The provincial government announced plans to build two new ferries on Wednesday. The first one will cost $51 million.
The new ferry will replace the Captain Earl W. Winsor, a vessel that’s been in service for more than 40 years. Currently it is on the Fogo Island-Change Islands run.
There are a few interesting things about this particular ship and the announcement.
Part way through her interview with historian Margaret MacMillan last September, the Globe’s Sandra Martin turned the conversation for the lessons we might draw for today’s world from MacMillan’s understanding of what led the European nations to war in 1914.
MacMillan does more than oblige Martin. She goes into a lengthy discussion of how the situation in Syria looks somewhat like the conflicts in the Balkans before the Great War. She winds up at the end with the admonition that “what history can do more usefully is offer you warnings, give you ways of thinking about the present and help you formulate sceptical questions so you can say, ‘Wait a minute, let’s think of examples where that action didn’t turn out well.’”
To that extent, MacMillan is right, even if her discussion of the similarities between Syria in 2013 and the Balkans in 1913 is rather superficial and ultimately useless. What’s more useful to think about for a moment in the days after Remembrance Day is the tendency people have to interpret the past to fit modern circumstances.
Trumpet virtuoso Mike Herriott has a new CD titled “off the road”, available online from www.mikeherriott.com.
Awesome music from an amazing musician but if that isn’t enough for you, he grew up in Sin Jawns.
Here are some samples:
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Amid all the new books hitting the shelves this fall, there are a few worth adding to your list either for yourself or as gifts.
Over the next couple of weeks, SRBP will highlight some of the fall’s crop of new books.
First up is a book from 
With voting set to begin in the Liberal leadership campaign, Cathy Bennett took out newspaper ads that have stirred up a bit of controversy.
Right up until the point where the ad says that Cathy looks forward to working with Ed and asks for “your vote for Liberal leader.”
Quite a few people found the ads curious because the entire caucus - except for leadership candidate Jim Bennett - has already publicly endorsed Dwight Ball.
With the House of Assembly open again, the major topic of Question Period was Muskrat Falls and the second version of the deal to ship power to Nova Scotia.
Premier Kathy Dunderdale explained it on Monday in terms of firm and “non-firm”. Firm power is what you know that the hydro plants will be able to produce reliably. The unfirm power is the stuff that you can get when there is plenty of water.
What’s interesting is how much of this unfirm power the Premier says is around. It is:
“half a terawatt to four or five terawatts a year. Based on fifty years of hydrogeology, the amount of snow or rain in this Province, we have been able to commit to Emera 1.2 extra terawatts of power on average; …, some years that might be 0.5 terawatt, another year that might be three.”
On the face of it, that is such a really interesting idea that it is worth digging into the notion a bit more.
Andrew Leach at macleans.ca took issue on Monday with the idea Canada’s economy is overly dependent on oil production.
Leach notes that both the oil industry and oil industry critics tend to over-estimate the share oil represents of the value of all goods and services produced in the country during the year. These people will estimate that oil makes up about 30 to 40 percent of GDP, in other words.
The reality is more like 10% today, down from 12% in 1997.
Leach goes through a raft of other measurements that support his position.
Fair enough.
But what about particular parts of the country?
Make no mistake.
This is not your New Democratic Party.
For those who are active members, they cannot even say that it is “our party”.
It’s hers.
A couple of weeks ago, the St. John’s media devoted huge amounts of of the reporting space to the death of a woman who spent most of her time beating the streets of St. John’s.
The word the news writers settled on to describe her was “iconic”. People started a Facebook group about her and talked of making a collection to build a statue or do something else to mark her life.
There was a real sense to the reporting that suggested people didn't understand the meaning of the word “icon” any more than they knew the woman’s name. She went by “Trixie” but one of the fascinating trends inside the story itself was the way the news outlets had to edit their stories as people came forward to tell them what her real name was. And then others came forward to tell them that the real name was not the real name they’d been reporting but another one.
Few people knew who she really was, as it turned out.
November is polling month in Newfoundland and Labrador. Corporate Research Associates goes to the field for its quarterly omnibus and marketing poll.
Historically, the Conservatives have skewed their public communications to the four times a year when CRA was collecting data for public opinion polls that the company will release publicly.
The goal was simple: the Conservatives wanted to manipulate the poll results. By and large, it worked. Then the Conservatives plummeted in the polls. In order to get out of their hole, the Conservatives have been on a relentless campaign to do what they have always done, but more intensely.
So it’s a little odd that people wondered what was going on when the Conservatives announced a hike in minimum wage last Friday. Look at the calendar.
The way things go in Newfoundland and Labrador, you can sometimes think that some things only go on here.
Not so.
Take a short trip, if you can spare a second, to Manitoba and the riding of Brandon-Souris. The editor of the Brandon Sun published an e-mail last week that went from a federal Conservative political staffer out to thousands of people on a series of distribution lists.
The headline is as dramatic as NTV could make it:
Leadership crisis sends NDP tumbling to third place in NTV/MQO poll
The numbers looked bad for the Dippers: Grits at 52% of decideds. Tories at 29% and the NDP in the basement at 18%.
Then you take a closer look and you see something else entirely.
No sooner had Lorraine Michael pronounced the New Democratic caucus back together again than two of its members announced that they would leave and sit in the House of Assembly as independent New Democrat members of the legislature.
Dale Kirby and Christopher Mitchelmore made the announcement in separate media statements on Tuesday morning.
This latest twist didn’t actually end anything, of course. It’s merely another step in a drama that will play out for another year or more. Let’s take a look at 10 observations about the whole ferkakta tale
Politics is often about compromise.
Compromises are great when they work.
They suck when they don’t.
The provincial New Democrats spent a week in a leadership crisis that climaxed with a two-day caucus retreat complete with a hired, professional meeting facilitator.
The result is the worst possible solution for the New Democrats if they are interested in being a viable competitor in the next provincial general election.
Four members of a political caucus don’t usually demand their leader’s resignation unless they had a reason... or a bunch of reasons that built up over time.
As it turns out, the number of people unhappy with Lorraine Michael’s leadership style is a lot more than a small faction.
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