Roundup: 2 more COVID deaths, New Glasgow police lose ammo & magazine, Lobster Crawl to resume in Feb, new ferry launches in Country Harbour
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Plus: The Power of persuasion — how a Halifax cop of dubious skills became hailed as Canada’s “Sherlock Holmes”
Nova Scotian health officials reported two more COVID-19 deaths in yesterday’s update: a man in his 60s who resided at the East Cumberland Lodge long-term care home in Pugwash and a man in his 70s from the Western Zone. Since the pandemic began, the disease has killed 110 people in the province, with four of the deaths coming from the East Cumberland outbreak.
Nova Scotia has 171 known active cases of the disease, with officials reporting 59 new cases and 58 recoveries yesterday. Thirteen people are hospitalized with the disease, including four in ICU.
The update also includes three more school exposures; the latest in HRM are at Astral Drive Junior High, Duc d’Anville Elementary, and Charles P. Allen High.
New Glasgow police lose ammo and magazine
Police in New Glasgow have lost rifle ammunition and the magazine containing it. A spokesman says he doesn’t know how or where the mishap happened, but still praises the cop responsible.
“The officer and their crew have been very diligent in doing anything they can to find the missing magazine,” says Const. Ken Macdonald. “It’s not a firearm in question, but the ammunition in the clip.”
Raissa Tetanish reports for The Pictou Advocate.
The Power of Persuasion
Nic Power was Victorian Halifax’s most famous cop, hailed as an innovative detective, and a real-life Sherlock Holmes.
But he wasn’t very good at his job. His investigation methods mostly relied on hunches, guesses, and racial stereotypes. And in one of his most notorious cases, he almost certainly sent an innocent man named Peter Wheeler to the gallows, largely because he was Black and in the general vicinity of the crime.
“Power was astonishingly egotistical,” says author Bob Gordon. “He had a really symbiotic relationship with the media. He got the attention he wanted, and newspapers got the stories that would sell. Newspapers just freely and frequently made up news if there was nothing to print. In Peter Wheeler’s case, it was categorically impossible he committed that murder. The forensic evidence puts the murder at a time when reliable witnesses testified he was at his boarding house. But according to the press he confessed multiple times. Every time a reporter had a slow news day, they made up a confession. And Power just fed into all that, and profited from it.”
In his new book The Bad Detective, Gordon looks back at Power’s dubious career. In this exclusive excerpt, read about his most famous case, when he claims to have saved a prince from an assassination plot (that almost certainly never existed).
Lobster Crawl to resume
Started in 2018 to promote year-round travel on the South Shore, the Nova Scotia Lobster Crawl went on a pandemic hiatus last year, but is now set to return in February.
“As in the past, Lobster Crawlers will once again be invited to sip, savour, and stroll the nearly 250 km stretch along the South Shore in communities from Barrington, the Lobster Capital of Canada, to Peggy’s Cove and all ports in between,” organizer Joanne Cooper says in a press release.
Gayle Wilson reports for LighthouseNow.
Country Harbour launches new ferry
The communities on Country Harbour have a better connection to the rest of the province, with the recent launch of the new $6-million, 15-car Theodore O’Hara ferry, which replaces the 41-year-old Stormont II, linking the villages of Port Bickerton and Isaacs Harbour.
Warden Vernon Pitts welcomes the upgrade, but adds that it only partially addresses the area’s needs. “It’s not much good when you don’t have an adequate road to get to it,” he says.
Drake Lowthers has the story for The Reporter.
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