Canadian contributes to 3D book
Paralympic athlete Rick Hansen hopes to shine light on world’s largest minority
LAUREN LA ROSE THE CANADIAN PRESS
TORONTO — Albert Einstein’s mind has been the source of endless
fascination, so it’s only fitting that a forthcoming tribute to the
Nobel Prize-winning physicist will take shape within a mould of his
famous face.
Genius:
100 Visions of the Future, is being billed as the world’s first
3D-printed book, and is due out next year. Designed by Ron Arad, the
publication will bear a resemblance to a bust of Einstein, complete with
his trademark shock of hair and bushy moustache.
Genius will feature the thoughts of 100 leading minds and influencers
sharing nuggets of wisdom and thoughts on the future. The project is a
global initiative put forward by the Albert Einstein Foundation and
conceived by Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in
commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s Theory of
Relativity.
Among the
contributors to Genius are retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield,
environmental activist David Suzuki, Cirque du Soleil co-founder Guy
Laliberte, Right To Play International founder and former Olympic speed
skater Johann Olav Koss, and Paralympic athlete Rick Hansen.
“For me, the notion of contribution is consistent with my 30-year
journey that has been underway which first started with my Man in
Motion’world tour … trying to create awareness about the potential of
people with disabilities, to move the stigma from negative to positive,”
Hansen said in a phone interview from Richmond, B.C.
Hansen said having the chance to share his vision for the future is
critical, given that it affects “the world’s largest minority,” noting
that more than a billion people have disabilities, according to the
World Health Organization.
“With aging boomers — the largest population cohort on the planet —
this number will accelerate dramatically over the next 20 to 30 years,”
Hansen added.
“It’s not something that just affects a few people — it affects all of us.”
Hansen said he has been amazed by people with disabilities who have
“transformed and transcended” their fields and made contributions to the
world, from entertainer Stevie Wonder to theoretical physicist Stephen
Hawking.
“I hope that
by being selected that really I can shine a light on this important,
necessary global movement and some of the issues to consider, and
perhaps leave a challenge for others to get involved, to make a
difference and to help join this ultramarathon of social change.”
Preview of world’s first 3D printed book Genius: 100 Visions of the Future. HO •CP
We have to create; it is the only thing louder than destruction.
Canada's Man in Motion - how cool is that #RickHansen
Earle and Don used to come to our home in the 70s ... he signed a print for me and sent me a hand painted postcard..... he loved that i called him a dirty little man..... and one of the few that would actually eat my cooking....... God how we loved u and your brother.... disabilities... what disabilities.... u were rip rawing funny with a potty mouth..... :) and your art.... oh God loved loves you sir...
For Love of the Arts: Paintings by Lunenburg artist Earl Bailly up for grabs at auction
Acclaimed Lunenburg artist Earl Bailly
An exciting live art auction this month could put you in an exclusive
club with members like Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and
Britain’s Royal Family.
They all own paintings by acclaimed Lunenburg artist Earl Bailly, and you could snag your own at For Love of the Arts -- a fundraiser in support of the Lunenburg Foundation for the Arts on September 17.
Bailly’s niece, Suzanne, says there was a polio epidemic in Lunenburg when her uncle was two years old. Although his brother, George, also contracted the disease, it was Earl who had it the worst of anyone in town.
“He was barely a toddler and he was paralyzed from the neck down. He wasn’t expected to live for very long,” says Suzanne. “But out of all of the folks in town who had it, he lived the longest.”
Earl learned to hold a pencil in his mouth to write, and that led to experimenting with ink sketches, watercolours and oils. Suzanne grew up living on the top level of her grandparents’ house, with Earl living downstairs. Looking after Earl was something that was simply a part of her life. He had a studio and gallery where tourists would come in to look at his work, and she remembers his paintings being in every nook and cranny of the house.
Acclaimed Lunenburg artist Earl Bailly.
Before he got an electric wheelchair and custom motorized easel, it was
Suzanne and her brother who wheeled him up to his canvases — and then
back again, when he needed to see them from a distance.
Suzanne says she’s always credited exceptional care for her uncle’s long, rich life. Her father, Donald, was born 10 years after Earl and grew up caring for his younger brother. As soon as he started walking, he would pick up items his brother dropped and bring him what he needed. Donald went on to become Earl’s chief caregiver and helped him do everything he wanted to do.
“He left school at 15, lied about his age, got his license, and took Earl to Florida in an old car,” says Suzanne. “Earl was always the brains and Dad was the brawn. Earl wanted to see everything and he loved the feeling of the wind in his face.”
She remembers watching her father stand up in a rowboat with Earl in his arms, stepping carefully into a speedboat to take him on a joyride.
“My dad made sure Earl had all of the adventures he wanted to have,” says Suzanne. “Everyone — his brothers, my grandparents — made sure he had a real life.”
She speaks fondly of a man who read voraciously, listened to opera on CBC Radio 2 and had a lovely singing voice. He never painted during the summer months because he preferred to be zooming around in his convertible, and maintained a strict schedule of painting only between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. during the rest of the year.
Suzanne and her brother donated one of their uncle’s paintings to the auction because the funds raised will be going towards curating a permanent display of Earl’s paintings in the old Lunenburg Academy — which the Lunenburg Foundation for the Arts plans to open before the end of the year.
She says the Bailly family is grateful her uncle’s work will be treasured for years to come in the collection.
Lunenburg Art Auction.
“It was always my father’s dream that Earl’s name would not be forgotten,” says Suzanne.
Trish Topshee is helping to organize the auction and says the committee hopes to raise $20,000 to fund the Earl Bailly Centre. More than 30 artists have offered up pieces to be auctioned off for the cause.
“We’re pleased to have pieces from so many well-known Maritime artists,” says Topshee. “The committee is working hard to make sure it’s a fun and successful event, and there are great pieces to be auctioned off.”
Along with pieces by Earl Bailly, guests can purchase works by Jeanne Aisthorpe-Smith, Hangama Amiri, Alan Bateman, Wayne Boucher, Holly Carr, Kate Church, Rosemary Clarke Young, Richard Crowe, Ruth Flower, Doretta Groenendyk, Brad Hall, Tony Hughes, Sandi Komst, Ron Kuwahara, F. Scott MacLeod, Shelley Mitchell, Bradford Naugler, Susan Paterson, Harold Pearse, Don Pentz, Ed Porter, Joseph Purcell, Peter Redden, Patricia Rhinelander, William Rogers, Alan Syliboy, Anna Syperek, Brenda Thebeau and Brad Wiseman.
IF YOU GO
WHAT: For Love of the Arts: an art auction fundraiser in support of the Lunenburg Foundation for the Arts
WHEN: Saturday, Sept. 17 from 4 p.m to 7 p.m.
WHERE: Lunenburg Opera House (290 Lincoln St.)TICKETS: $35 (includes wine and hors d’oeuvres) available at eventbrite.ca or Shop on the Corner (263 Lincoln St. in Lunenburg)
MORE INFO: www.lunenburgartsfoundation.ca
They all own paintings by acclaimed Lunenburg artist Earl Bailly, and you could snag your own at For Love of the Arts -- a fundraiser in support of the Lunenburg Foundation for the Arts on September 17.
Bailly’s niece, Suzanne, says there was a polio epidemic in Lunenburg when her uncle was two years old. Although his brother, George, also contracted the disease, it was Earl who had it the worst of anyone in town.
“He was barely a toddler and he was paralyzed from the neck down. He wasn’t expected to live for very long,” says Suzanne. “But out of all of the folks in town who had it, he lived the longest.”
Earl learned to hold a pencil in his mouth to write, and that led to experimenting with ink sketches, watercolours and oils. Suzanne grew up living on the top level of her grandparents’ house, with Earl living downstairs. Looking after Earl was something that was simply a part of her life. He had a studio and gallery where tourists would come in to look at his work, and she remembers his paintings being in every nook and cranny of the house.
Acclaimed Lunenburg artist Earl Bailly.
Before he got an electric wheelchair and custom motorized easel, it was
Suzanne and her brother who wheeled him up to his canvases — and then
back again, when he needed to see them from a distance.Suzanne says she’s always credited exceptional care for her uncle’s long, rich life. Her father, Donald, was born 10 years after Earl and grew up caring for his younger brother. As soon as he started walking, he would pick up items his brother dropped and bring him what he needed. Donald went on to become Earl’s chief caregiver and helped him do everything he wanted to do.
“He left school at 15, lied about his age, got his license, and took Earl to Florida in an old car,” says Suzanne. “Earl was always the brains and Dad was the brawn. Earl wanted to see everything and he loved the feeling of the wind in his face.”
She remembers watching her father stand up in a rowboat with Earl in his arms, stepping carefully into a speedboat to take him on a joyride.
“My dad made sure Earl had all of the adventures he wanted to have,” says Suzanne. “Everyone — his brothers, my grandparents — made sure he had a real life.”
She speaks fondly of a man who read voraciously, listened to opera on CBC Radio 2 and had a lovely singing voice. He never painted during the summer months because he preferred to be zooming around in his convertible, and maintained a strict schedule of painting only between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. during the rest of the year.
Suzanne and her brother donated one of their uncle’s paintings to the auction because the funds raised will be going towards curating a permanent display of Earl’s paintings in the old Lunenburg Academy — which the Lunenburg Foundation for the Arts plans to open before the end of the year.
She says the Bailly family is grateful her uncle’s work will be treasured for years to come in the collection.
Lunenburg Art Auction.
“It was always my father’s dream that Earl’s name would not be forgotten,” says Suzanne.Trish Topshee is helping to organize the auction and says the committee hopes to raise $20,000 to fund the Earl Bailly Centre. More than 30 artists have offered up pieces to be auctioned off for the cause.
“We’re pleased to have pieces from so many well-known Maritime artists,” says Topshee. “The committee is working hard to make sure it’s a fun and successful event, and there are great pieces to be auctioned off.”
Along with pieces by Earl Bailly, guests can purchase works by Jeanne Aisthorpe-Smith, Hangama Amiri, Alan Bateman, Wayne Boucher, Holly Carr, Kate Church, Rosemary Clarke Young, Richard Crowe, Ruth Flower, Doretta Groenendyk, Brad Hall, Tony Hughes, Sandi Komst, Ron Kuwahara, F. Scott MacLeod, Shelley Mitchell, Bradford Naugler, Susan Paterson, Harold Pearse, Don Pentz, Ed Porter, Joseph Purcell, Peter Redden, Patricia Rhinelander, William Rogers, Alan Syliboy, Anna Syperek, Brenda Thebeau and Brad Wiseman.
IF YOU GO
WHAT: For Love of the Arts: an art auction fundraiser in support of the Lunenburg Foundation for the Arts
WHEN: Saturday, Sept. 17 from 4 p.m to 7 p.m.
WHERE: Lunenburg Opera House (290 Lincoln St.)TICKETS: $35 (includes wine and hors d’oeuvres) available at eventbrite.ca or Shop on the Corner (263 Lincoln St. in Lunenburg)
MORE INFO: www.lunenburgartsfoundation.ca
http://thechronicleherald.ca/artslife/1392346-for-love-of-the-arts-paintings-by-lunenburg-artist-earl-bailly-up-for-grabs-at-auct
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8 young blacks killed in black on black wars WTF.-Activist
speaks out after young Halifax man slain, found in trunk http://herald.ca/8cy#.V8A2xWM7HvM.twitter …
----------------------
Tylor McInnis remembered as a devoted father, partner
To his ten-year partner, Tylor McInnis will always be the man who put her and their four children above everything else.
“We always came first. He was always there for our family,” said Tyelisha Voeltz in a phone interview with the Chronicle Herald.
She shared a life with the 26-year-old before his tragic death on Tuesday, Aug. 23. Her baby with McInnis, born in late 2014, was named after another of Voeltz’ family who passed.
Her brother, Tristan Oliver, died in January 2014 at his home of natural causes.
He was a Grade 11 student at J.L. Ilsley High School and captain of the Judges football team. He had been accepted into the army reserves, according to his obituary.
It was important to her that her child with McInnis pay respect to her brother.
“We had a close family, and Tylor and Tristan were close. It seemed only natural to name our girl Tristyn,” she said.
“I respected my brother, and I wanted to do this for him. It was important.”
A day after McInnis’ death, there was a post on a commemorative page for Oliver.
“You've got one more ... angel ... up there with you bro . I love both of you ❤️” said the post from Dylan HHeavy Johnson.
|
Two
residents comfort each other during a memorial walk in memory of Tylor
Donovan McInnis held in North Preston on Sunday. (STAFF)
|
Voeltz’ older daughter, Brooklyn, said her dad was great, and he was an awesome coach. The YMCA leader was the coach of her team before his death.
“He was just such an awesome father. He coached her team, and she loved it,” said Voeltz.
The Basketball Nova Scotia website lists McInnis as the head coach for the Community YMCA Panthers 2 team.
McInnis was found dead in a trunk of a stolen black Honda Civic at the St. Thomas Baptist Church Cemetery in North Preston on August 23.
Mel Lucas, project manager for Ceasefire, said there was already a Sunday barbecue planned, but the march was in response to the death of McInnis.
“We wanted to show unity. The family is grieving, and this young man had a mom, a father, a partner and kids,” he said.
“We need young people to understand that we are all losing when things like this happen. There are so many affected.”
He said this “what goes around comes around” mentality is not helping anyone.
“We need to put our guns down — all of us. We need to all enjoy our time on this earth and enjoy our families,” he said.
“A life is a life. McInnis had a record, but he paid his dues. He was doing what was right for his family. Your background means nothing, and no one should go through what this family is right now.”
Voeltz remembers how McInnis made her feel, and the way he was always there for her.
“He was a good man. I’ll always remember his smile. He was always just smiling,” she said. “I could choose so many memories to share, but all I know is there will never be anyone like him.
“A special person was taken from us. He can’t be replaced, but I know angels can’t stay with us forever.”
RCMP still have not released the cause of death, and have no new information on the case at this point.
They ask those with information to contact them by calling 902-490-5020.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/metro/1392483-tylor-mcinnis-remembered-as-a-devoted-father-partner
---------------------
Should Black Lives Matter Focus on 'Black-on-Black' Murders?
Critics who charge that prioritizing police killings over
other, more prevalent forms of violence misunderstand the purpose and methods
of the movement.
Over the years, John McWhorter, a linguistics
scholar at Columbia University, and Glenn Loury, a Brown University economist,
have conducted a series of thoughtful public conversations about U.S. politics
with a focus on race and black identity. Their latest discussion concerns the
Black Lives Matter movement. Should its activists protest police killings of
black people or all killings of black people? Before I offer a perspective,
here’s a slightly condensed transcript of their exchange:
John McWhorter: The reason Black Lives Matter has a lot of eyes
rolling is not because people don't care about black people and don't
understand the problem with police. The problem is that the typical black man
in a particular kind of community is at much, much more risk of being killed by
another black man. And you can't argue it away. There are all these sophisticated
feints such as saying that there's a difference between the state murdering and
citizens murdering. But none of it goes through.
This high
indignation about one white cop doing a terrible thing looks incongruous given
that in these same communities, hundreds of black men are killing each other
every summer. And so I think, in short, Black Lives Matter is very important.
It could make a very important difference in modern black history. But for it
to be a movement that resonates historically, it has to add a new wing where it
firmly says and stands behind the idea that black lives matter when black
people take them too.
There has to be a
second wing that goes into black communities and works in a real way on the
black-on-black murders. That would make Black Lives Matter complete. As it is
now, it's incomplete and it looks shrill. And the idea that Black Lives Matter
when white people try to take them looks recreational, it looks childish, it
looks peevish, and it's just wrong, it's incomplete.
That's my take on
Black Lives Matter.
Glenn Loury: I don't personally disagree with the sentiment
that you just expressed. But here's what the rebuttal would be, I think. First
people would say, “Yes, there's violence in black communities in low-income
urban black enclaves. Homicide rates are very high. But this is a consequence
of the structural racism that has played out over history and continues to play
out today: that confines people to racially segregated neighborhoods; that
denies people an opportunity to develop their talents and to live decently with
legitimate jobs and so forth; drug trafficking is flourishing; people are
concentrated in public housing; gangs are proliferating; young men are idle, so
there's a structure that accounts for the behavior, and it's unfair to ask a
movement demanding justice from the police to be responsible for patterns of
behavior that are deeply embedded in a system over which black people don't
exercise any control.” Another rebuttal would be, “These are two different
subjects all together. Why are you changing the subject? We came here to talk
about police brutalization of black people. And you tell me about something
else: that young black people brutalize themselves. I can agree with you and
stipulate that the latter is a problem, but it's not the subject I'm trying to
talk about. Why are you trying to change the subject?” Those are two possible
rebuttals to the position that you just stated.
McWhorter: And they fail utterly. I am never more struck than
I am lately about how certain sentences that you here often enough are accepted
as truth until they become almost a kind of music. You take a group of people
who are all the same color and you put them together in neighborhoods where job
opportunities are not great. And the inevitable result is that the men are
going to start killing each other over trivia?
That is an
equation that I don't think any historian or any anthropologist would think of
as applicable to homo sapiens that we know.
A group of people
who are poor, all put together in one place, without a whole lot of opportunity
will start killing one another. No. If you think about it, it would be
considered racist if a white person said that 75 years ago.
But today we're
somehow encouraged to think about that as an “enlightened” or “humane” take on
what goes on in black America. And as far as changing the subject, all you have
to do is think about the mother who just lost her second son. Now go up to her
with a pad and tell her, “Well, this is really sad, but we're really more
interested in things that the state does. We're really more interested in
things that people who are responsible for the public order do. Now the fact
that this was done by somebody who was from three blocks over, well, we're
sorry, that's regrettable, but we're not concerned with that. We're doing this
now.” It seems almost inhumane yet we're supposed to accept that as wisdom.
Loury: You don't believe it's necessarily the case that
because people are poor and concentrated in this way that they have to be
violent––that in a way, it diminishes the humanity of people to say that
they're just gonna be violent because of some environmental circumstance. They
have the volition and moral will to eschew violence despite their deprivation.
But a person might
say, “Look, the state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Agents of
the state who abuse that awesome responsibility constitute a real threat to
democratic values. There's a great deal more at stake here than the personal
safety of an individual. This is about an abuse of power. And the lack of
accountability for agents of the state who abuse power in this way creates a
circumstance in which people are basically terrorized. They may fear
victimization by their neighbor, and the fear may be quite real. That's one
thing. But victimization by the people whose salaries you pay with your tax
money and who are supposedly there to serve and protect you, agents of the
state, the fear of victimization by them is quite another thing altogether.
It's a different order of violation. And it's appropriate to prioritize the
response to these things in the way that Black Lives Matter has done.”
McWhorter: I reject that. I think that argument is hopeless.
That is a wordy, beautifully put argument designed to give people an excuse to
focus on racism as the problem as opposed to the more complex issue of looking
at a Rube-Goldberg sequence of socio-historical events that have led us to an
unfortunate situation where racism from whites may not always be the problem
that we need to face. And it's not that the black men shooting each other are
evil. I understand their humanity too.
But the idea that
democracy is threatened by the white cop whereas if the kid from three blocks
over does it, well he's just an ordinary person? No!
And I am confident
that A.
Philip Randolph, that Martin Luther King, would not agree with that
fancy way of putting it. The situation that we're in now is as if—think about
Selma. Think about watching people coming over that bridge with the terrible
things that happened, and meanwhile over on the other side of the bridge, black
teenagers were killing each other by the dozens every summer. And the idea was,
“No, we're not really going to think about that, because they kinda can't help
it, and that's not important because they're the keepers of public order.”
Imagine what Selma would've looked like if that's what the situation was.
That's where we are now. And no amount of fancy Latinate words can disguise
that simple fact from me or most of America watching.
Airing those viewpoints is a service—and there’s a
lot to chew on that I won’t address here.But it seems to me that the debate about whether to focus on police killings or “black-on-black” killings presumes that reducing the former will not help to reduce the latter.
What if the opposite is true?
Black Lives Matter calls for 10 specific changes to policing policy, including body cameras, an end to “policing for profit,” better training, and stricter limits on the use of force.
If reforms of that sort were implemented in Baltimore, where local police officers operate in a culture where stunning brutality is commonly meted out to innocent residents, or Ferguson, Missouri, where residents suffered through years of misconduct so egregious that most Americans could scarcely conceive of what was going on, wouldn’t it be reasonable to expect that relations between black residents and police would slowly improve?
Wouldn’t better behaved, more accountable, less abusive police departments make people in poor black communities marginally more inclined to involve law enforcement in disputes before they turn deadly, to cooperate more during homicide investigations, and to collaborate with the cops in making their blocks safer?
Those sorts of marginal changes could help to reduce the murder rate.
If the municipal authorities are known to destroy the lives of poor people over minor traffic infractions or to use excessive force so often that they pay out millions in lawsuits—if they abuse and lose the trust of a community over many years—a case can be made that effective, visible reforms are a prerequisite to a relationship between police and residents that is conducive to stopping a murder epidemic.
Black Lives Matter activists are often silent about black-on-black killings. Perhaps that is a P.R. mistake. But the reforms they are urging strike me as a more realistic path to decreasing those killings than publicly haranguing would-be murderers to be peaceful.
Black Lives Matter participants are civic activists, not respected high-school teachers or social workers or reformed gang members who can influence their former brethren.
Since police departments are ultimately responsive to political institutions, fighting for police reforms with civic activism is a relatively straightforward project. Reformers identify what they regard as prudent changes, persuade policymakers and the public that they’re needed, and achieve victory if they get the votes. I think that body cameras could significantly reduce excessive force, so I write articles urging that they be made mandatory with most footage publicly obtainable.
Fighting to stop black-on-black murder is much less straightforward project. And the tools available to civic activists are a much poorer fit for it: the undesirable behavior is already against the law; lots of attention has been paid to the problem for decades, so awareness-raising isn’t all that valuable; and there are few obvious best-practices to spread. More generally, street marches and protests have a rich history of sparking political change… but have they ever persuaded private citizens to kill less? I can imagine Black Lives Matter scoring political points for talking about black-on-black crime; I grant that if all black lives mattering really is the mission, movement rhetoric that ignores the vast majority of black murder victims is discordant; but I don’t see how the activists could help stop those murders.
Perhaps that is a failure of imagination on my part. I’d be curious to know what McWhorter has in mind when he urges Black Lives Matter to add a piece about black-on-black killings. Putting aside the question of public relations, what would that achieve and how? What specifically would McWhorter have the activists say and do? If you’re a reader who feels that Black Lives Matter activists should broaden their focus to all black murder victims, what exactly do you want them to do?*
Email conor@theatlantic.com with your thoughts.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/black-lives-matter-loury-mcwhorter/409117/
---------------------------
Evil and ugly...... why do people protect these monsters..... it’s just like Syria out there .....
Nova Scotia Black Gang Called North Preston’s Finest
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Preston%27s_Finest
------------------------
Dismantled Toronto gang Heart of a King evolved from North Preston's Finest
4 men with Nova Scotia connections charged in large-scale police bust
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/gang-arrest-toronto-north-preston-finest-1.3615623-----------------------------
Notoriously violent BLACK N.S. gang recruiting women, girls and pimping them out in Ontario: police
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/notoriously-violent-n-s-gang-recruiting-girls-and-pimping-them-out-across-southwestern-ontario-police
----------------
A Little Good News- Anne Murray 1983
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqUUQElQ8kM
---------------------
Gun crazy - Halifax- Nova Scotia
With shootings way up in Halifax, we look into how the cops are---and aren’t---responding.
By Mairin Prentiss
Thirty minutes after Halifax rang in the new year, a 16-year-old boy refused to turn over his earrings to a stranger at the Bridge Terminal in Dartmouth. Eighteen-year-old Jerrell Shephard allegedly pulled out a gun and shot the younger boy twice. Once in the chest and once in the head.
Kyle Gallupe survived the gunshots. The police hunted for Shephard for six days until he eventually turned himself in to face charges including attempted murder.
By the end of the month, there were eight more shootings.
Things didn't seem to be changing much from this time last year, which was set ablaze with gunfire.
Last spring, shots were fired through apartment ceilings and doors. Two people were hit with BB guns by the Oxford Theatre, and three people were shot during a fight at a pool hall that spilled out into the street. Others were left bleeding in their cars after drive-by shootings in Dartmouth. One teenager stumbled into a hospital with a shot in his leg. Another was charged with attempted murder after he fired off some rounds near Citadel High School.
By April, 20-year-old Stacey Adams was shot dead and left outside a house on a quiet dirt road in Lake Echo. Police said that Adams was connected to drug trafficking--- something his mother denies---and he knew at least one of the suspects. By the time Steven Skinner, 38, was charged with second-degree murder in Adams' death, there had been 45 shootings in Halifax, matching 2010's entire record. It was only July.
"It certainly wasn't random," Supt. Stephen Sykes of the Halifax Regional Police said during the press conference on the Adams case. "We believe...it's all part of the drug culture. You know, guns and drugs."
By the end of 2011, there were 75 reported shootings.
Police say the rash of gunfire last year was connected to warring factions in the drug trade. But charges didn't come down in the same flurry. The majority of those involved in the shootings---both perpetrators and victims---are not cooperating with the police, says HRP spokesperson Brian Palmeter.
The department confiscated just over 600 guns last year, down from the year before. Meanwhile murders, attempted murders and shootings have all gone up drastically (see graphs, next page).
And police are pinning at least 10 of last year's 19 murders on gangs.
In 2009, Maclean's rated Halifax as having the eighth highest murder rate in Canadian cities, above Toronto (nine), Regina (17), Montreal (22), Ottawa (36) and St. John's (65). Halifax also ranked seventh-highest in aggravated assaults.
The Quick Response Unit typically focuses on "quality of life" issues like break-and-enters, kids setting off fireworks in parks and noise complaints. But after last year's flare-up in gunfire, the plainclothes officers in the unit turned their attention to the skyrocketing rate of shootings.
The QRU formed a task force with members from other units dedicated to trying to address shootings.
That task force ended over the summer because they saw a drop; shortly after there was another spike. But whenever there's a shooting, that's the unit's main priority, explains sergeant Kevin Hovey of the QRU.
Earlier this year, HRP launched a new guns and gangs team in combination with the RCMP. Police spokesperson Theresa Rath explains that idea evolved from the original task force after they realized they needed to have a dedicated team.
For the QRU, taking guns out of the hands of criminals is a lengthy process involving informants, stake-outs and behavioural profiling, adding up to a few days of investigating for each gun.
"We tend to know who they are, and they tend to know who we are," says Hovey assuredly. "But there's a big leap between us knowing who's responsible for shootings and proving it and getting enough grounds to put it into court."
This somewhat cordial acquaintance with their suspects comes of the hours of surveillance required to build those grounds. When the police get a citizen or informant tip that someone is carrying a gun, they generally dedicate two to three days to pursuing that.
"Unfortunately there's not a whole lot that's quick about it," says Hovey. "We get lucky sometimes---we'll catch somebody that's done a shooting real quick. Unfortunately the courts drive the process that we have to go through."
It's not as simple as pinning it on the ever-sparring Spryfield drug families the Melvins and the Marriotts, something Hovey says the media tends to run with.
Last year, he explains, there were three groups exchanging gunfire based in the Timberlea, Spryfield and Dartmouth areas. Overall police say there are six to eight local gangs on their radar.
The shooters they're finding are typically in their teens and 20s, maybe up to their early 30s, Hovey says.
"There's a huge push to focus on those that we suspect are out there shooting and involved in the drug trade," he says, adding that a majority of the armed robberies last year were largely motivated by drug culture as well: "Two thousand eleven was a year that we're hopefully not going to see again."
Watching their suspects' behaviour and body language is part of the waiting game. QRU officers have taken behavioural training courses that give them clues as to whether or not someone's armed. This official way of sizing-up their marks adds to the case for an arrest.
From an unmarked car Hovey's team waits for its targets to make certain sartorial adjustments. If they spy them checking and rechecking waistbands and pockets, that's one of their signs. Criminals don't tend to wear holsters, he explains.
Hovey plays the rest of his cards close to his chest, not wanting to reveal all their tricks. But according to a former US police officer's article on his experience identifying carriers, typically this type of safari-style reconnaissance involves spotting clothing styles "popular with gangs," unzipped jackets when it's cold out, a bulge in hoods or pant hems, an attentive gait such as standing with backs against walls and paying close attention to hands and eyes.
"They have to profile and narrow down the potential suspects," says Christopher Murphy, a Dalhousie University sociologist who studies policing. "But it's a matter of balancing the risk and reward of that strategy and potentially upsetting some people because they were not carrying a gun and they feel they have been stereotyped, versus the possibility you will get a few guns off the streets and some people out of harm's way by doing it.
"It's a judgement call," continues Murphy. "But I think the situation in Halifax has reached a stage where they have to do something other than simply waiting for gun reports to come in over the phone, which is passively reacting after the fact. I'm actually supportive of something that's selective, as long as it's done with some sensitivity and some competence. It's a kind of proactive response by police and it may be warranted under these circumstances."
When they can't catch those gun-slingers who are also practitioners of caution, Hovey's unit turns to something he calls suppression.
"It's not just sitting back and watching them," he explains. "Part of the strategy is suppression---making sure that they know you're there, and if they think that you're there they're not going to be shooting. A lot of times it's difficult to predict what will happen. So when it's happening, and even when it's not, it's about getting out there and focusing on the people that you know that are doing them or suspect are involved in the shootings, and if not catch them with guns, charge them with other criminal offences that hopefully is going to control their behaviour to the point where the shootings end as well."
Sometimes this tactic can be as simple as stopping someone for a motor vehicle infraction and just having a chat.
"The vast majority of guns that we were seizing," says Hovey, "when you start tracing them back, they were either guns that were stolen or obtained in break-and- enters."
He's not sure how thieves would go about finding a home with a cache of guns, but guesses that they likely find them through word of mouth or just plain luck.
While hobby shooters try to stay off the radar---by, for example, keeping their addresses out of the phone book---there are good odds of stumbling across a gun in a Nova Scotian home. In our population of 945,000, we have 300,000 registered firearms---almost one gun for every three people.
Smuggling guns into the country is far more rare. Of the 719 guns the local cops confiscated in 2010, 129 were what they dub "crime guns." Only seven of those were smuggled across the border. Fifty-three were traced back to Canadian homes and shops. The remainder couldn't be traced, but had no signs of being from outside of Canada (see graph).
However, with the source of the arms being fairly clear-cut, there is no specific program to inform legal gun owners of what they can do to prevent this.
"We don't have a theft prevention program," HRP spokesperson Brian Palmeter admits. "But we encourage gun owners to take additional steps above the required ones regarding safe storage, such as disabling the gun so in the event it is stolen it is not operational."
Such victim-focused prevention efforts aren't unusual---recently the HRP slapped some paternalistic reminders on coffee sleeves, urging young women to lock their doors in response to The Sleep Watcher cases.
Regardless, after Bill C-19 gets the expected greenlight from the Senate and government begins to dismantle the Long Gun Registry, police officers' jobs aren't going to get any easier.
"I'd like to see it stay," Hovey says of the registry. "For us it is a huge, huge tool that we can draw on when it comes to tracing guns. It gives us instant access to whether or not the gun is stolen, taken in a break-and- enter, who owns it and where they're from. For me, personally, I'd hate to see it go.
"There's one that always sticks in my mind," recalls Hovey, "when we went back to the owner he said, 'Fifteen years ago, when I went up in my attic, my gun was there.'" That owner had no answer as to when or how it could have gone missing.
Palmeter says not only does the registry make it safer for police, but it adds to their ability to prosecute criminals to the "full extent of the law." The police use the database to connect guns to other offenses---such as possession of stolen property or possession of a weapon obtained by a commission of an offence. Without the ability to differentiate between legally owned or an illegally acquired gun, these charges may be lost and previously legal long guns can move more freely to illegal markets.
"We have to work with what we have. If it is abolished we'll have to find another way to get that information," says Palmeter.
While he can't say what types of weapons were used in murders and attempted murders last year, Palmeter did say that long guns are frequently involved in Halifax shootings.
Last year, over 70 percent of the guns seized were long guns (see graph).
Conservatives argued that the registry targets legal, law-abiding owners, not criminals. But when criminals' guns are being lifted from law-abiders' homes, it's hard to see how they can be considered separate from the issue. And while it may win Harper some support from country gentlemen and freedom fighters, it flies in the face of his tough-on-crime agenda.
In February, Quebec launched a legal battle to save its part of the registry. The province of Nova Scotia said it has no plans to fight for it.
Currently, Canadian police search the database an average of 17,762 times daily, up from 14,000 in 2010.
In a January interview with the CBC, Palmeter said the police department may revisit its gun amnesty program, which first rolled out in 2009: "The guns that we're seeing here in Halifax are being stolen locally, so if we can get people who aren't using their guns to turn them over and get rid of them, then that's one less gun that's potentially able to be put into the hands of a criminal."
In the city of New Orleans, a population about 80,000 above Halifax, there were 199 murders last year. In January 2012, one sheriff's department tried a gun trade-in program offering $50 cash for handguns, rifles and shotguns, and $200 for semi-automatic weapons, with no questions asked.
Halifax had a similar program in 2009, Pixels for Pistols, but our version was a little less alluring. Registered and unregistered guns were accepted in exchange for gifts from the program's partner, Henry's Camera---pocket-sized Sony digital cameras for working guns, and $80 gift cards for non-functional guns.
In both programs the guns were tested to see if their ballistics matched up to a crime. New Orleans' program promised anonymity, while Halifax's program only promised amnesty for a criminal firearm possession charge, but not any other charges that could be connected to the weapon or person---a caveat that seems to channel the "You won the police auction!" ruse.
And Pixels for Pistols was not anonymous. While New Orleans offered drop-off sites, HRP's required gun-packers to email or call to have their firearms picked up.
The Halifax program hauled in 1,074 guns and 10,000 rounds of ammunition during November 2009. In New Orleans, over 400 guns were collected in one day.
While driving on patrol, Halifax Regional Police constable Ann Giffin doesn't keep an eye people strolling in the streets. In between emergency calls and follow-ups, she hunts for expired vehicle licenses, wobbly drivers and shoddy parking jobs.
Unlike US beat cops, she's not looking for gun carriers. Giffin explains that she can't stop anyone on a pure suspicion that they may be have a gun. "This is still Canada, we have rights," she says, laughing.
During her two years with the Halifax Regional Police, she has never personally confiscated a firearm.
Hovey explains combating gunfire all happens behind the curtain. "When you're out on the street as an average citizen, you see that patrol car driving down the road and you see them driving away, you may be thinking they're not really doing anything," he says. "I realize that people don't necessarily see it, but there is a huge effort focusing on the people committing those offences."
When asked why criminals in Halifax are arming themselves now more than ever, Hovey laughs. "I wish I had the answer, I truly do!"
Hovey sees the same people go through the system over and over again. Coming up on his 19th year with the police, he admits he's gotten a little jaded about about it. He'd like to see them stop after they're caught the first time.
The part of the job he takes pride in is looking out for the community.
"There have been cases where innocent people have been caught in the middle of gun fire," he says, "but from what we've seen, generally the participants are willing participants, and somehow involved in the criminal world.
"What drives me and what drives a lot of the people in here is innocent people around that have to put up with the shootings and have to worry about it," he continues. "These are the people that you feel bad for. Even if that bullet is not hitting people, it bothers people."
Criminologist Donald Clairmont backs up Hovey's sentiment. "There is significant recidivism among the young adults involved in serious violence. I suppose we might all feel the same were we in his shoes," says Clairmont, the director of the Atlantic Institute of Criminology at Dalhousie University and facilitator for the 2008 Mayor's Roundtable on Violence.
"At the same time our criminal justice system does punish adults quite severely compared with most other western societies, such as mandatory sentences, and it is about to become even more severe," says Clairmont, referring to the rash of tough-on-crime legislation coming forward. "I would place more emphasis on gang liaison, offender reintegration programs---there are precious few available---and mentoring programs, since we have pretty much exhausted the punishment cupboard that is acceptable in Canadian society."
We hear very little of the lives among the dead and wounded. Kyle Gallupe's and Stacey Adams' parents spoke up about their children, but most remain silent. But as the months passed, those details fade too.
Police are still searching for Steven Skinner, the man accused of killing Adams, his mug sitting idle on the outstanding warrant list for the last eight months.
But there's no easy place to assign blame. An encumbered police force whose chief blames late-night bars and liquor for violence, a government that seeks easy sound-bite-attracted votes over explaining more nuanced measures of public safety, judges who sometimes let those accused of horrendous crimes out on bail or a community that passes on caring for the kids shot down because they weren't innocent bystanders? Perhaps all the above.
Kyle Gallupe survived the gunshots. The police hunted for Shephard for six days until he eventually turned himself in to face charges including attempted murder.
By the end of the month, there were eight more shootings.
Things didn't seem to be changing much from this time last year, which was set ablaze with gunfire.
Last spring, shots were fired through apartment ceilings and doors. Two people were hit with BB guns by the Oxford Theatre, and three people were shot during a fight at a pool hall that spilled out into the street. Others were left bleeding in their cars after drive-by shootings in Dartmouth. One teenager stumbled into a hospital with a shot in his leg. Another was charged with attempted murder after he fired off some rounds near Citadel High School.
By April, 20-year-old Stacey Adams was shot dead and left outside a house on a quiet dirt road in Lake Echo. Police said that Adams was connected to drug trafficking--- something his mother denies---and he knew at least one of the suspects. By the time Steven Skinner, 38, was charged with second-degree murder in Adams' death, there had been 45 shootings in Halifax, matching 2010's entire record. It was only July.
"It certainly wasn't random," Supt. Stephen Sykes of the Halifax Regional Police said during the press conference on the Adams case. "We believe...it's all part of the drug culture. You know, guns and drugs."
By the end of 2011, there were 75 reported shootings.
Police say the rash of gunfire last year was connected to warring factions in the drug trade. But charges didn't come down in the same flurry. The majority of those involved in the shootings---both perpetrators and victims---are not cooperating with the police, says HRP spokesperson Brian Palmeter.
The department confiscated just over 600 guns last year, down from the year before. Meanwhile murders, attempted murders and shootings have all gone up drastically (see graphs, next page).
And police are pinning at least 10 of last year's 19 murders on gangs.
In 2009, Maclean's rated Halifax as having the eighth highest murder rate in Canadian cities, above Toronto (nine), Regina (17), Montreal (22), Ottawa (36) and St. John's (65). Halifax also ranked seventh-highest in aggravated assaults.
The Quick Response Unit typically focuses on "quality of life" issues like break-and-enters, kids setting off fireworks in parks and noise complaints. But after last year's flare-up in gunfire, the plainclothes officers in the unit turned their attention to the skyrocketing rate of shootings.
The QRU formed a task force with members from other units dedicated to trying to address shootings.
That task force ended over the summer because they saw a drop; shortly after there was another spike. But whenever there's a shooting, that's the unit's main priority, explains sergeant Kevin Hovey of the QRU.
Earlier this year, HRP launched a new guns and gangs team in combination with the RCMP. Police spokesperson Theresa Rath explains that idea evolved from the original task force after they realized they needed to have a dedicated team.
For the QRU, taking guns out of the hands of criminals is a lengthy process involving informants, stake-outs and behavioural profiling, adding up to a few days of investigating for each gun.
"We tend to know who they are, and they tend to know who we are," says Hovey assuredly. "But there's a big leap between us knowing who's responsible for shootings and proving it and getting enough grounds to put it into court."
This somewhat cordial acquaintance with their suspects comes of the hours of surveillance required to build those grounds. When the police get a citizen or informant tip that someone is carrying a gun, they generally dedicate two to three days to pursuing that.
"Unfortunately there's not a whole lot that's quick about it," says Hovey. "We get lucky sometimes---we'll catch somebody that's done a shooting real quick. Unfortunately the courts drive the process that we have to go through."
It's not as simple as pinning it on the ever-sparring Spryfield drug families the Melvins and the Marriotts, something Hovey says the media tends to run with.
Last year, he explains, there were three groups exchanging gunfire based in the Timberlea, Spryfield and Dartmouth areas. Overall police say there are six to eight local gangs on their radar.
The shooters they're finding are typically in their teens and 20s, maybe up to their early 30s, Hovey says.
"There's a huge push to focus on those that we suspect are out there shooting and involved in the drug trade," he says, adding that a majority of the armed robberies last year were largely motivated by drug culture as well: "Two thousand eleven was a year that we're hopefully not going to see again."
Watching their suspects' behaviour and body language is part of the waiting game. QRU officers have taken behavioural training courses that give them clues as to whether or not someone's armed. This official way of sizing-up their marks adds to the case for an arrest.
From an unmarked car Hovey's team waits for its targets to make certain sartorial adjustments. If they spy them checking and rechecking waistbands and pockets, that's one of their signs. Criminals don't tend to wear holsters, he explains.
Hovey plays the rest of his cards close to his chest, not wanting to reveal all their tricks. But according to a former US police officer's article on his experience identifying carriers, typically this type of safari-style reconnaissance involves spotting clothing styles "popular with gangs," unzipped jackets when it's cold out, a bulge in hoods or pant hems, an attentive gait such as standing with backs against walls and paying close attention to hands and eyes.
"They have to profile and narrow down the potential suspects," says Christopher Murphy, a Dalhousie University sociologist who studies policing. "But it's a matter of balancing the risk and reward of that strategy and potentially upsetting some people because they were not carrying a gun and they feel they have been stereotyped, versus the possibility you will get a few guns off the streets and some people out of harm's way by doing it.
"It's a judgement call," continues Murphy. "But I think the situation in Halifax has reached a stage where they have to do something other than simply waiting for gun reports to come in over the phone, which is passively reacting after the fact. I'm actually supportive of something that's selective, as long as it's done with some sensitivity and some competence. It's a kind of proactive response by police and it may be warranted under these circumstances."
When they can't catch those gun-slingers who are also practitioners of caution, Hovey's unit turns to something he calls suppression.
"It's not just sitting back and watching them," he explains. "Part of the strategy is suppression---making sure that they know you're there, and if they think that you're there they're not going to be shooting. A lot of times it's difficult to predict what will happen. So when it's happening, and even when it's not, it's about getting out there and focusing on the people that you know that are doing them or suspect are involved in the shootings, and if not catch them with guns, charge them with other criminal offences that hopefully is going to control their behaviour to the point where the shootings end as well."
Sometimes this tactic can be as simple as stopping someone for a motor vehicle infraction and just having a chat.
"The vast majority of guns that we were seizing," says Hovey, "when you start tracing them back, they were either guns that were stolen or obtained in break-and- enters."
He's not sure how thieves would go about finding a home with a cache of guns, but guesses that they likely find them through word of mouth or just plain luck.
While hobby shooters try to stay off the radar---by, for example, keeping their addresses out of the phone book---there are good odds of stumbling across a gun in a Nova Scotian home. In our population of 945,000, we have 300,000 registered firearms---almost one gun for every three people.
Smuggling guns into the country is far more rare. Of the 719 guns the local cops confiscated in 2010, 129 were what they dub "crime guns." Only seven of those were smuggled across the border. Fifty-three were traced back to Canadian homes and shops. The remainder couldn't be traced, but had no signs of being from outside of Canada (see graph).
However, with the source of the arms being fairly clear-cut, there is no specific program to inform legal gun owners of what they can do to prevent this.
"We don't have a theft prevention program," HRP spokesperson Brian Palmeter admits. "But we encourage gun owners to take additional steps above the required ones regarding safe storage, such as disabling the gun so in the event it is stolen it is not operational."
Such victim-focused prevention efforts aren't unusual---recently the HRP slapped some paternalistic reminders on coffee sleeves, urging young women to lock their doors in response to The Sleep Watcher cases.
Regardless, after Bill C-19 gets the expected greenlight from the Senate and government begins to dismantle the Long Gun Registry, police officers' jobs aren't going to get any easier.
"I'd like to see it stay," Hovey says of the registry. "For us it is a huge, huge tool that we can draw on when it comes to tracing guns. It gives us instant access to whether or not the gun is stolen, taken in a break-and- enter, who owns it and where they're from. For me, personally, I'd hate to see it go.
"There's one that always sticks in my mind," recalls Hovey, "when we went back to the owner he said, 'Fifteen years ago, when I went up in my attic, my gun was there.'" That owner had no answer as to when or how it could have gone missing.
Palmeter says not only does the registry make it safer for police, but it adds to their ability to prosecute criminals to the "full extent of the law." The police use the database to connect guns to other offenses---such as possession of stolen property or possession of a weapon obtained by a commission of an offence. Without the ability to differentiate between legally owned or an illegally acquired gun, these charges may be lost and previously legal long guns can move more freely to illegal markets.
"We have to work with what we have. If it is abolished we'll have to find another way to get that information," says Palmeter.
While he can't say what types of weapons were used in murders and attempted murders last year, Palmeter did say that long guns are frequently involved in Halifax shootings.
Last year, over 70 percent of the guns seized were long guns (see graph).
Conservatives argued that the registry targets legal, law-abiding owners, not criminals. But when criminals' guns are being lifted from law-abiders' homes, it's hard to see how they can be considered separate from the issue. And while it may win Harper some support from country gentlemen and freedom fighters, it flies in the face of his tough-on-crime agenda.
In February, Quebec launched a legal battle to save its part of the registry. The province of Nova Scotia said it has no plans to fight for it.
Currently, Canadian police search the database an average of 17,762 times daily, up from 14,000 in 2010.
In a January interview with the CBC, Palmeter said the police department may revisit its gun amnesty program, which first rolled out in 2009: "The guns that we're seeing here in Halifax are being stolen locally, so if we can get people who aren't using their guns to turn them over and get rid of them, then that's one less gun that's potentially able to be put into the hands of a criminal."
In the city of New Orleans, a population about 80,000 above Halifax, there were 199 murders last year. In January 2012, one sheriff's department tried a gun trade-in program offering $50 cash for handguns, rifles and shotguns, and $200 for semi-automatic weapons, with no questions asked.
Halifax had a similar program in 2009, Pixels for Pistols, but our version was a little less alluring. Registered and unregistered guns were accepted in exchange for gifts from the program's partner, Henry's Camera---pocket-sized Sony digital cameras for working guns, and $80 gift cards for non-functional guns.
In both programs the guns were tested to see if their ballistics matched up to a crime. New Orleans' program promised anonymity, while Halifax's program only promised amnesty for a criminal firearm possession charge, but not any other charges that could be connected to the weapon or person---a caveat that seems to channel the "You won the police auction!" ruse.
And Pixels for Pistols was not anonymous. While New Orleans offered drop-off sites, HRP's required gun-packers to email or call to have their firearms picked up.
The Halifax program hauled in 1,074 guns and 10,000 rounds of ammunition during November 2009. In New Orleans, over 400 guns were collected in one day.
While driving on patrol, Halifax Regional Police constable Ann Giffin doesn't keep an eye people strolling in the streets. In between emergency calls and follow-ups, she hunts for expired vehicle licenses, wobbly drivers and shoddy parking jobs.
Unlike US beat cops, she's not looking for gun carriers. Giffin explains that she can't stop anyone on a pure suspicion that they may be have a gun. "This is still Canada, we have rights," she says, laughing.
During her two years with the Halifax Regional Police, she has never personally confiscated a firearm.
Hovey explains combating gunfire all happens behind the curtain. "When you're out on the street as an average citizen, you see that patrol car driving down the road and you see them driving away, you may be thinking they're not really doing anything," he says. "I realize that people don't necessarily see it, but there is a huge effort focusing on the people committing those offences."
When asked why criminals in Halifax are arming themselves now more than ever, Hovey laughs. "I wish I had the answer, I truly do!"
Hovey sees the same people go through the system over and over again. Coming up on his 19th year with the police, he admits he's gotten a little jaded about about it. He'd like to see them stop after they're caught the first time.
The part of the job he takes pride in is looking out for the community.
"There have been cases where innocent people have been caught in the middle of gun fire," he says, "but from what we've seen, generally the participants are willing participants, and somehow involved in the criminal world.
"What drives me and what drives a lot of the people in here is innocent people around that have to put up with the shootings and have to worry about it," he continues. "These are the people that you feel bad for. Even if that bullet is not hitting people, it bothers people."
Criminologist Donald Clairmont backs up Hovey's sentiment. "There is significant recidivism among the young adults involved in serious violence. I suppose we might all feel the same were we in his shoes," says Clairmont, the director of the Atlantic Institute of Criminology at Dalhousie University and facilitator for the 2008 Mayor's Roundtable on Violence.
"At the same time our criminal justice system does punish adults quite severely compared with most other western societies, such as mandatory sentences, and it is about to become even more severe," says Clairmont, referring to the rash of tough-on-crime legislation coming forward. "I would place more emphasis on gang liaison, offender reintegration programs---there are precious few available---and mentoring programs, since we have pretty much exhausted the punishment cupboard that is acceptable in Canadian society."
We hear very little of the lives among the dead and wounded. Kyle Gallupe's and Stacey Adams' parents spoke up about their children, but most remain silent. But as the months passed, those details fade too.
Police are still searching for Steven Skinner, the man accused of killing Adams, his mug sitting idle on the outstanding warrant list for the last eight months.
But there's no easy place to assign blame. An encumbered police force whose chief blames late-night bars and liquor for violence, a government that seeks easy sound-bite-attracted votes over explaining more nuanced measures of public safety, judges who sometimes let those accused of horrendous crimes out on bail or a community that passes on caring for the kids shot down because they weren't innocent bystanders? Perhaps all the above.
Mairin Prentiss is a freelance writer living in Halifax.
http://www.thecoast.ca/halifax/gun-crazy/Content?oid=3039425
-----------------------------
WHERE COPS JUST WON’T GO.....
HALIFAX’S DIRTY LITTLE SECRET- where the cops do nothing
Where the sidewalk
ends
Walking after midnight near Pizza Corner, a couple is chosen at random and viciously beaten by a group of young people. They are given no warning. They are not robbed.
By Bruce Wark
Giles
Oland and his girlfriend Dawn MacPhee discovered what one expert calls
“Halifax’s dirty little secret” on a Friday night last October. The couple, in
their late twenties, spent a relaxing evening enjoying dinner with friends at a
downtown restaurant. They stopped for a nightcap at a bar on Argyle and then,
at about 1am, started heading toward their homes on Tower Road in the city’s
south end. They walked up Blowers Street to Pizza Corner and turned left on
Grafton. “Right in front of the Black Market, there were five or six
individuals who surrounded us and kicked me in the stomach and then punched me
in the face,” Oland says. “It was a very surreal moment for us because we didn’t
expect it. They gave us a look like, ‘You’re not going to get by here’,” he
adds. “It was more a feeling of disbelief than anything else,” MacPhee says.
“Just total shock that someone would be laying a hand on either one of us when
all we’re doing is walking up the street to go home.”
“We soon realized that we weren’t getting by without further violence,”
Oland says, “so we turned around and walked across Blowers Street to Pizza
Corner and we were only there maybe five or 10 seconds when I looked down Blowers
Street and saw a marked police Durango slowly driving toward us. When it got to
the corner, we approached it. We told the cop that we’d been assaulted and
tried to get across our sense of,” Oland pauses, searching for the right word,
“our sense of worry about what had just happened and we asked him to do
something.”
To their surprise, the officer told Oland and MacPhee there was nothing he
could do. “We more or less started pleading with him to do something,” Oland
says. “Eventually he asked which group was it and we pointed out the
perpetrators to him and again he said there was nothing he could do. And we
said there’s gotta be something you can do.”
MacPhee is still angry at the Halifax officer. “He could have put us in the
back of his cruiser and driven us one block up the street and dropped us off on
Spring Garden Road and everything would have been fine,” she says. “I see it as
a failure on his part that he didn’t put any effort into protecting us.”
Instead the officer promised he’d keep an eye on them. But as MacPhee and Oland
crossed Grafton Street, he abandoned them and drove off toward Spring Garden
Road. “Everyone saw us talking to the police, which escalated the situation I
think,” MacPhee adds. As the couple headed toward the Spring Garden Library,
they suddenly faced a much larger group of hostile young people.
Dalhousie professor Chris Murphy says stories like Oland and MacPhee’s
illustrate Halifax’s “dirty little secret,” the high rate of violent crime in a
relatively small maritime city. “I’ve had at least five or six students over
the last two or three years talk about being seriously beaten up or one of
their friends being seriously beaten up in downtown Halifax,” Murphy says.
“We’re talking about people who were hospitalized, broken jaws, broken arms,
not just simple scares or rough-ups, but quite serious assaults in places like
the Commons, Spring Garden Road and other parts of downtown.”
Murphy, who’s been studying crime patterns for a quarter of a century,
points to a Statistics Canada study called “Criminal Victimization in Canada,
2004.” The study, released last fall, is based on a survey of nearly 24,000
Canadian households. It shows Halifax had the highest violent crime rate among
the 17 Canadian cities surveyed, with 229 violent incidents for every 1,000
people over 15. Edmonton was second with a rate of 191, while Saint John scored
173 and Toronto and Vancouver, 107 each.
Murphy wishes city politicians and police would make our crime rate less
secret by talking about it more often. “The kind of crime that is increasingly
disturbing,” Murphy adds “is what is euphemistically referred to as street
assaults or swarmings. These are quite a distinctive kind of violent crime
because they occur in public places and they’re unprovoked in the sense that
the victims are innocent and often unconnected with the offenders.”
A search of newspaper archives and police crime reports quickly turns up
dozens of such assaults—so many that they seem to be part of the city’s daily
routine. Some are more memorable than others. In two separate incidents last
spring, for example, young thugs, each wearing one boxing glove, punched and
robbed female victims in the city’s north end. A Halifax musician ended up
unconscious in hospital with head and back injuries after being beaten, kicked
and robbed last summer on the Halifax Common. A Dalhousie soccer player
underwent three emergency operations last fall for uncontrollable bleeding
after being punched in the face and robbed in the downtown core. Two elderly
victims were beaten and robbed this spring as they returned to their north end
apartments. One, an 82-year-old woman, was rushed to hospital with a broken arm
as well as shoulder and facial injuries. Sometimes the incidents aren’t
reported to police because victims are embarrassed or fear further attacks. But
news of them spreads by word of mouth: a young man jumped by kids and punched
in the face; a young woman knocked off her bike with a two-by-four and another
assaulted with a bicycle chain.
The incidents happen all over the city. A Nova Scotia Supreme Court judge
called a highly publicized swarming at Pizza Corner in 2002, a “barbaric…act of
senseless brutality and violence.” Up to 15 assailants kicked and punched a man
in a series of unprovoked attacks. They also pelted him with rocks. The victim
needed 15 stitches to close a gash in his mouth and five staples to repair a
wound in the back of his head. The court heard that he still suffers from
headaches and memory loss. In August, when he sentenced two women to jail time
for the attacks, judge Joseph Kennedy called the assaults “absolutely,
completely, uncontrolled, mindless violence. Gratuitous, stupid, mindless
violence.” He added that crimes such as this are making people afraid to walk
the streets of Halifax.
Professor Murphy says what makes these violent incidents “both troubling
and puzzling” is that although there are sometimes thefts involved, money isn’t
the main motivation. “There usually is nothing much to gain other than the
sheer pleasure of intimidating victims and causing other people to be hurt,” he
adds. “On the surface, it looks like neither the municipal government nor the
police have figured out a way to respond to this effectively yet.”
Murphy says the Oland and MacPhee incident illustrates a phenomenon that
those who study crime call FIDO. The acronym stands for “Fuck It and Drive On,”
although during our interview, Murphy refers to it more diplomatically as
“Forget It and Drive On.” He says it reflects the sense that not much can be
done about this kind of crime, so police simply drive away.
“I’m not saying that the police aren’t concerned, but we haven’t seen any
kind of clear response other than their hands are tied by the Young Offender’s
Act,” Murphy says, referring to the often-repeated argument that young people
flout the law because they know they won’t get punished severely even if they
are caught. Murphy says it’s time that municipal politicians and police sat
down with community leaders and ordinary folk to discuss a range of solutions,
including a greater police presence in potentially dangerous areas, more
recreational alternatives for young people and heightened public awareness of
violent crime.
Giles Oland and Dawn MacPhee still have trouble coming to terms with what
happened after the Halifax police officer abandoned them at Pizza Corner. The
couple crossed Grafton Street heading in the direction of the Spring Garden
Library. As they passed in front of St. David’s church, they encountered a
group of about 15 young people. “A big fat woman got off the wall and kicked
Dawn in the stomach and Dawn went flying towards the parked cars,” Oland says.
He was surrounded by a half dozen young men who started punching him in the
head. “The next thing I know I’m on the ground, I’m on my side and I’m just
holding my head and I’m just I guess what they call ‘boot fucked,’ getting my
head kicked. You’re lying on the ground and you wonder, could this go on
forever?”
“There was a big commotion of people around me,” MacPhee says, “keeping me
away from what was going on with Giles.” The attackers said nothing as the
beating continued. Then, after about 30 seconds, they fled, fearing perhaps
that someone had called the police. “All of a sudden everyone just kind of
dispersed,” MacPhee remembers. Some of the attackers jumped in cars, others
just seemed to vanish. Oland remembers raising his head and seeing MacPhee
limping toward him. “I realized I was just gushing blood everywhere,” he says.
“The two of us were sort of staggering around,” MacPhee says. “I remember
feeling completely upset and scared and worried about Giles and just in utter
disbelief at how this could happen.”
Frank Beazley steps from behind his
big desk and extends his hand in a warm greeting. The chief’s spacious
office is upstairs in the ugly, red-brick fortress on Gottingen Street that
serves as police headquarters. The building may be intimidating, but the
silver-haired Beazley is not. Instead of barricading himself behind his big desk,
he sits down in an office chair and speaks in a quiet, clear voice about his
work as the city’s top cop.
“Speaking from a chief’s perspective, I lock up about 5,000 to 7,000 people
a year,” he says in his kindly way. Beazley acknowledges he’s disappointed that
the latest StatsCan study ranks Halifax as Canada’s most violent city, but he
admits he isn’t surprised. “Halifax historically has been in the top five or
six,” he says. “But no one wants to be number one, especially for things like
this.”
The StatsCan survey numbers are higher than the department’s own figures
because only about a third of violent assaults are ever reported to police. But
Beazley says the department’s figures do show that the city’s violent crime
rate has risen over the last couple of years. He adds, though, that about 70
percent of violent crime involves what he terms low-level assaults. “Most of
it’s driven by the very nature of our community. We have universities, we have
30,000 to 40,000 young people move in every fall and leave in the spring. It’s
a port city. It’s a military base. There’s about 200 licensed establishments
east of Robie Street in the downtown core. So with all of that and all the
activity and all the people, that sometimes drives our numbers up.”
Beazley acknowledges that the StatsCan study points out that young people,
and especially students, are particularly vulnerable to violent crime. StatsCan
reports that’s because young people participate in more evening activities such
as going to bars or visiting friends. Beazley explains it’s the first time away
from home for many university students. “They’ve got a pocketful of money and
they start getting into parties,” he says. “They get into the downtown area and
they get into fights. So that’s what drives your victimization numbers up. As
the study tells you, the profile of people who commit these types of crimes and
the profile of the people who are the victims is almost the same. They’re
people ages 14, 15 to about 23.”
Beazley has been a Halifax cop for 36 years and he knows the city well.
“Back in the ’60s, Halifax was like a lot of other cities,” he says. “The
business core was deteriorating. Businesses moved away. What saved the downtown
was really the entertainment industry. But that brings a different clientele
into the downtown area.”
Lately, Beazley has been talking more openly about Halifax’s dirty little
secret. In February, he told the Halifax Chamber of Commerce that police are
studying the emergence of six new street gangs that didn’t exist a year-and-half
ago. Gang members are between 12 and 22, he said. “A lot of these young people
that are in these groups come from areas of poverty and public housing,” he
tells me. “They’re people who may be on the social welfare system, from
single-parent families.” Dealing with street gangs and other youth crime, he
says, involves providing better recreation for young people, educating them
about crime and using what’s known as “community-based policing.”
“From the policing side, we’ve changed our whole patrol strategy in the
past year,” Beazley says. “We’re calling it our community response approach to
violence and crime. We’ve narrowed down the geographic areas of patrol. We’re
calling sectors and we’re putting patrol cars into smaller geographic areas so
they get to know even better.” There are five sectors or zones in the city’s
central area, for example. Much of the downtown from Spring Garden Road to
North Street and from Robie to the Halifax waterfront falls within zone four.
The chief also acknowledges the importance of getting officers out of their
patrol cars more often so they can talk to people on the street. “That has to
enhance the sense of safety when people get to know officers better. That’s why
we have the new bicycle beat patrol. It’s almost like what was old is new
again.”
The bicycle patrol consists of two officers assigned during daylight hours
to downtown Halifax and Dartmouth. As for beat patrols, the department says
officers are walking beats in the Gottingen Street “uptown” area 24 hours a
day. Another officer has been assigned to patrol a beat on Spring Garden Road
at varying times, five days a week. And a “community response” officer patrols
north-end Dartmouth. Meanwhile, the department’s business plan calls for
another foot patrol in downtown Halifax as well as additional foot and bicycle
patrols in north-end Dartmouth.
Beazley looks uncomfortable when I ask him about the officer driving away
from Pizza Corner on the night that Giles Oland and Dawn MacPhee were
assaulted. Oland says he has discussed the incident informally with various
members of the police department. He asked to speak to the officer involved so
he could find out why he drove away, but says his request went nowhere. Chief
Beazley says it’s hard for him to comment because he doesn’t know the details
of the case.
“The downtown core is just so busy on most nights of the week and I can
remember myself working it in the mid-’90s and there would be 400 to 500 young
people down in that particular area coming and going,” Beazley says. “You’re
kind of watching out for the bigger group and you’re trying to prevent
something like this from happening as well as investigate complaints when you
get a call,” he adds. “What I would have said to those folks if they weren’t
satisfied with the police approach that night, they should have come in and
filed an official complaint with me so I could have a look and see if we did do
something that wasn’t correct.”
On the day that I meet Mayor Peter Kelly in his office at City Hall, the Daily
News carries a huge front-page headline in capital letters: “RANDOM ACTS
OF…VIOLENCE.” It’s a direct quote from provincial court judge Jamie Campbell,
who denied bail to two teens, 14 and 15 years old, after hearing about a series
of violent attacks the weekend before in Dartmouth. Two men had been stabbed
and two others badly beaten by what appeared to be a roving band of youths
sporting blue bandanas similar to ones worn by a gang in Los Angeles. Only two
of the victims were robbed. The newspaper quoted the crown attorney as saying
one suspect told police “they just liked hitting people.”
Mayor Kelly frowns when I ask what goes through his mind when he sees
stories like this. “For me, it’s concern for communities within HRM,” he
replies. “Concern for our residents and concern for the approach that the
courts have applied in the past.” The mayor explains that judges have generally
been too lenient with young offenders, sometimes letting them go free even
after they’ve broken the terms of their probations and committed fresh crimes.
Kelly says he’s glad that in this case, the judge refused bail. “It’s a very
positive sign to me,” he adds. “I now see a desire of the court to be more
responsive to these types of situations.”
Kelly says the city is responding to violent crime partly by hiring more
police officers. Until now, new officers have simply replaced retiring ones.
But in October, the force will be getting 16 extra cops. Kelly also talks about
the increased emphasis on community policing with more cops walking beats. He
says he’d like to see the federal government bring in stiffer penalties for
young offenders and he wishes the province would provide financial support for
municipal
policing. (Kelly may get part of what he wants if premier Rodney
MacDonald’s new government keeps its recent campaign promise to provide
financing for 250 more officers across the province over the next four years.)
In the meantime, Kelly says the city is developing partnerships with social
service agencies and schools to provide more recreation for young people as
well as arts and after-school programs. The mayor insists the city is taking
violent crime seriously. “Should we be doing more?” he asks. “Yes we should.
Are we going to be doing more?” he asks again. “Yes we are.”
Councillor Dawn Sloane, the municipal politician who represents downtown
Halifax, is also a big fan of community policing. She supports Chief Beazley’s
new patrol policies. But she also says residents themselves need to do more
about crime. “I see our neighbourhoods around here as almost becoming
close-curtained because society has come to the conclusion that we’ll let the
police handle it. I don’t think that’s how we should be living,” Sloane says.
“I think people need to reclaim their communities and say, ‘I live at Pizza
Corner, but I live upstairs. If I hear something, I’m not just going to ignore
it. I’m going to take a look and see if I can help.’”
Sloane says the city should consider installing surveillance cameras in
areas like Pizza Corner, an idea the mayor and Chief Beazley also mentioned. “I
don’t see a problem with it, to tell you the truth. Because you know what? If
you’re doing something wrong, then you’d get caught. If you’re not doing
anything wrong, what does it matter?” she asks. “The amount of times that
you’re actually caught on camera in a day, just think about it. You’re going
across the bridge, you’re going to a bank machine, you walk into any mall or
any government-owned building, walk into a hospital. You’re on tape at all
these places. So having one on a corner which is known as a dangerous area, I
don’t have a problem with that at all.” Sloane recognizes there would be
opposition from people concerned about protecting privacy. “I hope people
understand that to make sure an area is safe for everyone, sometimes you have
to go to that extreme,” she says. “I would rather have everybody safe and
pissed off. It’s as simple as that.”
Sarah MacLaren, who’s been working with troubled teens for more than a
decade, doesn’t mention surveillance cameras as part of her preferred strategy
for dealing with violent crimes. For the last six years, MacLaren has served as
executive director of a Halifax non-profit group called LOVE. The acronym
stands for Leave Out ViolencE. MacLaren argues that kids who take part in
swarmings and assaults have usually been the victims of violence and abuse
themselves and are angry about it. “Our kids are wandering around with tonnes
of pain and anger,” she says. “We try to get at the root causes. We ask kids
‘What were you really mad about when you beat that person with a hockey
stick?’”
One teen who joined a gang in north end Halifax told MacLaren he had no
family support and no friends but the gang made him feel part of something.
“Race definitely raises its head in our town,” she adds. “We are not a racially
integrated city.” Sometimes that sense of frustration and racial isolation
erupts in violence against innocent bystanders. “We’re not going to do a lot by
taking punitive measures,” MacLaren says. “Kids need support programs,
education programs, et cetera.” They also need more affordable housing and job
opportunities, she says. Most of all, she believes, they need to be consulted.
“I’m in love with teenagers. The kids people cross the street to avoid. They
know what they need, but we rarely ask them. We don’t really consult with the
population we’re supposed to be trying to help.”
Police and paramedics arrived at
Pizza Corner within minutes and drove Giles Oland and Dawn MacPhee to the
hospital, where they spent 15 hours in the emergency department. MacPhee
sustained a few bruises but Oland’s injuries included a broken nose, two black
eyes, severe facial swelling and damaged shoulder ligaments. Oland, a member of
the famous brewing family who runs his own business called halifaxwireless.ca,
was unable to work for a week. He spent the time in bed popping painkillers and
has since undergone physiotherapy for his shoulder. Still, he feels his
injuries could have been much worse. At the hospital, he saw two men with
broken jaws who, he believes, had also been beaten that night at Pizza Corner.
“These people,” he says referring to the young people aged about 17 to 25 who
assaulted him, “weren’t down there eating pizza. They weren’t out at bars or
coming from restaurants. They were there to hurt people and that was their only
goal.”
“I know I can’t walk around this city at night,” MacPhee says. “I get in a
taxi now.” Oland says the assaults he endured at Pizza Corner took his freedom
away. “I don’t go downtown to eat anymore,” he says. “I’ve only been downtown
to eat once since then, maybe twice.”
Professor Chris Murphy says that when people stop going downtown because
they don’t feel safe, it makes things worse because the streets are abandoned
to troublemakers. “You should feel comfortable going downtown on Spring Garden
or going to the Jazz Festival or down to the Buskers’ Festival without being
worried about whether you’re going to be jumped by five or six kids,” Murphy
says. “I don’t have all the answers and I’m not sure any one person does.
That’s why we need to bring people together both within government and outside
of government to discuss this problem and develop a strategic response. You
can’t guarantee absolute safety, but surely there’s something we can do to take
back those streets, those spaces and make them public again.”
http://www.thecoast.ca/halifax/where-the-sidewalk-ends/Content?oid=959264------------------
---------------------
(WHY NOT TORONTO???? VANCOUVER??? MONTREAL???
StatsCan: Halifax worst Canadian city for gun-related violent crime
http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/1202649-statscan-halifax-worst-canadian-city-for-gun-related-violent-crime
--------------------
NOVA SCOTIA- Bus tickets for firearms: Council to consider gun amnesty program
http://thechronicleherald.ca/metro/1394297-bus-tickets-for-firearms-council-to-consider-gun-amnesty-program
------------------------
Op-ed: North
Preston and CBC’s not so finest
KJIPUKTUK (Halifax) – Seemingly forever residents of
North Preston have been reminding Nova Scotians that the historic African
Nova Scotian communities aren’t crime infested slums.
Then along comes the CBC and publishes a story that ignores all
these efforts and pulls out every anti-black stereotype you can imagine.
Just the other day our free daily, Halifax Metro, ran
an excellent story on the great work Miranda Cain is doing in her community.
All on her own this young woman managed to raise money for 12
summer positions. Her group helps seniors cutting grass, and performs other
‘random acts of kindness.”
She named her group North Preston’s Future, or NPF.
That’s also the acronym for North Preston’s Finest, the gang that at one
time originated in the community.
That’s on purpose, Cain told Metro.
“We are a part of Canada’s history as the largest black
community, we should be recognized as such – not as being North Preston’s
Finest where the little 2 or 5 per cent is doing whatever,” Cain told Metro.
“You come here and our community welcomes you with open arms.
People are not afraid to come here, so why are you portraying that in the
media?” Cain said.
That’s a question our national broadcaster should ponder.
CBC’s recent story, Understanding
the North Preston’s Finest Gang, pulls out all the stops. Really, there’s
not a racist stereotype about Black crime that’s not mentioned somehow. Black
men with $100,000 gold chains and cadillacs luring white women into
prostitution, you get the idea.
“There are no businesses there, which really means no
opportunities. What ends up happening is many people in the community, sadly,
end up getting involved in gangs,” journalist Angela MacIvor explains.
“Many.” What does that even mean? It strikes me that Cain
with her” 2 or 5 percent” is closer to the mark.
Also absent is any effort to provide context. No mention of the
high unemployment the community faces. No mention of the shameful racism in
Nova Scotia that’s one of the main reasons for that high unemployment.
No mention of the recent defunding
of the Watershed Association Development Services (W.A.D.E.), a community
organization that offered employment services to Black residents of East and North
Preston, Cherry Brook, Lake Loon and Dartmouth for many decades.
Most importantly, no awareness of the real hurt that a story
like this is likely to cause to the many law abiding residents of North
Preston.
And when I say many, I mean 95 to 98 percent.
With thanks to El Jones, whose post
on Facebook alerted me to the CBC coverage. She asks that people contact
the CBC to let them know their article is unacceptable and racist.
Comment: Here are my opinions on the situation. I agree some of the
comments made by CBC were wrong and were retracted, but you are forgetting the
main issue here. The lives of two innocent people, especially that innocent
five year old baby girl left at the roadside like piece of garbage. The young
men of Preston are killing themselves. As of yesterday there was another drive
by shooting. Thank God nobody was killed. These young men are profiling
themselves. Go to the news and read all the police reports on these young men.
I realize that this society is prejudice and Caucasians tend to stereotype all
races but do our young black men have to walk right in to it and play the role
to the utmost. If this black man did the crime, then he must pay for it. What
kind of a man could do this. I don’t care what color you are you know right
from wrong. Use the race card when required. BLACK LIVES DO MATTER! I am the
mother of two young black men and a young black women and they are in my prayers
everyday
1. COMMENT: The cbc, very often,
perpetuates divisive attitudes. What with the stereotyped overly exaggerated
reporting on crimes. Few reports are made of the white collar crimes, the sex
indiscretions of middle class Canada that are silenced.
cbc is largely responsible for people not knowing
about communities of other ethnicity. Change for the better will come.
-------------------
(WHY NOT TORONTO???? VANCOUVER??? MONTREAL???
StatsCan: Halifax worst Canadian city for gun-related violent crime
http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/1202649-statscan-halifax-worst-canadian-city-for-gun-related-violent-crime
---------------------------
-------------------
Look
at this beautiful NS Child-slaughtered and then dumped at his family's Church
WTF?? Black on Black Gang Wars must stop- TODAY WE ARE ALL BLACK- STEP UP NOVA
SCOTIA- OUR KIDS F**KING MATTER- No cowards allowed this time... we have 8 dead
kids in black on black war in Preston Area... TODAY WE ARE ALL PRESTON NS AREA-
we oldies stepped up b4- time to do it again
@TheDailyShow
#FeelTheBern #OneBillionRising #IdleNoMore #Pope
Man
found dead in North Preston was trying to better himself
Parole board praised Tylor McInnis for clean record since 2013,
involvement in community
------------------
OK-Canada-
LET’S ALL BE COWARDS OF THE COUNTY- LET’S BE NOVA SCOTIAN 4 #TylerMcInnis
genuine good decent poor folks trying to get by.... but sometimes.... when 8 of
our NS young get slaughtered like #TylerMcInnis (and dumped at his family’s
CHURCH in Preston )... it’s time to step up...#ScottBrison #JustinTrudeauPM
#StephenMacNeil #PeterMacKay #RonaAmbrose #JohnLohr #QuentrelProvo #IdleNoMore
#FeelTheBern #PopeFranis #TrevorNoah @TheDailyShow #love #KaylindDiggs #KristinJohnston
#TylerRichards #NarichoClayton #BlaineClothier #JosephCameron #FrankeLampe
#DavericoDowney
Cowards
of the County – Kenny Rogers
------------------
---------
“The highest result of education is tolerance,” Helen Keller
Blogged: 2014
Canada Military news -4 #KAYLINDIGGS #blacklivesmatter - black on black youth violence -part of CeaseFireHalifax (CeaseFireChicago Model) - is bringing pride and impressive skills 2 our youth in need in Nova Scotia- Check out all the programs on settling violence and turning our youngfolks lives around- because our kids matter- thank u this is awesome news- August 21- I'm Asking 4 Help Now-Why won't u help me???? - Homelessness in Canada of Youth- We must get back 2 basics/Thank u Jesus- Devon Downey turns himself in and confesses- thank
-----------
BLOGGED: 2013
Canada Military News: DON'T B AFRAID CAMPAIGN- speaks out against homophobia- We have been gender illiterate since 1969
===============
To our Canadian troops - True Patriot Love- There was never
more- The 1% who save us -The Trews - Highway of Heroes
https://youtu.be/QrkgV5bl7kQ
To our Canadian troops - True Patriot Love- There was never
more- The 1% who save us -The Trews - Highway of Heroes
--------------
To our Troops
We promised as Canadians we would be
here for u.... please know we are... and we love u dearly.... thank u... u will
never suffer alone... political humping by all parties of our Government levels
have proven they refuse 2 work jointly for your health, wellness, training and
protection of u who we value so dearly..... we love u... u are not alone.... O
Canada.... 200 cultures, 2 official languages, 2nd largest nation on the planet.... we are new, young,
intelligent, decent, poor, and basic decent folks.... who are inclusive in a
nation where women equal men by law, gays are equal since 1969... and our
children and troops matter... and hockey... we learned a long time ago...
politicians can sign anything.... but it's the troops that truly define
freedom... God bless.... and also our policing, RCMP, firefighters and first
responders.... it's an ugly world out there on this planet... yet Canada ... we
still sparkle, shine and soar with historical youth and nature's best... imho
Canada is committed to re-engaging in a full spectrum of
multilateral peace operations. http://news.gc.ca/web/article-en.do?mthd=index&crtr.page=1&nid=1117209 …
--------------
Equality- #Hero Jean
Vanier #Hero Dr Henry Morgentaler AFTER
MORGENTALER, JEAN VANIER KEPT HIS ORDER OF CANADA WHY? http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/after-morgentaler-jean-vanier-kept-his-order-of-canada-why/article20390793/?page=all …
-------------
HERO-there is no greater sacrifice than laying down ur life
4 basic freedoms for each and all humanity in all parts of the world.... NO
MORE RWANDA RULES OF ENGAGEMENT- EVER.... 800,000 butchered in 100 days of
silence by United Nations-G7 and MainstreamMedia News..... God is waiting....
for you..
----------------------
Canada’s History (page 8) incredible find friends... check out your Canadiana....
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/publications/discover/section-06.asp
---------
Confederation
The Dominion of Canada wasn't born out of revolution, or a
sweeping outburst of nationalism. Rather, it was created in a series of
conferences and orderly negotiations, culminating in the terms of Confederation
on 1 July 1867
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/confederation/
----------
Chart: Joining Confederation — Key
www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/cur/socstud/foundation_gr6/blms/6-1-3d.pdf
Chart:
Joining Confederation — Key. 6.1.3 d. Four Original Provinces of 1867. - Québec
(Lower Canada, Canada East). - Nova Scotia. - Ontario (Upper Canada ...
---------
Canada A Country by Consent: Confederation: BNA Act 1867
www.canadahistoryproject.ca/1867/1867-12-bna-act.html
The
formation of Canada, including the date and the names of the four original
provinces. 2. Executive power, with reference to the Governor General and
the ...
-------
CANADIAN CITIZENSHIP STUDY QUESTIONS & ANSWERS for the ...
www.yourlibrary.ca/citizenship/Booklet.pdf
May
31, 2010 ... 4. The federal government placed Aboriginal children in
residential schools to educate .... Which four provinces first formed the
Confederation?
--------
The Debate: Confederation Rejected, 1864 - 1869
www.heritage.nf.ca
The
meeting was organized by the three Maritime Provinces to discuss a union ... A.
Macdonald and George-Étienne Cartier, the Canadians argued for a
wider, ...
--------
The Atlantic provinces and the Confederation ... - ActiveHistory.ca
activehistory.ca/2016/06/the-atlantic-provinces-and-the-confederation-debates-of-1865/
Jun
27, 2016 ... [2] The four provinces together represent only 32 seats out of the
338 in .... “revive the original proposition for a union of the Maritime
Provinces.
--------
Part 4 - Part I: The British North America Act, 1930 - Enactment No. 16
www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/csj-sjc/constitution/lawreg-loireg/p1t164.html
In
order that the Province may be in the same position as the original Provinces
of Confederation are in virtue of section one hundred and nine of the
British ...
--------
Discover Canada
www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/publications/discover/section-06.asp
Jul
1, 2012 ... Following the war, Great Britain renamed the colony the “Province
of Quebec. .... The British paid for a costly Canadian defence system,
including the ... Sir Leonard Tilley, an elected official and Father of
Confederation from ...
-------
-----------
How Canada was formed
The
Shaping of Canada
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