STARR SNATCHES THE SHOW! - Best Hosting Plan Ever
STARR SNATCHES THE SHOW! - Best Hosting Plan Ever
STARR SNATCHES THE SHOW! - Best Hosting Plan Ever
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
South End<br />
divorce’s new<br />
mystery bride<br />
Read my lips!<br />
Local<br />
pastor<br />
shown<br />
the door<br />
FRANK BY NAME, FRANK BY NATURE<br />
ISSUE 582 GOOD TIL APRIL 13, 2010 $3.00<br />
BARB BARB SETS SETS HER HER SIGHTS SIGHTS ON ON OPRAH<br />
OPRAH<br />
<strong>STARR</strong> <strong>SNATCHES</strong> <strong>THE</strong> <strong>SHOW</strong>!<br />
Lawyer’s courtroom bombshell
TWEETS OF <strong>THE</strong> WEEK<br />
Follow Frank on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Atlantic_Frank.<br />
Because you never know when Frank may be watching.<br />
<br />
Well-known M Home toiler Matt Pelley reportedly<br />
moving to Toronto. (Tweeted March<br />
26)<br />
Ex-Lib MLA Richie Mann’s greeting to A.<br />
Frank Grunt earlier today: “How are you doing<br />
... you old gd C U Next Tuesday?”<br />
(Tweeted March 25)<br />
Word has it Sandy Getta, formerly of Winchester’s<br />
fame, is back (in town) after a period<br />
of time in Florida. (Tweeted March 25)<br />
Political twits & tweets: The N.S. Legislature<br />
is now on Twitter — @NSLeg (Tweeted<br />
March 24)<br />
Petty crime of the week (via<br />
@KingsNSNews): A New Minas business<br />
reported a button and clasp were stolen off<br />
an article of used clothing. (Tweeted March<br />
24)<br />
For all the preventative maintenance the<br />
Purdy’s Landing down escalator requires,<br />
why not just install a friggin’ slide? (Tweeted<br />
March 24)<br />
Clearwater cofounder<br />
John Risley<br />
has replaced J.D.<br />
Irving Limited exec<br />
John F. Irving as<br />
chairman of the board<br />
at the Atlantic Institute<br />
for Market Studies,<br />
the Halifax-based<br />
think thank. “John<br />
Risley is such a vi-<br />
sionary,” says the<br />
Bridgewater Bulletin,<br />
John Risley<br />
quoting AIMS president & CEO Charles<br />
Cirtwill. (Tweeted March 23)<br />
TWITTER<br />
RETWEET<br />
OF <strong>THE</strong> WEEK<br />
2 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK APRIL 13, 2010<br />
A cop car on the Macdonald Bridge needs<br />
to turn on its daytime running lights. (Illegally<br />
tweeted March 23 while driving on the<br />
Macdonald Bridge)<br />
Wow! Is it just me,<br />
or has the MLA expense<br />
scandal taken a<br />
serious physical toll on<br />
PC leaderine Karen<br />
Casey? (Tweeted<br />
March 23)<br />
Well, that stinks!<br />
Barb “The Nose”<br />
Stegemann (Frank<br />
581) has blocked me<br />
Karen Casey<br />
from following her<br />
@the7virtues tweets!<br />
I’d be offended if I cared. (Tweeted March 23)<br />
Halifax-based Aliant gal & ex-Fusion<br />
czarina Alyson Queen<br />
has earned the Accredited<br />
Public Relations<br />
(APR) designation, the<br />
highest in the land.<br />
Alyson is a Saint John,<br />
N.B., gal and a graduate<br />
of Mount Allison U.<br />
(Tweeted March 23)<br />
Lawyer Cameron<br />
MacKeen spotted<br />
sheepishly buying a copy<br />
of The Enquirer @ Scotia<br />
Square earlier today.<br />
(Tweeted March 23)<br />
“Mike Duffy is a recurring challenge. Flares up, creates trouble,<br />
goes away. The Senate’s herpes if you will.”<br />
— March 19, 2010, via @krisp131<br />
a.k.a. Krista Spurr<br />
Alyson Queen<br />
“22 Minutes” star Gavin Crawford, Halifax<br />
MP Megan Leslie, former HRM councillor<br />
Krista Snow, interior consultant Jonathan<br />
Legate, Assante financial dude Darren Dick,<br />
lawyers Catherine Watson & Kevin Kindred,<br />
and federal Liberal candidate Stan Kutcher<br />
among those photographed @ Saturday’s<br />
Fancy Gay Dress Ball (Tweeted March 22).<br />
We surpassed the 700 followers mark today.<br />
Do that many<br />
people really care<br />
what I have to say or<br />
are they worried I may<br />
say it about them?<br />
(Tweeted March 17).<br />
BT host Jayson<br />
Baxter spotted @ the<br />
Chickenburger — all<br />
alone.<br />
March 16)<br />
(Tweeted<br />
Realtor Steve<br />
Patterson @ Q (restaurant<br />
on Argyle).<br />
(Tweeted March 15)<br />
Old news, but news<br />
to me: Ex-CTV gal<br />
Anne Drewa (Frank<br />
410) now @ Global.<br />
(Tweeted March 15)<br />
WTF? moment du<br />
jour? Who knew the<br />
Herald had a “comics<br />
Jayson Baxter<br />
editor” [Paul O<br />
‘Connell]? (Tweeted<br />
March 15)<br />
Anne Drewa
ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK<br />
HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA<br />
ISSUE 582<br />
APRIL 13, 2010<br />
There is a House on Hollis Street<br />
It’s filled with a group of bums<br />
And it’s been the ruin of many a MLA<br />
And, God, there’s more to come<br />
Our Premier was a sailor<br />
He loved those submarines<br />
My ex-MLA was a radio man<br />
But never a man of means<br />
Now the only thing a MLA needs<br />
Is a suitcase and a trunk<br />
And the only time he’s satisfied<br />
Is sitting in Dartmouth, drunk<br />
Oh, mothers tell your children<br />
What your MLAs have done<br />
If they ask who the good ones are<br />
You can tell them “virtually none”<br />
You can tell them “virtually none”<br />
The chickens are all home to roost<br />
We know it’s all but a game<br />
Don’t give in, don’t lend a hand<br />
Let them live in their shame<br />
Let them live in their shame<br />
Well, there is a House on Hollis Street<br />
Where greed lays deep in the genes<br />
Where you can take, and take, and take,<br />
and take<br />
It’s the same ol’ MLA routine<br />
It’s the same ol’ MLA routine<br />
And if one should ever come to you<br />
Asking for your vote<br />
You can either kick the thing in the arse<br />
Or grab it by the throat<br />
Either kick the thing in the arse<br />
Or grab it by the throat...<br />
— A. Frank Grunt<br />
& The Frankland Animals<br />
Atlantic Canada Frank is a magazine of news,<br />
satire, opinion, comment and humour published<br />
every two weeks by Coltsfoot Publishing Co. Ltd.<br />
Copyright Coltsfoot Publishing Ltd. Mailing address:<br />
Frank Magazine, P.O. Box 295, Halifax,<br />
B3J 2N7. Subscriptions: see back page. Publications<br />
Mail Agreement No. 40050490; P.A.P. No.<br />
8158. Phone: 420-1668. Fax: 423-0281. E-mail:<br />
atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca. Toll-free Tips Hotline:<br />
1-888-335-5505. Frank acknowledges the financial<br />
support of the Government of Canada<br />
through the Publications Assistance Program<br />
(PAP) towards our mailing costs. Letters, see<br />
Pages 30, 31.<br />
ALISON’S CARBON FOOTPRINT<br />
BY E. MISSIONS<br />
THOUGH PROVINCIAL TAXPAYERS ARE NO<br />
LONGER PICKING UP SENIOR MANDARIAN<br />
ALISON SCOTT’S TRAVEL TAB, WE ARE NOW<br />
PAYING HER FEDERAL SOJOURNS, WHICH I<br />
FEAR LOOKS WORSE.<br />
A chronic regular on my N.S. silly servant<br />
expense hog lists (Frank 570, 524), Alison<br />
was our deputy minister of Energy before she<br />
accepted a secondment to the feds last August.<br />
In only 2.5 months, from September 8<br />
to November 20, our gal managed to rack up<br />
an impressive $32,245 in travel costs.<br />
Now special adviser to Environment Canada’s<br />
deputy minister for provincial climate<br />
change negotiations (what dat? — ed.), Halifax-based<br />
Alison must endure frequent jaunts<br />
to Ottawa, and so far each of her six hops<br />
Daisy-fresh florist Neville and<br />
a rose by some other name.<br />
BY LOUIE VUITTON<br />
has cost taxpayers about $1,600 on average.<br />
Her three costliest excursions were: a fiveday<br />
sojourn to Canada’s hot air capitals,<br />
Calgary and Toronto ($5,997); a three-day<br />
whirlwind climate change gabfest in<br />
Fredericton, Charlottetown and St. John’s<br />
($5,474); and three days of chewing the fat<br />
in Edmonton and Regina ($5,317).<br />
While Alison is covering more ground than<br />
El Nino, N.S. Energy Dept. spokesthingy<br />
Matt Lumley tells me she is technically considered<br />
still on secondment with the rudderless<br />
Darrell Dexter government.<br />
Long-time Tory-blue backroom corporate<br />
strategist Murray Coolican was recently<br />
tapped to fill Alison’s shoes as N.S. Energy<br />
deputy minnie.<br />
Does Frank Know?<br />
atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca<br />
A HALI-FABULOUS ARRIVAL<br />
MY MO<strong>THE</strong>R MAY HAVE TAUGHT ME, AT V. EARLY AGE, I SHOULD NEVER JUDGE A BOOK<br />
BY ITS COVER, BUT I CAN’T RECALL HER EVER ADVISING ME TO AVOID FORMING OPINIONS<br />
ABOUT PEOPLE BASED ON <strong>THE</strong>IR TASTE IN LUGGAGE.<br />
So when a zebra-print suitcase with hot pink piping passed by me on the Air Canada baggage<br />
carousel at Toronto’s Pearson Airport two weeks ago, I couldn’t help but wonder which<br />
Upper Canadian “cougar” would rush over any minute to claim it.<br />
Well, imagine my surprise when the owner of said flamboyant roll-on turned out NOT to be<br />
some middle-aged, tree trunk-faced Ontario femme fatale, but rather Halifamous petal-pusher<br />
Neville “My Mother’s Bloomers” MacKay, in town for this year’s Canada Blooms flower<br />
show.<br />
APRIL 13, 2010 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK 3
OH, <strong>THE</strong> HUMANITY! <strong>THE</strong> GROVES<br />
BY A. FRANK GRUNT<br />
THIS FRANKLAND TIDBIT WAS PREVI-<br />
OUSLY TOUCHED UPON BY JOURNALIST<br />
PARKER DONHAM ON HIS POPULAR<br />
CONTRARIAN WEBSITE.<br />
But it’s so classic Saint Mary’s University,<br />
is bears repeating up front somewhere in the<br />
pages of this fine bi-weekly family magazine.<br />
And I’m sure Donham would not take insurmountable<br />
offence, even with an ever so small<br />
dose of Frank tweaking, here and there. No<br />
great mischief intended.<br />
Donham reported that on the evening of<br />
Friday, March 12, while smack-dab in the<br />
middle of an original public reading at this<br />
sandbox of post-secondary education sometimes<br />
referred as a university, Alister<br />
MacLeod, the noted author, was rudely interrupted.<br />
And what gang of thugs? What circle of<br />
careless barbarians would make so bold a<br />
move as to disturb one of Canada’s most celebrated<br />
authors in the middle of an original<br />
and one-time only reading? And at such an<br />
august institution? WTF?<br />
Why none other than a trio of boorish, illiterate<br />
Halifax firemen who would, get this,<br />
rather be in the business of saving lives and<br />
preventing a sudden mass cremation, than<br />
reading books. That’s who.<br />
I mean, go figure, right?<br />
Yepper. So, there was 73-year-old flushfaced<br />
Alister MacLeod working up a good ol’<br />
flush-faced head of steam reciting his 1976<br />
short story The Closing Down of Summer<br />
when all hell breaks loose.<br />
Yepper. I guess nobody at Saint Mary’s, er,<br />
um, University, ever thought such a consecrated<br />
author as Alister MacLeod could ever<br />
draw an overflow crowd. This, after all, is only<br />
a post secondary education institute, ain’t it?<br />
Dr. Colin Dodds and his staff, particularly<br />
their handsomely paid veep external Margaret<br />
“Will Say Things For Money” Murphy, were<br />
in no way, shape or form prepared to tackle a<br />
reading by Alister MacLeod. They had zero<br />
idea of the demand for this freebie.<br />
Margaret Murphy, I never tire of pointing out,<br />
was formerly handsomely paid to say things<br />
for Nova Scotia Power Inc. There, she said<br />
a lot of silly things, really, if you ask me. But<br />
best to let sleeping dogs sleep it off, I always<br />
say.<br />
Imagine, though, the sheer fright and total<br />
embarrassment of one of Canada’s most<br />
eminent men of letters, when he’s shot down<br />
in mid-sentence by Margaret “Will Say Things<br />
For Money” Murphy, the local fire warden, and<br />
a couple of little less than Mensa hulking firemen.<br />
And no bloody wonder the local authorities<br />
were upset.<br />
4 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK APRIL 13, 2010<br />
Alister MacLeod<br />
The SMU crowd had so many extra bodies<br />
packed into the McNally Theatre Auditorium<br />
the place looked like L.A.’s Staples Center<br />
in July. The only thing missing was the bronze<br />
casket containing the friggin’ remains of<br />
Michael Jackson.<br />
Don’t know, at this point, if SMU Prez Dr.<br />
Colin Dodds did the one glove thingy or not?<br />
People were everywhere — in the aisles,<br />
blocking the aisles, blocking the lectern, in the<br />
stairway, blocking the stairway, scared to go<br />
for a piss save they lose their placement.<br />
Find the footage folks take a good, long,<br />
hard look at it.<br />
For older, more refined tastes, even if the<br />
big event did not, for you, resemble the<br />
Michael Jackson L.A. Staples Ctr. Memorial,<br />
it sure brought back not-so-fond memories of<br />
life in a London bomb shelter during the German<br />
Blitz of 1940-41.<br />
To the point, I’m told, somebody was heard<br />
to scream “you can’t cram 600 people into a<br />
250 people space.”<br />
Those figures seem a bit exaggerated to me.<br />
But turfed Herald business reporter turned<br />
SMU mouthpuppet, Mr. Steve Proctor (the<br />
wooden-headed dummy which sits proudly<br />
atop Margaret Murphy’s lap) said he’d check<br />
into those figures and get back to me posthaste.<br />
I haven’t yet heard back from the enterprising<br />
Mr. Proctor. Oh, well. Sucks to be me.<br />
On the plus side, though, Mr. Proctor, can<br />
even talk while Ms. Murphy sips a glass of<br />
water. How cool is that?<br />
In any event, complete with a telling photograph,<br />
the Contrarian cutline read:<br />
“The Halifax Fire Marshall temporarily halted<br />
a reading by Alister MacLeod so the overflow<br />
crowd of more that 600 could be arranged to<br />
clear clogged aisles. Officials turned away<br />
OF ACADEME<br />
another 100 people as the 73-year-old<br />
MacLeod, who splits his time between Windsor,<br />
Ontario, and Dunvegan, Cape Breton,<br />
read his 1976 story, The Closing Down of Summer.”<br />
The evening began on an equally embarrassing<br />
note when President Dolt, er, um,<br />
Dodds asked MacLeod about the origin of the<br />
title for his 1999 award-winner No Great Mischief.<br />
Obviously, Mr, President was less than acquainted<br />
with that piece of work.<br />
For, verily, it sez early on, probably even on<br />
the dust jacket that “no great mischief” was<br />
English General James Wolfe’s only<br />
thoughts on a dead Highlander or two in the<br />
Great Cause of English Colonialism.<br />
An uncomfortable murmur went through the<br />
overflow crowd as MacLeod contemplated Dr.<br />
Dolt’s, er, um, Dr. Dodds’s penetrating question.<br />
The audience was also forced to, as one<br />
disheartened member put it me, “endure the<br />
sovereign discomfiture of SMU Atlantic<br />
Canada Studies guru Dr. Ken MacKinnon,<br />
whose eloquence is matched only by the most<br />
prolonged case of the death rattles.”<br />
(Great sentence, wish I had said that.)<br />
Whatever.<br />
The most important thing to consider, here,<br />
and to remember, as long as we are graced<br />
with memory, is that were it not for the quick<br />
thinking of SMU veep external Margaret “Will<br />
Say Things For Money” Murphy, and the fact<br />
that 73-year-old MacLeod does not travel with<br />
a pyrotechnic kit, we could have had another<br />
tragic Rhode Island nightclub fire on our<br />
hands.<br />
Oh, by the way, Mr, Proctor described the<br />
big SMU literary event to me with this popular<br />
mouthpuppet phrase: a success.<br />
Sure. No question. Right up there with the<br />
Hindenburg, the Edsel and the 8-Track.<br />
As far as anybody at the Halifax Fire Department<br />
knows, Prez Dodds and his school<br />
were not issued a ticket for this flagrant infraction,<br />
but merely given a stern warning.<br />
One would hope. They won’t get off so easily<br />
next time. I assure you.<br />
And when it comes time again for Saint<br />
Mary’s, er, um, University, to go begging to<br />
the aging Mr. MacLeod for money — I think<br />
they should send a Halifax fire truck to pick<br />
up the cheque.<br />
And just for the hell of it, let’s have Margaret<br />
“Will Say Things For Money” Murphy drive the<br />
damn thing.<br />
Cheque, please...<br />
Does Frank Know?<br />
atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca
WHY PASTOR<br />
ELAINE<br />
HAS LEFT <strong>THE</strong><br />
IWK BUILDING<br />
BY A. FRANK GRUNT<br />
PASTOR ELAINE WALCOTT IS A BLACK AND A PREACHER. SHE’S<br />
BEEN BLACK ALL HER LIFE. SHE HAS BEEN AN ORDAINED MINISTER<br />
FOR ALMOST 10 YEARS. GOING BACK TO SCHOOL AFTER RAISING<br />
HER TWO BOYS.<br />
Raised Baptist in Lincolnville, Guysborough Co., the oldest of 10<br />
children, she is a proud graduate, as they say, of the Atlantic School<br />
of Theology, and is a firm believer in ecumenical unity. She is also an<br />
ardent support of gay rights, and is routinely recognized by the local<br />
gay community for her efforts.<br />
Equally important is that she was let go as part of the IWK Spiritual<br />
Health Team on March 31, the end of their fiscal year.<br />
It is Rev. Elaine’s, (by the way, my own spiritual adviser and Vice<br />
Regal Garden Party date) understanding that “spiritual care at the<br />
IWK” is currently running a deficit of $25,000 a year.<br />
I don’t know how you put a figure on “spiritual care” when you are<br />
dealing with sick and dying children, and their parents, brothers and sisters,<br />
but if I ever get to the other place (fat chance! — ed.) I will be sure<br />
to ask the Big Fellah just what to look for in that empirical question.<br />
Rev. Elaine was employed as a chaplain with the IWK Spiritual Health<br />
Team on a casual basis from November 16, 2007 through March 22,<br />
2010.<br />
In recent months, she worked primarily on the intensive care unit.<br />
Elaine’s departure culls the SCT to two full-time members: Glenn<br />
Breen, the co-ordinating chaplin, and Colleen Quinn, who is paid by<br />
the local Roman Catholic Diocese.<br />
Glenn Breen described Elaine as an “honest and caring person,”<br />
and in his letter of reference wrote:<br />
“Elaine possesses excellent crisis management skills. Much of her<br />
IWK ministry involved journeying with patients and families during times<br />
of life threatening crisis and end-of-life situations. She is a capable<br />
and effective mediator in situations where difficult family and interpersonal<br />
dynamics are present.<br />
“Elaine brought a willing flexibility to her ministry within the IWK. She<br />
was eager for more hours and employment within the Spiritual Health<br />
Team. She always accepted shifts offered to her on short notice.”<br />
There is tremendous irony in this departure, given only last year the<br />
IWK formed a diversity and inclusion committee, and now due to “ongoing<br />
challenges related to the Spiritual Health budget for 2010-11”<br />
the black on-call Chaplain finds herself on the outside looking in.<br />
Even Rev. Elaine’s efforts to volunteer her time were rebuffed.<br />
She tells me she is “disappointed, not bitter” by the IWK’s decision<br />
to let her go.<br />
“Spiritual care is a passion for me, it will never be about money.<br />
What I don’t understand is why the hospital went through all the hoopla<br />
to introduce me as a member of the neonatal intensive care team last<br />
fall as part of their diversity & inclusion push, and six months later it’s<br />
all over.<br />
“But I don’t see this as an issue of race. I won’t cheapen it by making<br />
Pastor Elaine<br />
Walcott<br />
it a race issue. But one would hope if you are going to initiate a diversity<br />
& inclusion campaign you are going to have the foresight to see<br />
that anything or anybody pertinent to that campaign operates longer<br />
than six months,” Rev. Elaine told me.<br />
<br />
She will continue to run her bi-weekly multi-faith Koinonia Church<br />
services every second Sunday in the free downtown space provided<br />
by Jim Petrie, the owner/operator of Halifax Feast Dinner Theatre<br />
in the Maritime Mall.<br />
Petrie is a deacon at the church, as is Sue Ellen Hansen, Wanda<br />
Hunt, and Rev. Elaine’s husband and high school sweetheart Joe<br />
Walcott.<br />
They, along with the talented and fragrant Beth Beare, a veteran<br />
psychiatric nurse, continue to shepherd the needs of many in Halifax’s<br />
marginalized community.<br />
Rev. Elaine and husband Joe are high school sweethearts from Glace<br />
Bay’s former Morrison High. They graduated 100 years ago from<br />
that pile, along with Jim Petrie, and the equally compassionate and<br />
brainy Diane (nee Gillis) O’Reilly, a top czarina in the IWK’s Women’s<br />
& Newborn Health Unit, a fervent supporter of diversity and a<br />
Facebook friend of Rev. Elaine’s.<br />
The IWK Health Care Foundation prez is Robbie Shaw, Alexa<br />
McDonough’s brother. I don’t know if he is one of Rev. Elaine’s<br />
Facebook or not.<br />
The IWK Health Care Centre employs about 3,000 people.<br />
Here Endeth The Lesson....<br />
Oh, this just in: Keeping with the reg PR BS, I have just rec’d an<br />
email from the IWK Health Centre public relations department (whatever<br />
that is supposed to mean) telling me ... yawn ... “Due to employee<br />
confidentiality, we can’t speak about details of any IWK employees.”<br />
However, the rather emaciated looking email did share the heavenly<br />
news:<br />
“We can tell you that the IWK has submitted a balanced business<br />
plan to the Department of Health.”<br />
All glory be to God, I say!<br />
Does Frank Know? atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca<br />
APRIL 13, 2010 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK 5
MARGERY DYKEMAN’S HARVEST<br />
BY DAISY BUTTERCUPS<br />
BRIDGEWATER’S FAMED GREEN THUMB,<br />
MARGERY DYKEMAN, HAS PLANTED <strong>THE</strong><br />
SEEDS OF LONG-TERM FINANCIAL SUCCESS<br />
FOR HER THREE SONS AND FOUR STEP-<br />
CHILDREN, NEATLY DIVIDING HER $2.2 MIL-<br />
LION ESTATE AMONG <strong>THE</strong>M.<br />
The Hennigar family’s indefatigable “Down<br />
To Earth” gardening columnist, Margery appointed<br />
sons Greg Snyder and Terry Synder<br />
her executors, on the strict condition their<br />
executors’ commissions not exceed $10,000<br />
apiece.<br />
Prior to her February 18 death at 86,<br />
Margery directed Conquerall Mills, Queens<br />
Co. rezzie Greg and Mosher Motors salesman<br />
Terry to sell her Bridgewater properties,<br />
187 Empire St. and the 102 Glenridge Ave.<br />
rental units, and divide the proceeds equally<br />
among Greg, Terry and her third son Geoff<br />
Snyder of Bridgewater, to whom Margery bequeathed<br />
her Fancy Lake cottage.<br />
Margery and her second husband, former<br />
prez of Dartmouth biz Lectro Sales, Lloyd<br />
Dykeman, bought both Bridgewater properties<br />
in the mid-to-late 1970s from Clarence<br />
Nauss, son of famed local building mogul,<br />
Bennett “BJ” Nauss.<br />
The Dykeman’s Empire Street home is wellknown<br />
to South Shore plant lovers. Margery’s<br />
botanical gardens were an inspired spectacle<br />
of colour and design, bursting with brown-eyed<br />
Susans, sedums, peonies, daisies, and a<br />
pleasing array of dozens more flowers and<br />
shrubs.<br />
The industrious Margery contributed over<br />
1,200 columns since her Down To Earth space<br />
first appeared in the Progress Enterprise and<br />
Bridgewater Bulletin in 1987. As she always<br />
supplied several in advance, all written on her<br />
manual typewriter, Lynn Hennigar had<br />
enough columns to run for several weeks after<br />
Margery’s death.<br />
6 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK APRIL 13, 2010<br />
An offshoot of the famous Hebb family of<br />
Hebbville, Margery was raised on Indian<br />
Garden Farm, a fifth-generation family farm<br />
known for its cranberries and Beluah Bloomers<br />
Greenhouse, which is now run by Glen<br />
Hebb, son of Margery’s brother, Gerald Hebb.<br />
Their father Clarence Hebb is widely credited<br />
with introducing scientific growing methods<br />
and expanding the farming biz.<br />
A graduate of business college and the Kree<br />
Institute of Electrolysis in New York state,<br />
Margery was 19 in 1943 when she married<br />
Robert Snyder, who owned a heating and<br />
plumbing biz and served as Bridgewater’s<br />
deputy fire chief.<br />
After Robert’s death in September 1971,<br />
Margery married Bedford businessman<br />
Lloyd, a Second World War Canadian army<br />
vet. Lloyd was 84 when he died on August<br />
Margery Dykeman at her trusty typewriter.<br />
11, 2003.<br />
Lloyd had four kids from a previous marriage:<br />
Cheryl Dykeman, Patricia Ann Schneider,<br />
Karen Dykeman and Derek<br />
Dykeman, all of whom now live out of province.<br />
In her three-page will, dated August 2008,<br />
Margery requested that her investments be<br />
split into seven equal parts for her kids and<br />
Lloyd’s kids, with the amounts reduced to<br />
Cheryl ($30,000) and Derek ($10,000), to reflect<br />
loans they received from her and Lloyd,<br />
and also to Karen ($50,000), for a previous<br />
loan from Margery.<br />
Pending final inventory, Margery wanted the<br />
rest of her estate divided into seven equal<br />
shares for her children and step-children, and<br />
she directed her sons to divide her household<br />
items equally among them.<br />
DARA’S HOUSE ON MARKET<br />
I SEE WHERE <strong>THE</strong> FAMILY OF <strong>THE</strong> LATE MCINNES COOPER<br />
LAWYER DARA GORDON HAS PUT ITS 67-ACRE GASPEREAU<br />
VALLEY PROPERTY ON <strong>THE</strong> MARKET FOR $1.2 MILLION.<br />
Tradewinds Realty duo Tim Harris and Barbie Nunn-Porter<br />
are listing the 19-year old Georgian style home, located outside<br />
Wolfville and previously owned by Dara and her hubby, outgoing<br />
Estrucan Resources ceo Gerry McConnell.<br />
Former N.S. Gambling & Booze czarina Dara died last December<br />
27, at the shocking age of 57, leaving most of her $2.45million<br />
estate to Gerry and their two daughters, Ashley and Devon<br />
(Frank 580).
INDIAN NEWS FOR INDIAN VOTERS<br />
BY CHIEF HANGING CHAD<br />
AN INDIAN AND NOR<strong>THE</strong>RN AFFAIRS<br />
CANADA (INAC) OFFICIAL HAS CONFIRMED<br />
SUSPICIONS OF VOTING FRAUD IN <strong>THE</strong> JUNE<br />
12, 2009 SHUBENACADIE BAND<br />
ELECTIONS.<br />
According to a March 8 letter from INAC<br />
bylaw adviser Jacques Boutin, “evidence and<br />
information compiled in (the consultant’s) report<br />
suggest that violations of the Indian Band<br />
Election Regulations may have taken place.”<br />
Former Queen’s Cowboy Bob Norton,<br />
prez of the Winnipeg-based Norton Security<br />
Consulting, was hired by INAC in January<br />
to investigate vote-tampering allegations<br />
on the electorally-challenged Indian Brook<br />
reserve. On February 8, Bob signed off on<br />
his report, which Jacques forwarded, along<br />
with the cover letter quoted above, to interested<br />
parties.<br />
INAC has said it is not commenting on the<br />
report, nor releasing it to the public. Frank<br />
Magazine has obtained a copy, and we are<br />
DEXTER’S<br />
MEGA N.B. DEAL<br />
BY LOTTA TAR<br />
SHAWN GRAHAM’S 11TH HOUR, PANIC-INDUCED PULL-OUT FROM<br />
<strong>THE</strong> NB POWER-HYDRO QUEBEC CONSUMMATION IS<br />
OVERSHADOWING NEWS OF A $275 MILLION-PLUS NEW<br />
BRUNSWICK GOVERNMENT CONTRACT, WHICH I’M HEARING COULD<br />
COST TAXPAYERS CLOSER TO $1 BILLION.<br />
On March 8 — two weeks before he killed the power deal (Frank<br />
572) — Preem Graham announced his Liberal government chose Nova<br />
Scotia road king Dexter Construction to pave over a wide swath of<br />
the Picture Province.<br />
After a tender call went out last summer, Dexter was shortlisted with<br />
two other national consortiums for the grandly-named Route 1 Gateway<br />
Project, a federal-provincial cost-sharing scheme with a P3 twist:<br />
Dexter gets to maintain and operate 235 kilometres of a four-lane highway<br />
for the next 30 years.<br />
N.B. Transportation Dept. spokesthingy Andrew Holland tells me<br />
discussions are ongoing, and can attach no dollar amount to the project.<br />
He expects a funding announcement in April, and construction to begin<br />
shortly thereafter.<br />
The massive project, which Andrew notes will be completed before<br />
August 2013, calls for 55 kilometres of new highway to twin the route<br />
between Saint John and St. Stephen; two new lanes between SJ and<br />
its uppity bedroom community Rothesay, making New Brunswick’s first<br />
six-lane highway; interchanges galore; and 104 kilometres of decora-<br />
pleased to summarize its findings.<br />
Bob investigated four specific allegations,<br />
(1) at least two candidates bought votes; (2)<br />
mishandling and/or tampering of ballot boxes;<br />
(3) at least two mail-in ballots were falsified;<br />
(4) Electoral Officer Karen Miller rejected a<br />
disproportionately high number of mail-in ballots.<br />
Bob was unable to verify the vote-buying<br />
allegations, saying that an alleged cash recipient<br />
denied being bribed for his vote, while<br />
another refused to talk about it. No one else<br />
agreed to co-operate.<br />
Bob’s scrutiny of the ballot box concluded,<br />
“they had not been sealed in accordance with<br />
(regulations). (But) there is no evidence of<br />
tampering with the ballots.”<br />
As for the alleged discrepancies with mailin<br />
ballots, Bob hit a bonanza.<br />
“There is no explanation for the significant<br />
difference between the reported number of<br />
votes cast and the number of voter names<br />
crossed off on the voters list,” he wrote.<br />
He concluded, “No one could explain why<br />
approximately 450 more names were crossed<br />
off than actually voted. This puts into question<br />
any record of who voted in the election.”<br />
Jerry Sack, who was “most co-operative”<br />
with Bob’s investigation, was elected chief winning<br />
389 more votes than Michael Paul, who<br />
lodged the original complaint with INAC.<br />
The elected councillors are: Ronnie Augustine;<br />
Rufus Copage; Thomas Howe; Ryan<br />
Julian; Colleen Knockwood; Ian<br />
Knockwood; Reg Maloney; Alex McDonald;<br />
Jim Nevin; Michael Sack; and Deborah<br />
Thiebaux (Julian). Their two-year terms expire<br />
June 12, 2011.<br />
INAC has given band members until April 9<br />
to respond to Bob’s report. Stay tuned.<br />
Indian Brook’s population is around 2,300;<br />
about half live off the reserve. According to<br />
INAC figures, almost 40% have an education<br />
that is less than a high school grad’s, and the<br />
unemployment rate typically runs about 30%.<br />
There is a long history of band election voting<br />
fraud.<br />
Does Frank Know?<br />
atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca<br />
tive fence-work, to keep deer from turning into roadkill.<br />
Bedford-based Dexter Construction will operate and maintain the<br />
Southern NB highway network until June 2040.<br />
While both the Irving-owned Telegraph Journal and the news release<br />
from the N.B. government (Isn’t that Irving-owned, as well? —<br />
ed.) do not estimate the millions of public dollars at stake, a July 2009<br />
article in the London, U.K.-based trade paper Project Finance International,<br />
expects the N.B. roadwork to have capital costs of $275 million,<br />
with the feds kicking in a maximum of $137.5 million. (Isn’t it<br />
great how we have to go to England for information from New Brunswick?<br />
— ed.)<br />
The same PFI article says Dexter Construction’s partnership team<br />
consists of its parent firm, the Carl Potter-owned Municipal Enterprises;<br />
principal consultant MMM Group, of Anne Murray’s hometown<br />
Thornhill, Ont.; Victoria, B.C.-based Thurber Engineering;<br />
Albuquerque’s Applied Research Associates; and N.B.-based<br />
Boissonnault McGraw et Associes of Campbellton and Roy Consultants<br />
Group of Bathurst. The group is bankrolled with National<br />
Bank financing.<br />
Does Frank Know? atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca<br />
APRIL 13, 2010 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK 7
<strong>STARR</strong> <strong>SNATCHES</strong> <strong>THE</strong> <strong>SHOW</strong>!<br />
BY V. JAY JAYE<br />
TO LOOK AT HER, YOU MIGHT THINK LIVE<br />
AT 5 HOSTESS <strong>STARR</strong> DOBSON WOULDN’T<br />
SAY SHIT IF SHE HAD A MOUTHFUL.<br />
So you may be surprised to learn that just<br />
last week, the fair-haired pride of Alma,<br />
Pictou County actually uttered the word<br />
“snatch” in public.<br />
Don’t believe me? Ask around. Lots of people<br />
— close to 400 in fact — heard her say it.<br />
That’s roughly how many folks attended two<br />
sold-out charity-raising* performances of Eve<br />
Ensler’s world-famous Vagina Monologues<br />
at Halifax’s Neptune Theatre, during which<br />
a darkly dressed Starr contorted herself in<br />
front of an imaginary full-length mirror in order<br />
to get a good look at her hoo-ha.<br />
“I can see why she was nervous,” one vagina-possessing<br />
ticket-holder remarked after<br />
the show, an observation with which my female<br />
source concurs.<br />
“I can’t imagine many women, many public<br />
figures, would be ready to put themselves out<br />
there like that, striking a variety of ridiculous<br />
yet ultimately intimate poses.”<br />
And while many felt Starr, who on TV regularly<br />
tends to appear wooden and disinterested,<br />
ably held her own on stage, it was<br />
former CBCer Heidi Petracek that left theatre-goers<br />
elated with her part, “The Woman<br />
Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy.”<br />
Part of her schtick, I understand, included a<br />
v. funny list of moans women tend to employ.<br />
Like the Irish Catholic moan (Oh, God. Oh,<br />
forgive me. Oh, God!), the yodel-esque mountain-top<br />
moan, the college moan (Oh, no. I<br />
should be studying. Oh. Oh, I’m not studying!)<br />
and the unforgettable triple surprise orgasm<br />
moan. (What? No Black Snake Moan?<br />
— ed.)<br />
MEDIA LOVEFEST LANDS ANO<strong>THE</strong>R FREEBIE<br />
BELIEVE IT OR NOT, TORONTO-BORN CNN<br />
AMERICAN MORNING TALKING HEAD JOHN<br />
ROBERTS WON’T BE POCKETING A FEE TO DE-<br />
LIVER <strong>THE</strong> KEYNOTE ADDRESS AT <strong>THE</strong> UPCOMING<br />
ATLANTIC JOURNALISM AWARDS BANQUET.<br />
AJA honcho Bill Skerrett says they have a<br />
strict policy of not paying for speakers, a policy<br />
which hasn’t deterred the non-profit from attracting<br />
such giants of Canadian reportage as<br />
Lloyd Robertson and Linden MacIntyre, not<br />
to mention gelatinous blobs like Mike Duffy.<br />
“Is it our good reputation? Is there vanity<br />
involved? I don’t know,” Bill admits.<br />
He also says it didn’t require much prodding<br />
to convince the former Muchmusic VJ to pay<br />
a visit; less than a week went by between Bill’s<br />
8 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK APRIL 13, 2010<br />
“How do you follow up something like that?”<br />
offered one audience member.<br />
Provincial MLAs Lenore Zann and Diana<br />
Whalen also participated in the production,<br />
though I was a bit disappointed to hear that<br />
instead of using her stage presence to lobby<br />
for a vagina-friendly February holiday, Halifax-Clayton<br />
Park rep Diana, chose instead<br />
to stick to statistics.<br />
Other performers included: Ann Graves;<br />
Transition House Association of Nova<br />
Scotia co-ordinator Pam Harrison; working<br />
mom Shirley Jollimore; Dalhousie voice<br />
grad Candice Campbell; Leigha Chiasson;<br />
Cynthia DeBois; MSVU Women’s Studies<br />
gal Rita Shelton Deverell; Elizabeth Fry<br />
Society toiler Nicole Farmer and her Citadel<br />
High daughter Cymone; Monetta<br />
James; Sharleen Kalayil; Norma Kennedy<br />
of the N.S. Advisory Commission on AIDS;<br />
Rena Kulczycki; Holly Lewer, IT consultant<br />
Dena McDonell; Robyn McNeil; Newf<br />
transplant Kelly Melanson; Melanie Moore;<br />
Nancy Pike; Susan Ploetner; Adrienne<br />
Power, MSVU prof Dr. Meredith Ralston;<br />
Jo-anne Sheehan; Kelly Shephard; Tova<br />
Sherman; The Three Helens (Joanne<br />
Bond, Kathryn Burke and Pam Mason),<br />
Sandra Witherbee; Kate Wilkinson; and<br />
Live at 5 alum Nancy Regan, whose task it<br />
was to discuss the ugliness of her character’s<br />
vagina.<br />
“I pitied anyone who had to go down there,”<br />
was one of her more memorable lines, along<br />
a reference to her “mink-lined muffler.” The<br />
things they’ll put on luxury cars now a days.<br />
*Proceeds from ticket sales went to benefit<br />
Alice Housing, the Barry House Shelter on<br />
Gottingen Street, the Elizabeth Fry Society<br />
and Paula’s Project.<br />
Does Frank Know?<br />
atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca<br />
first contact with CNN in New York and John’s<br />
acceptance of the invitation, which includes<br />
roundtrip airfare, hotel and incidentals.<br />
I can’t say whether John’s girlfriend, Atlantabased<br />
CNN afternoon host Kyra Phillips, will<br />
be making the trek with him. The raven-haired<br />
stunner is perhaps best known to casual media<br />
watchers as the chick who left her wireless<br />
mic on during a trip to the bathroom back<br />
in 2006, causing complaints about her sisterin-law<br />
to be broadcast over top of a speech<br />
George W. Bush was giving from New Orleans.<br />
She also praised her husband at the time<br />
as a “really passionate, compassionate, great,<br />
great human being”. Guess John’s got some<br />
pretty big shoes to fill.<br />
Tickets to the big show, scheduled for May<br />
Starr Dobson<br />
John Roberts Kyra Phillips<br />
8 at the Marriott Harbourfront, are $135<br />
apiece, or, if you prefer, 10 for $1,350.<br />
MORE AJA NEWS, PAGE 18
BY SAM ANTICS<br />
LIKE A GOOD MANY OF US, SHAMELESS<br />
SELF-PROMOTER BARB STEGEMANN<br />
NEEDS TO GET OFF <strong>THE</strong> INTERNET BEFORE<br />
IT MAKES HER STUPID. SPECIFICALLY, BARB<br />
NEEDS TO STOP CONSULTING WIKIPEDIA<br />
AND BRUSH UP ON HER GANDHI<br />
SCHOLARSHIP.<br />
Authoress of the self-help tome The 7 Virtues<br />
of a Philosopher Queen, Barb has lately<br />
tossed around Gandhi’s name as she peddles<br />
her new bottled odour, The 7 Virtues Afghanistan<br />
Orange Blossom eau de parfum, and a<br />
March 2 Metro national article explains she<br />
was “delighted to discover that “Gandhi”<br />
means “seller of perfume.” Mohandas<br />
Ghandi is one of her personal heroes.”<br />
It seems a linguistically sensitive Barb has<br />
taken umbrage with my Frank 581 breaking<br />
newsflash on the origins of Gandhi: not “perfume<br />
seller,” but “grocer,” a fact I’m sure Barb<br />
will realize once she opens her first 7 Eleven<br />
store.<br />
Here is Barb’s March 22 tweet on Twitter:<br />
“Gandhi, surname means “seller of perfume”<br />
— wikipedia. Mills sold out — but not to worry,<br />
we have restocked The 7 Virtues Afghanistan<br />
Orange Blossom Eau de Parfum.”<br />
In full-on slapdown mode, Barb even supplies<br />
a link to the online encyclopedia, which<br />
reads: “Gandhi is an Indian family name,<br />
Barb Stegemann<br />
meaning a seller of perfumes.” The citation is<br />
an untranslated Hindi passage, purportedly<br />
from the 15thC Indian mystic Kabir, considered<br />
one of India’s greatest poets.<br />
Incidentally, when you type in “Wikipedia:<br />
Credibility” in Wikipedia, it says, “Credibility<br />
is one of Wikipedia’s goals which it has strug-<br />
Buy Barb’s<br />
perfume!<br />
BARB & HER FAVOURITE GROCER<br />
gled to attain, although in its first four years,<br />
it has only had partial success.[citation<br />
needed].” <strong>Ever</strong>ybody got that?<br />
Barb’s tweet, juxtaposing her sold-out perfume<br />
at Mills Brothers with a man whose idea<br />
of a simple life resulted in his entire earthly<br />
possessions at death fitting inside two shoe<br />
boxes, is just too funny for words.<br />
Not since the public relations disaster of<br />
Steve Jobs using Gandhi billboards to sell<br />
his Apple computers have I seen such bunk.<br />
But I smell more Eau de BS here.<br />
If Gandhi really is one of Barb’s personal<br />
heroes, she would know that most Gandhi<br />
scholars agree the Mahatma’s family name<br />
more closely signifies a victualler, than one<br />
who hawks scented products to mask BO.<br />
In his annotated notes in the book Essential<br />
Gandhi, editor Louis Fischer, who wrote<br />
the then-definitive biography that inspired Richard<br />
Attenborough’s Oscar-winning 1982<br />
film, states: “Gandhi means grocer.”<br />
And the first line of Gandhi’s 1927 Autobiography?<br />
“The Gandhis belong to the Bania<br />
caste and seem to have been originally grocers.”<br />
OK, who are we going to believe here? One<br />
of the world’s great Gandhi scholars, even if<br />
Fischer was a Commie, or Barb’s link to a<br />
Wiki page? Think about that for a second.<br />
But wait, it gets funnier. Ready for this?<br />
CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE<br />
APRIL 13, 2010 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK 9
Oh, Stedman! Don’t<br />
deny it was you! I saw<br />
you eat that chili!<br />
BARB, FROM PREVIOUS PAGE<br />
Barb’s tweet has ignited a cry to arms from<br />
her rabid fan base, who began sending a five<br />
word tweet — “Gandhi means “seller of perfume”<br />
not only to friends, but also to executive<br />
producers of the Oprah Winfrey Show,<br />
in their holy crusade to have Oprah dose her<br />
fatty self with Barb’s perfume, whose essential<br />
oils Barb buys directly from Afghani<br />
women.<br />
On March 22, Barb cult member Peggy<br />
Chisholm sent the bare-bones tweet to Lisa<br />
Erspamer, chief creative officer, Oprah<br />
Winfrey Network; Harpo producer Ellen<br />
Rakieten; Oprah’s executive producer Sheri<br />
Salata; and the official Oprah Show Twitter<br />
page. Imagine, checking your Crackberry,<br />
and seeing the Tweet: “Gandhi means seller<br />
of perfume.” You’d likely either go, Huh? or<br />
WTF?<br />
There is also a Facebook page, “Oprah<br />
must try the 7 Virtues Afghanistan eau de<br />
parfum,” which as of 10:32 a.m., March 26,<br />
had 116 members. Barb and Peggy are two<br />
of the page’s administrators.<br />
Facebookers who have joined Barb’s Chase<br />
For Oprah glory include: such rank Tories as<br />
Jordi Morgan, Jim David, Scott Armstrong,<br />
the Facebook omnipotent Tyler Cameron,<br />
HRM councillor Debbie Hum, John<br />
McDonnell (Barb’s fiancee), federal Liberal<br />
hopeful Stan “Brainworks” Kutcher, twominute<br />
Daily Snooze editor Jack Romanelli,<br />
erstwhile Chronically Horrid social columnist<br />
Greg Guy, Anne Calder, the lawyer in a<br />
spot of bother with the law (Frank 564), freelance<br />
scribe Stephen Patrick Claire, and the<br />
lovely Lisa Merrithew, one of Peter<br />
MacKay’s many exes.<br />
There you go. The power of the Internet at<br />
work.<br />
BTW, I know you’re dying to know (Not really!<br />
— ed.), so I’ll tell you. Stegemann is of<br />
German origin, from the old German saying<br />
“Steg,” meaning footpath or footbridge. Barb<br />
was born a Robbins, which has Scottish origins<br />
and likely derives from the name Robin,<br />
itself a variation of Robert.<br />
Cheque, please!<br />
Does Frank Know?<br />
atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca<br />
10 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK APRIL 13, 2010<br />
SARAH & DAN SUCK UP<br />
TO <strong>THE</strong> PEONS<br />
BY A. FRANK GRUNT<br />
SO, TELL ME WHAT YOU REALLY THINK?<br />
THAT APPEARS TO BE <strong>THE</strong> QUESTION AT<br />
NOVA SCOTIA’S PAPER OR RECORD,<br />
WHICH I BELIEVE IS CALLED <strong>THE</strong> CHRONI-<br />
CLE-CANADIAN PRESS OR SOMETHING OF<br />
THAT NATURE. I THINK.<br />
One year after the Great Purge, or the repression<br />
of the working peasants (some who<br />
actually did do some work), which was accomplished<br />
with Stalinist speed and Toyota acceleration,<br />
the time has come for the usual<br />
performance appraisals.<br />
In a Tuesday, March 23, email to “Hello<br />
colleagues,” the publisher’s daughter, Sarah<br />
Dennis, shiny, new president & CEO of the<br />
Chronicle-Herald, (Yeah, that’s the name of<br />
the thing) wrote to “...thank everyone who<br />
participated in the performance appraisal<br />
process over the past few months.<br />
“I am happy,” Sarah glowed, “to let you know<br />
that over 95 per cent of the appraisals are<br />
complete - the highest number ever! Lets aim<br />
for 100 per cent next year!<br />
Sarah added:<br />
“The next step in this process is supervisor<br />
reviews and it started with me. I was the first<br />
to be reviewed and it has given me some good<br />
feedback to move forward and work on. So I<br />
encourage all of you to continue to participate<br />
in the process as it comes time for you to review<br />
your supervisor.”<br />
I imagine the paperwork took less time to<br />
process this year, than in previous years. Although,<br />
I have yet to receive my performance<br />
appraisal form to fill out. Darn, that surface to<br />
surface mail.<br />
I also feel it is incumbent upon me, as Ruling<br />
Czar of the Frankland Fair & Balanced<br />
Department to dispel rumours that CH working<br />
schmucks were asked to fill out their supervisor<br />
appraisals on the back of a $100 bill<br />
and send those $100 bills off to a certain address<br />
on Halifax’s opulent Bloomingdale Terrace.<br />
In keeping with the hot topic of absorbing<br />
emails:<br />
CH managing editor Dan Leger, prior to<br />
Sarah’s email, sent out this gem to all hands<br />
on March 5. I reproduce it in its entirety:<br />
Hi folks:<br />
Just a quick note to say thank you to so<br />
many people who have been making the paper<br />
and our website look great.<br />
Thank you for giving readers a very strong<br />
MEDIA<br />
MADNESS<br />
series of Olympic papers, capped by the<br />
magnificent front page with Crosby on Monday.<br />
Then you gave them stories, to name just<br />
a few among many, on the Hants Country<br />
cross burners, the squabble over policing in<br />
HRM and the fate of Sid the Kid’s gold-medal<br />
pants. You gave them a live blog of the firstever<br />
public meeting of the Internal Economy<br />
Board.<br />
And readers enjoyed their news on pages<br />
that were consistently well-designed and wellpresented.<br />
In fact, the paper has never looked<br />
better, and today’s edition is a perfect example.<br />
A great front page that was both visually<br />
arresting and packed with useful information.<br />
Inside we found lovely section fronts with a<br />
lovely photograph anchoring Sports.<br />
There’s much more, of course. But it just<br />
feels to me like we are producing very strong<br />
material and presenting it as well as any newspaper<br />
in the country.<br />
So thank you.<br />
Dan Leger<br />
* As you probably already know, I ain’t no<br />
expert on the English language, but Leger’s<br />
email, smelling like a can of Febreze, is the<br />
full embodiment of self-congratulations.<br />
He wisely forwarded this can of Febreze to<br />
his boss, the said Ms. Sarah Dennis.<br />
Certainly, again as the Ruling Czar of the<br />
Frankland Fair & Balanced Department, I congratulate<br />
Dan and Sarah on the live blogging<br />
of the Internal Economy Board.<br />
As for the HRM policing story, Phonse<br />
Jessome of CBC-TV broke that one.<br />
Moreover, the Canadian Press covered the<br />
Olympics for the Herald, just as CP reporters<br />
Keith Doucette and Alison Auld continue to<br />
cover the N.S. MLA Looting Scandal for<br />
Nova Scotia’s Paper of Record.
MYRA’S MOMENTARY LAPSE IN PROTOCOL<br />
BY A. FRANK GRUNT<br />
A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO I FOUND<br />
MYSELF AT ONE OF <strong>THE</strong> GREATEST, ABSO-<br />
FANTASTIC GROCERY STORES IN <strong>THE</strong> ENTIRE<br />
PROVINCE OF NOVA SCOTIA. <strong>THE</strong> STAFF<br />
ARE ALWAYS FRIENDLY. EVERYTHING IS AS<br />
ADVERTISED, ROUTINELY IN STOCK, AND<br />
YOU CAN GENERALLY FIND WHAT YOU WANT<br />
WITHOUT ANY FUSS OR BO<strong>THE</strong>R.<br />
Not sure why I was there?<br />
Oh, yeah, that’s it. There’s a liquor store<br />
close by, and I had to go into the grocery store<br />
to get some mix. That’s what that was all<br />
about. I don’t think the notion of food was actually<br />
ever involved.<br />
In any event, who should I find myself strolling<br />
some distance behind but Nova Scotia’s<br />
former Lieutenant Governor Myra Freeman,<br />
who is married to a bald man who wears a<br />
remarkable, almost no-can-tell wig.<br />
Anyway, the lovely Myra was dressed up like<br />
a stick of gum. In a charming fire engine red<br />
skirt, cut just above the knee, and a matching,<br />
looked to be wool, fire engine red threebutton<br />
jacket Myra Freeman was definitely the<br />
fashion queen of the frozen food section.<br />
And no white gloves. After all, who wants<br />
the indelicate stench of stinky fish all over your<br />
delicate white gloves?<br />
She was looking quite tanned, like she’s<br />
seen her share of sunny days in recent<br />
months. Possibly, Myra had recently returned<br />
from Yarmouth, or some place south like that?<br />
The former grade school teacher, surprisingly,<br />
was hatless, but wore fashionable<br />
eyewear. You know, the kind where the arms<br />
of the glasses are the size of two-by-fours.<br />
I think she was wearing befitting hosiery. I<br />
never thought, however, to check out her footwear.<br />
<strong>Ever</strong>ything happened so fast.<br />
Unfortunately, I never really caught up with<br />
New Brunswick-born Myra until we were in<br />
the ketchup section, where she, understandably,<br />
was trying to decide on whether or not<br />
to go with the irresistible essence of Heinz or<br />
the much cheaper in-house no-name brand.<br />
It doesn’t matter.<br />
All I can say is that for a woman who turns<br />
61 on May 17, Myra Freeman, regardless if<br />
her husband wears a wig, still cuts a very, very<br />
fine ladylike figure. Let me say with unbridled<br />
conviction that Myra Freeman is the best darn<br />
looking vice regal freeloader this province may<br />
ever see. Here, here!<br />
We didn’t meet again until we entered the<br />
speedy checkout.<br />
It was all good up until this point. Gawd, I<br />
wish it had never, ever happened.<br />
I mean, I thought we were getting along fa-<br />
Myra Freeman<br />
mously up until this point. The future looked<br />
bright. We had the world on a string. It was<br />
our oyster. Nobody else’s oyster. Nothing, it<br />
seemed, like is mentioned in that old Starship<br />
song from the late ’80s, was going to stop us<br />
now.<br />
But <strong>THE</strong>N it happened.<br />
And, as always it happened abruptly, shockingly,<br />
without warning.<br />
Myra having taken out her gold card to pay<br />
for her few items, fish-sticks and ketchup,<br />
whatever, grappled onto her two grocery bags<br />
(plastic), then just blew out the store like she<br />
had never been there in the first place.<br />
She nudged her shopping cart ahead of her<br />
goodself. It rolled very briefly, looked as if it<br />
was going to transition into one of those circle<br />
type shopping cart pirouettes. But then it<br />
stopped. Out of life and out of physics, it sat<br />
there, testimony to listlessness. Definitely a<br />
dead parrot grocery cart.<br />
Myra had dis-Carted. And, and ... in such a<br />
public and uncaring fashion. And there, alone<br />
and forsaken, it sat — Myra’s dis-Carted grocery<br />
cart.<br />
Just sat there. Just pushed aside like some<br />
unwanted lover or bizarre grocery store<br />
stalker.<br />
There it sat.<br />
Myra Freeman had abandoned her grocery<br />
cart straight in the foyer of the busy store, just<br />
like abandoning it. Like abandoning the Baby<br />
Moses in a flimsy woven basket, into the mid-<br />
dle of the swirling Nile.<br />
Now, maybe, there’s some kind of vice regal<br />
canon law for former Lieutenant-Governors<br />
of Nova Scotia which clearly sets out the<br />
protocol that they never have to return their<br />
grocery carts to the designated area. I don’t<br />
know. I’m not an expert on how parliamentary<br />
democracies work.<br />
Probably, there is something, somewhere,<br />
some archaic writ which commands that<br />
former Lieutenant-Governors don’t have to<br />
dis-Cart like the rest of us poor bastards.<br />
Maybe, we are all supposed to stop, backoff<br />
three steps from the sliced baloney cooler,<br />
and sing God Save The Queen as Myra Freeman<br />
leaves the store. I don’t bloody know! I<br />
mean the subject never came up in Glace Bay,<br />
OK?<br />
I do know, however, that I am now headed<br />
for years and years of expensive, time consuming,<br />
painful therapy.<br />
Serendipity replaced by disappointment.<br />
Again.<br />
I mean, all these years, you think you know<br />
a person, then, right outta the friggin’ blue<br />
some hideous idiosyncrasy has to come up<br />
and hit ya right between the two friggin’ eyes.<br />
And, you’re not prepared for it, you haven’t<br />
even had your first rye & coke yet, for<br />
petesake!<br />
And, like, isn’t, like ... goin’ to the liquor store<br />
supposed to be a pleasant experience, you<br />
know, like havin’ yer first kid or sumthun’ like<br />
that.<br />
I just don’t get it. I don’t know what more to<br />
say.<br />
I paid for my four litres of brand-X cola with<br />
the only money I had — the loose change in<br />
my ragged pocket.<br />
It took about three minutes for the incredibly<br />
patient cashier, also with funky glasses,<br />
to get me squared away on the loose change<br />
front. Then I triple-(plastic) bagged by brand-<br />
X cola, since I was walking to my nearby hovel.<br />
As I left the checkout, I reached out to touch<br />
the trolley only minutes before caressed by<br />
Myra’s sweet ungloved hands.<br />
But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I couldn’t<br />
touch Myra’s grocery cart.<br />
Instead, I asked one of the floor staff to,<br />
please, get the thing away from me. Remove<br />
it from my sight. Get it out of my Halifax<br />
viewplane. Push it to the designated area<br />
where other shoppers were returning their own<br />
non-vice-regal grocery carts.<br />
Oddly, that simple act didn’t appear to fatigue<br />
any of these rather ordinary, one would<br />
suspect, grocery shoppers.<br />
Even the habitual cigarette smokers.<br />
Oh, the humanity!<br />
APRIL 13, 2010 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK 11
Hank Dunnewold<br />
IT SEEMS DOUG MACKEEN, FORMERLY <strong>THE</strong><br />
HEAD SHERIFF AT <strong>THE</strong> PICTOU JUSTICE CENTRE,<br />
IS NOT SO EASILY REPLACED.<br />
Five months after his departure last fall, the<br />
N.S. Justice Department has yet to find a permanent<br />
successor.<br />
I understand Jimmy Snow, the head sheriff in<br />
Port Hawkesbury and Antigonish, is serving<br />
as the interim boss in Pictou County until a<br />
permanent replacement can be found. I hear<br />
Justice officials thought they had found their<br />
man in Ray Lindsay, a sheriff’s deputy in Truro,<br />
12 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK APRIL 13, 2010<br />
HANK D.<br />
WAS WARDEN<br />
& SHERIFF<br />
I UNDERSTAND FORMER PICTOU COUNTY WARDEN<br />
HANK DUNNEWOLD LIVED A MERE SIX WEEKS AFTER<br />
BEING DIAGNOSED WITH CANCER, WHICH HAD IN-<br />
VADED HIS KIDNEYS, STOMACH AND LUNGS. HE DIED<br />
ON MARCH 17 AT <strong>THE</strong> AGE OF 61.<br />
Despite spending 18 years around the municipal<br />
council table, the gregarious chap never came to<br />
my attention in any substantial way until after he<br />
was dismissed from the Pictou County Sheriff’s<br />
Service in 2008 for one reason or another. Something<br />
about slapping a fellow sheriff on the behind,<br />
if I recall correctly. At the time Hank told me he was<br />
grieving his dismissal, but I understand he eventually<br />
moved on to a night watchman’s job at the N.S.<br />
Power generating station in Trenton.<br />
Sincerest Frankland condolences.<br />
<strong>THE</strong>RE’S NOT A NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN<br />
but he apparently wasn’t interested in the gig.<br />
Ray refused to confirm or deny the scuttlebutt<br />
when I reached him at work the other day.<br />
You’ll recall former sheriff Doug was the target of<br />
a Justice Dept. investigation stemming from complaints<br />
lodged against him by current and former<br />
employees in 2008 (Frank 536). His final day at<br />
work was October 16 of last year.<br />
A message left with the Justice Dept. wasn’t returned<br />
at Frankland Press Time.<br />
Does Frank Know?<br />
atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca<br />
PAULA GALLANT<br />
Murdered:<br />
December 27, 2005<br />
As of March March 27 27, 27 2010...<br />
1<br />
5 5 1<br />
DAYS<br />
WITHOUT AN ARREST<br />
Dave MacNeil<br />
TOP TRURO<br />
COP MOVES<br />
TO SPLITSVILLE<br />
SADLY, TRURO CHIEF OF POLICE<br />
DAVID MACNEIL AND HIS WIFE<br />
ANGELA HAVE SET UP SEPARATE<br />
HOUSEHOLDS.<br />
N.S. Property Online records indicate<br />
that Angela signed over their<br />
Sandy Place, Valley, Colchester<br />
County matrimonial home (2010 assessment:<br />
$259,900) to Dave, 39ish,<br />
on February 23. Two days later,<br />
Angela closed the deal on a Coburg<br />
Crescent abode ($210,000) in town,<br />
handy to the new elementary school.<br />
I believe the estranged couple’s<br />
marriage produced a pair of pre-teen<br />
children.<br />
A graduate of J.L. Ilsley High<br />
School in Spryfield, Dave studied<br />
sociology and criminology at St.<br />
Mary’s before attending the Atlantic<br />
Police Academy in Charlottetown.<br />
A 16-year veteran cop, he was promoted<br />
to deputy chief in 2005 and<br />
then onto chief after Ken MacLean’s<br />
retirement in 2008.<br />
A detailed message left for Dave at<br />
work was not returned before<br />
Frankland presstime.
WHY ‘BABY JESSICA’<br />
NEEDED A SMARTPHONE<br />
BY JACK BLACKBERRY<br />
HE DIDN’T SPEND 58 HOURS TRAPPED<br />
IN A TEXAS WELL, BUT HIS UNFORTUNATE<br />
ALBEIT BRIEF SEALING IN AN OTTAWA LOO<br />
LAST WEEK HAS TRANSFORMED PORT<br />
HAWKESBURY’S V. OWN GREG<br />
MACEACHERN INTO PARLIAMENT HILL’S<br />
ANSWER TO “BABY JESSICA” MCCLURE.<br />
“OK, no kidding, but I’m trapped in the washroom<br />
outside 200 West Block,” exclaimed the<br />
former Bindy Stronach spokesman via Twitter<br />
last week, “Help.”<br />
I’m told Summa Strategies communica-<br />
LIFESTYLES OF <strong>THE</strong> RICH & CLUTTERED<br />
BY NICK KNACKS<br />
IF YOU’RE WONDERING WHY A RECENT<br />
AUCTION AD IN <strong>THE</strong> CHRONICLE HERALD<br />
WAS TRUMPETING <strong>THE</strong> SALE OF ITEMS<br />
tions consultant Greg, who’s worked in the<br />
provincial Liberal caucus office, at Halifax<br />
City Hall, and as then-Transport Minister<br />
Clifford Huskilson’s executive assistant, was<br />
attending the Cattleman’s Reception in the<br />
West Block Ballroom when nature called.<br />
“Wish I had a beer,” came a follow-up tweet,<br />
informing Greg’s 550-plus Twitter followers<br />
that a commissionaire had apparently been<br />
contacted and was en route to save the day,<br />
while a fellow “hostage” — a colourful, old elbow-tipping<br />
gent who it seems was responsible<br />
for shutting the bathroom’s knobless barrier<br />
— continued to “beat on the door.”<br />
Sprung from the can a short time later, Greg<br />
BELONGING TO <strong>THE</strong> N.S. DEPT. OF<br />
COMMUNITY SERVICES, YOU’RE NOT<br />
ALONE.<br />
Both the March 11 and March 18 editions<br />
SPOTS OF BO<strong>THE</strong>R AT<br />
<strong>THE</strong> PURDY’S PARKADE<br />
It took some digging, but I’ve finally managed<br />
to attach a name to that pretty red<br />
Nissan I far too often see taking up TWO<br />
spots at the Purdy’s Wharf Parkade<br />
(Tweets of the Week, Frank 580).<br />
Seems the owner of said vehicle — N.S.<br />
licence plate EDY 102 — is Danette Pottle<br />
of Dartmouth.<br />
Danette used to live on Green Village<br />
Lane, but now dosses down in a $360,500assessed<br />
abode on Freshwater Trail — off<br />
Baker Drive — which she co-owns with<br />
Christopher Cruikshank (Who he? — ed.).<br />
Surely this couldn’t be the be the same<br />
talented and fragrant Danette Pottle, the Regional<br />
Sales Manager for Growthworks’<br />
Atlantic Venture Fund? Or could it? GASP!<br />
Does Frank know? Phone: (902) 420-1668<br />
Greg MacEachern<br />
via his @gmacofglebe Twitter account, exclaimed<br />
to one and all that he was, “Free at<br />
last. But scarred.”<br />
He subsequently tweeted to CBC political<br />
hack Rosemary Barton, informing her that<br />
“Twitter saved my life.”<br />
Did someone say “Movie of the Week”?<br />
of the Herald carried the advert, proclaiming<br />
that an auction under the Warehouseman’s<br />
Lien Act would take place March 28 at 11<br />
Pettipas Drive in Dartmouth. Although the<br />
blurb gives the names of the few dozen individuals<br />
whose stuff would be sold — including<br />
cab driver and would-be real estate developer<br />
Ali Roushani — there were no details<br />
on what sort of items would be up for<br />
grabs. The last name appearing on the list is<br />
the Dept. of Community Services.<br />
“It’s not actually our property,” explains government<br />
spokesthingy Lucas Wide. He says<br />
the department agreed to pay a months’ storage<br />
fees on behalf of a client who was going<br />
through a “period of transition.” It would appear<br />
the client ran out of time.<br />
Under the Act, the owner of a storage facility<br />
has the right to confiscate a customer’s<br />
items and sell them at public auction if they<br />
fall too far behind in their rent.<br />
In a related story, I see some items belonging<br />
to beloved local sports personality Alex J.<br />
Walling were also advertised for sale, this<br />
time in an auction at the U-Haul Self Storage<br />
place in Burnside on March 20. I unfortunately<br />
wasn’t able to catch up with the man<br />
himself before Frankland Press Time, so I’m<br />
left to speculate what goodies ol’ Alex J. might<br />
have left to rot.<br />
Some old snow tires, maybe? A few dozen<br />
of those blasted red paper boxes left over from<br />
his days as a student newspaper peddler?<br />
The possibilities, if you care enough to<br />
speculate, are endless.<br />
Does Frank Know?<br />
atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca<br />
APRIL 13, 2010 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK 13
<strong>THE</strong> N.S. MLA LOOTING SCANDAL<br />
ZINCK IS NOT<br />
A PRECIOUS METAL<br />
BY A. FRANK GRUNT<br />
WHEN CANADIAN ROCKERS APRIL<br />
WINE SANG ROCK ’N’ ROLL IS A VICIOUS<br />
GAME, I’M SURE <strong>THE</strong>Y ACTUALLY HAD <strong>THE</strong><br />
GAME OF POLITICS IN MIND.<br />
The many and growing number of inconsistencies<br />
in the “He said, they said” Trevor<br />
Zinck saga would make anybody’s head spin.<br />
We know a few things for sure:<br />
The Dartmouth North MLA was not<br />
named as a player in Auditor General<br />
Jacques Lapointe’s recent report.<br />
That with Premier Darrell Dexter’s<br />
massive majority win in June, Trevor<br />
Zinck was expendable.<br />
That Zinck was not paying his constituency<br />
office bills on time.<br />
That Zinck fessed up to a gambling<br />
& booze fixation, the result of mounting<br />
personal problems.<br />
And, finally, we know that Zinck is<br />
definitely Dr. Phil material.<br />
Trevor Zinck<br />
As it has been from the very start of this N.S. MLA Looting Scandal,<br />
there are more questions than answers.<br />
But there’s no comparison between incompetence and the suspicion<br />
of criminality. The Zinck file now sits on the desk of AG Lapointe<br />
for further investigation. We don’t know where that further investigation<br />
might lead.<br />
I have no sympathy for the now Independent Honourable Member.<br />
Doctor, lawyer, political columnist, Frank magazine hack, show me<br />
the person who claims to be personal problem free, and I’ll show you<br />
a liar.<br />
But why throw Zinck under the bus when Halifax Atlantic Dipper<br />
Michele Raymond, duly noted in the AG’s report, has her own bookkeeping<br />
challenges to deal with?<br />
I may eat these words one day but, as of now, I consider Zinck an<br />
upgrade from Glace Bay’s dearly departed Dave Wilson. Sadly, both<br />
these characters were (and Zinck still is) entrusted by distressed constituents<br />
who need effective representation the most.<br />
One Dipper caucus member explained to me that they, including<br />
Dexter, had been aware of Zinck’s problems for months, but at the<br />
end of the day found him to be beyond rehabilitation.<br />
It was also explained it’s not unusual for MLAs to get behind on their<br />
bill payments, because in theory, at least, the Speaker’s Office doesn’t<br />
reimburse until after the bills is paid. All bills are in the individual MLA’s<br />
name.<br />
Zinck claimed he was turfed because of a perception he was getting<br />
too cosy with opposition parties, and Dexter & Co. did not want to be<br />
embarrassed by Zinck possibly voting against the upcoming budget.<br />
He even cited recent reports in a popular bi-weekly family magazine<br />
to make his case.<br />
CONTINUED ON PAGE 23<br />
14 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK APRIL 13, 2010<br />
<strong>THE</strong> END IS NEAR<br />
FOR STEPHEN MCNEIL<br />
BY A. FRANK GRUNT<br />
WELL, IF A MONTH IS A LONG TIME IN<br />
POLITICS, <strong>THE</strong>N TWO WEEKS BETWEEN EDI-<br />
TIONS OF FRANK MAGAZINE IS ALSO A LONG<br />
TIME.<br />
Last issue, Frank 581, we once again<br />
touched on the inner workings, or non-workings,<br />
if you will, of that “black hole” sometimes<br />
referred to as the N.S. Liberal Caucus.<br />
Of which, as of this writing Friday,<br />
March 26, 9 p.m., there are a total of<br />
10 members. But that could change any<br />
minute. Might even change tomorrow<br />
when I come in to fix only my major<br />
spelling errors.<br />
But, what the hell, life’s too short.<br />
Political lives are even shorter.<br />
One rumour circulating the last 10<br />
days or so, and which will not go away,<br />
is that another prominent Liberal MLA Stephen McNeil<br />
is about to go bye-byes, like the late<br />
Dave Wilson from Glace Bay. Anybody remember him?<br />
He resigned over the N.S. MLA Looting Scandal. Watch for this<br />
little matter to continue to grow. Wilson, as we reported last week,<br />
lawyered up with Sydney’s Sheldon Nathanson.<br />
Since then, Liberal Leader Stephen McNeil has made another<br />
spectacle of himself, saying sorry seems to be the hardest word. All<br />
the system’s fault, McNeil continues to say, not one mention of greed<br />
and the possibility of criminality on part of our “Honourable” MLAs,<br />
including Liberals.<br />
Fact is McNeil misled everybody he knew, February 17, a full three<br />
weeks ahead of time that Glace Bay’s Wilson’s was going to resign,<br />
which he did on March 11. McNeil preferred not to know why, so<br />
when the shoe fell, he could plead ignorance.<br />
Is this the mark of a leader ... of anything?<br />
So, it gets worse, not better, for McNeil, who some Liberals feel will<br />
not survive the mid-May Liberal AGM in Antigonish.<br />
“No. I don’t see him surviving,” said one Liberal.<br />
“He knows his caucus is unhappy with him, and does nothing. He<br />
wouldn’t even survive a vote of confidence from his own caucus members.<br />
I think a lot of membership cards are going to be signed and<br />
mailed. Secret ballot is the best way to get rid of any party leader.”<br />
I also asked the question Frank 581, does McNeil chief of staff,<br />
Allan Sullivan Jr. have the same political savvy of his late namesake<br />
father?<br />
The answer, according to one party insider is a resounding “NO!”<br />
Even some loyal Liberal Cape Bretoners are seeing Sullivan as<br />
not exactly what they thought they read on the label.<br />
“He doesn’t even come close to Dan O’Connor (D. Dexter’s chief<br />
of staff), and he’s a nine to five-er. If anybody should know by now<br />
that politics is not a nine-to-five job, it should be Allan Sullivan. Somebody<br />
who grew up around politics,” said the irate insider.<br />
CONTINUED ON PAGE 23
NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS<br />
FOR NOT-SO-FAT FREDDIE<br />
BY A. FRANK GRUNT<br />
FREDDIE JACKSON IS OUT AS <strong>THE</strong> LONG-<br />
TIME MANAGING EDITOR OF <strong>THE</strong> CAPE<br />
BRETON POST.<br />
His last day, I’m told, was Friday, March<br />
19.<br />
Known for schmoozing with members of<br />
Sydney’s uppercrust and anybody bearing a<br />
title, as much as he was known for his long<br />
black trenchcoat, Jackson was the Post’s lead<br />
newsman for nearly two decades.<br />
The native Newfie and former Telegram<br />
sports reporter replaced Angus MacDonald,<br />
who as managing editor introduced the notion<br />
of very wide, red suspenders into the Post<br />
newsroom.<br />
As for schmoozing, it’s great as long as at<br />
the end of day (or night!) you get some worthwhile<br />
copy out of it. Schmoozing also works<br />
best with an open bar, outside of those two<br />
facts of life, schmoozing is a complete waste<br />
of time. Yours, and particularly mine.<br />
I understand Freddie, who a certain biweekly<br />
family magazine back in about 1992<br />
labelled Fat Freddie Jackson, was offered<br />
something else to do within the TransCon (a<br />
Quebecois outfit) newspaper chain.<br />
At 53, married with five girls between the<br />
ages of 17 and 27, Freddie, who in latter years<br />
a certain bi-weekly family magazine was<br />
forced to refer to as Not-So-Fat-Anymore<br />
Freddie Jackson, is too young to retire.<br />
He did get severance from Transcon. What<br />
those particulars are, I don’t know.<br />
A move back to Newfoundland is highly<br />
unlikely.<br />
When Freddie first joined the Post, it was a<br />
Thomson newspaper, then a CanWest chattel,<br />
now a TransCon plaything.<br />
Important to note, once again, that TranCon<br />
Media is a company more interested in corporate<br />
profits from the printing biz than effective<br />
news gathering.<br />
At the time of Freddie’s arrival, Peter<br />
Kapyrka was the Post publisher. (Middle initial<br />
“J”, by the way, if you care.)<br />
I think the writing had been on the wall for a<br />
very long time re Freddie Jackson.<br />
Only recently, bang on Frankland 581 deadline,<br />
did that same bi-weekly family magazine<br />
receive a tip that managing editor Freddie had<br />
virtually lost all his editorial power “months<br />
ago” to former city editor/associate editor<br />
Doug McGee.<br />
It is, in fact, McGee who can now be addressed<br />
as the paper’s managing editor. Pro<br />
tempore.<br />
Fred Jackson<br />
The paper (read: TransCon) I understand,<br />
is currently wondering aloud if the Post needs<br />
a full-time managing editor.<br />
Oh, dear, how this bodes for another former<br />
sports guy turned TransCon managing editor,<br />
Carl Fleming, at the Truro Daily News, a<br />
much, much smaller newspaper, is now a very<br />
open and interesting question.<br />
Much the same can be said for other<br />
TransCon playthings like: the New Glasgow<br />
Evening News, and the Amherst Daily<br />
News.<br />
Current circulation figures, supplied by<br />
TransCon, claim Post circulation at about an<br />
average of 26,000 daily.<br />
Circulation was about 32,000 daily when<br />
Freddie took over, but that fact is also a function<br />
of the meltdown in the newspaper biz.<br />
Although, you talk to any Cape Bretoner<br />
over 25 years of age (if you can find one) and<br />
they will tell you the same thing — they basically<br />
buy the Post for the obits. It’s been that<br />
way for 35 years at least.<br />
Not that a little bit of enterprising hard news<br />
wouldn’t help move the paper from time to<br />
time, but that’s not been seen in the pages of<br />
the Post since the days of the late Ian MacNeil<br />
in the 1970s.<br />
Anita Delazzer, who arrived on the scene<br />
CAPE<br />
BRETON<br />
CALLING...<br />
from Irving Schwartz’s Seaside Cable, is<br />
now the Post publisher. She’s seen as a fair<br />
person (just taking orders as they say), but<br />
Anita Delazzer is rarely confused with the late<br />
Katharine Graham from that other Post.<br />
Near the end of his tenure at the Post,<br />
Freddie was doing some late night tab and<br />
editing work, work formerly done in rather<br />
accomplished manner by Peter Cotter. But<br />
poor Peter was also let go by Transcon earlier<br />
this year.<br />
It was Freddie and former publisher Kapyrka<br />
who teamed up to give readers the short-lived<br />
asinine “Buddy Breton.”<br />
It was an anonymous weekly column playing<br />
on every Cape Breton stereotype, using<br />
the Cape Breton vernacular, which was employed<br />
to, ... to, er, u, ... I have no idea, really.<br />
Freddie and Kapyrka also employed their<br />
lovely wives to help out during election nights.<br />
What’s that they say “strong families build<br />
strong paycheques.” I dunno.<br />
No matter.<br />
Freddie isn’t the last to go.<br />
As previously reported, TransCon plans to<br />
move all pre-production of its Nova Scotia<br />
playthings to Charlottetown. This will put at<br />
least another six Post employees out of work,<br />
TransCon’s only unionized shop. They have<br />
been without a contract since January 31.<br />
The good news is that pre-production workers<br />
kicked out on their arses by Anita Delazzer<br />
have been invited to re-apply for their old jobs<br />
in Charlottetown, where there is no union protection.<br />
Incredibly gracious stuff.<br />
Freddie first went on the missing list a few<br />
weeks ago when his regular Saturday, happy<br />
talk column suddenly disappeared from the<br />
editorial page. Shame. I’m gonna miss that<br />
inspirational quote at the end of each column,<br />
Freddie used to close with.<br />
But Freddie has made enough connections<br />
in Cape Breton to land on his feet. Don’t you<br />
worry.<br />
Also disappearing from Cape Breton at<br />
alarming rate is any real media presence.<br />
First ATV pulled out of Sydney, then CBC-<br />
TV’s Cape Breton Report was also flushed<br />
down the toilet, and when Halifax’s “Little”<br />
Bobby Pace came to town buying up radio<br />
stations, this only added to an already advanced<br />
case of media atrophy.<br />
Does Frank Know?<br />
atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca<br />
APRIL 13, 2010 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK 15
MARTY MUST BE CRYING<br />
IN HIS BEER...<br />
BY M. BYBERS<br />
IT ISN’T OFTEN YOU SEE MARTY CHERNIN WIND UP WITH <strong>THE</strong> SHORT END OF <strong>THE</strong><br />
STICK, BUT <strong>THE</strong> BANKRUPTCY OF SMOOTH HERMAN’S AND JOE’S WAREHOUSE HAS<br />
LEFT C.B. BIZ MOGUL MARTY SHORT NEARLY $220,000.<br />
Marty’s company, Joe’s Warehouse Ltd., which he co-owns with Hugh Tweedie, owns the<br />
sprawling complex on Charlotte Street and Esplande Street, the old Canadian Tire store<br />
that for three decades was home to the now-failed nightclub and eatery.<br />
The entity that went bankrupt is Joe’s Warehouse Management Ltd., which operated both<br />
the watering hole and hashery. The JWM firm, not to be confused with Marty and Hugh’s<br />
similar-sounding biz, is run by father-daughter duo, barrister Joe Salter and Sara Figliomeni.<br />
Two weeks after Joe and Sara pulled the plug on the Sydney institutions (Frank 581), their<br />
JWM firm filed official bankruptcy papers, claiming $640,510 liabilities, and only $40,000 as-<br />
sets, which include $2,000 in liquor and beer,<br />
$1,055 cash, a $15,000 cooler and a $13,405<br />
point of sale computer system. The biz cited<br />
an inability to meet its obligations, as the bankruptcy<br />
cause.<br />
The first meeting of creditors takes place<br />
April 8, at the BDO Canada offices, bright<br />
and early at 10 a.m. Halifax BDO guru Paul<br />
Goodman is the trustee.<br />
Halifax-based computer systems guru AM<br />
Aloha is the only secured creditor ($13,405),<br />
while the sole preferred creditor is Marty and<br />
Hugh’s biz, owed $16,000 for wages and/or<br />
rent, on top of the $203,645 it is owed as an<br />
unsecured creditor.<br />
Joe and wife Sharon Salter are the individual<br />
creditors most on the hook. One-time<br />
Progressive Conservative candidate Joe,<br />
who in 1984 lost Cape Breton-The Sydneys<br />
to Russell MacLellan, is out $65,237, and<br />
North Sydney lass Sharon is out of pocket<br />
$183,500.<br />
Another significant creditor is Canada Revenue<br />
Agency, stiffed $25,000. No doubt some<br />
noses may get out of joint, at the thought that<br />
Sara, as an Enterprise Cape Breton Corp.<br />
board member, is herself the recipient of federal<br />
tax dollars, yet her biz is unable to fulfil<br />
all its federal tax obligations.<br />
The last time I checked, ECBC boardies<br />
collected about $4,000-per, and received a<br />
$200-$300 per diem. I left a message with<br />
ECBC spokesthingy D.A. Landry, asking if<br />
Sara’s commercial bankruptcy in any way affects<br />
her federal Crown Corp. directorship,<br />
but D.A. did not return my call at deadline.<br />
Sara, whose ECBC tenure was extended two<br />
years (current term ends January 2011),<br />
claimed $896.90 in ECBC-related expenses,<br />
for a two-day trip to Ottawa last March.<br />
On the municipal front, John Morgan’s<br />
fiefdom, also known as the Cape Breton Regional<br />
Municipality, is owed $2,600, and<br />
Myles Burke’s C.B. Regional Police is out<br />
$19,905. As you can see, the Smooth<br />
Herman’s-Joe’s closure hurts not only local<br />
imbibers and gourmands, but the local tax-<br />
16 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK APRIL 13, 2010<br />
payer feels the sting, as well.<br />
Does Frank Know?<br />
atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca<br />
WHO ELSE IS OWED<br />
AM Aloha (John MacKeen, owner) $3,940<br />
Bell Mobility $1,070<br />
Cape Breton Beverages<br />
(Michael Cote) $2,350<br />
EcoLab, Mississauga $580<br />
Giant 101.9 CHRK (Newcap) $26,000<br />
Metro Sanitation (Mary Macneil) $5,075<br />
Scotia Propane<br />
(Allan & Michael Pace) $10,265<br />
Shaw’s Wholesale Fish $42<br />
SOCAN $2,200<br />
Sysco Atlantic $84,920<br />
Transcontinental (C.B. Post) $3,200<br />
Yellow Pages $1,575<br />
Marty Chernin<br />
LOT OF HOT WINGS<br />
<strong>THE</strong> MARCH 7 CLOSING OF SMOOTH<br />
HERMAN’S AND JOE’S WAREHOUSE RESTAU-<br />
RANT STIFFED SUPPLIER SYSCO CANADA TO<br />
<strong>THE</strong> TUNE OF A NEARLY $80,000, COURT<br />
DOCUMENTS ALLEGE.<br />
Via its Hill Law beagle Tim Hill, Sysco sued<br />
Joe’s Warehouse Management Ltd. in Halifax<br />
Supreme Court on March 23, the same<br />
day the Sydney establishments filed for bankruptcy.<br />
Sysco alleged the unpaid $79,985 debt (at<br />
1.5% monthly interest) was incurred between<br />
January 4 and March 5.<br />
According to federal bankruptcy records<br />
(see story), Sysco is a JWM unsecured creditor<br />
to the tune of $84,920. But what’s an olive<br />
or two difference between friends?
ARMOYAN DIVORCE:<br />
FIVE MONTHS OF DRAMA<br />
BY MEL T. DOWN<br />
Oct. 20: Mother of three, Lisa Armoyan<br />
files a divorce petition in Palm Beach County<br />
court against her husband of 16 years, Armco<br />
Capital bigwig and developer Vrege<br />
Armoyan.<br />
Oct. 22: Lisa serves Vrege divorce papers<br />
in their Bocca Raton abode. She allegedly<br />
tells him: “Don’t talk to me, talk to my lawyer.”<br />
Oct. 26: Vrege flies back to Halifax, taking<br />
with him his Armco company laptop. While<br />
at their Marlborough Woods home (formerly<br />
Commodore Bruce Oland’s cottage), Vrege<br />
realizes, with trepidation, that he recently left<br />
his laptop alone with avid archivist Lisa.<br />
Nov. 3: The FBI searches the Miami law<br />
offices of disbarred lawyer Scott Rothstein,<br />
who attracted dozens of high-rolling investors,<br />
including Vrege, in a massive Ponzi scheme.<br />
The week before, Rothstein chartered a private<br />
jet to Africa and began sending colleagues<br />
suicide texts.<br />
Nov 3: Unbeknowest to Vrege, in Florida<br />
Lisa files a lis pendens on the Marlborough<br />
Woods abode, legally disputing Vrege’s sole<br />
ownership of the $2.81 million assessed<br />
property.<br />
Nov. 3: Returning to Bocca Raton, Vrege<br />
and Lisa have it out. He accuses her of copying<br />
the contents of his Armco laptop. She allegedly<br />
responds, “Do you think I’m stupid.<br />
You have no idea how smart I am. I’m going<br />
to get you.” She allegedly threatens to disclose<br />
confidential Armco info to its competitors.<br />
Nov 4: Vrege shares the bad news with<br />
his big brother George Armoyan, the famed<br />
Bay Street wheeler-dealer.<br />
Nov. 8: George flies down to Florida to<br />
meet Vrege.<br />
Nov. 11: George convenes an Armoyan Divorce<br />
War Room in Boca Raton, with Vrege’s<br />
Florida lawyer Jeffrey Fischer, Lisa, her lawyer<br />
Joel “Mad Dog” Weissman, her two<br />
chartered accountants, and her father, T.O.<br />
jeweller Hagop Atikian. Despite his best attempts,<br />
George is unable to reconcile the<br />
warring parties.<br />
Nov. 17: Vrege hands his laptop over to<br />
George, who promptly gives it to a Deloittee<br />
& Touche forensic investigation team. They<br />
determine that the laptop was compromised<br />
by a USB thumb-drive on Oct. 7, nearly two<br />
weeks before Lisa began divorce proceedings.<br />
Nov. 18: Armco prez Rob MacPherson<br />
terminates Vrege’s $144,000-per employment<br />
as head of Armco’s US division in Florida.<br />
Early December: Vrege buys a $1.6 million<br />
yacht he moors in Miami and leaves Boca<br />
Raton, according to Lisa’s subsequent court<br />
documents.<br />
Dec. 1: Fugitive lawyer Rothstein returns<br />
from Morocco to surrender to U.S. authorities.<br />
Dec. 2: Florida court orders Vrege pay<br />
$150,000 in temporary support to Lisa and<br />
their two daughters. (Their son is attending a<br />
T.O. private school.)<br />
Dec. 4: Vrege sues Lisa in Nova Scotia<br />
Supreme Court over her Florida lis pendens<br />
on the Marlborough Woods home, arguing<br />
that her US legal manoeuvres are “an abuse<br />
of power, high-handed, callous and an attempt<br />
to embarrass” him.<br />
Dec. 15: Armco sues Lisa in N.S. Supreme<br />
Court to prevent her from releasing the confidential<br />
biz info on Vrege’s laptop.<br />
Dec. 22: Newly released documents from<br />
US federal court reveal that Rothstein’s firm<br />
paid Vrege $240,000 shortly before its Nov.<br />
10 bankruptcy. In total, Vrege lost $3.62 million<br />
investment in Rothstein’s fraudulent<br />
scheme.<br />
Dec. 23: After Vrege allegedly terminated<br />
the lease of their $12,000-a-month rented<br />
house in Bocca Raton, Lisa and her daughters<br />
move into a new home across town.<br />
Monthly rent: $8,000.<br />
Jan. 13: George announces he is stepping<br />
down from the family’s gazillion dollar<br />
holding firm Clarke Inc. “to attend to personal<br />
family matters.”<br />
Jan. 27: Rothstein pleads guilty in Florida<br />
court to masterminding a $1.2 billion Ponzi<br />
scheme.<br />
Jan 28: Vrege resigns his long-time post<br />
as Armco director, which paid him an additional<br />
$50,000 or so, over and above his<br />
Armco executive salary.<br />
Jan. 28: On this day their youngest child<br />
was “scheduled to have emergency surgery<br />
to correct life threatening complications” from<br />
a previous IWK surgery, states Lisa’s N.S. affidavit.<br />
“I cannot leave her.” Lisa requests she<br />
be allowed to deliver N.S. court testimony via<br />
video conference from her lawyer’s Palm<br />
Beach office, and her request is granted.<br />
Early February: Part-time fitness trainer<br />
and model Lisa begins classes at Kaplan University.<br />
Feb 8: A Florida lawyer in the Rothstein<br />
fallout indicates he wants to question Vrege<br />
and George’s 82-year father Sami Armoyan.<br />
According to documents, Sami’s numbered biz<br />
1181830 Alberta Ltd. was recently paid $6.17<br />
million from Rothstein’s law firm. George later<br />
tells media the payout was related to legitimate<br />
legal work. Post-bankruptcy, Rothstein’s<br />
firm owes Sami’s biz $910,000.<br />
Feb 9: Lisa appears before Florida judge<br />
Kenneth Stern, asking the court to take possession<br />
of her copied info from Vrege’s laptop,<br />
Lisa Armoyan<br />
to preserve it for the purposes of disclosure<br />
in their divorce. Stern obliges.<br />
Feb. 11: A marathon, three-hour N.S. Supreme<br />
Court hearing in the Lower Water<br />
Street courthouse. Lisa appears via TV hookup<br />
before judge Gerald Moir, requesting a<br />
stay in Armco’s Nova Scotia lawsuit. Vrege<br />
testifies. Moir reserves his decision.<br />
March 3: Vrege’s lawyer Mick Ryan files<br />
a new SC lawsuit in Halifax, alleging Lisa<br />
“committed the tort of intimidation.”<br />
March 15: Frank Magazine reveals details<br />
of Vrege’s ongoing tax feud with Revenue<br />
Canada over $405,000 in disputed income,<br />
stemming from $1 million loans he gave his<br />
children in 2000. The kids (combined age:<br />
eight) promptly flipped the $1 million loans<br />
back to one of Vrege’s companies at a higher<br />
interest rate (Frank 581).<br />
March 17: Judge Moir sides with Lisa, ruling<br />
that Florida court is the more appropriate<br />
venue for Armco’s laptop dispute. At presstime<br />
it is unknown if Armco intends to appeal, or<br />
intervene in the Armoyan’s Florida divorce, or<br />
sit on the sidelines.<br />
The Armoyan legal row is ongoing in the<br />
Sunshine State.<br />
Does Frank Know?<br />
atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca<br />
APRIL 13, 2010 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK 17
CTV SHRUGS OFF <strong>THE</strong> AJS<br />
BY ANDREW CORNSTALKER<br />
WHILE CTV ATLANTIC NEWS DIRECTOR JAY<br />
WI<strong>THE</strong>RBEE ISN’T TALKING ABOUT HIS STATION’S<br />
VIRTUAL BOYCOTT OF <strong>THE</strong> ATLANTIC JOURNAL-<br />
ISM AWARDS, LONG-TIME AJAS EXECUTIVE<br />
DIRECTOR BILL SKERRETT SAYS CTV’S LACK<br />
OF SUPPORT IS “ABSOLUTELY” HURTING <strong>THE</strong><br />
AWARDS’ CREDIBILITY.<br />
It’s been a couple of years since CTV has<br />
been represented on the non-profit’s board of<br />
directors, and just as long since the station<br />
came up with any financial support for the organization,<br />
which has an annual budget in the<br />
neighbourhood of $100,000. In recent years,<br />
Bill says his appeals for cash from CTV have<br />
been denied because of the company’s financial<br />
difficulties. Incidentally, Global Maritimes,<br />
whose parent company Canwest Global filed<br />
for bankruptcy protection last year, is sponsoring<br />
the AJAs to the tune of $2500 in 2010*.<br />
The last time CTV bought a table at the<br />
awards gala was 2007, which happened to<br />
be the same year CTV Newsnet’s former<br />
mascot, The Stay Puft Newsman, belched<br />
out a stale Belinda Stronach joke or two for<br />
the gathered masses. But worst of all, Bill says<br />
CTV only saw fit to submit two pieces of work<br />
for consideration this year.<br />
“From my point of view there’s a big hole<br />
there,” says Bill, who describes CTV as a “sig-<br />
CBC GOES WHOLE HOG<br />
ONE MORE AJAS DISPATCH, NOT CONCERN-<br />
ING <strong>THE</strong> TEPID NUMBER OF SUBMISSIONS FROM<br />
CTV ATLANTIC, BUT <strong>THE</strong> VERITABLE MOUN-<br />
TAIN OF ENTRIES RECEIVED ANNUALLY FROM <strong>THE</strong><br />
CBC.<br />
AJAs boss-man Bill Skerrett estimates that<br />
his volunteer corps of judges are examining<br />
around 120 entries from the Mother Corp this<br />
year, a number that represents a whopping<br />
30 per cent of the approximately 400 total<br />
Rob Johnson<br />
18 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK APRIL 13, 2010<br />
nificant force” in Atlantic Canadian journalism.<br />
CTV submitted about a dozen pieces for<br />
consideration last year, but it only sent one<br />
foot soldier to attend the Moncton gala (Was<br />
it the grumpy one with the moustache or the<br />
splotchy red-headed guy? — ed.).<br />
Bill dismisses my suggestion that the network<br />
could be sore over the AJAs’ constant<br />
dismissal of Liz Rigney’s fine work. Last year<br />
Liz won her second Edward R. Murrow<br />
Award for feature journalism; both awards<br />
were for emotionally manipulative pieces<br />
which failed to capture top prizes at the AJAs<br />
(Frank 558). Veteran CTV camera-slinger<br />
Dan MacIntosh did manage to bring home<br />
the hardware however, snagging the 2008<br />
Gold Video Journalist award for his show of<br />
work.<br />
* Other sponsors this year include Irvingowned<br />
Brunswick News, the Mother Corp,<br />
NewCap Radio Inc., The Chronicle Herald,<br />
and Transcontinental Media, who all<br />
coughed up $4,000 apiece. Bill wouldn’t divulge<br />
amounts pledged by corporate and government<br />
sponsors, including Bell Aliant,<br />
TelAv, Emera, Atlantic Lotto, CNW Group,<br />
the Province of New Brunswick, and Communications<br />
Nova Scotia.<br />
Does Frank Know?<br />
atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca<br />
entries received. Keeping in mind that each<br />
entry costs $55, the Mother Corp’s submissions<br />
are costing taxpayers in the neighbourhood<br />
of $6,600 this year, certainly more than<br />
enough to pay for a few billboards along<br />
Barrington Street (Frank 581). By way of<br />
contrast, CTV is spending $110 on its pair of<br />
entries.<br />
It’s a reality that seems to be reflected everywhere<br />
these days, isn’t it? Private companies<br />
are pinching pennies at every turn, while public<br />
concerns like the CBC continue to pitch ’em<br />
out the door with greater gusto than ever.<br />
UP AND DOWN <strong>THE</strong> DIAL<br />
KEN GEDDES, <strong>THE</strong> FOUNDING GENERAL MANAGER OF K-<br />
ROCK IN KENTVILLE, HAS BEEN SHUFFLED TO HALIFAX IN<br />
ORDER TO SERVE AS Q-104 AND KOOL 96.5’S GENERAL<br />
SALES MANAGER.<br />
Ken’s first day in the big city was March 1.<br />
“It was a promotion designed to give me experience in a<br />
larger market,” says Ken, adding that it was an opportunity<br />
that he “couldn’t pass up.”<br />
While I couldn’t be happier for Ken and his move up the<br />
corporate ladder, I fear David Suzuki wouldn’t exactly approve<br />
of his environmentally unfriendly decision to commute<br />
every day from the Valley. He’ll continue to keep house with<br />
Prospect Agri Services maven Kim <strong>Best</strong>, his talented and<br />
WHY I’LL<br />
BE <strong>THE</strong>RE<br />
WITH BELLS ON<br />
ANYWAY<br />
SOME MIGHT SAY THAT TO CONSIDER WHAT<br />
LOSS OF CREDIBILITY <strong>THE</strong> ATLANTIC JOURNAL-<br />
ISM AWARDS HAS SUFFERED AS A RESULT OF<br />
CTV’S ALMOST COMPLETE LACK OF PARTICI-<br />
PATION THIS YEAR WOULD BE A FOOL’S ERRAND,<br />
AND <strong>THE</strong>Y MIGHT BE RIGHT.<br />
After all, how credible can the Atlantic Journalism<br />
Awards claim to be in the first place? In<br />
order for a piece of reportage to qualify for an<br />
award at all, the news organ must submit it for<br />
consideration to the AJAs, along with a cheque<br />
or money order for $55 per piece. The magazine<br />
which you hold in your hands at this very<br />
moment could contain the most hard-hitting,<br />
mind-blowing, toe-curling piece of journalism<br />
the world has seen since Woodstrum and<br />
Burnward forced Anthony Hopkins to resign<br />
the presidency, but (with apologies to the Chinese),<br />
if there’s no tickee, there’s no laundry.<br />
Then again, since when do credibility and<br />
awards go hand and hand anyway? In a world<br />
where Jamie Foxx has a Grammy, the Nobel<br />
Peace Prize was possessed by Yasser Arafat<br />
and Liz Rigney has not one but two Edward<br />
R. Murrow Awards, who gives a darn if<br />
Saltscapes has to pay $55 to give some random<br />
freelance schmuck the opportunity to<br />
stand at a podium and feel like he’s done<br />
something that matters for once in his life? I,<br />
for one, do not.<br />
In fact, I love the Atlantic Journalism Awards,<br />
and I don’t care who knows it. I love the glitz,<br />
the glamour, the tears and laughter; a boozy<br />
acceptance speech here, a touch of cleavage<br />
there.<br />
May 8 can’t come soon enough.<br />
fragrant wiferoo, at their Prospect<br />
Road, King’s County<br />
abode (2010 assessment:<br />
$190,000).<br />
RADIO DAZE<br />
Elsewhere in the new-ish<br />
NewCap bunker, which boasts<br />
a majestic view of the Windsor Street Exchange, Kool 96.5<br />
program director Rob Johnson has fled the coop.<br />
“He tendered his resignation this morning (March 26),”<br />
general manager Ted Hyland tells me.<br />
I regrettably wasn’t able to catch up with Saskatchewan<br />
native Rob before Frankland Press Time.<br />
Does Frank Know?<br />
atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca
CLOAK AND DAGGER IN WOLFVILLE<br />
BY WATT ITSAY<br />
IN SPRING A YOUNG MAN’S FANCY TURNS TO THOUGHTS OF LOVE, BUT<br />
IF YOUR NAME IS LUTZ BECKER AND YOU LIVE IN WOLFVILLE, AND TOWN<br />
HALL WON’T ANSWER YOUR FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST, <strong>THE</strong>N<br />
YOUR FANCY TURNS TO THOUGHTS OF LITIGATION.<br />
Lutz has once again opted to go the Supreme Court route to unlock<br />
Wolfville’s vault of many secrets, and to pry the mayoral digits of gatekeeper<br />
Bob Stead from its closed crypt.<br />
A sense of deja vu is overwhelming, as Lutz is suing the town for the<br />
second time around, to force the release of a pristine, unedited copy of<br />
the (cue organ music — ed.) mythic Stead Letter.<br />
This mysterious missive is the one-page note dated Feb. 15, 2007<br />
from Mayor Bob to cao Roy Brideau, outlining Roy’s robust four-year<br />
ROY’S SWEET DEAL<br />
BY MEG A. BUCKS<br />
MY MIND REELS AT <strong>THE</strong> THOUGHT OF WOLFVILLE CAO ROY BRIDEAU<br />
BAGGING $100,000-PER AND LIKELY ENJOYS <strong>THE</strong> SWEETEST PENSION<br />
DEAL IN TOWN.<br />
Is there a major oil sands project underneath Mud Creek, and untold<br />
wealth that permits Mayor Bob Stead and his merry councillors to pay<br />
town employees top dollar?<br />
On January 18 town council unanimously ratified Roy’s contract, as<br />
it was formally written in a Feb. 15, 2007 letter to Roy from Mayor Bob.<br />
This is the infamous Stead Letter, with its final paragraph blacked out,<br />
the missive Lutz Becker has been trying to wrestle from the town since<br />
May 2008.<br />
In the non-redacted paragraphs, Mayor Bob spells out Roy’s pay from<br />
Year 1 (2007-2008) to Year 4 (2010-11), beginning at $91,000 and<br />
steeply climbing to $100,403.<br />
We’re talking serious change, in a town with a tax base the size of<br />
Wolfville’s. For comparison’s sake, Robert Thibault is making<br />
$125,000-per as cao of Richmond County, an area vastly larger with<br />
nearly 2.5 times the population.<br />
Wolfville’s pension contributions seem equally as outlandish, er, generous.<br />
In Year 1, the town contributes 12% to Roy’s pension plan, to<br />
salary raises (see story below).<br />
You’ll recall Lutz first sued town officials after a fruitless 18-month<br />
quest for answers, via the misnamed “Freedom of Information” Act.<br />
In Frank 581 I reported Lutz settled his row with Mayor Bob and Roy,<br />
at a cost to taxpayers, some suggest, that hit about $17,000 in legal<br />
fees. A cost, of course, Mayor Stead’s administration could have easily<br />
avoided, by handing over the letter in the first place.<br />
Turns out, Lutz had a premature notion of settlement. The town did<br />
not release the full Stead Letter as Lutz expected and the contents of<br />
the Stead Letter’s blacked-out paragraph elude him to this day. What<br />
heinous mystery does this missing paragraph foretell?<br />
Stay tuned.<br />
Does Frank Know?<br />
atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca<br />
Roy’s 6% contribution.<br />
By Year 4, Roy contributes nothing to his<br />
retirement fund, while the town contribution<br />
maxes out at 18%.<br />
For context, our poor, beleaguered MLAs<br />
ante up 10% of their salaries for their<br />
cadillac pension plan, an amount the government,<br />
ie. the taxpayer, annually<br />
matches.<br />
Maybe Roy is worth every penny of his<br />
present and future take-home, I don’t know.<br />
The Banff School of Management and<br />
U. of Alberta grad toiled for 12 years as a<br />
senior municipal manager with the Alberta<br />
government before becoming executive director<br />
of the New Brunswick Council on<br />
Recreation for the Disabled, and subsequently<br />
cao of Sackville, N.B. Roy has<br />
served as Wolfville cao since 1995.<br />
I believe he was first hired at just below<br />
$60,000-per, though I cannot state it as fact.<br />
Roy Brideau<br />
Roy’s wife Sherry Brideau teaches primary at Hantsport school.<br />
They live in a $319,300-assessed abode on Avon Street in the tiny<br />
hamlet of Hants Border, Kings Co.<br />
Does Frank Know? atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca<br />
Frank News Tips<br />
Hotline<br />
1-888-335-5505<br />
www.atlanticfrank.ca<br />
2010014<br />
APRIL 13, 2010 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK 19
FROM <strong>THE</strong> WHO’S WATCHING<br />
<strong>THE</strong> WATCHERS FILES<br />
BY WARD N. LOOTER<br />
I HEAR LOCKEPORT-AREA DWELLERS WERE<br />
STUNNED TO LEARN FROM <strong>THE</strong> COMICAL HER-<br />
ALD’S MARCH 20 EDITION THAT LOCAL GAL<br />
SUZANNE CROSBY HAD BEEN UNDER HOUSE<br />
ARREST SINCE DECEMBER FOR COMMITTING<br />
FRAUD DURING HER STINT AS DEPUTY SUPER-<br />
INTENDENT OF <strong>THE</strong> PROVINCIAL JAIL IN YAR-<br />
MOUTH.<br />
“(The case) was very hush-hush,” says my<br />
source who, like many others, found the timing<br />
of Herald hack/reformed plagiarist Brian<br />
Medel’s article odd.<br />
“Why wasn’t this in the Yarmouth Vanguard’s<br />
court news when it went to court (in<br />
December)?”<br />
Either way, my source calls 42-year-old<br />
Suzanne’s downfall “poetic justice,” explaining<br />
that in some Department of Justice circles,<br />
she wasn’t exactly Miss Popularity.<br />
A former toiler at the Shelburne School for<br />
Boys, Sue also spent time as a Burnside<br />
Lock-up captain, before securing employment<br />
in Yarmouth, where she eventually helped<br />
herself to more than $8,000 from the prisoner<br />
trust account and abused her government<br />
credit card. All of the funds in question have<br />
been paid back.<br />
Appearing on Sue’s behalf one week before<br />
Christmas, high-priced criminal lawyer Joel<br />
Pink told Judge Robert Prince Sue didn’t<br />
really know why she did what she did.<br />
And frankly, neither do I.<br />
Government documents show Suzanne’s<br />
annual salary was hovering around $75,000<br />
at the time she resigned from her position.<br />
That’s not exactly pocket change in N.S. and<br />
definitely not in Lockeport.<br />
Her departmental travel expenses for the<br />
previous fiscal year totalled nearly $15,000,<br />
only $1,500 less that of the Provincial Court’s<br />
Chief Justice Pat Curran.<br />
Several years ago, Sue and her husband<br />
Bill Crosby, who once served as Lockeport’s<br />
Recreation Director and later toiled at the<br />
Boys School, purchased Bill and Val<br />
Atwood’s Ocean Mist Cottages, a series of<br />
oceanfront getaways overlooking the town’s<br />
BRANDON LOSES LOBSTER GIG<br />
BY PINKIE SLIPP<br />
SOUTH SHORE NATIVE PARTY ANIMAL<br />
BRANDON LOVITTE BLADES, 33, WHOSE<br />
SEXUAL ASSAULT AND CRIMINAL HARASSspokesthingy<br />
Const. Brian Palmeter, the<br />
Barrington Municipal High School graduate<br />
is in hot water for an alleged incident that<br />
occurred at 5770 Spring Garden Road between<br />
8:30 and 9 p.m. on December 2. Sez<br />
MENT CHARGES WERE FODDER FOR MY Brian, Brandon allegedly touched and/or<br />
ORGAN LAST TIME OUT, HAS BEEN LET GO<br />
FROM CLEARWATER FINE FOODS, APPAR-<br />
ENTLY AS A RESULT OF HIS LEGAL WOES.<br />
grabbed the complainant, who is known to<br />
him, in a sexual manner. Last time out,<br />
Brandon told me that he dated the girl, who<br />
cannot be named in light of a publication ban,<br />
Just before quitting time on Friday, March for about six weeks. He’s expected to answer<br />
19, three days after Frank 581 hit newsstands, to the charges in Spring Garden Road Pro-<br />
Brandon, a $25,000/year secretary, says he vincial Court on April 1 at 9:30 a.m..<br />
was ushered into human resources thingy N.S. Legal Aid lawyer Matt Darrah repre-<br />
Linda Hutchison’s office and fired without exsented Brandon during his initial appearance<br />
planation.<br />
on March 2.<br />
“We love you, it’s not about your performance. Although Brandon, who maintains his inno-<br />
But something’s come up,” is Brandon’s sumcence, freely admits to me that the matter is<br />
mary of the brief meeting. Considering he hadn’t before the courts, he has a different story for<br />
completed his three-month probationary period, his pals on www.thehawkroad.com, a mes-<br />
no further explanation was necessary.<br />
sage board dedicated to the goings-on in The<br />
Brandon says his immediate supervisor Pat Hawk, Shelburne County.<br />
Woodworth — CEO Colin MacDonald’s ex- “My Court date was March 4th (it was<br />
ecutive assistant — was in tears.<br />
March 2 — ed.) ... So Yup ... it’s been thrown<br />
“It was all Colin,” Brandon speculates, not- out..and that’s that,” his alter-ego, Chachi<br />
ing that his former boss is an avid reader of Arcola, proclaimed on March 20.<br />
Frank. “He’s in (Frank Magazine) all the Brandon, who has spent much of his adult<br />
time.”<br />
life buying and selling lobster, is the youngest<br />
According to Halifax Regional Police son of Prudence Elizabeth Blades (nee<br />
20 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK APRIL 13, 2010<br />
famous Crescent Beach.<br />
Court documents indicate Sue’s period of<br />
house-arrest — the mother of three lives on<br />
Lockeport’s main drag in a home previously<br />
owned by former mayor Sarah “Sally”<br />
Huskilson — is scheduled to come to an end<br />
June 17, at which time, she’ll begin a sixmonth<br />
curfew period.<br />
Looks like she’ll be free, however, to leave<br />
the province from June 8 to 10 — with the<br />
approval of her sentence supervisor — in order<br />
to attend one of her son’s university graduations<br />
in Edmonton, Alberta.<br />
Local sports enthusiasts may remember<br />
Suzanne (nee Cotter) from her days as a<br />
Lockeport High basketball star, while<br />
younger folks may remember that in the late<br />
’80s, she was a regular fixture along with provincial<br />
basketball star Patti (Langille)<br />
Hutchison, Patti’s two sisters Wendy and<br />
Marlene — and others — at teacher/coach<br />
Kent Balish’s v. well-received summer basketball<br />
camp.<br />
Does Frank Know?<br />
atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca<br />
Brandon Blades<br />
Corbett) and retired silly servant Lovitte<br />
Blades, who still call The Hawk home. Lovitte<br />
is known far and wide for his love of the Boston<br />
Red Sox. Back in 2004, no less of an authority<br />
than Alex J. Walling declared the 62year-old<br />
to be the “world’s biggest” BoSox fan<br />
in a column that appeared on the TSN website.<br />
Incidentally, chatty Brandon proudly declares<br />
that his Edmonton-based uncle, Phil<br />
Smith, is a “self-made millionaire,” although<br />
he mysteriously declined to tell me more. A<br />
little internet snooping revealed Phil to be the<br />
proprietor of something called Alberta Hardwood<br />
Flooring.<br />
Does Frank Know?<br />
atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca
EVERYONE’S AN IRISHMAN ON MARCH 17<br />
BY PADDY O’FURNITURE<br />
AS <strong>THE</strong> IRISH SAY, “I DRINK TO YOUR<br />
HEALTH WHEN I’M WITH YOU, I DRINK TO<br />
YOUR HEALTH WHEN I’M ALONE, I DRINK<br />
TO YOUR HEALTH SO OFTEN, I’M STARTING<br />
TO WORRY ABOUT MY OWN.”<br />
And so I raise my pint of Guinness to the<br />
March 17 Charitable Irish Society shindig<br />
at the Marriott Harbourfront. God knows I<br />
would have joined all these lovely people, if I<br />
was steadier on my feet that night.<br />
Here are the attendees, and the official<br />
drinking, er, seating plan. To your health!<br />
Table 1: Pat & Anne O’Neil; Jamie O’Neil;<br />
Stan & Marjorie McLean; Bob & Barb<br />
Sheehan.<br />
Table 2: Brian & Andrea Downie; Lorraine<br />
Lafferty; Chris Lydon & Amanda Dean; Cliff<br />
Soward; Alexa McDonough & Guest. (Who<br />
dat? Spill your guts at Frank’s Alexa’s Mystery<br />
Guest Hotline, 420-1668. — ed.)<br />
Table 3: Sandy & Sean Phillips; Paddy &<br />
Loly Crowley; Eileen & Don Reardon; Dr. John<br />
& Bridget Sullivan.<br />
FOUNDER’S<br />
FLOUNDERS<br />
Table 4: HEAD TABLE! HEAD TABLE! <strong>THE</strong><br />
POINTY-HAT TABLE! James Connolly; Anglican<br />
Bish Sue Moxley & Bruce Moxley; Catholic<br />
Archbish Tony Mancini; Chris & Christina<br />
Corkett; Bill & Mary MacLeod; Mark & June<br />
Spindlowe.<br />
Table 5: Bill & Carolyn Harvey; Gerry &<br />
Stella Fogarty; Margaret Havey; John Riley;<br />
Mary Walker & Guest.<br />
Table 6: St Mary’s U.: Bridget Brownlow;<br />
Emily Anderson; Caitlin Dix; Sandy English;<br />
Ben Garcone; Michelle McMullin; Andria<br />
Power; Nich Reyes; Chris Walker; Jenna<br />
Leigh Wilson.<br />
Table 7: Pat & Elizabeth Brownlow; Lea &<br />
Ivan Forbes; Mary & Dave Hutchings; Patrick<br />
Slaney.<br />
Table 8: John & Andrea Murphy; Betty &<br />
Grace Crosby; Michael Murphy; Pat Murphy<br />
& Maggie MacDonald.<br />
Table 9: More SMU: Dr. Esther Enns; Pat<br />
O’Malley; Ni Chuaig; Sean Kennedy; Betty<br />
MacDonald; Bill MacDonald; Anothy O’Malley;<br />
Steve & Debbie Proctor.<br />
Table 10: Brian & Betty Maloney; Erv &<br />
Dorothy Doak; Theresa Laffin & Bob Butler;<br />
NOVA NEW ENGLAND LTD.,<br />
HEADED BY BRENNAN BRO<strong>THE</strong>RS<br />
TERRY AND JAMES, IS IN BREACH<br />
OF CONTRACT AND OWES OVER<br />
$9.7 MILLION ON <strong>THE</strong> MORTGAGE<br />
FOR ITS FOUNDER’S CORNER<br />
DEVELOPMENT, MONEYLENDER<br />
ADDENDA CAPITAL IS ALLEGING<br />
IN COURT DOCUMENTS.<br />
The Montreal-based investment<br />
Founder’s Corner<br />
firm wants the Supreme Court to appoint a receiver for the besieged downtown Dartmouth<br />
condo development, which is burdened by over $650,000 in lien claims (Frank 580).<br />
Both Terry and James signed personal guarantees in November 2009, when Addenda upped<br />
the mortgage from $8.98 mil to $9.73 mil, and the amount was to be repaid in full by January<br />
29, court papers indicate.<br />
As of March 2, the alleged debt stood at $9,727,534.52.<br />
Via its legal rep Maurice Chiasson of Stewart McKelvey, Addenda wants its court-appointed<br />
receiver to oversee the development’s completion, register the condo corp., and proceed with<br />
selling the units.<br />
Terry was immediately unavailable for comment.<br />
Last fall, the Railtown condo development in Wolfville, which faced similar construction<br />
hurdles as Founder’s Corner, was forced into receivership by its financial backer (Frank 571).<br />
Does Frank Know? atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca<br />
Don & Effie O’Driscoll; Jean Knickle.<br />
Table 11: Ellen & John Feehan; Hazel<br />
Feehan; Bob Martell; Marie Mullins; Marianne<br />
& Michael Nee; Pauline Scott.<br />
Table 12: Sheila Donahoe & Michael<br />
Derwin; Edmund Boyd; Patricia Donnelly &<br />
Brian Casey; Lynne Donahoe & Ron Flinn;<br />
Jack Hartnett.<br />
Table 13: Sean & Michele Brownlow; Bill &<br />
Sheila McCallum; Erv & Joan Retie; Jim &<br />
Deborah Stokes.<br />
Table 14: Marie & Matt Kerrigan; Penny &<br />
Bob Doherty; Anne & Richard McKay; Mary<br />
Clancy & Guest (Who dat? — ed.).<br />
Table 15: Sheila & Joe Fougere; Phil<br />
Vaughan & Guest; Breeda & Robert<br />
McDonnell; Bob Wilson & Wendy Booth.<br />
Table 16: Stephen & Dennice Leahey;<br />
Gloria McCluskey; Bernadette & Michael<br />
Fegan; Mairead Fegan; Cathleen<br />
Niedermayer.<br />
Table 17: Carol Conrad; Betty Flemming;<br />
Mary Flynn; Helen Gillis; Ruth MacDonald;<br />
Mary Nolan; Patricia Walsh MacNeil.<br />
Does Frank Know?<br />
atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca<br />
The Waterton<br />
CONDO SAFETY FINE<br />
I see where Navid “Greater Homes”<br />
Saberi’s Waterton Condominium complex<br />
on Walter Havill Drive has been fined a total<br />
of $11,714 in connection with a pair of infractions<br />
under the Occupational Health &<br />
Safety Act noted by safety dude Rodney<br />
Woodworth last fall.<br />
Patrick LeRoy, Navid’s VP Operations,<br />
redpresented the firm and pleaded guilty to<br />
two counts of failing to comply February 18.<br />
The aforementioned fine, which must be<br />
paid by April 30, remained outstanding at<br />
press time.<br />
Does Frank Know? (902) 420-1668<br />
APRIL 13, 2010 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK 21
WHEN LAWYERS COLLIDE<br />
BY A. JUDE ACATE<br />
HERRING COVE ROAD SOLE PRACTI-<br />
TIONER DANIEL WEIR IS STEPPING UP HIS<br />
FULL FRONTAL ASSAULT ON <strong>THE</strong> NOVA<br />
SCOTIA BARRISTERS SOCIETY, HITTING<br />
<strong>THE</strong> REGULATORY BODY WITH A NEW CIVIL<br />
APPEAL LAWSUIT.<br />
The pugilistic Dan, who I’m told is in dire<br />
need of a liver transplant, has dealt a real onetwo<br />
punch to the self-policing Bar Society,<br />
much to the secret delight of its critics within<br />
the profession (Frank 581).<br />
The nearly 30-year vet’s new N.S. Court of<br />
Appeal motion comes fast on the heels of a<br />
related Supreme Court lawsuit, in which Dan<br />
accuses the NSBS of acting to “demean, harass<br />
and torture” him.<br />
Of course, not to sound like Howard<br />
Cossell, but the Bar Society has landed some<br />
heavy blows of its own.<br />
In addition to his Supreme Court suit, Dan<br />
BY LOTTA SINNIN<br />
PARISHIONERS AT CHRISTIAN FELLOW-<br />
SHIP CHURCH IN NEW GLASGOW ARE ON<br />
<strong>THE</strong> CUSP OF RE-INSTALLING PASTOR<br />
BRUCE MORRISON AS <strong>THE</strong>IR CHIEF BIBLE-<br />
THUMPER FOLLOWING AN EIGHT YEAR AB-<br />
SENCE.<br />
It’s a surprising turn of events, as I recall<br />
there was some measure of internal strife<br />
surrounding Bruce and his wife Marlene’s<br />
2002 departure, although the man himself<br />
wasn’t much help in jogging my memory.<br />
“Nobody asked us to leave, it was something<br />
we did on our own,” says Pastor Bruce.<br />
22 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK APRIL 13, 2010<br />
is now appealing a March 3 NSBS Complaints<br />
Investigation Committee resolution,<br />
imposing conditions on his law practise for an<br />
alleged failure to participate in a February 16<br />
practise review.<br />
Chaired by past NSBS prez Phil Star, the<br />
complaints committee “erred at law when it<br />
found that (Dan) had refused to co-operate,”<br />
argues Dan, and “erred at law when it exercised<br />
its jurisdiction to order a practise review<br />
.. .when, in fact, there was no reason to do<br />
so.”<br />
Dan is asking the court to rescind the complaints<br />
committee resolution and disallow its<br />
practice review.<br />
On March 3, the NSBS disciplinarians ordered<br />
Dan to cough up his entire client file list<br />
from the past three years; his 2008 and 2009<br />
records of work in process, monthly financial<br />
statements and monthly trust statements, as<br />
well as provide written confirmation of all files<br />
he received from Ray Wortman, Dan’s former<br />
legal partner now in Calgary.<br />
RETURN TO <strong>THE</strong> GODBOX<br />
FOR PASTOR BRUCE<br />
“We thought it was better for the church.”<br />
An online transcript of his final sermon,<br />
which he delivered on February 24, 2002,<br />
seems to address the turmoil, specifically<br />
when he notes that the most difficult part of<br />
pastoring is the administration of church discipline:<br />
“Whenever a pastor rebukes a person for<br />
wrongdoing he is likely to face a counter attack<br />
that can be downright scary,” Pastor<br />
Bruce declared at the time, adding that the<br />
spread of “slander and false witness against<br />
the pastor” is likely to occur among the flock.<br />
He also seemed to draw parallels between<br />
the Biblical story of Jezebel and contemporary<br />
happenings at the Abercrombie Road<br />
Join our<br />
Facebook Group<br />
www.facebook.com<br />
keywords: Atlantic Canada Frank<br />
AT <strong>THE</strong><br />
BAR<br />
In his earlier Supreme Court harassment<br />
suit, Dan names acting NSBS executive director<br />
Victoria Rees, current NSBS prez Ron<br />
Creighton, acting professional responsibility<br />
director Elaine Cumming, and, for acting on<br />
the Bar Society’s behalf, Michael Brooker,<br />
Deborah Gillis, and Melanie McGrath, as<br />
well as all members of the Complaints Investigation<br />
Committee.<br />
The Barristers Society has filed no defence<br />
in either of Dan’s cases.<br />
Dan’s practice is closed until April 1.<br />
Case — NOT — closed.<br />
Does Frank Know?<br />
atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca<br />
HOLY<br />
WRIT<br />
godbox, although Bruce insists to me that he<br />
was speaking “more on the basis of principle,<br />
not on the basis of an actual occurrence.”<br />
“There really wasn’t a conflict,” he says.<br />
Bruce and Marlene had been there since<br />
the very beginning, from the group’s first gathering<br />
at the Stellarton Fire Hall in 1984, to<br />
their move to a shiny new erection on the edge<br />
of town two years later.<br />
The couple spent much of their time away<br />
from Pictou County pastoring at churches in<br />
Hong Kong and Ottawa; Bruce says they<br />
were doing some “travelling” when the Christian<br />
Fellowship board invited them to return<br />
home on a temporary basis last fall, following<br />
the departure of Pastor David and Laurilyn<br />
Campbell.<br />
Bruce says the board of directors — which<br />
includes N.G. sawbones Dr. Spencer<br />
Barclay’s wife Caroline — started discussing<br />
making the arrangement permanent in<br />
January, contingent on a full vote of the congregation.<br />
To my knowledge that vote had not<br />
been scheduled before Frankland Press<br />
Time.<br />
Does Frank Know?<br />
atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca
ZINCK, FROM PAGE 14<br />
In response, the N-Dipper caucus unanimously<br />
said they could no longer trust Zinck.<br />
It’s even said that N-Dipper staffers made<br />
calls to CBC-TV to tip them off to Zinck’s gambling<br />
& boozing so as to diminish any chance<br />
of an opposition party picking him up on the<br />
MLA waiver wire.<br />
Politics truly is a vicious game.<br />
Does Frank Know?<br />
atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca<br />
MCNEIL, FROM PAGE 14<br />
Meantime, on the plus side, if you can call it<br />
the plus side, Preston MLA Keith Colwell is<br />
once again attending caucus meetings. He<br />
stopped going for a spell to protest the growing<br />
influence of McNeil’s director of communications,<br />
Glennie Langille. She screens all<br />
calls to the caucus office, including personal<br />
calls.<br />
(I have experienced this out of control<br />
phenom thing myself, and, yes, I agree with<br />
Colwell that Langille is out of control.)<br />
She is now demanding that each month she<br />
gets a peek at Andrew Younger’s news letter<br />
before he sends it off to the fine people of<br />
Dartmouth East.<br />
Andrew Younger is not amused, and I don’t<br />
think the star candidate who knocked off N-<br />
Dipper Joan Massey in the middle of an N-<br />
Dipper sweep should be amused.<br />
“After all,” asks my man (or woman). “Who’s<br />
supposed to be running this party? Stephen<br />
McNeil or Glennie Langille? And what’s with<br />
Stephen continually running to Glennie’s defence,<br />
almost like some kind of cockold husband?”<br />
AS I WENT TO PRESS, TORIES IN <strong>THE</strong> RIDING<br />
OF BEDFORD-BIRCH COVE WERE BUSILY<br />
PREPARING FOR A “SOCIAL EVENING” ON MARCH<br />
26, PART OF AN EFFORT TO HELP RALLY <strong>THE</strong><br />
TROOPS IN <strong>THE</strong>SE DARK POLITICAL TIMES.<br />
But while newly crowned interim riding president<br />
Joan Christie is hoping the St. Peter’s<br />
Church Hall shin-dig will boost morale, I’m<br />
hearing at least a handful of Tory Pig Dogs<br />
will be staying away due to the attendance of<br />
Len Goucher, who for whatever reason isn’t<br />
very popular these days. Something about<br />
pillaging the public treasury to buy electronics.<br />
I can’t remember all the details.<br />
Joan, the long-suffering wiferoo of former<br />
finance minister Peter, says if people are staying<br />
away because of Len, it’s the first she’s<br />
heard of it.<br />
“I spoke to over 100 people ... and they’re<br />
<strong>THE</strong> N.S. MLA LOOTING SCANDAL<br />
TORY TRUE BLUES <strong>THE</strong> CHRISTIES<br />
KEEP <strong>THE</strong>IR STIFF UPPER LIPS<br />
HOUSE ARREST? PLEASE?<br />
Good question.<br />
One final point, Digby Annapolis MLA Junior<br />
Theriault threatened to pack it in over all<br />
the bullshit. But McNeil coaxed Junior to stay<br />
on, because McNeil is scared shitless of los-<br />
ing Official Opposition funding.<br />
More, next edition.<br />
Does Frank Know?<br />
atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca<br />
all coming,” she tells me, adding that it’s only<br />
proper that Lenny is on hand.<br />
“We’ve had a lot of good times over the<br />
years, and a lot of them have included Len<br />
Goucher,” she says. (Remember that time we<br />
went to Len’s surprise party and instead of a<br />
treat bag we all got a printer? — ed.)<br />
The theme of the piss-up is Tories & Their<br />
Stories, and will feature tales from prominent<br />
TPDs like John Hamm. Joan is also hoping<br />
Ken Streatch will be sending along his greetings<br />
from the Bahamas, although she admits<br />
there have been some communications difficulties<br />
between her Shore Drive abode and<br />
the Caribbean as of late. According to Joan,<br />
guests must abide by one rule only: no gloomy<br />
gusses allowed.<br />
“I’m telling people, if you start any doom and<br />
gloom, I’ll fine you a Toonie,” she says. Peter and Joan Christie.<br />
APRIL 13, 2010 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK 23
Lester &<br />
Moneesha<br />
(not exactly<br />
as illustrated).<br />
HE LAW-VES YOU, YEAH, YEAH, YEAH<br />
HOPELESSLY ROMANTIC? OR A TOTAL<br />
WASTE OF AN ALREADY BACKLOGGED<br />
COURT SYSTEM’S VALUABLE TIME?<br />
Regardless of how you slice it, Blois<br />
Nickerson legal beagle Lester Jesudason’s<br />
surprise marriage proposal to fellow BN jurisprudent<br />
Moneesha Sinha at the Halifax Law<br />
Courts last week was, without question, a little<br />
bit unorthodox.<br />
“I strongly suspect this is a one-time thing,”<br />
noted Chambers Judge Deborah K. Smith,<br />
one of several people responsible for granting<br />
40-ish Acadia and Dal Law grad Les the<br />
latitude necessary to pop the question in her<br />
courtroom.<br />
But Les’s choice of venue wasn’t the only<br />
part of the proposal some might consider a<br />
little far afield.<br />
Calling 30-something Moneesha his “best<br />
friend” and the sweetest person he knows<br />
(FYI, he and I have never met), Les brought<br />
forward a motion seeking a joinder-of-party<br />
order, which is much less like a “hook-up” than<br />
it sounds. Essentially, it’s legal speak for “engagement.”<br />
Musing he’d been subject to years of “relentless<br />
hounding” by his mother Lily, Les<br />
confessed to all those present that after knowing<br />
Moneesha for three years, he’d finally<br />
found the person with whom he was willing to<br />
share the rest of his life.<br />
Amid Moneesha’s endless stream of teenage<br />
tee-hee-hees (Hey! At least she didn’t<br />
drop the f-bomb! — ed.), self-proclaimed<br />
“good catch” Les promised to look after her<br />
and support her, going so far as to promise<br />
he would devote a portion of his salary to supplementing<br />
her already extensive shoe collection.<br />
(Now, THAT’s what I call a commitment!<br />
— ed.)<br />
Apparently Mauveesha Moneesha owns 20<br />
pairs of purple shoes.<br />
24 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK APRIL 13, 2010<br />
Judge Debby (not exactly as illustrated).<br />
After uttering at least one, “I’m in shock,” an<br />
“Are you serious?” and an Ella Fitzgeraldinspired,<br />
“Aaaaaaah!” Moneesha agreed to be<br />
Les’s wiferoo.<br />
The only person in the court more shocked<br />
than Moneesha by the turn of events was<br />
Dartmouth lawyer Andrew Wolfson, who<br />
was far more dumbstruck than lovestruck.<br />
On site to deal with a Royal Bank-related<br />
matter, Andrew’s first words in his address to<br />
ACJ Smith, who admitted she wished Les had<br />
chosen a day with a lighter docket, were, “I’m<br />
not proposing to anyone.”<br />
For the record, Moneesha is the daughter<br />
of Dal anatomy/neurology prof Dr. Gita Sinha.<br />
Though Les has long lived in the city, I’m<br />
sure his Sri Lankan dad, the late Joseph<br />
CHATTER<br />
BY<br />
BUBBLES<br />
FRANKLANDER<br />
WHO’S<br />
<strong>THE</strong> BRIDE?<br />
RBC SECURITIES (I THINK THAT’S WHAT<br />
<strong>THE</strong>Y’RE CALLED) SALESMAN, PHIL<br />
JENKINS, A LAWYER LIKE GEOFF MACHUM,<br />
WHO ACTUALLY PRACTISES LAW, IS ALSO<br />
DOING <strong>THE</strong> GEOFF MACHUM THING.<br />
He is remarrying after spending years as<br />
the husband of a very high-profile lady.<br />
As Geoff Machum is sometimes referred to<br />
as the former Mr. Nancy Regan, securities<br />
man Phil is sometimes referred to as the<br />
former Mr. Sarah Dennis.<br />
Sarah is the prez & CEO of the Halifax<br />
Herald Ltd., and she runs the province’s Paper<br />
of Record.<br />
Sarah and Phil split about three years ago,<br />
in 2007. They have young children.<br />
While South End Sarah, who’s known to<br />
enjoy very much hanging out and not offending<br />
her Halifax blueblood friends, her ex is<br />
more secretive.<br />
“I would rather not comment,” stockbroker<br />
Phil told me when asked about his betrothed’s<br />
identity. “It’s a private matter.”<br />
But Phil did say his second wedding will take<br />
place sometime this summer.<br />
When I guessed at June, he again replied,<br />
“No comment.”<br />
Really, I don’t understand the need for all<br />
this secrecy. Obviously Phil isn’t going to<br />
marry some babe he’s ashamed of or wants<br />
to keep hidden away in a friggin closet.<br />
But maybe, just maybe, it is what it is - he<br />
does not want to talk to me.<br />
I find that hard to believe.<br />
It’s more likely Phil is keeping his wedding<br />
a secret from me because he’s actually marrying<br />
the eleven secret herbs and spices of<br />
Kentucky Fried Chicken.<br />
Meantime, his ex, Ms. CEO Sarah, continues<br />
to date tennis dude Mark Lever, which,<br />
no doubt, pleases her mom and dad greatly.<br />
Does Frank Know?<br />
atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca<br />
Jesudason, is still remembered in Queens<br />
County, having taught physics and chemistry<br />
at North Queens Rural High in Caledonia<br />
and later moulded minds at Liverpool Regional<br />
High.
ARTISTS KNOCKED OFF <strong>THE</strong>IR PEDESTALS<br />
BY PHIL I. STEEN<br />
MY BOHEMIAN SPIRIT IS REALLY IN <strong>THE</strong><br />
TOILET NOW, EVER SINCE I GOT WORD<br />
NSCAD HAS CANCELLED ALL OUTSIDE<br />
PRESENTERS.<br />
While initially I thought NSCAD prez Dave<br />
Smith came to his senses, and realized that<br />
prolonged exposure to artists can give young<br />
people unhealthy urges, I’m told, in fact, more<br />
BY ART A. PRETIATION<br />
SOME SUSPECT HRM COUNCIL’S<br />
RECENT DECISION TO INVEST OVER $1<br />
MILLION TO FIX REPEATED BOTCHED<br />
RESTORATIONS OF CITY HALL SPELLS BAD<br />
NEWS FOR ANO<strong>THE</strong>R HISTORIC BARRING-<br />
TON STREET PROPERTY, <strong>THE</strong> CITY-OWNED<br />
KHYBER BUILDING.<br />
As anyone in the artzie-fartzie crowd can<br />
tell you, the city has shamefully neglected the<br />
c.1888 Church of England Institute, an architectural<br />
gem managed in the past 15 years<br />
by the mostly volunteer Khyber Arts organization.<br />
A March 2010 consultant’s report pegged<br />
the Khyber’s renovation needs at about<br />
$625,000, an amount our cash-strapped councillors<br />
likely won’t be able to stomach spending<br />
after OKing the costly City Hall repairs.<br />
Some fear this means the Khyber will continue<br />
to suffer from benign neglect at the<br />
hands of HRM decision-makers.<br />
City bureaucrats have done little but “consult”<br />
and “study” this landmark property since<br />
December 2005, when it handed out eviction<br />
notices to most tenants (Frank 470), depriving<br />
the Khyber Arts board of much-needed<br />
rental revenue needed to fund its nationally<br />
recognized arts exhibits.<br />
For over four years the building has practically<br />
stood empty, with a 28% occupancy rate,<br />
providing only an office and a gallery space<br />
for the arts org, plus a broom closet-sized office<br />
for the N.S. Heritage Trust. To say the<br />
building is under-utilized is an understatement.<br />
To say the Khyber Arts board is slowly being<br />
starved to death by its landlord HRM is closer<br />
to the truth.<br />
The Khyber’s high-calibre board of directors<br />
— including chair, former NSCAD prez Gary<br />
Neill Kennedy, NSCAD film prof Bruce Barber,<br />
Cox & Palmer lawyer Andrew Sowerby,<br />
erstwhile Heritage Trust boardie Wallace<br />
Brennan and Sobeys Art Award finalist Colleen<br />
Wolstenholme — have their hands tied,<br />
prosaic budgetary reasons are behind the<br />
abrupt cancellations. As in NSCAD can no<br />
longer afford the pittance it gave guest lecturers<br />
and artists to drop by for show and tell.<br />
One source tells me faculty members had<br />
to ring up invitees to sorrowfully spill the sad<br />
news that their big day was not to be, depriving<br />
students of seeing professional artists up<br />
close and personal.<br />
This cost-cutting move packs a real double-<br />
ARTZ<br />
&<br />
FARTZ<br />
whammy at NSCAD, where many teachers<br />
are allergic to practising art.<br />
WHAT WILL BECOME OF <strong>THE</strong> KYBER?<br />
waiting for HRM’s Kafkaesque bureaucracy<br />
to chart a course of action. Hell may freeze<br />
over first.<br />
As a vibrant arts centre, the Khyber could<br />
be Halifax’s answer to Toronto’s Drake Hotel<br />
and Gladstone Hotel, but instead it stands<br />
as a monument to municipal indifference to<br />
the arts and indifference to heritage preservation.<br />
The Khyber<br />
Building.<br />
The bulk of the Khyber’s estimated<br />
$625,000 reno budget is earmarked to install<br />
an elevator smack in the middle of the Victorian<br />
building. I’m all for improving access for<br />
the physically challenged, but isn’t putting an<br />
elevator in a registered heritage building going<br />
a bit overboard?<br />
Does Frank Know?<br />
atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca<br />
APRIL 13, 2010 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK 25
Good Morning My Fellow Conservatives:<br />
It’s great to be here in Amherst, the home<br />
of Sir Charles Supper, er, um, I mean Tupper.<br />
Charles Tupper.<br />
But, boy, I gotta tell ya that roast beef sure<br />
spells some good. Talk about manufacturing<br />
a scent. Can’t wait to get on top of that! Or<br />
the bottom! Ha! Ha! Ha!<br />
All depends what or whom, I guess, is on<br />
the bottom! Ha! Ha! Ha!<br />
And how hard you’re pushing! Ha! Ha! Ha!<br />
Well, I see that people are still filing in. Guess<br />
they must have taken the stairs to get here.<br />
Sorry, I ripped one in the elevator. I fart a<br />
lot, especially in the mornings! Ha! Ha! Ha!<br />
What’s that they say, “When ya gotta go, ya<br />
26 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK APRIL 13, 2010<br />
JUST NOT SO STORIES<br />
(YES, WE MAKE <strong>THE</strong>M UP)<br />
A message from the Honourable<br />
Senator from Cavendish, P.E.I.<br />
gotta go!”<br />
But you know, my stomach never, ever<br />
growls. Seriously.<br />
See, if I move the microphone down here<br />
and tuck it in my belt. If I can find my belt?<br />
Hear that? That’s not the sound of my stomach<br />
growling at all — it’s actually the sound of<br />
a helicopter hovering over my lower intestine<br />
doing the daily traffic report! Ha! Ha! Ha!<br />
And speaking of peeking, as I was riding<br />
into this lovely Town of Amherst this morning<br />
on the back of that donkey, never have I seen<br />
so many palm tree branches laid down before<br />
me. Thank you all very much.<br />
And to all these people, screaming “Hosanna”<br />
at me? Not sure, I’ve ever tried that<br />
dish. It must some kind of braised pork, is it?<br />
And I feel bad about the beast, I mean the<br />
donkey. Like, what do you do with a donkey<br />
with four broken legs anyway?<br />
Shame the beast had to be put down.<br />
And speaking of “The Beast,” glad to see<br />
that Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams<br />
is now back in Canada after his U.S. heart<br />
operation.<br />
Of course, my own open heart surgery took<br />
place in aisle #13 at the Canadian Tire Store<br />
on Robertson Road in Ottawa.<br />
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with<br />
Mastercraft.<br />
But that’s not what I’m here to lecture you<br />
fine, fine Progressive Conservatives on.
BY BILLY BOB MCWILLIAMS<br />
EVERY WEEK OR SO, SOME PINHEAD<br />
HUMAN RESOURCES OUTFIT CLOGS UP <strong>THE</strong><br />
FRANKLAND FAX MACHINE WITH PAGES AND<br />
PAGES OF TOUCHY-FEELY HORSESHIT<br />
DESIGNED TO SOMEWHAT SUBTLELY<br />
SUGGEST THAT I, BILLY BOB MCWILLIAMS,<br />
MAY BE ABLE TO BENEFIT FROM ONE OF<br />
<strong>THE</strong>IR MOLLY-CODDLING MANAGEMENT<br />
TRAINING PROGRAMS.<br />
I don’t mind telling you I round-file that<br />
malarky immediately upon receipt.<br />
I mean, really, let’s be serious, do I strike<br />
you as the kind of individual who needs to<br />
learn to manage people?<br />
I didn’t think so.<br />
I’ll have you know that after six long<br />
years at the helm of this fine bi-weekly<br />
family publication, I have become nothing<br />
if not adept at dealing with the concerns<br />
of my esteemed colleagues.<br />
Why just the other week, I overheard<br />
someone compare a week at The Bunker<br />
to a prison sentence, a preposterous<br />
comparison if ever I’d heard one.<br />
And so to prove the sheer ridiculousness<br />
of such a statement, I presented my coworkers<br />
with a copy of a recent BBC news<br />
article outlining a few of the goings on at<br />
the real Frankland Prison, a high-secu-<br />
SENATOR, FROM PREVIOUS PAGE<br />
I’m here today to talk to you about my fair<br />
and balanced education at The School of Hard<br />
Knockers, er, um, I mean Knocks, School of<br />
Hard Knocks, and how I manufactured my<br />
ascent to the Upper Chamber.<br />
Now, I know what a few people are asking,<br />
they’re asking, “Geez, Duff, what are you doing<br />
in the Senate, anyway?”<br />
And, the answer is nothing. At the moment.<br />
However, shortly, I will be forming my own<br />
sitting committee — The Senate Sitting Committee<br />
on Hotdog Eating Contests — of which,<br />
of course, I will be the chair and only member,<br />
and therefore sure to win The First Annual<br />
Honourable Mike Duffy Hotdog Eating<br />
Contest.<br />
I haven’t made up the rules yet, but I am<br />
sure they’ll be fair. Fair to me, at least.<br />
After all, I’ve eaten my share of hotdogs and<br />
baloney sandwiches over the years. As well<br />
as many other things.<br />
That’s what I mean by going to The School<br />
JUST NOT SO STORIES<br />
(YES, WE MAKE <strong>THE</strong>M UP)<br />
Peace & joy in the Bunker<br />
rity lock-up in County Durham, England.<br />
In addition to the high-profile stabbing of<br />
three guards by a deranged, bottle-wielding<br />
inmate, Frankland Prison has, since 2007,<br />
been the scene of several — how can I put<br />
this tastefully? — messy incidents, including<br />
two separate cases of inmates having “boiling<br />
liquid” poured over them, and another<br />
of Hard Knocks. But I dropped out of the<br />
School of Hard Knocks when I decided it was<br />
too hard for me and much, much easier to<br />
suck up to the likes of Stephen Harper and<br />
Peter MacKay, and John Baird and Jim<br />
Flaherty, and Jason Kenney, and the poor<br />
bastard in the wheelchair, and the chick in the<br />
permanent sunglasses, to get where I am<br />
toady ... er, um, or should that be today?<br />
Don’t know. Never was much of a writer, just<br />
more of a sycophantic television presenter,<br />
talking head, who could never find either the<br />
right time slot for my show or a shirttail that<br />
would stayed tucked in! Ha! Ha! Ha!<br />
All I can say is Thank The Good Lord, the<br />
U.S. networks would never give me a second<br />
look, because, it they did, I would certainly<br />
never be where I am today. I had to do something.<br />
What was I supposed to do?<br />
Ask John Bragg if he could put me on his<br />
gold card for the rest on my life? Go door to<br />
door in Summerside and Charlottetown ask-<br />
where a terrorist prisoner was “set on fire.”<br />
I don’t recall anything even remotely similar<br />
happening here.<br />
And obviously my co-workers agree, as<br />
not one of them has since dared offered to<br />
make any more of those unfounded Bunker-prison<br />
comparisons in my presence.<br />
Management training. As if!<br />
ing if I could eat any spare house pets? I had<br />
to make a move.<br />
I had to move up, and sucking up won’t get<br />
you everything in life. But it will certainly get<br />
you where you want to go.<br />
That’s what wrong with journalism students<br />
today. They think the bloody world owes them<br />
a living.<br />
They’ve been brainwashed by integrity and<br />
stupid things like that.<br />
Yeah. Mark my words.<br />
Someday, they’ll all end up part of some left<br />
wing totalitarian state; wearing berets, living<br />
the high life in unelected positions of power,<br />
with far too many perks and absolutely nothing<br />
to wrap their vacuous minds around except,<br />
possibly: affordable housing, accessible<br />
health care, decent wages, progressive taxation,<br />
and assorted crap like that.<br />
Anyway, thank you ... and, now, I hear that<br />
helicopter sound again!<br />
Say! Anybody wanna order out for donairs?<br />
It’s on you!!!<br />
APRIL 13, 2010 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK 27
THAT PAGE IN FRANK<br />
...AND SO, BASED ON<br />
MY EXTENSIVE<br />
EXPERIENCE<br />
HELMING HURON<br />
COLLEGE AS WELL AS<br />
MY YEARS VOLUN-<br />
TEERING WITH<br />
WOMEN’S RESOURCE<br />
CENTRES AND<br />
PROGRAMMES FOR<br />
IMMIGRANT WOMEN...<br />
I DON’T<br />
add “call<br />
KNOW<br />
or text<br />
DAWG<br />
this number”<br />
- I MEAN,<br />
graphics<br />
I GUESS “LUMPKIN” IS KINDA A FUNNY NAME<br />
AN’ ALL, BUT OVERALL I GOTTA SAY I JUST DON’T REALLY GIVE A CRAP.<br />
AND SAY, WHAT IS A “MOUNT ST VINCENT”<br />
ANYWAYS? IS THAT, LIKE, IS IT A COMMAND?<br />
HEY YOU - MOUNT ST VINCENT! NO THANK YOU!<br />
HEH!<br />
28 APRIL 13, 2010 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK<br />
I BELIEVE I WOULD<br />
BE AN EXEMPLARY<br />
CHOICE TO LEAD<br />
MOUNT SAINT<br />
VINCENT UNIVERSITY<br />
INTO <strong>THE</strong> NEXT<br />
DECADE!<br />
YES, IT’S AN I DON’T<br />
GIVE A RAT’S ARSE<br />
FROM ME AS WELL!!<br />
OKAY PEOPLE, THIS ISN’T WORKING - LET’S TRY SOMETHING ELSE...<br />
...YES! AND IF YOU THINK RAMONA LUMPKIN SHOULD BE <strong>THE</strong> NEW<br />
MSVU PRESIDENT, TEXT 01 TO <strong>THE</strong> NUMBER ON YOUR SCREEN!<br />
SERIOUSLY -<br />
WHAT <strong>THE</strong> HELL?<br />
UH...<br />
WHAT?<br />
RAMONA’S COMPETITION IS DOWN TO JUST TWO<br />
O<strong>THE</strong>R CANDIDATES — BUT CAN SHE BEAT<br />
LINGUIST SHEILA EMBLETON, WITH HER IMPRES-<br />
SIVE C.V. AS FORMER VP AND WOMEN’S STUDIES<br />
FACULTY MEMBER AT YORK UNIVERSITY...<br />
OR EX-MOUNT A. DEAN<br />
OF ARTS KATHRYN<br />
HAMER, WITH HER<br />
ELECTRIFYING<br />
PERFORMANCE OF<br />
HELEN REDDY’S<br />
“I AM WOMAN”?<br />
LET’S SEE WHAT <strong>THE</strong> JUDGES SAY!<br />
OKAY! WELCOME TO DANCING WITH <strong>THE</strong> STARS IN ORDER TO<br />
BECOME PRESIDENT OF A SMALL, AGGRESSIVELY FEMINIST<br />
ARTS COLLEGE — AND JUST LOOK AT SHEILA EMBLETON<br />
JITTERBUGGING UP A STORM WITH BRENT BUTT...<br />
...WHILE DRAWING ATTENTION TO CONTINUING GENDER PAY INEQUALITY<br />
IN <strong>THE</strong> WORKPLACE! WAY TO SHAKE THAT FEMINIST CRED, SHEILA!
AND <strong>THE</strong>RE’S RAMONA DOING <strong>THE</strong> CHARLES-<br />
TON WITH POPE BENEDICT XVI WHILE<br />
ARGUING THAT <strong>THE</strong> CHURCH’S PEDOPHILE<br />
CRISIS IS <strong>THE</strong> CONSEQUENCE OF A MALE<br />
HIERARCHICAL POWER STRUCTURE...<br />
YAWWWN! STILL DON’T CARE!<br />
I’M SORRY ALEXA -<br />
NOTHING’S WORKING!<br />
<strong>THE</strong>RE’S JUST NO WAY TO<br />
MAKE <strong>THE</strong> SELECTION OF<br />
YOUR SUCCESSOR AS MSVU<br />
PRESIDENT IN ANY WAY<br />
FUNNY OR INTERESTING!<br />
AND<br />
SO...<br />
OHHH! AND KATHRYN’S<br />
JUST KICKED DON<br />
CHERRY IN <strong>THE</strong> NUTS!<br />
SIGHHH! OKAY - LET’S<br />
TRY ONE MORE...<br />
TYPICAL! TYPICAL!! AFTER ALL <strong>THE</strong><br />
STRIDES WE’VE MADE IN <strong>THE</strong> LAST<br />
CENTURY, SMART, ACCOMPLISHED,<br />
SUCCESSFUL WOMEN IN NOVA SCOTIA<br />
ARE STILL BEING DENIED AN EQUAL<br />
PLACE IN <strong>THE</strong> ASININE PUNCHLINES<br />
OF A BIWEEKLY MAGAZINE’S CRAPPY<br />
BACK PAGES!<br />
PAPER MIZ MCDONOUGH?<br />
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, FOLLOWING IN THIS UNIVERSITY’S<br />
GREAT TRADITION OF PROMOTING FEMALE DIGNITY AND EMPOW-<br />
ERMENT, I AM PROUD AT LAST TO INTRODUCE MY REPLACEMENT<br />
AS PRESIDENT - A POWERFUL , WORLD-TRAVELLED AND INTERNA-<br />
TIONALLY RESPECTED WOMAN WITH LITERALLY DECADES OF<br />
LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE...<br />
DON’T WORRY LADIES — I’VE SET MY HOT TUB TIME MACHINE FOR <strong>THE</strong><br />
MSVU GOVERNORS’ BOARDROOM IN 2010, WHERE YOU CAN ALL PRESENT<br />
YOUR RESPECTIVE ACADEMIC AND ADMINISTRATIVE CREDENTIALS!<br />
HOORAY!!!<br />
ZZZZZ!<br />
SNORE!<br />
DAMMIT! CUT! CUT!!!<br />
I MEAN LOOK AT THIS! O<strong>THE</strong>R PLACES IN <strong>THE</strong> WORLD HAVE LOADS OF<br />
STRONG, POWERFUL FEMALES WHO ARE JUST AS CAPABLE AS ANY MAN<br />
OF PROVIDING <strong>THE</strong> PRETEXT FOR LAZY, NOMINALLY TOPICAL CHEAP<br />
LAUGHS — AND YET WE AT <strong>THE</strong> MOUNT STILL GET ZERO LACK OF RESPECT!<br />
...QUEEN ELIZABETH II (COMING DOWN SOME STAIRS<br />
WE BOUGHT OFF <strong>THE</strong> NOVA SCOTIA TATTOO)!!!<br />
HEM HEM - WE NOW<br />
PRONOUNCE THIS<br />
WAAAHHH JESUS!!!<br />
WELL <strong>THE</strong>N SCREW ‘EM! I DON’T<br />
CARE IF <strong>THE</strong>Y DO THINK IT’S<br />
BORING AND UNFUNNY - WE’RE<br />
JUST GOING TO HIRE <strong>THE</strong> BEST,<br />
MOST COMPETENT AND QUALI-<br />
FIED WOMAN FOR <strong>THE</strong> JOB!<br />
IN FACT - OMIGOD!<br />
YES! <strong>THE</strong>RE SHE IS<br />
- <strong>THE</strong> PERFECT<br />
PRESIDENTIAL<br />
CANDIDATE!!<br />
BRAVO!!! NOW THAT’S COMEDY.<br />
ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK APRIL 13, 2010 29
PHONE ANYTIME : (902) 420-1668<br />
LETTERS<br />
E-MAIL: atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca<br />
PO BOX 295, HALIFAX, NS B3J 2N7<br />
LIFE ON <strong>THE</strong> STREET<br />
Dear Frank:<br />
Given your report last year on the significant increase<br />
in police activity at the Metro Turning Point Centre<br />
on Barrington Street (Frank 564), I thought you might<br />
be interested in this photo of the shelter as it appears<br />
via Google’s street view function. No denying the police<br />
presence on the day this footage was taken!<br />
On a related note, have you ever noticed how ridiculous<br />
the ad placement at the bus stop in front of<br />
LIKE ANY OF US<br />
WOULD PROCREATE<br />
Dear Frank:<br />
Your magazine is actually<br />
pretty funny, other than the<br />
fact that you make a living<br />
off snitching and ratting on<br />
the misfortunes of others.<br />
I could not think of a bigger<br />
tool.<br />
Hope your kids are<br />
proud!!<br />
Andy Moss,<br />
Via Facebook<br />
MR. LI’S<br />
ELEVEN HERBS<br />
BARBS<br />
& SPICES<br />
Dear Frank:<br />
Given the fire he’s breathing<br />
in Baan Thai guy Victor Woo’s<br />
direction these days, restaurateur<br />
Runping Li (Frank 580)<br />
should really consider renaming<br />
his Blowers Street establishment<br />
“Angry Chili.”<br />
I. Carumba,<br />
Downtown<br />
30 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK APRIL 13, 2010<br />
Metro Turning Point is?<br />
Right now, the space flogs the services of Centum<br />
Home Lender guy Clinton Wilkins. Before that, it was<br />
taken up by Royal LePage house-flogger Helen<br />
Parker.<br />
Is it just me, or is it not a bit callous to advertise various<br />
home-ownership options in front of a facility designed<br />
to put a roof over the heads of the homeless?<br />
Or are these ads simply placed as reminders of one of<br />
the unfortunate alternatives to buying a home?<br />
I. Nita Napartment,<br />
Halifax<br />
NO BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY FOR REV. RENEE<br />
Dear Frank:<br />
re: Holy Cat Fight, Frank 581.<br />
Just a minor point regarding First Baptist Church associate minister Rev.<br />
Renee Clark’s previous work experience.<br />
Prior to landing on the doorstep of the Oxford Street, Halifax church, the good<br />
reverend spent three years thumping her Bible at the Freeport and Tiverton United<br />
Baptist Churches on Long Island, Digby County, not Long Island, New York.<br />
Of course it’s an easy mistake. The two are practically interchangeable.<br />
Long Island, N.Y., with a population of 7.5 million people, is known for the<br />
Queensboro Bridge, funny accents, iced tea and Billy Joel, while Long Island,<br />
N.S., with a population of 750, is known for the Petit Princess Ferry, funny accents,<br />
lobster, and the world-famous Balancing Rock.<br />
Could’ve happened to anybody.<br />
Pop U. Layshon,<br />
Weymouth<br />
PICKLES<br />
& NOODLES<br />
Dear Frank:<br />
Your article on the sudden<br />
closing of Smooth Herman’s<br />
(Frank 581) sparked a great<br />
deal of conversation here at<br />
my office.<br />
Not because we were fans<br />
of the Glace Bay watering<br />
hole or anything, but because<br />
of A. Frank Grunt’s passing<br />
mention of one Nancy Pickles.<br />
None of us knows Nancy<br />
either, but I was convinced<br />
that Nancy Pickles also happened<br />
to be the name of Bedford<br />
hat model Jan Bird’s<br />
canine companion.<br />
Turns out Jan’s dog’s name<br />
is actually Nancy Noodles.<br />
Mystery solved.<br />
E.Z. Misteak,<br />
South End Halifax<br />
Jan Bird<br />
URBAN LEGEND?<br />
Dear Frank:<br />
re: Hotel Horror, Frank 581.<br />
As any long-time hotel employee will tell you, guest room<br />
suicides are not unheard of. A hotel can be a lonely place.<br />
But I can’t help but point out that suicides have been particularly<br />
prevalent at the Westin Nova Scotian over the last<br />
few years. In fact, some staffers claim that the unfortunate<br />
gentleman discovered asphyxiated in his room on March 9 is<br />
the fifth suicide in five years, all of which have occurred on the<br />
fifth floor.<br />
Sure, it sounds eerily like the set-up for a macabre Stephen<br />
King novel, but could it be true?<br />
S. Kerry,<br />
Halifax
FAX ANYTIME: (902) 423-0281<br />
LETTERS<br />
WEB: www.atlanticfrank.ca<br />
PO BOX 295, HALIFAX, NS B3J 2N7<br />
PATRICIA IN WONDERLAND<br />
Dear Frank:<br />
While your chronicles of Patricia MacCulloch provide comic relief,<br />
they read like Alice in Wonderland.<br />
According to your latest instalment (Frank 581), she divides her time<br />
between her cottage in North West Cove and Fairview. Not an easy<br />
task given that she does not hold a valid driver’s licence.<br />
How does she manage to get to and fro her getaway if she cannot<br />
get to a grocer or an apothecary (for her “care and food and medication”)<br />
all of which are no doubt available in Fairview either on foot, or<br />
by one of those “taxis.”<br />
Also, am I wrong to believe that her years of litigating were to prove<br />
that her late husband’s estate was not bankrupt? How does a bankrupt<br />
estate pay for her “lengthy Caribbean sojourn”?<br />
Furthermore, in previous articles she supposedly sold her principle<br />
home of 30 years in Enfield. I lived in that house for two years. I have<br />
signed letters from Ms. MacCulloch stating that she did not own the<br />
house. Things just keep getting curiouser and curiouser.<br />
As one of Will Shakespeare’s character was once overheard saying.<br />
“Me thinks the woman doth protest too much.”<br />
Wayne Garden,<br />
Enfield<br />
PATRICIA MACCULLOCH,<br />
YOU’RE A CAB! YUK! YUK! YUK!<br />
Dear Frank:<br />
Thanks for the latest Widow MacCulloch update (Frank 581). Always<br />
appreciated.<br />
Love the drama queen. Someone call her a cab. Ha ha.<br />
B. Grant-Paul,<br />
Via Twitter<br />
NASAL NAVEL-GAZING<br />
Dear Frank:<br />
If you could be so kind, please explain how<br />
“thumping” one’s nose differs from the traditional<br />
“thumbing” of the nose.<br />
In A. Frank Grunt’s otherwise informative<br />
piece on the resignation of Liberal MLA Dave<br />
Wilson last time out, he uses both terms.<br />
<strong>THE</strong>RE’S NO LIFE LIKE IT<br />
Dear Frank:<br />
Re: the articles, “Premier Dexter’s wanderlust”<br />
and “Darrell’s travelogue” (Frank<br />
580).<br />
If Darrell Dexter wants to see the world<br />
at taxpayer’s expense, he should rejoin<br />
the Navy.<br />
I. Aye,<br />
Sydney<br />
WIND-BREAKING ISN’T<br />
GROUND-BREAKING<br />
Dear Frank:<br />
I’m hardly a prude, but I found your piece on Darrell Dexter’s gas<br />
pains (Frank 581) most distasteful.<br />
Letty Rip,<br />
City Of Flakes<br />
I think it’s quite<br />
fetching.<br />
STILL HELPING<br />
HIMSELF TO PROPERTY<br />
Dear Frank:<br />
For a guy who stamps “copyright”<br />
on everything he touches —<br />
including those Rocky Lake<br />
Dome video updates beloved by<br />
dozens of people worldwide<br />
(Frank 579) — The Honourable<br />
Len Goucher, E.C.N.S. seems to<br />
safeguard other people’s intellectual<br />
property about as carefully as<br />
I wonder, is the act of “thumping” one’s nose<br />
simply an angrier version of the old standby<br />
“thumbing”? Perhaps there are varying degrees<br />
of derision which one can display utilizing one’s<br />
nose? If a nose can be thumbed and thumped,<br />
can it also be threatened or throttled?<br />
Please advise.<br />
C. A. Honker,<br />
Halifax<br />
Was the COPYRIGHT<br />
LEN GOUCHER tattoo<br />
on my ass really necessary?<br />
he spent our tax dollars.<br />
A good portion of Len’s March 2<br />
video update is filmed in front of a<br />
green screen showing footage of<br />
the gold medal ceremony for the<br />
Canadian Olympic Men’s Hockey<br />
Team, footage, which if I’m not mistaken,<br />
is the property of CTV.<br />
Oh, and the Calgary Flames’<br />
superstar right-winger answers to<br />
the name Jerome ih-GIHN-lah, not<br />
ig-NAIL-ee-uh. Moron.<br />
Rip Toff,<br />
Bedford<br />
AND <strong>THE</strong> BACKHANDED<br />
COMPLIMENT OF <strong>THE</strong> WEEK<br />
AWARD GOES TO...<br />
Dear Frank:<br />
Exceptional, great work. I totally tip my hat<br />
to you. I bet you don’t hear that often.<br />
Y. Thanks,<br />
Halifax<br />
APRIL 13, 2010 ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK 31
Hello, hello, Frankie,<br />
I picked up your magazine,<br />
Last Tuesday at the corner store,<br />
Funniest thing I’ve seen<br />
Wha-wha-what did you say?<br />
That I should buy a sub,<br />
I’d save myself forty percent<br />
Then spend it at the pub<br />
G-Gotta get a sub,<br />
G-Gotta get a sub,<br />
I’ll save myself forty percent, if I just buy a sub<br />
I’m callin’, I’m callin’,<br />
I’m not gonna wait anymore,<br />
I got my VISA in my hand, cuz I’m cash poor<br />
I’m callin’, I’m callin’,<br />
Gonna get Frank Mag in the mail,<br />
Gave ‘em my address, now I’ll get it without fail<br />
Eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh,<br />
I’m telephonin’<br />
Frankie, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh<br />
I’m callin’<br />
Eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh,<br />
I’m telephonin’<br />
Frankie, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh<br />
SUBSCRIPTIONS:<br />
Call or fax toll free<br />
YOU CAN NOW ORDER OR RENEW YOUR SUBSCRIPTION ON-LINE USING OUR SECURE WEBSITE: WWW.ATLANTICFRANK.CA<br />
YES FRANK! I’M ENCLOSING A CHEQUE FOR $54.95<br />
(INCLUDES FST) FOR A ONE-YEAR, 26-ISSUE SUBSCRIPTION.<br />
NAME (PLEASE PRINT):<br />
1-800-259-1066<br />
frank.mag@ns.sympatico.ca<br />
ADDRESS: POSTAL CODE:<br />
PHONE: VISA/M’CARD/AMER.EX: EXPIRY:<br />
SEND THIS PAGE AND YOUR CHEQUE TO:<br />
ATLANTIC CANADA FRANK, BOX 1481, SHELBURNE, N.S., BOT 1W0<br />
2010015<br />
WE DO NOT SELL OUR SUBSCRIPTION LIST!<br />
One year.<br />
26 issues. $54.95.<br />
Go Gaga.<br />
Order now!<br />
NEWSROOM:<br />
Call toll free<br />
1-888-335-5505<br />
atlanticfrank@eastlink.ca<br />
New Renewal<br />
PUBLICATIONS MAIL AGREEMENT<br />
NO. 40050490