Author Archives: Ryan Van Horne

Barbara Amiel column an embarrassment to journalism

In modern parlance, Barbara Amiel is a troll. Fear not, I am not making an ad hominem — she does not look like one of Tolkien’s trolls — but her latest column in Maclean’s is the latest in a litany of off-the-cuff scribbles penned merely to elicit shock from those who can stomach her prose.

Titled Landmines in Our Sexual Landscape, the column is a vain attempt to prove that you can shine shit, but she fails in that regard. If she continues to write columns for Maclean’s — and I predict she will — it’s proof that the well-connected Amiel can write whatever the hell she wants just to get a reaction. Not only are her comments insensitive to the victims of sexual assault, child pornography and sexual harassment, they reek of a juvenile attempt to poke a stick at what she perceives to be a hypocritical zeitgeist. If she thinks that we need to have a “Come to Jesus” debate and reconcile state-funded abortions with modern society’s so-called heavy hand on rape, child porn and groping, she would be better served if she didn’t belittle the victims of those three crimes.

Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are protected in the Constitution, but in availing oneself of these rights, one must endeavour to use them responsibly. Barbara Amiel has been given a tremendous privilege to write for a national magazine and by writing as she does, she is squandering that privilege by trying to spark reactions, rather than encourage debate or enlighten a discussion.

An Ode to a Hamster

If you dare me to jump off a cliff into the ocean or jump out of a perfectly good airplane with a parachute, I will not do it. There are some dares that I find irresistible, however, and today, someone tossed such a dare at my feet.

It started innocently enough as Frances Willick, someone I follow on Twitter, posted a link about a hamster that was rescued during a blizzard in Edinburgh. (See story here.)

I responded that it was too bad that Robbie Burns had passed away long ago because it would be a great story to put in verse.

“I dare you,” Frances responded forthrightly.

“Och aye! That’s an irresistible dare,” said I.

And so it was born: a poem about a hamster, who survived a wintry blast in Scotland and found succour with the SPCA. The Edinburgh SPCA named the hamster Poppy, gave it fame, and tried to find its owner – or a new one that would give it a good home.

Burns wrote a poem called To A Mouse, so it’s not much of a stretch to write one dedicated to such a hardy and famous hamster.

Ode to a Hamster

O wee, fluffae, darin’ rodent
Thy thinkin’ kinna be less cogent
To venture out in a blizzard
An’ scoff an’ mock winter’s wizard

Och! Did thy owner cast thee out?
Or did ye weary of the lout?
Dinna hae give ye wee nibbles?
An’ water bottle tha’ dribbles?

Sallow face wi’ emptae cheeks
Of tha’ cruel fate surely speaks
Like some beggar on a mount’in
Wi’ no blessins for a’countin’

Poppy, O small jitt’ry beastie
Ye have found a great big feastie
Y’ill nee’ nae go on such daft spree
When fine cozie home awaits thee

With apologies to Robbie Burns and a hope that my Grampy and Granny Smith, who hailed from Castle Douglas, will get a wee chuckle from this.

Is racism to blame in Alehouse complaint?

I was at the Alehouse last week for a pint. There was a bouncer working at the door who was of African heritage and had the same colour of skin that Peter Gilpin has.

Peter Gilpin is a man who filed a human rights complaint against the Alehouse, saying that they refused to let him into the downtown bar because he was black. See story here.

When I was younger, I was refused service at bars and in liquor stores. The most noticeable difference is that I am caucasian and so the reason for me being denied service was for failing to provide valid identification. Another big difference was my age; I was younger than Mr. Gilpin, who was 33 at the time of the incident. Nova Scotia has very strict liquor laws and there is intense scrutiny on bars to make sure they uphold them. If they don’t, they face costly penalties.

I’m not denying that racism has existed in Nova Scotia and that it continues to exist. In fact, I find this line in the CBC story to be somewhat comical: “The hearing has accepted a ground-breaking report that indicates Nova Scotia has a racism problem.”

What? Really? Who funded that report, the No Shit, Sherlock Institute?

I supposed I shouldn’t be so glib about that. There are actually people who deny that racism exists. The first step in solving a problem is getting people to realize that it exists. Getting a sense of the scope of the problem is also helpful.

Whenever an employee feels pressure to follow rules, it can sometimes seem unkind or unfair to the person that is affected.

About a year ago, I was walking up Quinpool Road toward a bus stop that was not the one at which I regularly boarded the bus. When the bus drove past me, I wondered what was going on. I looked up at the sign and realized that recent changes to the route had eliminated this stop. Even though the bus driver was mired in rush-hour traffic, he drove past me and stopped about 20 feet up the road.

When I walked up to the stopped bus and knocked on the door to see if the bus driver would let me in, he would not. The bus driver, who was an African Nova Scotian, just shook his head and drove off when traffic started to move.

Traffic was so heavy that I was able to walk a few blocks up the road to the next stop and board the bus. When I asked the driver why he didn’t let me on earlier, he told me that he is not allowed to stop the bus and let passengers board at unmarked stops.

He was just following the rules and I did not think that he was treating me any differently because I was white.

With a history of racism against black people, it is easy to understand how Mr. Gilpin can make the assumption that his race was the reason he wasn’t allowed in to the Alehouse.

Racism exists, it is ugly, and I hate it. I hate it for the injustices that it has caused and continues to cause.

Even though I have never been a victim of racism, it does affect me directly. It has led to distrust and resentment that prevents racial harmony.

Was Mr. Gilpin a victim of racism or a victim of strict liquor laws and their draconian enforcement?

Given the facts and circumstances, I would say the latter, but it’s easy to see how even a youthful-looking 33-year-old man could think otherwise.

If I were the owner of the bar, I would have a special African Heritage night with live music and invite Mr. Gilpin and his friends to come down for a meal and a pint on the house.

This, more than any ruling from a human rights commission, would work to improve racial harmony in Nova Scotia.

A maestro in our midst

An old acquaintance of mine told me a funny story once about how she “discovered” Harry Connick, Jr.

She was in a bar in Connick’s hometown of New Orleans and listening to him perform. She was mightily impressed and told him so after his song was over – something she could do in the intimate setting of the bar they were in.

“Hey, you’re pretty good,” she told him, not realizing who he was. She had heard of Connick, but didn’t recognize the man who had already won a Grammy Award for best jazz male vocal performance thanks to his work on the When Harry Met Sally soundtrack.

Connick was gracious and said “thank you” but someone – perhaps a friendly bartender – pointed out to her who he was. She was sheepish, but not so much that she didn’t delight in telling the story when she returned to Nova Scotia.

Sometimes, you see somebody perform and you feel like your discovery is the world’s discovery.

So it was with me and the first time I watched Dinuk Wijeratne conduct the Nova Scotia Youth Orchestra.

While I didn’t approach Wijeratne or the orchestra to say “Hey, you’re pretty good,” I did decide to write about them for Halifax Magazine; that article will appear in the magazine’s April issue.

The more I researched Wijeratne’s background, the more I realized what a virtuoso he is. It was his work as a conductor that prompted me to write about him, but his talents are more diverse than that.

We are fortunate to have him plying his craft here in Nova Scotia. If you haven’t watched him play the piano, conduct, or seen one of his compositions brought to life off the page, then you must change that.

To get a sense of Wijeratne and what he and the NSYO can do, watch this video.

Now, go “discover” him like I did. The NSYO and Symphony Nova Scotia will be performing a joint concert at the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium on Feb. 17.

Watch out for the last kid picked

If you’ve ever played a game of pick-up hockey, you know that some poor kid always ends up getting picked last. Sometimes, though, that person can surprise people with their unknown ability.

That happened on January 16 in the CHL Top Prospects Games in Halifax. Laurent Dauphin was the last replacement added to the roster after Hunter Shinkaruk couldn’t play because of the flu.

No matter. Dauphin has skills and had averaged more than a point per game with the Chicoutimi Sagueneens of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. After the game, he said he wanted to show that he belonged.

He had a rough start to the game as he was decked with a clean open-ice hit just 20 seconds in the game. Ticked off, he came back on his next shift and set up his team’s first goal. He later added a goal to make it 2-0 and had two other good scoring chances as he earned player-of-the-game honours for Team Orr, which won 3-0.

After filing my story for The Canadian Press, I was musing over the game and Dauphin’s effort made me think of that old Canadian Tire commercial featuring Albert.

I mentioned it to a couple of colleagues and one of them, Neate Sager, ran with it. The Yahoo blogger who compiles the CHL blog Buzzing The Net, converted it into a nice post. Yes, I bet Don Cherry wished he had a guy like Dauphin on is team.

Well played, Neate. Well played.

Olympians make the best stories

CSCA's Excellence in Sport, London 2012 Edition

Almost 20 years ago, I wrote a story about a Nigerian who emigrated to Canada to escape religious persecution in his homeland. His name was David Defiagbon and he was a boxer who went on to represent Canada at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics where he won a silver medal.

I’ve had the privilege of being able to interview other Olympians and cover some high-profile international events. Nothing — absolutely nothing — compares to writing about an individual’s singular pursuit of the Olympic dream. Their training and dedication are non pareil and yet their stories are most remarkable because they all started from humble beginnings — humble beginnings that we can identify with.

This summer, 19 Atlantic Canadian athletes and a coach are going to London for the Olympics and the Paralympics.

Canadian Sports Centre Atlantic commissioned a magazine with some profiles on our region’s best. Enjoy the show, and remember, you won’t get this kind of coverage on NBC.

Follow the link below to see the magazine and download it if you like. Enjoy the Games.
CSCA-Magazine-London-2012

Memories of The Old Mill

The Old Mill is closing this Saturday and the former site of the Dartmouth Rope Works, a 144-year-old landmark building on Wyse Road, will be demolished to make way for a new grocery store.

My only visit to The Old Mill was after a hockey game at the Dartmouth Sportsplex. The Daily News had a team in the Metro Media Gentlemen’s Hockey League and a few of us went there on a Saturday afternoon for some grub and a few pops.

The food was good, but not memorable, and the beer was cold and relatively cheap, so it flowed a little more freely. Most of all, I remember the people I went with that day.

The guys on The Daily News hockey team were a great bunch of guys. In the newsroom, there was a fair bit of turnover, but the hockey team didn’t have as much. To fill out the roster, a few guys were recruited to fill out the team and they played with the team for years. They were the mainstays on the team; sort of like the beams at The Old Mill.

Chizzy, Jimmy Dunn, David Earle, Dave Clarke, Wilson Beaton, Terry Spicer and Kevin Lapierre, were among that crew. So too were Daily Newsers Stephen Barnes, Lindsay Woodin, Bruce Chisholm, Craig Meister and our coach/beer manager was John McLeod.

I’ll never forget the support and camaraderie. It meant a lot to me at a time when things weren’t going so well at home. My marriage was breaking up and the guys on the team helped me get through a rough patch.

So, on my only visit to The Old Mill, I don’t remember the beams and I never realized that I was in an old rope factory.

I do remember the laughs and the smiles — and I surely realized that I was among friends.

Wilderbeats know how to connect with kids

The Wilderbeats in concert at The Music Room in Halifax while recording a promotional video.

I made my debut for Halifax Magazine in their June issue with my article and photo spread on The Wilderbeats, a children’s band from Halifax. (See story here.) My kids are big fans of the group and watching them in concert and interviewing them provided me with some insight on why kids and grownups who listen to their music love it so much.

The three members of The Wilderbeats — past and present — have two important things in common.

  1. They love connecting with kids during a performance, and;
  2. Their catchy music has a clever way of educating people about nature.

The first reason is why they have dedicated so much time to the genre despite the difficulties children’s musicians face achieving commercial success. The latter is why their music is so noteworthy and not only deserves to be famous, but should be.

For Ashley Moffat, who started The Wilderbeats in 2001 with Joyce Saunders, her personality doesn’t change when she’s on stage. She treats kids the same way she would treat an adult and that’s likely because she admits to having a little bit of kid in her.

“They’re just my buddies, I don’t talk down to them,” she said during an interview for the feature article in the June issue of Halifax Magazine.

Audience participation is a key ingredient in any Wilderbeats performance and part of why they love performing for kids says Shannon Lynch, who replaced Moffatt as Saunders’s sidekick in 2009.

“How boring can you get if you don’t want to children to join in,” Lynch says. “They just want to mimic, they want to be part of it. Kids are the greatest audience ever because they don’t lie to you. If they don’t like what’s going on, they will just shut down. It’s amazing, as a performer, to have a clear read on your audience.”

When Moffatt is writing music, she looks for inspiration in nature and while she often sings about Canadian wildlife, she admits some creatures catch her fancy from afar. One such song would be Clickety Clack, I’m a Yak.

“I come across things that I think are cool,” Moffat said. I put it in a song and try to make it fun.”

Fun indeed; I’ll forever remember my three-year old coming into our kitchen while that song was playing and hopping and bopping to the tune.

For Saunders and Lynch, their love of nature — and sharing that with kids — comes out in their music.

“We have a really deep appreciation of the Earth and all of the different creatures,” said Lynch. “We can share that with children and hopefully, cultivate, instill and inspire an appreciation and an excitement on their part about some of that immense beauty.”

Lynch has teased Saunders about her song Himalaya, Home of Snow because it’s a bit too “chewy” or technical. It’s a beautiful song, though, and teaches kids a great deal about the world’s greatest mountain range.

Saunders takes the ribbing good-naturedly, but adds “kids are way more intelligent than we are in many ways. There’s a certain age where kids like to know stuff. They really want to know the big words or how things work.”

Natural gas could lower power rates

There has been a lot of complaining about Nova Scotia Power Inc.’s (NSPI) latest application for a rate increase and rightly so.

However, the groundswell of opposition is directed at rising salaries, bonuses, and a swanky party by executives, and does not address the root of the problem. Even the opposition parties in the Nova Scotia legislature got into the act as they repeatedly stood up in Question Period and railed against the NDP government and accused the Dexter government of being too cozy with Emera,

The only defence the NDP mounted was that it had taken the HST off home electricity. Time and time again, the NDP went back to this defence, looking like a boxer against the ropes, gloves held up over their face and absorbing punch after punch. The Liberals and the Tories were more than happy to deliver them, too, much to the delight of the angry mob that was watching.

While the NDP did remove the HST — and that move did provide immediate relief — it didn’t go far enough in addressing the short-term pain associated with the Renewable Electricity Plan that the NDP implemented in 2010. This plan was designed to get Nova Scotia Power off its dependence on coal and set a legislated target for 25 per cent renewable energy by 2015. This switch was a no-brainer and the NDP should be lauded for this.

What the NDP realized, but not all ratepayers realize, is that there is a short-term cost associated with this because building new infrastructure costs money.

Unfortunately, the prospect of stable rates in the future has not been enough to placate the growing discontent among ratepayers. If added infrastructure costs for renewables was the only cause for rate hikes, it would be easier to stomach — but it’s not. Another huge problem for Nova Scotia Power is their outdated blueprint based on burning coal, a commodity that has gone up in price because of a growing demand in China and other industrializing countries.

Meanwhile, there is a glut in the natural gas market — something that has existed for a few years now — and there hasn’t been a big enough shift away from coal to natural gas. Doing this would help reduce electricity rates, provide a better back-up for renewables, reduce emissions, and allow Nova Scotia Power to burn a made-in Nova Scotia fuel. While it can be risky to rely too much on one fuel source, clearly Nova Scotia Power needs to increase its ability to burn natural gas — and pronto.

Most of the coal Nova Scotia Power burns is imported and last year it generated 57 per cent of its electricity from coal. Meanwhile, natural gas generated only 20 per cent of electricity in Nova Scotia. Tufts Cove in Dartmouth is going flat out, but it’s the only thermal plant in the province capable of generating electricity by burning natural gas.

The Renewable Electricity Plan should have been introduced in tandem with a plan to boost the use of natural gas, but it wasn’t and this was a missed opportunity.

So, while the government can’t tell NSPI to lower rates and it can’t tell the Utility and Review Board to reject the latest application, it is not powerless to address rising power rates.

Just like it changed the rules of the game for NSPI to make it create more renewable electricity, the government could do so again and make it burn more natural gas. Many other jurisdictions have made a more rapid move away from coal to natural gas, but Nova Scotia is lagging behind.