The Patient’s Progress, Part 1
Case study: Patient has moved from a depression over the loss of rural life to an hallucinatory state in which rural Newfoundland and Labrador is flourishing.
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Your Vote Is Your Consent
I am talking to teenagers about consent. In the courthouse alongside, Chantel John’s mother suffers through a slew of new charges against her daughter’s accused murderer. Newfoundland and Labrador is attempting to hold this man accountable. Though in the land of Mary March, it is difficult indeed to ignore the violent colonial locomotion that blasts through us regardless of our objection or intent. I hike round a river named for these exploits. It is beautiful big birch country. The water is surging fast-forward with the spring breakup in full-on yellow flop where new-wet meets rock-face. The running signage recounts a tragic tale taught to us via elementary school readers. A Beothuk woman resisting capture exposes herself to her aggressors. The courts of the day rule there was no malice in her kidnapping or her husband’s death during the abduction. Their baby died, too. We are always told she revealed her…
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Sleeping On the Ballot Box
Elections are one of our favourite things, and have been for as long as we can remember. From the excitement of following the “race” once the writ is dropped, to the thrill that comes from marking a ballot and shaping the future of your community, to the awesomeness of election night as you watch the results roll in: elections are entirely exciting and engrossing exhibitions of democracy. Then we get to do it again in four years’ time! It’s like the Olympics of civic engagement! Alas, we are election nerds: we like gathering data, we like following trends, and—in a nutshell—we are strange. Regardless of our personal preferences (and the obviously very fun parties we throw on election night), elections are incredibly important in a free society because they provide a number of key functions in a democracy. They provide a mechanism by which citizens are able to select their…
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May Day from Central
I drive by a gas bar named for some other Megan and wonder if all her dreams came true. Traveling thoughts can take reckless turns when you’re headed westward on Newfoundland’s Trans Canada. Highway 1. Ground zero for colonialism where signage along the roadside declares that those who ruled at the starting hour of their agreed upon clock continue to do so today. And I wonder if the merchant still got me round the neck. As I pass blue and red squares proclaiming the hopeful inheritors of our little bit of earth, I feel the merchant’s hand tightening. Not that they refer to themselves as merchants anymore. The comms department sorted that before we even knew there was a comms department. They call themselves all kinds of generous, extravagant things now to confuse us. But a collar by another name is still a collar. My field of view is foggy…
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The Passion of Graydon Pelley
The 2019 Newfoundland and Labrador general election is a very strange beast. The province finds itself in the throes of existential crisis at the same as it is mired in a full-blown political depression. Nominations have finally closed for all parties, but only the governing Liberals are running a full slate of 40 candidates. The Tories are a close second with 39, while the NDP trail a distant third with 14 candidates. There are nine people running unaffiliated. As far as provincial politics goes, you could be forgiven for feeling like things are starting to circle the drain. But then there is the other weird feature of the 2019 NL election: there is a new option on the ballot. In November 2018, former NL Progressive Conservative party president Graydon Pelley announced that he was resigning from the Tories to form a new entity called the NL Alliance. The Alliance is,…
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Budget 2019: Shag It, Let’s Do Magic
I went to the NL Budget Lockup to hear tales of a budget surplus in 2019. Don’t get me wrong; budgets are normally big policy events. Not only do they chart the government’s fiscal plans for the upcoming year and update us on how things went the last one, they also usually involve a myriad of specific policy announcements across sectors. But as communication strategists become more and more important in all aspects of government, budgets have become more of a public relations medium than they once were. There has always been political spectacle on budget days: the finance minister’s new shoes, surprise funding for new paving and the like, but there has usually been an actual budget obscured by the government’s marketing efforts. Budget 2019 in Newfoundland and Labrador takes the communications side of budget days to a new extreme. It’s a pre-election budget, which are usually long on…
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Reaping Without Sowing: Government Support for the Arts in NL
Newfoundland and Labrador’s Transportation, Culture, Industry and Innovation Minister Christopher Mitchelmore loves the arts. He is very excited about all the wonderful work being produced in this province by its artists, and he cannot wait to share their stories with the world. This is wonderful. Unfortunately, Minister Mitchelmore seems to have some trouble listening to stories from local artists when they’re directed at him. Spearheaded by playwright Robert Chafe and director Courtney Brown, local artists last week organized a letter-writing campaign to the provincial government looking for an increase in funding to ArtsNL. “[ArtsNL is] the only pot of funding, really, that exists in the province [and] that goes directly to working artists to start the product that will actually fill the theatre, fill the CDs, fill the film halls, that kind of thing,” Chafe told the CBC. “The cultural programming in the province wouldn’t exist without it.” ArtsNL funding…
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CHEAP Thrills: This Week at The House
Question Period is like a soap opera, except about politics and with terrible pacing. Old storylines are picked up wherever they left off while new, meandering subplots bubble up all the time. All the actors in the show have tangled, weirdly passionate interconnections that sometimes go back decades. But the script is badly written and all the drama is exaggerated beyond any resemblance to a reality most people would recognize. Prolonged exposure seems hazardous to human mental health, and I worry the surrealist funeral parlour lighting in the scrum room might trigger an acid flashback. Outside of the actual content of the House of Assembly, though, it has been a tremendous first two weeks at the House of Assembly. My colleagues in the press gallery are all lovely. I am deeply humbled to be part of that small cadre charged with checking on the stewards of the state. This job…
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Where Does Government End and Nalcor Begin?
In 1998, then-Secretary of State Madeline Albright captured perfectly the multi-generational culture of the US Foreign Policy establishment: “if we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.” That last part in particular has aged poorly. When she uttered it, the US-led West was ramping up its campaign to open and secure markets (“spread democracy”) in every corner of the globe—peacefully if possible; by force if necessary. Two decades later, it is hard to argue that this approach has been especially successful for the United States of America. In The Hell of Good Intentions, Stephen Walt, Professor of Foreign Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, describes the culture of this entrenched establishment as “fiercely self-protective.” Professional success depends on reputation, and you do not advance your career by challenging orthodoxy, which in this case…
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When little means a lot
Tom Marshall’s first and last speech from the throne is as remarkable for what it does not say as for what it does
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Dunderdale joins Liberals, red tsunami continues to grow
Former premier joins party she feels best reflects her values
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Taking the politics out of spending
It’s time to get away from the “election pavement” mentality and look at Ontario’s legislated 10-year-plan approach to infrastructure development
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