its special session of the House of Assembly to pass legislation to impose a rejected contract on the province’s 9,300 teachers, then sent the MLAs home with nothing...
On the Money: Morning File, Saturday, December 10, 2016
News
Province House Dumpster Fire: Examineradio, episode #91
This week saw a meltdown at Province House of near epic proportions with Education Minister Karen Casey locking Nova Scotia students out of their own classrooms while insisting that teachers had to show up to teach … I dunno, the dust motes? Joining us to try to make sense of this colossal clusterfuck is former […]
Something fishy going on: Morning File, Friday, December 9, 2016
News 1. Big Halifax convention cancelled Another black eye for Halifax: ISPE’s 33rd International Conference on Pharmacoepidemiology & Therapeutic Risk Management (ICPE) will NOT be held in Halifax, Nova Scotia Bethesda, MD USA – December 7, 2017 — The International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology (ISPE) was notified that the Halifax Convention Centre that was scheduled to open […]
Viola Desmond, Carrie Best, and serving face
A Black journalist and her newspaper championed Desmond's cause
Having abandoned my dream to become a prison warden, I came late to a journalism career. There was one other Black woman at the San Francisco Chronicle when I joined the staff, as a rookie reporter, in the mid-1980s. But having had a falling out with the powers-that-be over the paper’s lackluster coverage of the local Black […]
One smart cat: Morning File, Thursday, December 8, 2016
News 1. The S-word No, not soccer, but we’ll start with that. Reports Chris Cochrane for Local Xpress: The top official with a new Canadian pro soccer league, planned for a 2018 start in several major Canadian cities, was in Halifax Wednesday for talks with those behind a proposed local franchise. Halifax-based sports promotion firm Sports & […]