NEWS

1. Remembering Mary Campbell of the Cape Breton Spectator

Mary Campbell, publisher of the Cape Breton Spectator, has died.

In a note to readers, members of her family write:

It is with immeasurable sadness that we share the news that Mary passed away suddenly in the early hours of Wednesday, April 24th, at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital, seven months after being diagnosed with encephalitis…

The path of Mary’s life led her back to Cape Breton and the work she knew needed to be done here – work she always knew she was destined for. You all made that possible.

Tim Bousquet has written a remembrance of Mary Campbell and the importance of her contributions to journalism in this province, and I encourage you to read it.

Bousquet writes:

The news comes as a gut punch. Worse than a gut punch. It’s incredibly sad news in a world of sadness, a gaping hole in everything that was right and good and smart and fun and decent.

I think Bousquet brilliantly captures Mary’s journalism and the energy of her writing here:

And let me tell you, the Cape Breton Spectator was fantastic. (If you’re not familiar with Mary’s work, I urge you to wander around the Spectator website.) It was no-holds-barred adversarial reporting, taking on the power structures and economic self-dealing of the ruling managerial class. This is hard to do in any community, but especially in a small community like Sydney. And yet Mary ventured forward with cheerful aplomb, clear-headedness, and above all, humour. I will never forget that wicked humour.

I want to say that I regret not knowing Mary better on a personal level, which is true — I didn’t know enough about her private life, the grist of her day-to-day, the things that brought her personal joy. Here’s the thing, though: through her writing, I found and in some sense bonded with her interior thoughts and inner monologue, and from that understood how she was moored, what her values were. And behind all that great reporting, that fearlessness, that humour, was a heart of gold, a soul, if you will, that was its own bright sun in a world lacking of much light.

Click or tap here to read “Mary Campbell: 1964-2024”

I never had the opportunity to meet Mary, but I was in awe of her work: her research skills, her spectacularly good writing, her tenacity, and her determination to ask the hard questions about local government and business decisions. She was not a cheerleader.

And while Mary’s journalism may have been tough, it was always fair. Writing about one of her articles in a 2022 morning file, I used the word “snide” to describe Mary’s thoughts on the Donkin mine. This was a poorly chosen word. I wrote “snide,” but I was thinking “snarky.”

Mary responded immediately, on Twitter, as we used to communicate in those days:

“Snide” is not a tone I ever mean to adopt! I just looked up the synonyms on Merriam-Webster and they include: base, contemptible, currish, despicable, detestable, dirty, dishonorable, execrable, ignoble, ignominious, low, low-down, low-minded, mean and nasty!

I am glad she called me out on this. Her tone could be cutting, sharp, even snarky, but she was absolutely not snide.

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2. ‘Alarming’ increase in poverty and food insecurity

“A Nova Scotia researcher says newly published national data shows an “alarming increase” in the province’s poverty and food insecurity rates, which are also among the highest in the country,” Yvette d’Entremont reports.

The numbers are grim:

In Nova Scotia, the poverty rate increased by 52% between 2021 and 2022 (from 8.6% to 13.1%). That’s the highest rate in the country and surpasses the province’s pre-pandemic levels.

On Monday, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-Nova Scotia (CCPA-NS) director Christine Saulnier expressed her concerns.

“I mean, 52% between 2021 and 2022. That’s significant. The holes in our safety net are huge. And this isn’t just one group of people,” Saulnier said in an interview. 

“This is working age adults, this is seniors, this is children. It’s families, it’s households across this province who are all struggling. I think that’s also what really strikes me in looking at where Nova Scotia sits here. It’s on all fronts.”

Click or tap here to read “‘Disheartening data’: Nova Scotia advocates concerned by increased poverty and food insecurity rates.”

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3. Nova Scotia Health job fair attracts thousands

Jennifer Henderson stopped by one of the job fairs Nova Scotia Health held throughout the province. Nova Scotia Health is the province’s largest employer, and is looking to fill 4,000 vacant positions.

Henderson reports on the Halifax job fair, held at the Nova Centre:

Lauren Murphy, director of recruitment and volunteer services for NSH, said most people don’t realize the diverse range of job openings available.  

“Yes, 1,000 of those positions are for registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, and nurse practitioners. Obviously hiring internationally educated nurses will be a big part of that,” Murphy said in an interview.

“But we also have positions to fill in information technology (IT), clinical engineering, pharmacy, medical lab technology, mental health, housekeeping, and food services. And we welcome high school students and retired people who wish to volunteer.”

Click or tap here to read “Nova Scotia Health job fair attracts thousands.”

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4. Province reviewing MVI requirements

Michael Gorman at CBC reports that the province is reviewing motor vehicle inspection fees.

NDP leader Claudia Chender has called for MVIs to be good for five years, rather than the current two. Meanwhile, Liberal leader Zach Churchill worries that watering down the MVI requirements will affect road safety.

Gorman also speaks with Darrell Bethune, a garage owner in Porters Lake:

Bethune said that at least once every two weeks he sees a vehicle that should not be on the road. He estimated that between 30 and 40 per cent of the people who come to him to renew their MVI require work they would not otherwise have known about.

Although the process does lead to work for automotive shops, Bethune said he also knows of examples where people have been told they needed certain work done to renew their inspection that was not actually required.

He said a compromise could be for the government to have inspection stations that would generate a report for the driver to take to a mechanic. Once the necessary work is complete, they could return to the inspection station to get their sticker.

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5. Migrant worker laid off after filing harassment complaint

The Guardian in Charlottetown has published the first in a three-part series by Thinh Nguyen on “a migrant worker and her efforts to get an open permit to work in P.E.I. after filing a complaint against her employer.”

The worker is Lude Meng, and she came to Canada from China as a temporary foreign worker, for a job at a seafood processing plant in Three Rivers, PEI, owned by North Lake Fisheries.

But Meng tells Nguyen she soon began to face sexual and other forms of harassment at work:

Meng alleges she faced multiple instances of sexual advances from certain management and supervisory staff, such as being grabbed around the waist or told to dance with a supervisor while at work.

At one point, a manager even sent her a message on Facebook Messenger saying he wanted to be “making love” with her, according to screenshots of the messages that Meng shared with SaltWire.

“I felt unbelievable,” she said in a recent interview, recalling the moment she received that message.

Temporary foreign workers’ permits are tied to specific jobs, which gives their employers an inordinate amount of power.

Meng filed a complaint about harassment at work, and soon after was laid off.

Nguyen reports on what happened next, and her efforts to stay in Canada and become a permanent resident. It’s a good story, and I look forward to the rest of the series.

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NOTICED

Papyruses of everyday life

A man is released from military service, because he has cataracts.

Three dancers are hired to perform at a homeowner’s festival, and a contract lays out their terms and compensation.

A merchant claims that his business partner’s widow is cheating him by claiming he owes her more than he believes he should.

There is nothing particularly notable about these events. But they do become more interesting when you know when they occurred — in the years 52, 102, and 206 CE.

The papyri.info database is a collaborative project among several institutions, with information on thousands of papyruses, including translations of their texts.

Every day on Mastodon, Ryan Baumann, a digital humanities developer at the Duke Collaboratory for Classics Computing (which I think is a phenomenal job title) and member of the papyri.info team, posts a photo of a papyrus and summary translation for something that happened many centuries ago on the same date. Baumann, who seems like an interesting person, also has an ongoing project in which he plays old videogames made for the Apple II.

Baumann offers a good summary in contemporary language of what the papyrus says, and if you want to read more, you can follow the link for a full translation.

To give you a taste for his summaries, here is one involving a property dispute:

Dieras and Isidora duke it out in court… with Dieras claiming that Isidora defaulted on a loan he gave her, and Isidora saying that she would pay him but he seized land not stipulated in the contract. Ruling in favor of Dieras.

Here is the full text for the dancer’s contract, translated from the original Greek:

To Isidora, castanet dancer, from Artemisia of the village of Philadelphia. I wish to engage you with two other castanet dancers to perform at the festival at my house for six days beginning with the 24th of the month Payni according to the old calendar, you to receive as pay 36 dracmai for each day, and for the entire period 4 artabai of barley and 20 pairs of bread loaves; and whatsoever garments or gold ornaments you may bring down, we will guard these safely; and we will furnish you with two donkeys when you come down to us and a like number when you go back to the city. ;Year 14 of Lucius Septimius Severus Pius Pertinax and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Pius, Augusti, and Publius Septimius Geta Caesar Augustus, Payni 16.

Many of the papyruses involve business disputes: someone received payment and did not deliver, for instance. Others are decrees from local authorities to, for instance, build levees along the Nile ahead of coming floods. (I imagine some Egyptian farmer with property along the line grousing that the government shouldn’t be telling him what to do). There are simple contracts, properties bought and sold, petitions for divorce, wills, imperial decrees and various other documents — the bureaucratic ephemera of everyday life. Many of these are familiar to us while others, like terms for the sale or release of enslaved people, are less so.

A transcript of decisions made by Septimus Severus and posted in Alexandria in 199-200 CE makes for some interesting reading. Here are some of the decisions:

• To Kronios son of Herakleides. Transient sicknesses do not afford relief from municipal liturgies, and those who are physically sick are subject to liturgical services if they are mentally capable of conducting their household affairs. 
• To …thalge, daughter of Ambrelos, through Abdomanchos her son. Women are not forbidden to obligate themselves for loans or to exact payment in behalf of others.
• To Dioskoros son of Hephaistion anda to Pieseis son of Osiris, and others. We have forbidden you to pay money in place of grain.

One of my favourite recent ones concerns a contract with a wrestler to throw a match. It dates from 267 CE. The document doesn’t have a translation, but here is Baumann’s summary:

February 23rd, 267 CE—the high priest Aurelius Aquila signs a contract with two men representing a wrestler named Demetrius… agreeing that he will pay Demetrius 3,800 silver drachmae to throw a wrestling match against Aurelius’ son Nicantinous.

And in the “it’s hard to find good help” department, the captain of a boat in Egypt in 338 CE was frustrated by the local authorities’ failure to provide someone to help him unload grain:

In the consulship of Flavius Ursus and Flavius Polemius, the most illustrious. To Flavius Eusebius, logistes of the Oxyrhynchite nome, from Aurelius Papnouthis, son of Paümis, … of Oxyrhynchus, pilot of a public rowing vessel carrying 700 artabae, through me Helena, his wife. It is the custom that a single boatman should be provided from the city to serve on the said state vessel. I have several times requested Eustochius … of the tribe which is at present responsible for this duty, to provide a boatman for the current year who shall help in the service of the public corn-supply. But he puts it off day after day and has not provided a man; and for this reason I send this petition, requesting your grace to send for him and compel him nevertheless to assign me a boatman… In the consulship above-written, Pharmouthi 2. I, Aurelia Helena, have presented this petition. I, Aurelius Theon, signed for her, as she is illiterate.

There is a danger in thinking that people are all the same and have been throughout history. Different cultures, and people in different time periods have very different ways of looking at the world.

At the same time, there is also a danger in overstating our differences. (Did parents in the Middle Ages — itself, a problematic term, but I digress — care when they lost babies? Yes, of course they did).

I love seeing ancient children’s toys and jewelry in museums. I love baking bread from recipes that are centuries old. I love playing games that have been around for millennia. I love reading old wills and contracts and judgments and so on. We are part of a long flow of humanity.

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Government

City

Today

No meetings

Tomorrow

Board of Police Commissioners (Wednesday, 1pm, HEMDCC Meeting Space, Alderney Gate and online) — agenda

Province

No meetings

On campus

No meetings

In the harbour

Halifax

09:30: Algoscotia, oil tanker, moves from Irving Oil 3 to Pier 9C
14:00: Acadian, oil tanker, arrives at Irving Woodside from Saint John

Cape Breton

11:11: Maersk Teesport, oil tanker, sails from Everwinds 2 for sea
11:11: Maetiga, oil tanker, arrives at Everwinds 2 from Port Arthur, Texas

Footnotes

Apparently this is what over 50 looks like.