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84 days ago
Nova Scotians are unpretentious and civil to the point of being quaint. People go out of their way to be agreeable; they listen sincerely to other points of view, express their own thoughtfully, and generally withhold or temper opinions with the potential to be hurtful. The place feels safe and friendly. It is a preferable culture to one of aggression, suspicion or indifference. Indeed it’s worth visiting just for this experience alone. But there are undercurrents here too. The most obvious is that real conflict occurs passive-aggressively. Many people prefer this, as it tends to blunt the emotional discomfort of conflict and prevents some escalation of disputes. But it also results in a lot of confusion and misunderstanding. People talk in riddles and avoid resolution. There’s a driving behavior that is so common in Nova Scotia that it deserves a proper name. At the exact moment that you pull out to pass a car, the driver will accelerate by about 10 mph. They will hold ...
109 days ago
Once again I’m lucky enough to be back in Nova Scotia. In the summer. Here, the Conservatives (“Progressive Conservatives”, to be exact, in an oxymoronic way) just got booted and the New Democratic Party is in. When I left over twenty years ago, the NDP was the fringe party. Too liberal (in the modern, Western sense) for a proud liberal province in a proud liberal country. So I’ve been talking to people to understand what’s going on here. The first thing I discover is that nobody really knows what the policy of NDP is. They might have become the most moderate, mature and cautious choice. They might be to the left of Greenpeace. Nobody knows, and for the most part, nobody cares. The NDP, despite being in power now, are still the butt of jokes. Indeed the fact they got elected is a source of (I suspect – unfair) political humor. But few are concerned. And few are hopeful. People have accepted that not much will change. For better or worse, the nanny state is no ...
304 days ago
MEMORANDUM TO: The Like Minded FROM: NYT Management and Key Stakeholders in Various Organizations of Significance RE: The ’09 Agenda Dear Progressives: Congratulations on Job #1. Everyone pulled together on this and the results show. It’s time to transition to memes that will have appropriate impact over the next 4 years. The following have been deemed to be of key importance: Restore Credibility : In our enthusiasm to cover the historic story we may have overreached occasionally. This is a good time to remind ourselves that as the newspaper of record, working with Key Stakeholders in Various Organizations of Significance , we have an obligation to set our strongly held bias aside and be seen as objective. The timing is good here, as this will like have little impact on Job #1. Again, congratulations. Back Peddle : It was a historic time. An uplifting time. Almost a spiritual time. We feel it. We know you ...
349 days ago
As an immigrant myself, I was keenly interested in Jennifer’s grade 8 Social Studies assignment, “Immigration Unit – Whose America Is It”. Part of the assignment was to define the following terms, and provide “examples from your own experience, literature or the news that best pertains to immigration.” I thought I’d take a crack at this. Xenophobia n. fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign One of the reasons that I found America so desirable as a place to immigrate to is that, unlike much of the world, including , at some time, Nazi Germany, Rwanda, Zimbabwe and China, its values, laws and culture seem to discourage xenophobia. Indeed we are so divorced from actual xenophobia that, like Nazism, the word has lost real meaning and is used as slang to mean anything “bad” or “different”. Assimilation n. the process of adapting to a new ...
