Nova Scotia’s political class bases much of their ideas and efforts on a bleak assessment of Nova Scotia that is wrong. Not just a little wrong. Totally wrong.
What happens if you make decisions based on wrong information? Generations of Nova Scotian politicians and bureaucrats have often had a muddled understanding of the economy they preside over. Nowhere is that more muddled today than in Pictou County’s Boat Harbour. At the centre of it all is a pulp mill and its poison garbage dump on the north shore of Nova Scotia. It’s a place that takes the pitiful remnants of our forest and uses it to make the goop from which toilet paper is made. You may have heard of the Mi'kmaq first nation protests about it, or the political ‘studies’ and promises to ‘look into it”, or the fisherman’s blockade, or you may have read Nova Scotia actor/activist Ellen Page’s tweets about environmental racism in Pictou County. “That’s the smell of money and politics” my Pictou county grandmother used to say when I’d wrinkle up my nose and ask her what the heck the stench was. My grandfather, less circumspect and much more closely aligned with the woods, waters and wildlife around Granton and Pictou Landing, would just hawk and spit. |
John Wesley
Writing about life, citizenship, and Nova Scotia. Archives
June 2020
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