The Nova Scotia government is asking for public feedback by January 8 on 65 pages of regulations which will dictate how roads should be used by the public, and also potentially allow for some safer controls and infrastructure for vulnerable road users. Martyn Williams has some excellent suggestions.
We spoke with Nina Newington, one of the forest protectors who were arrested while defending mainland moose habitat in Digby County from destruction. “I understand that for many people the arrests have been discouraging, but gosh, most struggles take a long time and many people around the world take far greater risks than we have taken and fight for far longer.”
Julie Wilson interviews Peter Counter, author of Be Scared of Everything. “Horror is helpful in processing the post-traumatic experience precisely because it doesn’t promise order. It presents a narrative that accepts bad things happen to good people for no reason, and that unresolvable trauma still has value.”
Dr. Pam Palmater interviews Chief Mike Sack of Sipekne’katik First Nation for her excellent Warrior Life Podcast and Youtube channel. Lots of information here that isn’t as readily available as it should be.
What happens when a Mi’kmaw and settler university student share car rides on their way to university and other places? They talk, and the settler learns some hard lessons about colonial oppression, systemic racism and white privilege.
Kendall Worth: In normal years New Year’s is a time of loneliness and social isolation for many of us in the community of people living in poverty. This year we will not be the only ones.
Contributor Alexander Bridge, who usually writes about the state of the province, switches gears and offers some wisdom and hope here as we ring in the new year.
“I took every shift I could get, up to 70-hours per week, to make ends meet. With wages that low, this is what you have to do.” Lisa Cameron reports on Justin Trudeau’s 2019 promise of a federal minimum wage of at least $15 and hour, starting in 2020, and rising with inflation. We are in the final days of 2020, and yet Trudeau has taken no steps to honour this commitment.
Martyn Williams: 2020 has been yet another year marked and marred by vulnerable road user fatalities, all of them seniors. An urban or suburban community that can’t support people to move around safely without a car cannot function. People with disabilities, children and seniors in particular are placed in the unwilling position of performing dangerous stunts, using crosswalks that do not meet their unique needs and abilities.