Let me see if I have this straight:

The Cape Breton Regional Municipality, which is $102.9 million in debt, and which constantly complains that it can’t afford to provide basic services, is going to borrow $6 million to buy 400 acres of harbour-front land, or a lesser amount to buy a controlling interest in the company that is selling the land, all to block — yes, block! — a proposed industrial development, so it can “save” the land for a fantasy container pier that will never, ever happen.

CBRM can afford to do this because it is overflowing in industrial development, and because a glorious fantasy in the bush is worth a real industry in the hand, especially in an election year.

CBRM can borrow beyond its already unsafe debt-service ratios, because it will be rolling in cash as soon as it gets the evil oppressors in Halifax to start forking over its rightful level of handouts, or rather, equalization payments. (The current level is more than what Halifax sends to all other municipalities in the province, combined.)

Dredge it, and they will come. And we will put the run on them. This is what passes for economic development strategy in the fervid brains of CBRM’s mayor and council.

There may be legitimate reasons to question this proposed development. But pretending Sydney is going to get a container pier isn’t one of them. That fraud has gone on long enough.

H/T SP vis Gawker

To whom it may concern:

I am a professional (pharmacist) married (since 1999) man. I had some difficulty in life, partly due to an abusive home life while growing up and partly due to poor choices of my own.

I spent nearly ten months at Talbot House in 2001-2002. One thing I can say, and will say on record, is that Father Paul Abbass was a kind and solid psychological and spiritual presence for me. On no occasion was he a threat to my sense of wellbeing. Nor did I see any kind of misbehaviour on his part. In fact, I often saw the politics of resentment and envy — levied by some of my disturbed co-residents — threaten the sanctuary Fr. Abbass built. It seems the sick have prevailed.

When I was a resident at Talbot House, Father Paul Abbass and I went for a number of drives down to a Catholic hermitage near the Bras D’or Lakes south of Frenchvale and simply talked about life, my marriage, my anguish, my addiction, my violent (and sometimes wonderful) childhood, and ultimately my — and his — love of the beautiful natural world before our very eyes. No threat did I even once feel from him. Only love and good intention. Father Paul rescued me from a hell of cynicism and despair. I won’t ever forget the kind days he shared with me.

Regards,
Sean McSween

Before publishing Mr. McSween’s letter, I wrote him back to confirm that he wanted me to use his name. “I think it will make [your letter] doubly effective,” I wrote, “but I will totally understand if you prefer not.”

Mr. McSween replied:

Certainly, use my name. I hoped that would lend it strength….

I don’t want to seek any personal glory, but only to help exonerate Father Paul and re-open Talbot House under his direction, and the direction of the Church he so skilfully represents.

Father Paul is an exemplary Catholic Christian, in that he does not proselytise with fire-and-brimstone, or even with scripture, but with acts of loving kindness and a collected, calm presence. So I feel that the presence and influence of the Church in the operation of Talbot House is essential.

A Community Services Department report on Talbot House and Fr. Abbass contained erroneous financial analysis and many factual mistakes. The report — published after CBRM Police looked into the case, and found no basis for a criminal investigation — also included vague, anonymously sourced allegations of unspecified sexual misconduct by Fr. Abbass. When combined with the other mistakes that litter the report, it reads like a deliberate smear.

Yet Community Services Minister Denise Peterson-Rafuse, with the backing of the Dexter government, has refused to withdraw the report or apologize to the man it falsely accused. Her behaviour stands in marked contrast to the courage displayed by Sean McSween.

I just call to your attention the fact that in all the posts about Superintendent Pynch-Worthylake, none of you polite Canadians commented on her name. I”m pretty sure she was Dean of Discipline at Hogwarts before coming to NS.

Tsk, tsk.

[Update] Reader Bev Brett replies:

I find it interesting that not stooping to namecalling is considered “polite.” Obviously the people who wanted their points in the debate to be considered valid held back. Rather than “polite,” I would call it “informed discussion.” If anyone makes fun of someone’s name during a serious debate, I automatically dismiss the argument.

Do you live in a mid-sized city with poor public transit, a taxi fleet choked with vested interests, and a risible bicycle system? Do you fear there will never be a day when folks can get around your city efficiently, emitting a minimum of greenhouse gases?

If so, then the family sedan may be the answer.

That’s crazy talk, of course. Buses are far more efficient, right? But how many times have you driven behind a bus containing two, one or zero passengers. Do you really believe the greenhouse gas emissions from your trusty Corolla are more than those of the empty behemoth belching diesel fumes in front of you?

A report [pdf] published inn 2011 by the U.S. Department of Transportation says that, on average, a city bus emits 0.65 pounds of carbon dioxide per passenger-mile, much better than the 0.96 emitted by a sedan occupied only by the driver. But throw passenger in your Corolla and suddenly it clocks in at 0.48, much better than the bus. Pop in 3 passengers and you’re at a planet-saving 0.24 (approximately).

So what we really mean is full buses. If you fill every seat, in every bus, on every trip, the bus wins the climate change sweepstakes at 0.16. But if you believe that can happen, I’ve got a 6/49 ticket for you.

What we need is more full passenger cars and vans. This already exists in other parts of the world, notably Latin America, where it’s known as the colectivo.

At its most basic and unregulated, a colectivo is a sedan that follows an established route. You hop in, pay your full fare and get off when the mood strikes. By economic necessity, colectivos are almost always full and, for the same reason, you don’t have to wait long for one.

Could a large fleet of sensibly regulated colectivos be the way forward in Halifax? Figuring out good bus routes has eluded local public transit for decades, but it won’t take long for colectivo drivers to master it. Think of them as water running down a rocky slope. They’ll find hundreds of independent routes around obstacles. Some will be little used; others will be rushing streams by comparison. But, in the end, like water moving downhill, they will add up to getting the most people from A to B in the shortest time. Or think of it as public transit design by crowd-sourcing.

Crazy-talk? Could be – certainly a single report doesn’t prove otherwise. But it would be interesting to get two simple numbers from Halifax’s Metro Transit: the total of GHGs the agency generates each year, and the number of passenger-miles it actually delivers. Then we do the math.

You say crazy; I say brilliant. But it’ll never happen in a city where you can’t put up a wooden utility pole without a public hearing.

The shape of this trussed torus, and the way it hung in the air, reminded me of something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Then it hit me:

Alexander Graham Bell’s circular kite, two fabric-covered disks, conjoined by tetrahedral trusses, flying over Beinn Bhreagh. No larger point here — the structures aren’t even all that similar in detail — just a striking confluence of shape, style, and scale across the span of a century.

[Video link]

H/T: Tara Calishain

[Video link]

HT: 99% Invisible, my new favorite podcast. Thanks to Marie.

Chris McCormick writes:

I figure someone’s right to express their opinion is balanced by my right to ignore them; the principal’s reaction just valorizes the ‘victim society’ where we want to whitewash all differences and offending symbols…remember Lenny Bruce [language NSFW]? “It’s the suppression of the word which gives it the power, the violence…”

Jeannie Eyking:

I have been aware of Superintendent Pynch-Worthylake’s work for about 10 years.  From everything I’ve heard, I understand her to be an intelligent, brave, and discerning professional and leader.  When I read your blog this morning, I thought there must be more to this story than first presented.  The editorial in the Cape Breton Post made the story more complete for me.   My conclusion is the her decision was not only reasonable, but brave.

The young people in our schools are arriving with all sorts of things written on their shirts, much of which promotes disrespect. What was written on Swinimer’s shirt was not benign. The phrasing is significant. “Life is wasted without Jesus”  is a judgment of what you should be and do, not an expression of what I choose for me.  This is no small point. Tolerance and free speech can only be protected, if we have the intelligence to sort out the difference.  The principal and Nancy Pynch-Worthylake tried to do that.  I applaud them both.

A reader whose family includes a retired Anglican minister, passed along antidote apparel depicted at right:

A reader who is not from the Annapolis Valley or Bridgewater writes:

It’s obvious Jeffrey Shallit does not live in the Annapolis Valley or Bridgewater, because if he did, he’d know that no matter how strongly you felt it, you’d never say anything like this: “Swinimer’s t-shirt expresses a moronic and wrong sentiment, and he sounds like the typical evangelical jerk who can’t keep quiet about his own ‘good news.’”  Because the fall-out from evangelicals, of which there are many who attend Baptist, Pentecostal, and break-away Protestant churches in the Bible Belt of Nova Scotia, would not be worth it. Shallit, safe from the wrath of God in Waterloo.

Reader Dana Doiron thinks the The Cape Breton Post got it right:

Proselytizing at school and suggesting that the international students at his school were damned (I spoke to students and parents) were the issue.  The t-shirt was just the most recent manifestation to which the complaining students could point. Parents, teachers and religious leaders (and, politicians) should help students learn tolerance and empathy not just the assertion of individual rights. The student’s dad may have taken the best step toward resolving this issue by removing his son from school today to go home and change shirts.

What Shallit was reacting to, given the information available at the time, was Swinimer’s suspension for the sin of wearing a T-shirt expressing minority religious views. If Swinimer was browbeating fellow students, or proselytizing disruptively on school time, that’s another matter. Wearing a slogan the superintendent doesn’t like is not grounds for dismissal in a democracy.

Matt’s a big guy with a big heart. He’s from the Perth-Andover, NB, area, where he organized a benefit concert April 28 that included Bruce Guthro and Lennie Gallant among others.

Perth-Andover’s population is only about 1900, and there were close to 1200 in attendance, while others watched via live web streaming. Ticket revenue and various door prize/50-50 sales, plus cash donations at the event or direct to the Red Cross during the concert, totalled just under $48,000, which the New Brunswick government agreed to match. So in a few hours, Anderson’s initiative raised close to $100,000 to assist families and individuals most affected by flood damage to their homes.

It’s not just Matt. Surveys always put artists and musicians at or near the bottom of income surveys, but they’re the ones called upon when a worthy cause needs money. If you added up the funds these folks raise every year, the total would be in the millions — an industry in itself.