News

1. Chronicle Herald strike

“The Nova Scotia government has called for an inquiry into the 18-month-old labour dispute between the Chronicle Herald, Canada’s largest independently owned daily newspaper, and the union that represents the paper’s editorial staff,” reports the Canadian Press:

Ingrid Bulmer, president of the Halifax Typographical Union, said the government’s move was in response to the union’s fourth application for an inquiry. “I guess the fourth time is the charm,” she said. “We’re pretty relieved. This is a bit of a bright light in this long dispute.” Bulmer said the union had 61 members when the strike began. It now has 53 members, including reporters, editors, photographers, editorial writers, columnists, page technicians and support staff.

“Acting Labour Minister Derek Mombourquette made the surprise announcement Thursday following a regularly scheduled cabinet meeting,” reports the CBC:

According to the province, the last time it appointed an industrial inquiry commission in the private sector was in 1993. The parties in this case were the Construction Management Bureau and the Nova Scotia Building Trades Council.

2. Cornwallis

Here’s a photo of something that was erected on the south side of South Street:

Here’s a photo of something that was erected on the north side of South Street:

The building and the statue are across the street from each other.

The building is the old Elmwood Hotel, which was erected in 1826. It is a graceful structure that has housed thousands of people. By the latter part of the 20th century, it was home to an eclectic mix of students, musicians, and artists and was something of a cultural hub. The Elmwood sits almost at the exact centre of the Old South Suburb, a proposed Historic Conservation District.

The statue is of course the representation of Edward Cornwallis and was erected 105 years later, in 1931. It has no historic or artistic value, but is just an example of early twentieth century imperialistic schlock.

When demolition permits for the truly historic Elmwood were issued in 2015, only a handful of malcontents, of whom I consider myself a proud member, expressed concern. Even fewer people have condemned the dog-awful building that’s going to be built in its stead.

Ah, but talk about tearing down the imperialistic schlock of a statue, and suddenly everyone’s a historic preservationist.

As Ryan Cameron points out on Facebook, addressing councillor Waye Mason:

You guys have rushed to tear up half of the city — seemingly granting every developer who farts a proposal at you full rights to rush up a new building and tear up our heritage — while hesitating for months over this one statue. Makes all the talk of preserving history among this rubble left of Argyle seem quite disingenuous — particularly on the part of our Mayor.

It’s not just the Elmwood. The South Barrington Historic District is a sad joke, as building after building comes down with nary a peep. The historic waterfront is being maimed by a cheap knockoff of the Oslo Opera House. And the entire political and business class decided it was a great idea to drop the Borg in the middle of an otherwise human-scaled downtown.

Anyone who objected to any of the destruction of Halifax’s built heritage was labelled a naysayer, a hater of progress, and worse.

But those who speak of removing the statue? They are “hotheads on the warpath” said councillor David Hendsbee on the Rick Howe Show yesterday, employing an unambiguously racist term to refer to indigenous activists.

“Later in the day,” report Andrew Pinsent and Dan Ahlstrand:

Hendsbee issued a halfhearted apology for his comments to anyone who may have been offended. “My use of that word has been deemed by some as inappropriate and insensitive. I apology [sic] for that,” his statement read.

Yesterday, I interviewed Chief Grizzly Mama, Rebecca Moore, and Trish MacIntyre, three women who are among those organizing tomorrow’s event at noon at the statue. The interview will air today at 4:30pm on CKDU, 88.1 FM, and will be published as a podcast at about the same time here.

3. Daewoo

“The Nova Scotia government knew from the beginning that a partnership with a South Korean company in a Trenton plant to manufacture wind turbine towers was going to involve major government support,” reports Michael Gorman for the CBC:

“Without special support from the Nova Scotia government, the project may not be economically feasible,” Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Ltd. said during a slide presentation to provincial government officials on Aug. 5, 2009. CBC received a copy of the business proposal, which included the August presentation and one from June 2009, this week following a 2014 freedom of information request.

Three years to get a response from a freedom of information request.

4. CFW Group demands commenters’ names

The Canadian Financial Wellness Group and its president John LeBlanc have asked the Nova Scotia Supreme Court to order Google to produce the IP addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers for commenters on a blog post that criticized LeBlanc.

The original post was posted on a Blogger blog titled “john leblanc cfw group.” That post has since been taken down, but it is archived on the Internet Archive and reprinted in full on the application to the court.

“The Applicants suspect that a former client of CFWG named Jansen White is the administrator of the Blog but cannot be sure,” wrote LeBlanc’s lawyer Richard Norman in the application.

LeBlanc has separately filed a defamation suit against Kimberley Mundie, who Norman writes “has engaged in a campaign of defamatory comments on a separate blog” and who is “apparently a commentator on [White’s] Blog too.” I suspect Mundie is being sued for this post.

“John leblanc is a con artist,” reads the original post on the “john leblanc cfw group” blog, which claims that LeBlanc was hired for $750 to help the poster renegotiate a student loan debt, but that LeBlanc took no action.

Over 100 comments were made on the post, and LeBlanc wants the identities of 12 of the commenters:

• johnisacon

• Administrator

• Disappointed

• RB

• Sherry

• Shirlie

• Sunny

• Scammed from CFW

• Stu

• Bruce Tracey

• Bruce W. Tracey

• Mike

The CFW Group is registered through a Dartmouth lawyer; LeBlanc lives in Fall River. The company has no reviews from the Better Business Bureau, and I could find no lawsuits against it.

The “john leblanc cfw group” post and the comments on it are defamatory, says the application to the court, and LeBlanc wants to identify the poster and commenters so he can take legal action against them.

Norman, LeBlanc’s lawyer, cites Mosher v Coast Publishing Limited, a 2010 case, as precedent for requiring Google to turn over identifying information of the poster and commenters. I had written an article about the Halifax fire department, and then-chief Bill Mosher and deputy chief Stephen Thurber filed an application for the names of seven commenters on the article. The Court ordered the Coast to release the information. I was not involved in the decision-making related to the court order, but as I understand it, on the advice of their lawyer, the owners of The Coast did not appeal the order and turned over the identifying information as directed. Mosher and Thurber then filed suit against the commenters.

LeBlanc’s application will be heard by the court in August.

5. The PDA fix

“Researcher Karen Blair was in Toronto’s gay village recently counting the number of couples walking by holding hands,” writes Chris Lambie for the Halifax Examiner:

Over one 15-minute period, researchers saw nine mixed sex couples walk by holding hands and just one same sex couple. […] “Even just realizing that 10 years after same sex marriage has been legalized, same sex couples in Canada are still not equally comfortable holding hands — that’s still saying something.”

Click here to read “The PDA fix: public displays of affection could improve your health.”

This article is behind the Examiner’s paywall. Click here to subscribe.

Views

1. Weeping willows

“Here’s something that gives me a great deal of joy,” writes Stephen Archibald. “I wonder if you will be equally thrilled: willow designs on nineteenth century gravestones”:

Weeping willow designs were popular from the early 1800s until late in the century. In the early days the tree often hung over an urn. I’ve read several interpretations of the meaning of the willow symbol. “Weeping” handles most of it for me.

The Icarus Report

• This is out of sequence, but let’s lead with the July 7 Air Canada flight that nearly became the worst aviation disaster in all history. Here’s the Transportation Safety Board’s report and update:

TSB Report#A17F0159: C-FKCK, an Airbus 320-200 aircraft operated by Air Canada, was conducting flight ACA759 from Toronto/Lester B. Pearson Intl, ON (CYYZ) to San Francisco Intl, CA (KSFO). As the aircraft was on a visual approach to Runway 28R at KSFO, ATC cleared ACA759 to land. Approximately 0.6 nautical mile from the runway threshold, the flight crew asked ATC to confirm the landing clearance for Runway 28R because they were seeing lights. ATC responded in the affirmative, and re-cleared ACA759 to land on Runway 28R. The controller was coordinating with another facility when a flight crew member from another airline taxiing on Taxiway C queried ATC as to where ACA759 was going, then stated that ACA759 appeared to be lined up with Taxiway C which parallels Runway 28R. ACA759 had overflown Taxiway C for approximately 0.25 miles when ATC instructed the aircraft to go around. Four aircraft were positioned on Taxiway C at the time of the event. It is estimated that ACA759 overflew the first two aircraft by 100 feet, the third one by 200 feet and the last one by 300 feet. The closest lateral proximity between ACA759 and one of the four aircraft on Taxiway C was 29 feet. The NTSB is investigating. UPDATE: FAA Report: The following information was reported by FAA Washington Operations Centre: On July 7 at 23:56 PST (July 8 2017 at 02:56 EDT) Air Canada flight 759, an Airbus 320 from Toronto (CYYZ) to San Francisco (KSFO) US was cleared to land runway 28R and instead line up for Taxiway C which is parallel to the runway. The aircraft overflew United 1 and Philippine Airlines 115 by 100 feet, United 863 by 200 feet and United 118 by 300 feet before being issued a go around by Air Traffic Control.

• On June 2, a Lake Buccaneer amphibian aircraft taking off from Muskoka crashed into a highway. Two men on the plane, Ted (Edward) Dirstein, 66, of Bracebridge, and Allan Metiver, 48, of Stratford, Ont., died.

• On June 8, an amateur-built Acro Sport II crashed in a field near Lake Simcoe, Ontario, but the pilot escaped without injury.

• On June 9, four insane people thought it would be a great idea to jump out of an airplane, so they went to the Cookstown Airport and found a pilot to take them up on a Cessna operated by Skydive Toronto Inc. The plane took off and promptly crashed, giving the four insane people the thrill of hitting the ground without having to actually jump out of the plane, but alas, four of the five people on board suffered injuries, with three taken to the Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre. Skydiving is dangerous.

• On June 12, a Lake Buccaneer crashed into the St. Lawrence River east of Cornwall, Ontario. The plane was taking on water, and a passing ship towed the plane to a nearby island. The pilot miraculously survived.

• On June 30, a pilot flying an amateur-built Rocket F1 Rocket complained that they had a hard time landing at Tisdale, Saskatchewan because there’s a garbage dump right at the end of the runway and a bunch of birds are always flying above it. The pilot said this is an ongoing problem.

• On July 6, a Zodiac boat with ultralight wings took off from Hamilton Bay, Ontario, got to 40 feet, and then crashed back into the bay. The pilot survived, with no injuries reported.

• On July 7, the TSB reported the following incident:

At approximately 0110Z, a Delta Air Lines Boeing 767-300 (N174DZ/DAL129) on a flight from Seattle-Tacoma, WA (KSEA) to Beijing, China (ZBAA) was 100NM west of Port Hardy, BC, and declared an emergency returning to KSEA due to an unruly passenger. The aircraft dumped fuel in Seattle, WA (ZSE) airspace and landed KSEA at 0210Z.

The New York Times has the details:

A flight attendant smashed a large bottle of red wine over the head of a passenger on Thursday during a struggle to stop the man from opening an exit door, according to a criminal complaint filed Friday. The Delta Air Lines flight, which departed from Seattle en route to Beijing, had been in the air for about an hour when the man, identified as Joseph Daniel Hudek IV, who was seated in first class, made his way to the bathroom, the complaint said. Mr. Hudek came out, asked a flight attendant a question, and then went back in, the complaint said. When he re-emerged, he “lunged toward the forward right exit door of the aircraft, grabbed the handle and attempted to open it.” As Mr. Hudek wrestled with the door, the complaint said, two flight attendants tried to subdue him; Mr. Hudek punched one of the attendants twice in the face. After a passenger jumped into the fray, it was Mr. Hudek who went for the bottle of wine first, hitting the passenger “in the head with a red dessert wine bottle,” the complaint said. The altercation continued as Mr. Hudek made repeated attempts to open the exit door, the complaint said. Then a flight attendant, wielding two large bottles of wine, struck Mr. Hudek with both, breaking one, the complaint said. Mr. Hudek “did not seem impacted by the breaking of a full liter red wine bottle over his head, and instead shouted, ‘Do you know who I am?’ or something to that extent.” The altercation ended when flight attendants, with help from passengers, restrained Mr. Hudek with zip ties. But according to the complaint, Mr. Hudek “remained combative” even after police officers took him into custody after the plane landed.

• On July 7, an insane person jumped out of an airplane over the Campbell River, BC airport and landed on the runway and not in the designated drop zone.

• On July 9, a Cessna crashed into Fishem Lake, BC. No word on injuries.

Drones: July 4: a Piper pilot reported a drone at 900 feet above the Catharines/Niagara Airport. July 7: Jazz Air flight 8374 from Fort McMurray to Calgary reported it came within 100 feet of hitting a drone at 6,000 feet above McMahon stadium. July 8: Air Canada flight 424 from Toronto to Montreal spotted a drone at 8,000 feet above Toronto. July 9: Jazz Air flight 8194 from Vancouver to Kamloops saw a “large white unmanned air vehicle” 1,800 feet above Vancouver.

Lasers: July 8: Porter Air flight 251 from Ottawa to Halifax was hit with a green laser on takeoff. WestJet flight 3185 from Vancouver to Victoria was hit by a green laser at 4,000 feet. Sky Air flight 7548 from Toronto to Atlanta was struck by a laser at 4,500 feet above Toronto. July 10: a Cessna pilot reported being hit by a green laser while taking off from Saskatoon.

Animals: July 7: a coyote was on the runway at Campbell Island, BC. July 8: WestJet flight 3208 from Kamloops to Calgary reported it hit a gopher on landing. Two dogs were running around the runway at Inuvik, Northwest Territories.

Government

No public meetings.

On campus

Saint Mary’s

Friday

Thesis Defence, International Development Studies (Friday, 10:30am, Atrium 306) — Masters student Elizabeth Eritobor will defend her thesis, “Women’s Education and Development in Nigeria: A Content Analysis of Nussbaum’s Capability Approach Applied to Women’s Empowerment (2010-2017).”

In the harbour

8am: Insignia, cruise ship, arrives at Pier 22 from Saint John

10am: Glen Canyon Bridge, container ship, arrives at Fairview Cove from Colombo, Sri Lanka

11am: Hoegh Singapore, car carrier, sails from Autoport for sea

11:20am: CSCC Shanghai, car carrier, arrives at Autoport from Gioia Tauro, Italy

Footnotes

I had my first donair yesterday. It was nothing to write home about.