CrowsNest
In the days of sail, mariners would ‘take watch’ in a basket-shaped crow’s nest, mounted just below the top of the mast.
We’ve been keeping watch from the CrowsNest for more than a decade.
Now, we’re starting to share what we see. Sometimes our posts will be quirky, sometimes sad, sometimes insightful, and sometimes wrong. We’ll do our best to be relevant. Now and again, we might even steer you safely into port.
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At Province House – it’s time to stop wringing hands and ringing bells
Everybody talks about reform of the legislative process at Province House in Nova Scotia, but only NDP Leader Claudia Chender proposes to do something real about it. Good for her. Ms. Chender’s call for commonsense reform at Province House, with fixed hours during scheduled fall and spring sessions of the legislature, was renewed following the…
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‘Billy Jean King laces up her skates’
Billy Jean King, the tennis legend and so much more, was in Toronto this month to help launch the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL). If King’s starring role in the PWHL event seems strange to you, you’ve missed half a century of sports history. On Sept. 18, 1973, King handily beat Bobby Riggs – a…
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Atlantic Canada’s once-in-a-generation opportunity … let’s seize it
We, the watchers of the CrowsNest, were happy to see Donald Savoie back in the public eye this month. In a commentary published in The Chronicle Herald, the eminence grise of Atlantic Canada’s thinking classes argues (as do we) that the federal carbon tax has a disproportionate and unfair impact on this region, with its…
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These guys should talk – more!
Chances are pretty good you’ve never heard of the Council of Atlantic Premiers (CAP), though it’s been around since 2000. CAP, with its mandate to “promote Atlantic Canadian interests in national issues”, more or less slept through its first two decades of existence. Fortunately, that’s starting to change. In May, the premiers launched the Atlantic…
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Yes, there is a fairer way than a carbon tax to go green
In Atlantic Canada, tens of thousands of rural residents – many of them older and living on limited incomes in an inflationary era – depend on oil to heat their homes. In theory, they can spend $30,000 they don’t have – to qualify for $10,000 or so in government subsidies they might get someday –…
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In the culture wars, let’s have more Merle and less Jason
Merle Haggard wrote better songs than Okie from Muskogee – up here in the CrowsNest, we always hum along to Sing Me Back Home. But Okie is still Haggard’s signature song. Released in the late 1960s, it staked out middle America’s position on the Vietnam war. “We don’t smoke marijuana in MuskogeeWe don’t take our…
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Finding a decent, affordable place to live (in Vienna)
Vienna, home to almost two million people, is depicted as a Shangri La by international media, and its brand is about more than coffee shops and its famous opera house. The Austrian capital, the world’s most livable city according to The Economist, is also a place in which ordinary people can find an affordable place…
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Newspapers that forgot to stay new
Two pictures can say 10,000 words. The one on the left shows New York’s Park Avenue at Easter 1900. The one on the right was taken on the same thoroughfare at Easter 1913. The juxtaposed photos tell us a lot about the advent of the automobile more than a Century ago, when horse-drawn conveyances rapidly…
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Competition and the high cost of everything
According to a recent article in The Economist, Canada and Australia have much in common – starting with resource-intensive economies, sparsely-populated territories, and dominant global infrastructure companies. That’s the good news, in a way. Resource sectors help make both economies hum; and expertise in managing and financing infrastructure renewal is a key asset as floods,…
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David Johnson’s lineage
For those of us in the CrowNest, keeping watch from the seas off the East Coast, David Johnston is one of those privileged guys who buys into and benefits from the Laurentian Thesis. Johnston, as you’ll recall, is the special rapporteur appointed by Justin Trudeau to probe foreign interference in Canadian elections. The Laurentian thesis,…
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COVID-19 – it’s time to understand the full story
On March 22, 2020, Nova Scotia declared a state of emergency under which the government was empowered to order people to “stay the blazes home” (unless they needed essential items like groceries). Gatherings of more than five people were forbidden. Provincial parks and beaches were closed. (Yes, police officers patrolled public parks and gave out…
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A fifth horseman comes riding in, again
If you’re following breaking news about Artificial Intelligence (AI), you might think technology has just joined conquest, war, famine, and death as the fifth horseman of the apocalypse. Truth is people have feared apocalyptic technological change since the German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable-type printing press around 1436. Suddenly, books and pamphlets could be…
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Women Talking, Women Working
Women Talking, the 2022 film based on a novel by Canadian writer Mariam Toews, depicts the sexual abuse of girls and women by male elders in a remote Mennonite colony. It is a tough but beautiful film, tough because the colony’s women suffer horrendous abuse, and beautiful because they talk and argue and talk some…
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Counting Sheep, not Docs
Counting sheep helps some people sleep. Counting docs keeps people awake across Canada because there aren’t enough of them to go around. In Nova Scotia, it seems, the government wants people to rest a little easier – to stop fretting about doctor-shortages and start counting on the broader health care system. On April 14, Health…
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24 Sussex – that’s our home, not theirs
Canada can’t provide housing for thousands of its citizens or its prime minister. The former issue is a tragedy. The prolonged agony over 24 Sussex Drive, the PM’s official residence, is starting to feel like a farce. The old Norman-style mansion has been derelict for years and is now a rodent-infested, asbestos-laden health hazard. Actually,…
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Trader Joe and Trojan horses
President Joe Biden put in a bravura performance last month, telling Canadian Parliamentarians it was time for Canada and the US to forge closer economic ties. Biden, at his ‘ah-shucks’ best, said ‘secure’ North American supply chains would put the two nations at the forefront of the economy of tomorrow. (Think high tech, electric vehicles,…
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The Finance Minister – another endangered species
We don’t know when Canada’s finance ministers stopped sounding like accountants, but it was a bad moment. It might have been back in 2017, when then Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau spoke in his budget speech about “the joys of building a campfire with” the kids. Finance Ministers should neither wax poetic nor sound joyful.…
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The China conundrum and Atlantic Canada
China is arguably the rogue state ‘du jour’ in Canada, though Russia is giving it some firm competition. How is the Canadian government dealing with each nation? In Russia’s case, the response to the invasion of its neighbour is clear – provide weapons to Ukraine, impose economic sanctions against the Russian state, and freeze or…
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Churchill Falls – Guess Who Came to Dinner?
At last, Newfoundland and Labrador has a fighting chance to wrest its fair share of revenue from the Churchill Falls hydroelectric project. In 1969, Premier Joey Smallwood’s government signed the infamous Churchill Falls agreement, under which Hydro Quebec buys very cheap power from the massive hydro project in Labrador until 2041. Quebec pays Newfoundland…