Daily briefing Premier Stephen McNeil opened today’s briefing with a shout out to Richard Martell and Debbie Johnson Powell, the sign-language interpreters who translate the COVID-19 updates. McNeil noted that today is National Interpreter Day as he thanked them for their work. Dr. Robert Strang then announced no new COVID-19-relatedRead More

The CBRM will borrow from the province to fund a property-tax deferral program to assist residents and businesses “significantly impacted” by the COVID-19 pandemic. The first thing you must understand about this program — and you know this is vital because it appeared on the very first slide presented toRead More

One of the best hours I spent this week was listening to my favorite podcasters dissecting the recent attempt by a ragtag group of mercenaries to overthrow the Venezuelan government — a saga that sounded like a James Ellroy novel come to life. (Seriously, if you’ve read Ellroy’s American Tabloid,Read...

“The unease and fear are appropriate and can be useful, all the more so as the self is liberated from convoluted efforts at falsification and denial.” — Robert Jay Lifton, The Climate Swerve   On February 8, as COVID-19 fast-approached a slow-moving British government, BBC World News aired a discussionRead More

It’s hard to believe that seven weeks have gone by since my self-imposed isolation began. After listening to the many calls, across the country and the world, from those who want to hit the streets, abandoning all semblance of concern as to what might result from breaking everything wide open,Read More

Editor’s Note: The Spectator is reaching into Michelle Smith’s gardening column archive for some weekly advice that is as relevant now as when it was first written.   What to do this week Our original idea for this column was to write about what I am actually doing in theRead More

Daily briefing Dr. Robert Strang announced three more deaths at the Northwood long-term-care facility (LTCF) in Halifax, bringing total deaths there to 35 and total COVID-19-related deaths across the province to 41. He also announced six new cases of COVID-19, four of which were detected in “various parts” of HRM,Read More

Briefing There was no press briefing today (they’ve been reduced to Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays) but press releases sent out over the weekend noted some grim statistics: eight additional COVID-19-related deaths at the Northwood long-term-care facility (LTCF) in Halifax (two announced Saturday, six on Sunday) plus another death announced onRead More

Update Dr. Robert Strang announced the death of another resident of the Northwood long-term-care facility (LTCF) in Halifax, bringing total COVID-19-related deaths at the facility to 23 and total deaths in the province to 29. Strang also announced 12 new cases of COVID-19, bringing total cases in the province toRead More

NSP Someone (you know who you are) recently got me to thinking about the history of policing in Nova Scotia, which led me to this 1990 article by Greg Marquis (the author, more recently, of a book about the murder of Richard Oland). The piece, entitled “The History of PolicingRead...