A Closer Look At Sexual Violence Policies at StFX – Residence Life and StFX Athletics

In 2019, an independent review was conducted of StFX’s sexual violence policy and was re-examined in 2023. The Watershed Report, as it is commonly known, gave 32 recommendations that StFX should consider implementing to support survivors and reduce the culture that perpetuates sexual violence. The Report was broken down into three areas that have the largest impacts on the culture of sexual violence on this campus: Athletics, Residence, and the Sexual Violence Policy itself.  

In writing this article, I interviewed several football players and current and former Community Advisors. They all wished to remain anonymous. All of the names used are fake. 

Community Advisors have been hired by the university to be the frontline support for first-year students. They are upper year students who live in residence and act as mentors, therapists, and emergency responders. Think back on your own first year – I’m willing to bet that you had at least one major event happen that has continued to impact your time at StFX. It happens to everyone, but most first years are particularly vulnerable compared to the rest of the student body. This is their first time living away from home, their first time having complete freedom. It doesn’t always lead to the best decisions, but it’s an important milestone and experience, which is why CAs are so important. CAs are the people who are there for students, who help you through your first year. You may not have known your CAs very well or you may have made a lasting relationship with them, but either way, they were there to offer help and support.  

Multiple recommendations in the Watershed Report focused on how more resources should be put in place to support CAs – including increasing staff and mental health supports. While these are positive and necessary changes, the Watershed Report is working under the assumption that every CA takes the position and performs it to the best of their ability and with the best intentions. This doesn’t always hold true.  

There may be people remembering stories of CAs who were not the positive influences they should have been. This article does not aim to circulate more gossip or target anyone in particular – but rather, I wish to highlight the fact that CA’s and their influence can be overlooked when discussing who on campus perpetrates sexual violence.  

Athletes don’t have the best reputation on this campus when it comes to sexual violence. There are plenty of stories – true or rumoured – that feature the sports teams. Even the Watershed Report pointed out that athletes are often “put on a pedestal” and have significant “social capital” which translates to a level of authority over other students. Athletes are prominent figures at StFX, meaning that if they do something wrong, everyone will know about it by the end of the week. While CA’s are not quite as prominent as the athletes, they are the largest group of student leaders on campus. Where StFX athletes have social power and influence, CA’s have legitimate authority over students.  

While the athletes and the athletics department at StFX are far from perfect, sexual violence is taken very seriously. There is a zero-tolerance policy for athletes, which extends beyond sexual violence, but it is a hard line. “In training camp, we have meetings with the athletic directors and coaches, and they go through all the policies. They tell us about the drug policy, about hazing, and most importantly, they harp on sexualized violence towards women and anyone on campus. They tell us how there’s a zero-tolerance policy and if there’s any reports of any athlete doing anything bad to anyone on campus, they will be off the team and there will be severe repercussions that will be dealt to them,” explained Jordan, a current member of the football team.  

“There’s a specific kind of focus on [sexualized violence] when they talk about the severity. They definitely want to get that point across, because we have [those meetings] and then we do further training, like Waves of Change, twice a year. You definitely can tell that they care,” added Shayne, who is also a current football player.  

This zero-tolerance policy extends beyond sexual violence. “Anything that can be seen as hurting someone else, off the field. Anything that can be seen as having a negative impact on someone else will be met with discipline,” Jordan said. While it isn’t a perfect solution, the players are held accountable and the standards for their behaviour are clearly laid out. They’re aware that their actions reflect not only on them, but their entire team, the athletics department, and the university.  

I’m not praising the athletics department or saying that athletes can’t cause harm. They can, they do, and they have. However, the assumption that a player is protected because they are an athlete isn’t always true. I’m also not saying that this has always been the case. What I am saying is that StFX Athletics has standards they hold their players to and a policy in place to ensure that there are consequences when those expectations are not met.  

StFX’s Department of Residence Life has no such policy on student employees. The Watershed Report recommended that StFX move away from having a zero-tolerance policy as, “the problem with expressing this valid commitment through a ‘zero tolerance’ statement is that the aspirational statement is impossible for the University to fulfill” as stated on page 50 of the Watershed Report. This means that currently, there is no additional policy on sexual violence for Residence Life staff. An interesting fact, when Residence Life deals with sexual violence internally, specifically in cases of allegations against employees.  

“I feel that Residence Life operates in a similar way that Athletics does, where there is a very strong image that they want to portray. And very similar to Athletics when allegations come out, they understand that one allegation will represent an entire team. Or an entire group of players. I feel like it's very similar in Residence Life. Very internal and within the department, very, like, they'll let you know that these are your resources if you do want to go outside to the department, but in the same way, very much discourage you from actually seeking those resources if you do need them,” Megan told me, when I asked about what happens when there is an investigation that involves a CA.  

“I think more often you hear of [CAs] being placed on probation, on paper or on a ‘leave’, but they stay exactly where they are. Most situations they stay in their room, they stay in the building, and they're not working, but they're still there,” explained Diane, another former CA who worked in Residence Life for two years.  

Which begs the question: why is there no policy for Residence Life staff, specifically CAs? If the expectations and standards are so clearly laid out by the athletics department, what is stopping Residence Life from doing the same? 

CAs are also not given clear guidelines for what boundaries they should have with their residents, beyond that it is “discouraged” from having romantic or sexual relationships with them. “I was always told that [relationships between CA’s and residents] were ‘frowned upon’, but there was never anything put in place in terms of a solid rule,” said Megan, a former CA who worked in Residence Life for almost three years. “It’s mostly left up to the individual teams, and even then, they’re not followed. Someone on one of the teams last year tried to veto the true love clause, but a situation still happened. Because it's not actually binding or anything like that,” Christine, a current CA, explained. The true love clause Christine is referring to is a clause that is typically placed in unofficial team agreements that says you can date a resident if it’s “true love”.  

“I think that a lot of times in training, they just talk about like a gray area, you know? Programming is easy to say, you have to run however many programs, you have to do this number of shifts, but for a gray area, it's very much just your prerogative. I don't want to say how much you care, but it’s how much you want to take on and how much you have the capacity to take on,” added Megan, talking about boundaries with residents in general. 

All of the CAs that I spoke to agreed that there is a clear power dynamic, even if the resident isn’t always aware of it. Christine informed me that, “I think there's also a lot of residents who don't see that position of power. There's a lot of residents right now who will come and chat with me and tell me, ‘You're really chill, I don't feel like you have that position of power over me. I know that you're there if I ever need to talk to you, but I don't feel like there's a power imbalance’. And I'm glad [the residents] don't think that, but I do. And that is something, as a CA, to be aware of, that just because they don't see it, doesn't mean that it's not there.”  

“As much as people hate to say it, especially in the first-year buildings, there is not a big difference between a high schooler and a first-year university student. It's a big transition period and students are already vulnerable. So, when we put people that are untrustworthy in a position of power and keep them there, when they have proven that they can't safely be in that position of power, or are there for the wrong reasons, it's extremely damaging. To an already vulnerable demographic,” commented Tracie, a former CA who worked in Residence Life for three years.  

In contrast, athletes are afraid of failing to meet the expectations placed on them because they know there will be consequences if they do. There are clear policies for them, and if they break the rules, they face being suspended or kicked off their team. “From what I know, if an accusation reaches the coaches, there will immediate effects. Either there is a suspension while the investigation happens, or you’re just kicked off. And not even suspended, it's an indefinite suspension,” Jordan explained. 

“What would happen is once the person gets suspended, they probably wouldn’t want to come back to the team where everyone knows that they probably did something horrible. Either way, you’re basically kicked off the team,” Shayne said about his experience on the football team so far.  

This focal point on Athletics helps point out that although the sports teams are usually brought up and criticized when it comes to sexual violence on campus, there are other groups of students in positions of power who don’t have the same checks and balances that the sports teams do.  

Ideally, there should be a zero-tolerance policy for sexual violence within Residence Life. But if that is unrealistic, there should be some sort of policy, standards, or stricter expectations placed on CAs. “I think that, especially, too, if it's outlined more clearly, then if there is a breach, then we can fall back on the conduct book and it's not a gray area anymore. It can be ‘you can do this’, ‘you cannot do this’. Instead of using words like ‘frowned upon’. There should be no gray area, there should be no ‘frowned upon’,” answered Megan when I asked for her thoughts on whether Residence Life should have some sort of policy in place.  

“[Residence Life] only added the sections on ‘what to do if there’s a hurricane’, after the hurricane happened. So, what are they waiting for? Are they waiting for a massive situation to blow up so that they can go, ‘Oh, I guess we'll add a policy for sexual violence’? Is [Residence Life] waiting for something to make it out from under the rug that they've swept it under? If it’s in the handbook, then you can refer back to that handbook when something happens. Or put it in training, or both. [Residence Life] should set those standards of what you can and cannot do. And a lot of the time, not having those standards is used as an excuse when things go wrong,” says Tracie about a potential policy.  

Although Community Advisors aren’t the public figures that athletes are, they are in a position of power where they can do a lot of harm or a lot of good. A sexual violence policy to hold CAs accountable could reduce the risk of some of that harm. Either way, Residence Life lacking clear guidelines or a sexual violence policy seems like a gap that the Watershed Report didn’t recognize.  

Changing University as we Know It: Bill-12 and the State of Post-Secondary Education in Nova Scotia

On March 26, 2025, the Nova Scotia provincial government passed a new education bill titled Bill 12. Premier Tim Houston’s Conservative party passed the bill with the aim of improving the sustainability of post-secondary education in Nova Scotia through increasingly direct government interference. The bill focuses on four main areas of improvement:  

1. The new legislation gives degree-granting powers to the Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC)  

1. It looks to dissolve existing university boards and replace them with new boards that could be up to 50% government appointed. 

1. It gives new powers to the Minister of Advanced Education, Brendan Maguire, to direct Research NS funding towards predetermined research priorities at his discretion. 

1. The legislation amends Bill 100, which was passed in 2015 to protect universities against bankruptcy, to allow the government to require institutions to create recovery plans in order to not lose their existing funding. 

This bill’s impact has been grossly underreported to students at StFX.  An article by Alex Usher (Higher Education Strategy Associates, 2025), which I recommend every StFX student to read and will be attached below, breaks down each area of amendment and expands on the worries this new bill has created. My article will narrow the focus towards the impact of this bill on current academic programs and research and looks to unpack why educators and institutions are concerned about its prospective fallout. I talked with Dr. Mathias Nilges, professor in the English department, about what this bill means for the province and the StFX community. “Bill-12 is sort of a tricky thing,” he says. “On the face of it, it has four discrete parts, not all of them necessarily unusual or immediate cause for concern. Say for instance, adding government appointees to StFX as board of governors. This is a new thing at StFX [but] a very common thing in other provinces. So, one argument might be that it just brings us in line with what’s done elsewhere…but what it opens the door to, under current conditions, I think is the problem.” 

For Dr. Nilges, there are two main concerns over this bill. The first lies in its demand for a program rationalization and review. According to StFX’s 2025-2027 Higher Education Agreement, this review “involves reducing or discontinuing programs with low labor market need, low utilization, high program costs and those that no longer align with the institution's strategic priorities.” (St. Francis Xavier University, 42) In other words, post-secondary institutions will need to undergo review processes to assess the value of academic programs in relation to current labor market needs. Dr. Nilges worries about the accuracy of this kind of review strategy. “If you completely instrumentalize the account of what we do in the department, you reduce it to the simplest terms that don’t quite capture what we actually do…It’s a kind of change of valuation in the conversation of academic knowledge.”  

This review means that academic programs will have to defend their right to exist based solely on cost and labor market needs, an argument that grossly underrepresents the value of these programs for education and research. And if they are unable to produce a strong enough account, entire programs and degrees may disappear. “The worry is exactly that [this] is what’s going to happen here. The end result usually is maybe there were immediate benefits on cost savings, but over the long term, it comes at a high cost” cautions Dr. Nilges. Usher writes that this review will allow the government to “require institutions to put forward recovery plans on pain of losing existing funding”, potentially in order to have the ability to “force [institutions] to restructure.” The range of revitalizations may be minor or major, but because of the shaky nature of the bill we have no way of truly knowing just how severely the province and StFX will be affected. 

The second concern, Dr. Nilges states, is that “the scale of academic research and the time of academic research doesn’t map onto the quick-changing needs of the labor market.”  

He notes that “you have research in the environmental sciences that’s absolutely going to be crucial for everything we do – including the labor market – decades from now. The research products that require decades, you can’t shift them around.” When the government attempts to oversimplify academic research using terminology fit only to describe the ever-changing state of the labor market, what results is not a strategy for cost-effectiveness but rather a gross reductive metric of the role of academia in society. This bill, therefore, not only risks slashing certain programs and degrees but also has the potential to change how universities operate as a whole. 

Yet where our attention should really be directed towards is the overreach of party politics in academia. “[When] we instrumentalize what higher education should be, attaching it to fulfilling labor market needs, then we tend to forget about the crucial parts that traditionally made universities so incredibly valuable…as drivers of social innovation and progress. Entire fields of knowledge become instrumentalized and unrecognizable,” says Dr. Nilges. “The range of educational opportunities cannot depend on the rapidly shifting, at worst incoherent preferences of the government…In a time of anti-intellectualism, when people find it easy to be rustled up against universities, [a bill like this] is a great object” to the slash-and-cut agenda, says Dr. Nilges. Yet it fails to accurately portray the value of post-secondary institutions not only in terms of academia, but economically and culturally as well.  

With this new legislation Bill 12 attempts to create a lane for governmental control of educational opportunities, a concern that should alarm not only post-secondary educators but students as well. “The independence and freedom of higher education is absolutely crucial, and the damaging incursion of party politics into academic research and teaching is as self-serving and short-sighted as it is damaging for us” says Dr. Nilges. StFX students, as well as those of other institutions across the province, need to keep a close eye on this legislation’s effects on our schools and programs. As Bill 12 begins rolling out across the province, we at the Xaverian Weekly will continue to report on this developing story. 

Alex Usher’s article on Bill-12: https://higheredstrategy.com/nova-scotias-bill-12/  

StFX’s 2025-2027 agreement – p.42-45: https://novascotia.ca/lae/HigherEducation/documents/agreement-stfx-2025.pdf  

The Capstone Lecture Series: What Are They, Who Are They For?

On Thursday, October 16th, the Humanities Capstone Lecture series kicked off with Dr. Doug Al-Maini, professor of philosophy. Garnering an audience of roughly 50, his talk titled “Protagoras: Democratic Apologist,” asked the question: can the democratic and techne (Greek term meaning technique or specialization) mindsets be harmonized? While most Greek thinkers say “no,” Dr. Al-Maini believes Protagoras says “Yes.”

Dr. Al-Maini walked us through the general argument of teaching the specialization of democratic practices on a wide scale, so that the population will be more inclined to hold positions in democratic institutions themselves. The main take away for modern audiences is this: that no matter who you are — whether it be a police officer, janitor, store clerk, or teacher — you too should be an active participant in democracy, opposed to being another passive observer. Actions such as sitting on town/university committees, attending council meetings, and asking questions to those who are in elected positions, help foster a more democratic and free space for everyone.

“I totally believe that … part of the education of a good democratic citizen is engaging with other democratic citizens” says Dr. Al-Maini. “That was part of the point I was trying to make, that Protagoras thinks that everybody engages in the education of other citizens. So, it’s a thing that collectively happens.” When asked about the modern audience take away, Dr. Al-Maini said “[Protagoras’s] view of the modern world would be that right now, it seems there’s a lot of things that are keeping us from teaching each other how to be good democrats … social media would be the obvious culprit here. It has an effect of isolating people and keeping them from actually engaging with each other in a way that is conducive to participating in a democracy.”

In its own way, the lecture was a practice in democracy. During a roughly 30-minute question period which followed the talk, audience members raised questions, opposing views, and challenges about the lecture. And that, to me, is one of the defining features of the Capstone Lecture Series. By attending a talk, you get information on things you may not have known, are able to ask questions to an expert, and engage in academic traditions. Along the way you can sharpen your skills of critical thinking, public speaking, and more.

When asked about the impact of the Capstone Lectures, Quincie Grant — a third-year political science and philosophy student — said, “not only is it putting the Humanities Colloquium on the map, but I think any talks on philosophy are helpful to the populace no matter what. … The goal of the university is to create meaningfully virtuous people, and I think these talks are just a by-product of that. I don’t think StFX would be the same without them.” When asked more specifically about the talk itself, Quincie said “I agree with Dr. Al-Maini that even if you don’t feel that your contribution is as insightful as another’s, it is just as valuable … in a truly democratic society. […] I think that the values of technique and democracy have … already been harmonized through the idea of a representative democracy.”

“If we are going to have students that are educated in a liberal arts fashion, who are going to be cultivated intellectuals, then they have to see this other side of university” says Dr. Louis Groarke, professor of philosophy, “which is intellectual discussion, which goes beyond just studying for exams.”

Dr. Steven Baldner is a coordinator of the Capstone Lecture Series, and professor of philosophy. “[The Capstone Lectures] have been very successful. [They] are now really the only regular lecture series in Arts. […] We wanted the Capstone Lectures to be a kind of a social event … we wanted to show students that a public lecture is a chance to raise questions, to challenge, to get explanations. Which is a big thing for a first-year student… but every year students have risen to the occasion. It’s a contribution to the whole intellectual life of the university.”

The Capstone Lectures were started for the Humanities Colloquium and offer four educational lectures per year from experts on multiple topics covering four time periods (Ancient, Mediaeval, Modern, and Contemporary). Everyone is welcome, students and non-students alike. The next lecture is on November 27th at 7:30 p.m. from Dr. Gerjan Altenberg, professor of religious studies.

AI Cheating and the Undergraduate Experience

The rise of students cheating using AI is having a disastrous effect at StFX and in the academic field by fundamentally changing the way people experience university education, the goal of which is to get good grades in order to get a good job.  Some students use AI to keep their academic workload light. To them, even if it is cheating, it's justified; they're doing what they need to do to succeed. I interviewed a business student who admitted to using AI to cheat. When asked if they believe cheating makes the class experience worse, they argued that using AI to summarize readings allows people to engage in conversations they wouldn’t otherwise participate in, which improves discussion. However, they also said that students should not be allowed to pass off AI writing as their own. “I feel like you should only be able to use it as a reference” they said, adding that “anything over 25% [written by] AI is quite bad, and not professional, not beneficial to you or the school … if its more than that, I’m gonna feel bad about it”. They later added that when it comes to writing, “authenticity is important”. 

Professors argue that AI is damaging to the university structure and that cheating restricts the development of key practical skills that students must develop. For Dr Steven Baldner, professor of philosophy, one of these important skills include “writing, being able to understand a problem independently, explain what the problem is and give a solution to the problem in a clear and coherent way”. The student I talked to argued that AI makes the university experience easier and described AI as “so beneficial … especially for time saving”. They also said that “sometimes the way professors explain things is so advanced because they're so advanced and AI can really dumb things down”. But they did not hesitate to say that cheaters should be punished: “If you're getting an assignment and 100% generating it with AI and handing it in, then you should be punished, that’s not how school works”.  

Professors argue that cheating erodes their relationship with students by affecting their ability to trust them. Dr Baldner believes that “if you forbid the use of AI and a student has done that, it’s a real rupture in our relationship, and I have had that experience already, sadly. Its upsetting”. It is not hard to imagine that a lack of trust inevitably strains the professor-student relationship because reliability comes from trust; if you don’t trust your students, then the way you treat them changes - and likely for the worst. When asked if good prof-student relationships improve the class environment, the student answered that it makes the experience “just incrementally better” but that AI should not be seen as a form of betrayal. “I would say it's kind of the opposite of a betrayal, I feel like a betrayal would be me listening to the prof, not understanding what he says, and also never trying to understand … but AI allows me to - if I don’t understand something, actually dive deeper into it and care about what the prof is saying”. These two views on AI are incompatibly different, yet it is not difficult to sympathize with both opinions. 

In our conversation, Dr Baldner mentioned that AI falls short as an academic tool because that’s not what it was designed to be: “I don’t think it's intelligence … it is just a very elaborate way of producing word association and I think for that reason it will never achieve what the human author can do”. AI can produce relevant answers with proper grammar but is not concerned with truth or argumentative quality. It is not hard to see how AI could be helpful; in our conversation, Dr Baldner said that AI “certainly has a lot of very helpful applications in a number of fields,” but was clear that he is concerned about AI use among undergraduates.  

Dr Baldner used an analogy of a tennis ball machine to explain his view on AI; these machines are used to practice, not to compete. Dr Baldner said, “The point is for you to learn how to hit…we don’t put the machines in the game”. ChatGPT might be able to show you how to use a semicolon or what a good use of the exclamation mark is, but it’s production cannot be passed off as the work of a student. This is because the student didn’t participate in the generation of the arguments, often the most important part of an essay. The school considers AI to be plagiarism, not just because it generates sentences that are not one’s own, but because they also do not belong to the AI model. An AI database is not created by the machine; it is fed to it. AI results come from compilations of human data, and a student who uses these results is plagiarizing work from that database.  

Cheating is dishonest, and this alone is often seen as bad in and of itself. But that is not where the problems stop; professors at StFX are compelled to implement preventative measures to stop cheating. These measures take different forms, such as not allowing technology in the classroom, or in-class exams replacing take-home essays. But these changes also negatively affect students by stopping them from learning how to do take-home assignments or prepare research papers. In addition, in-class essays disfavour certain students. Dr Baldner recognized this by mentioning that certain “students have anxiety in those quiz situations”. In-class essays also take away from lecture time, resulting in either rushed examinations to fit a lecture in afterwards or missing topics that should be included in the teaching of a subject. “You're actually cutting down the amount that you can accomplish”, as Dr Baldner told me. These consequences come from trying to prevent cheating, something that has to be done to retain classroom equality, but the preventative measures negatively impact certain students, which also disrupts classroom equality.  

The ‘real world’ and the careers we are preparing for at university are competitive and complex. To excel, you will need to be trained and prepared for them. When a university does not set students up for success, then a good transcript becomes the sole purpose of their education. Many see a university diploma as an expensive addition to a job resume, so why not make this addition as easy as possible? During our conversation, the student told me that if there was no risk of punishment for AI that they “would use it always”. Being able to do your future job well is not common sense; it has long been the role of universities to prepare students for this transition, but now it seems that AI can do this. The problem is that AI does not provide its users with an education, only the answering of prompts. The job of AI is not done alongside a user, but for them, cheating them of the opportunity to learn how to do tasks themselves moving forward. When preparing for the job field, it is either education or reliance on AI.  

Federal Justice Minister Sean Fraser Hosts Q&A at StFX

Canada’s Justice Minister and Attorney General Sean Fraser stopped by StFX last Monday, giving a short lecture during Prof. Adam Lajeunesse’s Public Policy & Governance 101 class. Fraser, a StFX alumn, is the Member of Parliament for Central Nova, which covers all of Pictou County as well as parts of Antigonish County and the Eastern Shore, located north of Halifax.  

The speech started 20 minutes late as Fraser was on the phone with Prime Minister Mark Carney. In the meantime, StFX President Andy Hakin said a few words about StFX’s politics and public policy. ‘’Government is a big entity, and whether you do that or something else, there is a place for a myriad of skills within public service’’, Hakin said to the class. ‘’We’re trying to ensure that our country, through you, goes forward to do the things that are right for the population’’.  

Fraser began with a short introduction, then opened up the floor for a Q&A session. I asked him about the new Hate-Speech bill he announced on September 19. Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act, has been criticized by several human right’s watchdogs such as the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.  

The proposed legislation would make it a crime to commit an offence and show a sign or symbol associated with a listed terrorist entity, as well as Nazi Symbols. I asked Fraser if the law was in place 35 years ago, would it have been a crime to protest Apartheid in South Africa with a poster of Nelson Mandela. Mandela was a leader in the African National Congress, which is now widely celebrated for its key role in ending apartheid, yet at the time were proscribed as a terrorist entity.  

Fraser defended the Combatting Hate Act, saying it criminalizes the willful obstruction of “the ability for people to go to a place of worship”.   In addition, it “addresses what’s being treated in the media as a ‘symbols ban’, but there’s more nuance to that’’. Fraser said that it wouldn’t be illegal to raise a Nelson Mandela poster because “the law doesn’t criminalize the display of any symbols, it criminalizes the willful promotion of hate through the use of those symbols’’. Since the willful promotion of hate is already a crime, using a symbol in the exercise of hate would be ‘’an additional layer of criminal responsibility over and above the criminal responsibility for promoting hate against an identifiable group’’.  

When asked about violence against Indigenous women, Fraser replied “In my view, [it’s something] we will need a whole of society effort to overcome centuries of discrimination to a group who’ve been here since time immemorial’’. More broadly, “What justice means more broadly, from my part, I think it’s hard to say that you can address justice vis a vis Indigenous People in Canada if you’re dealing with a community that doesn’t have access to clean water, or affordable housing, or is dealing with overcrowding and the related spread of diseases that may come with it, in addition to whatever challenges you may have on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, in addition to what challenges you may have with under policing or over policing, whatever the case may be’’.  

Another student asked about the difference between having Carney as Prime Minister instead of Trudeau. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist’’, said Fraser, “to figure out that after ten years in office, people want to see new perspectives emerge’’. Under Trudeau, if cabinet ministers wanted to explain “the emotional connection to an issue they or others may have had, they were always given that space. You would be finding yourself occasionally in meetings beyond the scheduled end time because people wanted to air all of their thoughts on the issue, and there’s value in that, but it’s different now’’.   

With Carney, “the meeting starts when the second hand hits the top of the clock... to the extent you have questions, you know what they are, and you’re not just making conversation. It got to a point during one conversation early on where a few colleagues were saying things like ‘I’d like to build on what so and so said, I’d like to echo the argument my colleague made’ and the Prime Minister literally stopped the meeting and said ‘folks, this is a meeting, arguably the most valuable two hours anywhere in Canada this week, and I want you all to know that speaking is for people who have something new or useful to say’. And when you hear that once, you make sure you are not the kind of person who is going to fill time with your thoughts on an issue unless it’s essential to the decision being made”.  

President of the StFX Liberal Society Kash Richards thought “it was a very good talk, he was a very good speaker’’. He met Fraser during the federal election campaign, saying “the impression I got from him... is that what you see is what you get. He’s not putting on a thick mask. He’s there because he cares’’. Richards, a second year English Major, said he’s “always aligned’’ with the Liberal Party. ‘’I’m more of left-wing person, I believe the role of government is to take care of people’’.  

How YOU Can Vote in the Upcoming Federal Election

It is an exciting time in Canadian politics, as the federal election is scheduled to be held Monday, April 28th 2025. Here is how you, yes YOU, specifically, can have your voice be heard and exercise your foundational democratic right to vote.

At minimum you must be a Canadian citizen and at least 18 years of age to vote in any election within Canada.

Voting in the federal election is a little different than voting in a provincial election. In the latest Nova Scotia provincial election, you could vote anywhere in the province ahead of the election date and have your vote count in your home riding. This is not so in the federal election. As noted on the Elections Canada website, you must vote at your assigned polling station.

However, so long as you are able to prove residency in the riding of Cape Breton–Canso–Antigonish (the riding StFX is located in), you can register to vote in this riding for any of this riding’s candidates. You must be able to produce TWO forms of ID to vote in the Cape Breton–Canso–Antigonish riding, one of which must contain your current address within the riding.

Acceptable forms of ID include but are not limited to: A driver’s license or any other official identification issued by a Canadian government (federal, provincial, or municipal), your student ID, a bank statement, a piece of official correspondence from the university about your residency, a utility bill, or a lease or sub-lease. An exhaustive list can be found on the Elections Canada website. Students who live on campus can request a proof of residency letter from the Residence Office.

As confirmed by the university’s President’s Office, there will be advanced polling open April 13th and 18th in the Keating Centre Hospitality Suites from 7am-10:30pm, open to StFX students only. General advanced polling, which will be open to the town as well, are scheduled for April 18th and 21st from 7am-10:30pm in the Bloomfield Mackay Room. Election day polls will also be open in the Bloomfield Mackay Room.

You can also apply to vote by mail. The deadline to apply for mail-in voting is 6pm, April 22nd. Deadlines still apply, so you must take that into account the time it takes for your ballot to reach its destination. You will receive a voting kit and instructions on how to cast your ballot. Once you opt to cast you vote by mail, you will be prohibited from voting in-person, so keep that in mind.

You could cast a special ballot at an Elections Canada office by 6pm on April 22nd. The nearest Elections Canada offices are located at 74 Main Street, Guysborough, NS, and 811 Reeves Street, Port Hawkesbury, NS.

It must be noted that you can only vote in one riding. Voting in any more than a single riding is illegal. The penalty for voter fraud could be up to five years in prison, or a fine of up to $50,000.

Where does StFX Stand Politically: Survey Results

Over the first few weeks of February, I posted and circulated a survey around public spaces at StFX that asked students to anonymously indicate which party they’re most favourable towards, and to rank the most pressing issues Canadians face today according to their personal importance. My goal was to reach 200 replies so I would have a realistic sample size and therefore a good indication of how StFX really felt politically, and I achieved this goal. In this article, I will show you some interesting graphs I was able to compile using the demographic data volunteered by participants.  

Before I get to the graphs, however, I have to make some caveats. First, certain demographics were too small to include in the demographic-based graphs while respecting the anonymity of the respondents and the meaningfulness of the data. There were only two students who selected “education” as their program, one who selected “graduate studies,” and only seven students who selected “other” as their gender. Data drawn from these numbers alone would not tell us anything conclusive. Nevertheless, everyone who participated in the survey is included in the “All Students” bar in the graph ranking political issues, and those who selected “other” are still included in the graph representing their major. One final caveat is that conservative hesitancy in polling is a real phenomenon. If you’ve never heard of this, look up the “shy tory factor” or “social desirability bias.” Anecdotally, I have already heard of conservative students not wanting to complete the survey because I might be a nefarious character who would expose them. That is unfortunate, but it is what it is. I don’t think it would change too much if this wasn’t the case, but just keep in mind that StFX students may be marginally more conservative than a poll could indicate.  

With all that out of the way, here are the results of the survey. I’ll begin with the preferred parties of different majors, starting with Bachelor of Arts Students: 

I don’t think this or any of the other first three graphs are too surprising. Canadian universities are known to be pretty left-leaning places, and I don’t think anyone, regardless of political leaning, would guess that Bachelor of Arts students would be the ones to buck this trend. Up next, we have Bachelor of Science students: 

Almost identical. If you’re a Liberal or New Democrat, use this graph to epically own your Conservative friends by claiming that it is proof that Conservatives are anti-science. However, I will be collecting royalties if you choose to do so. On to Schwartz School of Business: 

Another shocking twist. It is cool to see some diversity of thought among departments, however isolated they might be from each other. Sometimes I wonder, though, if there’s a divide between how Conservative business students are and how Conservative actual businesspeople are. Because if I was a Canadian businessman and for 10 years I watched Liberal insiders collect those cheeky little government contracts and bailouts, I might buy some lobbying time and become Trudeau’s next best friend myself! 

These upcoming graphs are going to get far juicier than what we’ve already seen. Next, we have the differences in political preference between men and women on campus. Here are both graphs together: 

This one actually did surprise me. I understand I may be missing out on some nuances from my personal position, but it seems weird that men are more likely to be Conservatives but equally likely to support the NDP. I know this isn’t reflective of the country as a whole, and a university campus is a pretty unique place. But I feel like if men are more conservative (“small c” on purpose here), then shouldn’t there be more Liberal men than NDP men, since the Liberal party is ostensibly less left-wing than the NDP? It seems like the Liberal party must have done something to seriously alienate men that did not affect women at all, but I can’t think of what they could have done that would be so different than the NDP. Alternatively, men could just be more radical if the Liberals are seen as centrist, but the next graph would seem to suggest otherwise.  

This brings us to our finale. The juiciest graph of them all. Forthwith, I am about to expose the ideological divide between men and women on campus...prepare yourselves: 

These numbers were found by averaging all responses to each question by men and by women, and the total average of all responses (including those who selected other) as well. The average difference between men and women only equaled 0.79 which is not that high considering each issue was ranked out of 10, so a big win for unity between the sexes.  

I know that’s not what you care about, though, dear reader, so I have compiled the issues that men and women differed the most on.  

The top 5 most divisive issues at StFX are: 

1. Progressive social issues – 168% higher than the average difference (HTAD) 

2. Childcare – 78% HTAD 

3. Indigenous issues – 63% HTAD 

4. Climate change – 54% HTAD 

5. Provincial/language rights – 18% HTAD 

Interestingly, women cared more about each of these issues. 

Overall, men seem to be more socially centrist, only polling at an average 0.33 points more for progressive social issues than they did for conservative social issues. Women, on the other hand, poll as being much more left wing, with a difference of 2.83 between the average importance attributed to progressive social issues and conservative social issues. Outside of the social issues, men care more about affordability, housing, the economy, immigration, tax policy, foreign policy, and military spending, but the difference between men and women for these issues were all below average (0.79), except for military spending. Women care more about healthcare, climate change, poverty and social inequality, provincial/language rights, indigenous issues, and education.  

In conclusion, I hope you all enjoyed this survey as much as I enjoyed chasing strangers down to get them to participate in it. Thank you to all of those who did, and if people like this kind of thing than maybe it can become something that happens every few years to see where StFX stands politically in the future.  

The Rocky Twenties: StFX Professors Share How They Navigated Their Fears for The Future

On a chilly Saturday evening I lay in my mother’s bed, surrounded by sleeping cats and a pile of tissues, crying about my future. When I turned twenty, it seemed like everything I thought I knew about myself, my goals and what I wanted to do with my life, had simply vanished. My mother listened as I poured out my worries with my tears. How am I supposed to take steps towards my future when I haven’t got the faintest clue what I want it to look like? How do I navigate these feelings of being lost? Everyone tells you your twenties are some of the best but most challenging years of your life, and that these are the years to discover who you are. But how do I deal with the immense fear?

Many other students in their twenties feel this fear. As a child, we are taught to dream about our adult life and “what we want to be when we grow up”. Exploring the possibilities for our future and changing our minds was normal and expected of us. Yet, after post-secondary education, the pressure to find a good job, settle down, and begin a new chapter weighs heavily on many graduates. The imagination and the search for self we’ve nurtured since childhood are pushed aside to make room for one’s career trajectory.

This pressure can often make students feel isolated from their peers, especially when some are dragging their feet toward their future while others are taking it in stride. Yet StFX’s own professors have experienced these same rocky years, some in rather unconventional ways. “When I started university, I thought I wanted to be a physiotherapist,” confesses Angie Kolen, Professor of Human Kinetics. “I was interviewed [for physiotherapy school] and didn’t get in.” Then, she discovered physical education (the equivalent of StFX’s Human Kinetics) and loved it. “But I did not really know what I was going to do.” The fourth year came around, and nothing had changed. “I discovered I was pregnant in the final term of my fourth year. Here is where my career takes an interesting twist,” Professor Kolen recounts. She was asked to teach a university class as a sessional instructor for students wanting to teach physical education to elementary school children. “I dabbled in that for four years before going back to school. Four years mature, two babies later, I was twenty-five years old when I went back to school, and I loved it. It wasn’t until my master’s degree that I realized I wanted to be a professor”.

For Assistant Professor of Management Mark MacIsaac, there was no hard plan after graduation. “I had a general sense of what I wanted to do, and even that wasn’t very well formed,” Professor MacIsaac recalls. “I went into business because I thought I wanted to work in business, and that was only due to what I saw growing up – my father, putting on a suit, going into downtown Halifax, into an office building and working”. When graduation rolled around, he had yet to develop a specific plan. “I wasn’t really intentional or deliberate about what my career would be. By the time I got to graduation, it was kind of scary. Because I was uncertain, one of my professors recommended I go do my masters in England, which I did.” This led to the beginning of a career in business. Yet Professor MacIsaac learned that his expectations outgrew his reality. “It wasn’t really right for me. It was only when I started to teach at part-time teaching gigs that I realized, wow, this is something I really enjoy”.

“I didn’t graduate high school,” says Associate Professor of History Chris Frazer. “I had a very different experience; I didn’t go to university until I was 30.” Professor Frazer spent his twenties working, traveling, and going to community college with the hopes of transferring to a university. He also met his partner, and they had a child together. “When I started university, I was a dad, working and being a full-time student. I didn’t get my university degree until after having a child”. Professor Frazer's twenties coincided with a tumultuous state of the world; the imminent threat of nuclear warfare and the height of the AIDS crisis were events that majorly shaped his worldview and political organizing. Amidst this crisis was an extremely hostile climate towards the LGBTQ+ community. “I had to watch many friends die of AIDS. That left me wondering, am I ever going to be able to grow up and be myself completely?”

Each of these professors had to navigate many fears during this period of their lives. “I wondered, is it me? Am I never going to get a job?” recounts Professor MacIsaac. Coming out of a master’s program in a time of recession added another layer of difficulty. “It took probably 6-8 months before I landed what I characterized as a ‘“real job,” and that was uncomfortable.” But he kept trying, and, in the end, it worked out.

For Professor Kolen, her twenties were vastly different than many of her peers. “My twenties were not like my friends’ twenties: I was a young mom, fraught with a lot of self-esteem issues,” she remembers. She experienced many doubts about being good enough during her days as a sessional instructor. “I often wondered, was I going to amount to anything? I think being a mom is so important, but sometimes it felt like it wasn’t enough. Was my life going to be worthwhile?” When she went back to school, however, she found it an amazingly challenging experience and built her confidence back.

It’s easy to forget our professors were in their early twenties at one point, and they have learned incredibly important life lessons. For Professor Frazer, the most important thing he wishes to impart to his students is the importance of exploration. “Have experiences, go out and learn about the world,” he says. “I’m not unhappy with how late I made it to university. There is nothing wrong with taking your time, and there is no actual formula. It’s about discovering who you are, what you want, and finding like-minded people.” Professor MacIsaac reiterates this statement. “Uncertainty is a part of life. There’s a certain component of uncertainty that we all need to get comfortable with.” He highlights the importance of trust. “Trust the process. Don’t think that you need to have it all planned out. Things tend to make sense much more retrospectively than they do prospectively.” For Professor Kolen, she wants her students to take chances. “Don’t rush into another program just because you don’t know what to do other than school. Take a step back, and if you can, travel. Be brave and experience life and learn more about yourself”.

The twenties can be a time of fear, doubt, and many worries. Yet, they can also be a time for exploration and provide opportunities one can only dream of. Many of the successful adults around us have had to navigate their way through these same suffocating feelings. But what they all have in common is that they took risks and trusted that it would all work out. Like Professor Kolen says: “Dare to go through a door or window that you’re not sure is the right opportunity for you”.

Because at the end of the day, you have to try something to know if it’s right for you, even if it scares you. You can be scared and try anyways.

The Back-Alley Revisited: On Antigonish’s Abortion Access

Donald J. Trump, president-elect of the United States of America has stated that he is proud to have overturned Roe V. Wade and suggests that there should be some kind of punishment for abortion. Due to this, as well as his flawed character traits and policies I, much like many of you, woke up on November 6th, 2024, to the results of the election and reacted with sadness and anger.

As U.S and Canadian politics are certainly entangled, it is worth noting that we are not our neighbours. However, the re-elect of Trump made me start to question abortion access in our very own town. Upon research, I was disheartened by the availability of these reproductive rights here in Antigonish.

Many STFX students are familiar with St. Martha’s Hospital, the main healthcare facility serving the area. Astonishingly, according to a 2020 article by The Walrus, the hospital does not provide abortions, nor will it offer referrals to physicians who do.

Moreover, Antigonish is a small community, which is one of my favourite things about living here. Whether it be studying in the library or on a night out, I almost always run into a friend. However, this only adds to the increasingly apparent abortion taboo in a predominantly Catholic area. Consider seeking an abortion in the hospital, only to see the same doctor who turned you away the next day in town.

I looked elsewhere after discovering St. Martha’s did not provide abortion services. The STFX health and counselling centre offers many great resources for students. They provide IUD insertions, pregnancy and STI testing as well as emergency contraception. However, there is no mention of abortions being offered on the website. Likewise, The Antigonish Women's Centre, while they do great work for the community, do not provide abortions, as said by a member of their team.

According to the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, the closest place that performs abortions is the ROSE clinic in Halifax, a five-hour round trip away. This imposes many financial and social constraints on an already controversial medical procedure.

Additionally, considering that sexual violence is rampant on university campuses with 1 in 10 women having been assaulted at a post-secondary institution in Canada since 2019 5; it is even more imperative that abortions be made more accessible in our university town.

If we want to ensure back-alley abortions are never revisited, Antigonish needs to do better.

-

Rose Clinic Self-Referral Form:

https://forms-beta.novascotia.ca/NewSubmission/2500e7a6-0218-46e3-800e-f47f447e5147

U.S Election Watch Party at Candid

On Tuesday November 5, the StFX Political Science Society, Xaverian Progressive Conservatives, Young Liberals and the History Society organized a watch party for the U.S election at Candid Brewery. By the time it ended at midnight, it appeared likely to everyone that Donald Trump would secure enough votes in the electoral college to become president of the United States for the second time. Trump’s second term is expected to be one that continues to roll back reproductive and other human rights, weaponize government institutions, and inflame right-wring nationalism.

“The results of this election are extremely disheartening”, says Sophia Kydd, a third-year Honours Psychology student. “It solidifies how prevalent racism and misogyny are in our society, as two qualified, accomplished women, one being of colour, have now lost to Donald Trump. Trump takes responsibility for the overturn of Roe V. Wade, and while reproductive rights are determined at the state level, him in office greatly influences these laws. As a passionate pro-choice woman myself, your opinions on abortion aside, these extreme abortion bans have already and will kill women concerning sepsis, ectopic pregnancies, (etc.). As the U.S influences the rest of the world, the attack on reproductive rights in America is an attack on these rights everywhere."

Before the results came in, Simon Maltby, an Education student, said he was interested in the US election “because no matter who wins, it’s going to have an impact on us here in Canada. Also, for the U.S., it would be good for public confidence in the government to see a swift and peaceful transition of power.”

Emily Richard, president of the History Society, shared Simon’s belief. “Regardless of the outcome, this election is a major historical event that we need to recognize as we live through it”, she explains, “The only way to enact change for the future is to acknowledge these events and political issues as they occur”.

“I think it’s important for students to come together on issues in order to stay educated on past and recent world events”, says Mya Burke, Young Liberals president. “It’s hard to make sense of who we are and what we value if never given the opportunity to see both sides of the coin. Regardless of who you are, you can take something away from an event like this”.

President of Xaverian Progressive Conservatives Josh Kroker believes it’s important for students to follow politics because “once we stop watching elections and other democratic processes, that’s when democracy dies”

An Instagram Account called sillyneoliberals.69 posted a critique last week criticizing the watch party. Sillyneoliberals.69 posts rant-style articles, often critiquing “centrist” culture at StFX. The Xaverian Weekly has twice been targeted for articles about the Gender-Neutral washrooms at the Inn and controversial philosophy professor Dr. Mark Mercer. The account also posts pictures of Brian Mulroney with googly-eyes on his face.

The post is called “As the World Watches the American Elections in Horror, StFX Polisci Student & Their Weird-Ass Political Party Societies Wanna Share a Beer Over it at a LIVE Watch Party... smfh”. The account’s argument centers on the ethical problems posed by treating very real dangers to the lives of marginalized people too conceptually; “often like thought experiments or hypotheticals”.

This post lists some of the election issues this cycle, “the right to bodily autonomy, access to healthcare, access to gender-affirming care, policies around gun violence, immigration laws, education laws about access to knowledge about sexual diversity and the history of the oppression of Black Americans, the legitimization of police brutality against racialized people, climate policy, the degree and strategy of America’s continued support for the active genocide against the Palestinian people...”. The account argues that “so much is at stake here and as the world watches in horror, these BUFFOONS... want to organize a LIVE WATCH PARTY to jerk each other off and say ‘OMG we are SO politically engaged’” .

The post concludes with, “The only watch party of American politicians fucking the world up I am interested in attending is one in which we all hold each other and cry for the state of global politics today... You are not inviting politicians and organizing events like this because you care about politics or the state of the world”.

Antigonish Mayoral Race: A Breakdown

On October 19th, 2024, Antigonish will decide whether Sean Cameron or Emilie Chiasson will be its new mayor after incumbent Laurie Boucher decided not to run for reelection. This is happening alongside the election of what is expected to be several new faces to town council. Being as entwined with the town as our university is, we at the Xaverian Weekly thought it would be prudent to inform students and everyone else reading what’s at stake in this election, and remind them to get out and vote if they're eligible and willing to declare Antigonish and Nova Scotia their primary residence. 

To this end, I was able to get a hold of both mayoral candidates one-on-one and ask them some pressing questions potential voters may have.

Question 1: What are your main concerns? 

Cameron:  

“Infrastructure, water, sewer, streets.”  

Chiasson:  

“My main goals will be to form an effective council that will work on a strategy together to work on the main pressing things: being our streets, sidewalks and sewer. Those are three main things that we need to look at right away. And then I want to really focus on coming up with strong communication strategies about anything that is being done in the town that involves Council or the Mayor, sharing that out with residents and  I will begin right away forming good relationships with county council as well and whomever ends up being Warden for the county, because it's really an important piece of success in Antigonish and local government and as well as federal government, because we're very likely going to need to get federal government to solve some of our infrastructure issues.” 

Question 2: Why should students vote for you? 

Cameron:  

“I would hope that during your time here, in Antigonish that the town has presented and given you opportunity to meet with the citizens, see how a small town operates in conjunction and in partnership with StFX,  and see how this is town has grown. The students and town people can work together to ensure that you guys have a great experience, and the town can provide you with the safety and the adequate amenities required to have a safe and prosperous four years to complete your degree.” 

Chiasson: 

“I think that it's really important because the students are a big part of the community. There's lots of issues within the town that are directly related to students. You know, students dealing with landlords, bylaws, garbage removal, recreation, and volunteering. There's lots of ways (to volunteer).  I think having a more involved student body leads to better relationships between the town and StFX, which has historically sometimes been a bit of complicated relationship, and I would be really interested in having a committee that would meet with Town Council, with students on it, just hear what you have to say, like what your concerns are. I spoke to some students the other day, and they said that they don't have a working bathroom in their house right now. Oh, wow. Sometimes people spin it that students cause problems, but it can be the exact opposite. Sometimes there's landlords and other people that also need to step up and be better neighbors. 

Question 3: What’s your position on amalgamation? 

Cameron: 

“As a sitting town councilor, I was one of three opposing this rushed consolidation without any input from citizens. I demanded, from the onset, a plebiscite be held and that information sessions present pros and cons and clearly identified issues associated with everything. They failed to do that, in my opinion, and as a result, the premier ended up pulling the plug on the whole consolidation issue. Okay, great. Interesting note, my (opposing) mayoral candidate was in support of this rushed consolidation, both by in print and in video, and in presenting to the Law Amendments to Halifax that she felt that the nine elected people who voted for this were within their rights to dissolve the town without any financial implications or complete study done on the impacts of the town and county residents.” 

Here Sean references Emilie’s support for consolidation in an email to the Law Amendments Committe on March 3, 2024. Her words at the time were: 

“I would like to express my support for the consolidation of the Town and County of Antigonish... Town and County Councils have been voted in to make decisions on behalf of their constituents and we must trust in their decisions. [The Councils] have asked for the two municipal units to be consolidated, and I fully support that.” 

Back to the interview... 

Chiasson: 

“Well, I don't see it as being a topic that's going to be on the table in the near future, and if it does come back up, it's not my job to decide it for people and we would have a vote plain and simple.” 

 (End interview) 

This past Tuesday, October 8th, members of the community had a chance to listen to the mayoral candidates engage in a debate on their positions and view of the future of the town. I encourage those interested in voting to check out the livestream on the Student Union’s YouTube, because I’ll only be providing a brief recap. 

 Right out of the gate Emilie Chiasson came out strong in her introduction, making connections with people in the crowd, showing great public speaking ability and seeming comfortable. Sean Cameron seemed less comfortable speaking to the large audience. He read his introduction from his notes.  

Cameron’s introduction began with his extensive roots in the town and connection to the school, as well as the importance of students. He then went into his plan for improving infrastructure, noting the need for a new water supply, the aging sewer plant, and accessibility issues. During his opening, Cameron emphasized that without capable infrastructure, developers are unable to build new houses (including affordable housing) for the growing population. He mentioned his 31-year career with the department of community services, and that his 20 years on town council would enable him to guide the incoming council of mostly newly elected counselors.  

Chiasson gave a strong introduction, starting by connecting with the crowd. She gave a shoutout to incumbent mayor Laurie Boucher, alongside all those running for council in attendance, made eye contact with the audience, and commanded the room. She then went on to detail her extracurriculars during her time at StFX, and then her previous career with StFX as a Senior Fund Development Executive, before moving on to being the Manager of Alumni Engagement and Annual Giving. She also won the StFX Young Alumnus of the Year in 2020. The next part of her introduction focused on different ways students benefit the town, including some interesting facts. Did you know over 1000 StFX students volunteer in the community every year? Chiasson emphasized the need to work with students and the university.  

Overall, Cameron seemed to have more substance to his answers. He knew more about town operations in the past, as to be expected of someone with a slogan like “20 years of experience.” His proposals were ambitious, like the idea that Antigonish might build a new Rec Centre with a daycare to retain medical workers for St. Martha’s, and proposing that the town could become the first in the country to achieve net-zero emissions with its new wind farm. He focused on what the council did during his tenure, like building the library on Main Street  and securing $5 million to maintain the sewer plant a few years ago. He also really hammered home the need to strengthen infrastructure to enable growth. Again, Cameron’s answers were mostly read from his notebook, although he started addressing the audience more directly toward the end.  

Chiasson, on the other hand, was the stronger public speaker, almost never looking at her notes while speaking. She agreed that infrastructure issues were a major issue impeding growth, put an even greater emphasis on the sewage problem and how much the town stinks, and brought up how hard it would be for developers to sell recently constructed properties to newcomers when they arrive in a town that smells the way that it has recently. She also paid greater attention to the opportunity that lies in collaboration with students and the university, in council meetings and elsewhere.  

Feel free to take this next opinion with a grain of salt, as I’ve only lived here a few years, but anecdotally, being the mayor of a small town seems like a role where extensive technical knowledge may not be as important as personability and leadership ability. After all, the town already has a Chief Executive Officer who works alongside the mayor and council and whose full-time job is to run the logistics of the town.  

Warning to out-of-province students from Sean Cameron: 

“One thing you guys should be aware of as well as students. (If you) have an Ontario driver's license, Ontario OHIP card in Ontario student loan deal...and you sign that declaration saying you wish to vote in the town election, those three items could be jeopardized because you're now making Nova Scotia your home province, you. So, I would caution out-of-province students from voting and signing that declaration. I want them to be safe.” 

I confirmed this with the returning officer, Allan Armsworthy, although I could not find any cases of this happening.

Some important information for those looking to vote: 

E-voting began on Oct. 5th, and you can vote over the phone by calling 1-877-446-5146 or online at antigonish.isivote.com. 

 Oct. 12th is the First Advance Poll at the Returning Office, 149 Church Street (Mall Annex). Polls will be open from 12 to 8 p.m.  

Oct. 15th is the Second Advance Poll at the Returning Office, 149 Church Street (Mall Annex). Polls will be open from 12 to 8 p.m.    

Oct. 19th is Election Day. Polls will be open from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.at Dr. John Hugh Gillis Regional High School, 105 Braemore Avenue. E-voting closes at 7 p.m. 

If you have questions for Allan Armsworthy regarding your eligibility, you can call him at 902-318-3309 or email him at returningofficer@townofantigonish.ca. 

The candidates running for town council are as follows. 

Sarah Armstrong: sarahclaudette@gmail.com, 902-870-6519. 

Travis Decoste: vote4travisdecoste@gmail.com, 902-318-8292. 

Kara Kilfoil: karakilfoilforcouncil@gmail.com, 403-993-3659. 

Drake Lowthers: drake.lowthers@gmail.com, 902-623-0852. 

Leon MacLellan: leon4antigonish@gmail.com, 902-714-6393. 

Patrick McKenna: antigonishmckenna@gmail.com, 902-318-2745. 

Coline Morrow: colinemorrow123@gmail.com, 902-318-0961 

Andrew Murray: andrew.murray@townofantigonish.ca, 902-968-1248 

Juanita Pelly: Juanitampelly@gmail.com, 902 318 1153. 

Diane Roberts: 74ladyd@gmail.com, 902-318-1284. 

Jack Sullivan: sullmatt.cont@gmail.com, 902-863-5457. 

Why Does the Student Union Need More Money?

Every year, an almost $200 fee appears on our StFX account balance, and we seem to have no choice but to accept it as a couple of hundred dollars to swallow alongside our tuition payments. However, an upcoming referendum on April 2nd will ask StFX to vote on the question: “Are you in favor of Increasing Students’ Union Fees by 10% per year, every year for the next 5 years?”

This proposed hike seems to have inflamed student frustrations regarding not knowing how their annual fees are spent and why the Students’ Union would supposedly need more money. Ben MacKay, a student at StFX University, is urging his fellow students to "vote no'' on April 2nd. His Instagram account (@stfxfightthehike) has garnered almost 140 followers in support of his cause.

Sophia Fabiano, an advocate for voting "Yes" on April 2nd, has an Instagram presence as well, with almost 60 people following her account @voteyes24. In a recent post, Sophia described how increases in Students’ Union fees will only be raised to $210.41 next year and will continue to be raised in small increments, reaching $308.06 by 2028-29—after almost all current students have already graduated.

In 2022, the Students’ Union collected $669,465 in student fees alone, and in 2023 charged additional renovation fees to support the Bloomfield remodel. If the proposed 10% raise per year goes ahead, in five years, the U will be collecting over 1 million dollars in student fees. That’s a lot of money. According to Sophia’s Instagram page, this hike is necessary to increase salaries and continue hosting events. But while some might perceive these increments to be small and manageable, the U is asking students to pay a compounding 50% hike in student fees over the next 5 years.

When you read the Student Union’s annual budget report, it is not obvious why they need more money. According to the 2022 Budget, Graduation, X-Ring, O-Week, and Frost Week all together made nearly $29,000 in profit. The Golden X Inn alone made $87,775 in profit in 2023. Even when less lucrative events, like society events, are factored into the balance sheet, the U was only $924 short of breaking even. If the Students’ Union is spending $200,000 on events, it should be entirely possible to cover the $900 deficit from within the budget without imposing additional costs on students. This is particularly important given the already significant expenses students incur for events like X-Ring. For example, this year's X-Ring Super Sub tickets cost students $42.25 per ticket. Considering that most university-hosted events generate profits, it seems reasonable to explore alternative solutions rather than passing the expense onto students.

Frankly, when @voteyes24 depicts the U’s capacity to “continue to host multiple fun events” as if it relied on the referendum passing, it makes no sense. The majority of U-hosted events help fund the U, and only a small minority don’t turn a profit.

Julianna Drake, the Students’ Union VP of Finance, offers some clarity on her Instagram page. In a post to her story, she writes that “if we paid everyone a minimum wage with our current budget, many valuable services would have to get cut to compensate.” When the U says they need more money to continue funding events, they’ll need more money to fund events—once they’ve begun paying their employees higher salaries.

But Drake brings up a fair point: Working for the Students’ Union doesn’t guarantee minimum wage. Many employees, including ourselves, are paid with an honorarium which does not compensate people for the hours their jobs demand. This does create a barrier to working at the U, as students without disposable time to volunteer can’t realistically work there—which is a huge problem if we want our student government to be representative.

However, that’s not to say that the Union is paying its employees zero dollars. In 2022, the Students’ Union spent $136,738 on honorariums, with $17,137 being spent on salaries for the Representative Council, and $76,732 being spent on the Executive Board’s salaries. Students might also be surprised to learn that Exec pay has been rising around 10% per year since 2019, and the 2022 President Academic was paid a salary of $13,689 for the year.

Outside of honorariums, the 2021-2022 budget provisioned $2,820 to be spent on cell phones for full-time staff, and a $60/day allowance that U employees could spend on meals when away at events. There is also a $10,000 budget for “professional development,” and a $1,500 budget to be spent on T-Shirts. Additionally, the budget indicated that $6,000 dollars was spent on an awards banquet catering to individuals affiliated with the Students’ Union.

StFX students already have been experiencing significant rises in various expenses at StFX. For instance, we face the third-highest tuition among 15 schools for domestic students in Undergraduate Arts and the sixth highest for Sciences in the Maritimes. Additionally, we have some of the most expensive residence fees, meal plan costs, and the second highest "other" fees in the Maritimes (which covers technology fees, administration services, and student service fees). While this is all distinct from the Students’ Union, this increase would further compound our already high and increasing fees.

This Tuesday, the Students’ Union is asking you to commit future generations of students to pay a substantial and steep hike during a cost-of-living crisis. We’re not saying that U employees don’t deserve to be paid minimum wage, but it is unclear how much work is involved in working for the U, and how much of it is going unpaid. While people campaigning in favor of this referendum have framed it as if events like X-Ring and Grad were at stake should it fail to pass, this referendum really seems to be an issue securing a higher hourly wage for employees of the Students’ Union.

Ultimately, we encourage students to investigate the budgets themselves and see exactly where our money is going before making a choice on Tuesday. Transparency is key in ensuring that decisions regarding the Students’ Union fee hikes are made with full understanding and accountability. While fair compensation for Students’ Union employees is important, it should not be used as a pretext to significantly increase student fees. It's important to prioritize informed decision-making and hold our student government accountable for their financial decisions.

2021-2022 Student Union Annual Budget

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ed00ab06a31e8750be7fd6f/t/62ffe18ae67b6a3bad85be7c/1660936587263/StFX+Students%27+Union+Budget+2021-2022.pdf

The Students’ Union Policy Manual

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ed00ab06a31e8750be7fd6f/t/5ed91c3e5590d90859309c2c/1591286847489/Union%2BPolicy%2BManual%2BX18189%2B181118%2BTChikwavaire.pdf

Financial Statements: Saint Francis Xavier University Students' Union, April 30, 2023. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ed00ab06a31e8750be7fd6f/t/655e3a67e3203141d1b9313e/1700674151714/STFX+Students%27+Union+-+2023+Financial+Statements.pdf

Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission. Table A: Undergraduate Arts and Sciences Full-time1 Tuition Fees and Provincial Tuition Rebates/Bursaries 2022-2023 ​​http://www.mphec.ca/media/212618/Table-A_Tuition-undergraduate-2022-2023.pdf

Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission. Table C: Undergraduate Ancillary and Residence Fees 2022-2023 http://www.mphec.ca/media/212624/Table-C_Ancillary-and-residence-fees-2022-2023.pdf

What Led to Consolidation

This article details some of the steps that led to the proposed consolidation of Antigonish. The bill to consolidate the Town and County is currently being debated in Halifax. Last month, close to 300 Antigonish residents met up at a make-shift town hall in Tracadie to voice their frustration towards the process. Liberal party leader Zack Churchill and NDP MLA and municipal affairs critic Kendra Coombs were present. Local Conservative MLAs Michelle Thompson and Greg Morrow were not. All italics in the article are mine unless mentioned otherwise. Special thanks to the people of the Town and County of Antigonish.  

The consolidation process has been described by its champions as led by the Town and County of Antigonish with help from the Department of Municipal Affairs (DMAH). As well, they claim that the residents of Antigonish have been sufficiently informed on the matter to the extent that a plebiscite is not required to amalgamate. Reading over internal DMAH communications as well as their communications with Antigonish, it’s evident it was them who created and implemented the consolidation process, as well as instructed the town and county on what to do. The DMAH consistently omitted information they believed would hurt their goal and the amalgamation of Antigonish, and in this aim were not transparent with staff and residents of Antigonish.  

On September 29, 2021, Kate Gorman, Marketing Communications Officer for the Town of Antigonish, emailed Ross MacDonald, Municipal Advisor at the DMAH, to follow up on an email from Nick Barr, Director of Governance and Advisory Services. She wrote, “[Barr] referenced- ‘There are many, many reports that support ‘regionalization’ but I won’t bog you down with those for the present purposes. I would actually like to read those reports, I think they would be very helpful for me moving forward through this process.” Gorman followed up on October 6, asking again for these reports to get a better understanding of the pros and cons of consolidation.  

MacDonald finally got back to Gorman on October 15, with a list of 12 materials and references, 8 of which were written before the year 2000. He added another document called ‘Reasons to consolidate- the successes,’ which he asked Gorman to share only with staff. Overall, the documents had a lot more ‘pros’ than ‘cons’ regarding consolidation.   

On October 18, 2021, Shirley Donovan, Strategic Initiatives Coordinator for the County, emailed Ross MacDonald asking if he could “find out if consolidation with the Town of Antigonish would affect our education contributions?” Ross forwarded that message to Bongsun Cho-Macdonald, Manager of Municipal Finances at the DMAH, at Nick Barr’s suggestion. He didn’t CC Donovan or Kate Gorman. Cho-Macdonald responded, explaining how education contributions work, then said, “Consolidation would impact Education because I assume that the consolidated municipality would have their new tax rates.”  

Barr, who was CC’ed by Cho-MacDonald, responded, “Just to be clear, the contribution will not increase as a result of a consolidation, it will simply be based on the combined UA for the new unit. In other words, the education contribution/rate is based solely on the UA and will not be impacted by any change in governance.” In Cho-MacDonald's response, he wrote, “I had that in my draft email but deleted because I didn’t know exactly what she is trying to figure out. Anyway my answer is yes and no because it is going to be impacted because new tax rates will be based on the new council's decision. Does this make sense?” Ross MacDonald responded, “Makes sense to me.”  

If you, the reader, are unsure if Education Contributions will rise, because it seems that Cho-MacDonald and Barr are making contradictory statements, that's the point. More on this later. It’s unclear what response Donovan got.

On February 17, 2022, at 3:55 PM Glen Horne, CAO of the Municipality of the County of Antigonish wrote an email titled ‘Subject: Consolidation Update to Nick Barr and Ross Macdonald’: “Good Afternoon DMAH friends... Our website is now active (https://antigonish/) and features our first iteration of FAQs... We are still driving to a council decision in June.” Six minutes later Mark Peck (Associate Deputy Minister at the DMAH), who was CC’ed in the email, forwarded it to Barr, adding that “[Horne] was very supportive of all you are doing for them btw.” Barr, the Director of Governance & Advisory Services at the Nova Scotia Department of Municipal Affairs and Housing, wrote Glen Horne at 4:04: “Thanks Glen! This is great [smiley face emoji with blushing cheeks].” At 4:07 he emailed Peck, “I read through the FAQ’s and some of them aren’t 100% accurate, but I’m going to let it go. Nitpicking won’t do us any good.”  

To reiterate, the DMAH is telling the staff at Antigonish that their educational website is great, while privately admitting that the information is wrong. Kat Muth, a third-year Nursing student at StFX, isn’t at all surprised by Barr’s comments, “It feels like they’re trying to keep this whole thing hush-hush, they don’t care what the people here want.” 

Muth, who’s lived in the Town of Antigonish since 2021, said she hasn’t received any mail or notices from the town about consolidation. She added that this, coupled with the cloak and dagger techniques used to circumvent the Municipal Government Act (MGA) and deny the people of Antigonish a vote, has caused her to lose trust in the municipal and provincial governments to act in her best interest.  

Crucially, Barr didn’t even tell Horne that the website was inaccurate. The DMAH here is not taking the role of a neutral party assisting Antigonish in making an educated decision but curating the information available to Antigonish staff and residents in pursuit of their own goal. In their own words, “Nitpicking won’t do us any good.” The people of Antigonish are not included in that ‘us’, nor is Glen Horne.  

On June 21, 2022, the mayor and warden sent a letter to Minister Lohr entitled ‘RE: exploration of the consolidation of the Town and County of Antigonish,’ in which they wrote, “The Province of Nova Scotia is an important partner in this decision and the future of our municipalities and communities. Details and commitments concerning the process of a legislative merger and funding for transition and post transition are crucial to our decision. As our councils approach a decision point we want to take this opportunity share [sic] with you our process to date and discuss these two areas in particular.”    

On July 13, 2022, Glen Horne wrote a letter to Mark Peck, entitled ‘Re: Antigonish Consolidation Transition Funding approval.’ Horne wrote, “thank you for arranging and attending our July 6, 2022 meeting with Minister Lohr... Following our discussion with Minister Lohr, I would like to request a meeting with Town CAO Jeff Lawrence and I[sic] to begin to develop a proposal for transition funding in support of consolidation, should the Councils decide in favour. As you know, the province’s support in terms of transition funding is critical to our Council’ decision.” Subsequent emails indicate that Peck and Barr worked with Horne and Lawrence on the funding request in the following weeks. What became of it is missing or redacted in what I was able to access.  

In November of 2022, after both councils passed motion towards consolidation, the Minister wrote a response to an inquiry (CORR310M/smh) from a constituent concerned about the process.  In the draft letter of this email, he explained that consolidation was a council-led process, and that he “also want[s] to be clear about the financial support that the [DMAH] provided to the County and Town of Antigonish with respect to this process... At this time, the province has not committed to any other funding with respect to consolidation in Antigonish County.”  

Antigonish residents have indicated to me that they think it’s highly unlikely that the mayor and warden would have pushed through amalgamation without a promise, explicit or not, from the provincial government that they would be guaranteed funding. This mirrors what Glen Horne said in his letter to the minister.  

From a CBC article on February 27, 2024, Lohr says that the province will give money to Antigonish for transition costs, as it has for other municipal mergers. He didn’t say when that decision was made. An unnamed Antigonish resident suggested that on the July 6 meeting the province and Antigonish agreed to an implicit “under the table” non-binding commitment to funding that will be finalized at a later date. This would both reassure Antigonish enough to move forward towards consolidation as well as allow the minister to play fast and loose with the word ‘commitment’ in his letter to constituents. There is no evidence that proves this.  

The minister, in the draft letter to the constituent adds, “I would further note that the [MGA] does not require that a plebiscite be held to affect the proposed consolidation.” This is technically true in the most misleading definition of the word ‘true’.  The MGA does not require anything at all that could affect the proposed consolidation. Remember, the DMAH lobbied ‘consolidation’ with the express purpose to circumvent the MGA. To mention that the MGA does not require a plebiscite for consolidation but omit the fact that the consolidation process occurs outside of the MGA in a response to a constituent is intentionally deceiving. It would be like your waiter telling you that all their chicken eggs are free range but neglecting to say that your omelet’s made from duck egg. And the duck who laid it is chained to a cage in the basement. The DMAH and Communications Nova Scotia refused to provide me with the final version of this letter.  

While it’s unclear if the letter was edited before being sent out, it was written by a government official who was fully aware of the context deliberately being excluded in response to inquiries from a citizen of Nova Scotia about our democratic processes. This line, “The [MGA] does not require that a plebiscite be held to affect the proposed consolidation” was parroted in a Communications Nova Scotia ‘Issues Summary’ from March 9, 2023, without any other context.  

On October 10, 2021, Nick Barr emailed Stephen Ong, Director of Contracts and Special Projects at Justice Financial Advisory Services, regarding the town’s policing contract. In brief, the town and county have RCMP contracts that have a 70/30 cost share with the province. There was concern in the DMAH that a consolidated Antigonish would have their share rise to 90/10, paying significantly more money for the exact same service, like what happened to Windsor-West Hants. In this email Barr responded to Ong’s suggestion that it could be possible that a consolidated Antigonish keep its 70/30 split. This would be done by doing away with a regional municipality, and having the town join the county. This is the current plan for consolidation. Barr wrote, “When we went through the [Windsor-West Hants] consolidation, I didn’t understand this was an option.”   

About 10 minutes later, he forwarded the email chain to Mark Peck and Ross MacDonald, explaining, “On Thursday I told Glen that DoJ would get back to us this week but I'm not going to send him this information until the three of us have had the opportunity to discuss the matter first... Glen asked me what would happen if it turned out that consolidation would lead to an increased policing costs, and I told him that we’d have to discuss the matter internally to see if there was a willingness to provide some additional financing to mitigate such costs. Sorry for dropping the bad news on Thanksgiving.”  

The next day Ong answered some of Barr’s questions on the specifics of the PPSA (Provincial Police Service Agreement) and the MPSA (Municipal Police Service Agreement). Barr followed up with even more questions, including a clarification of how the definition of a municipality in clause 1.1(a) (rr) excludes rural municipalities under Chapter 295 of the Revised Statues of Nova Scotia 1989, the Municipal Act, and section 7 of the MGA from subsection 10.3, among others. To Barr’s credit, this is actually pretty complicated stuff. 

 Barr ended his email by asking for an in-person meeting with Ong, saying, “This is our #1 priority so we’ll work around your schedule.” Ong’s response stressed that Public Safety Canada (PSC) would have to agree to any course of action and based on what happened in Windsor-West Hants, it seems unlikely; “Thus, both the Town and County should be aware of the risk.”  

On October 12, 2021, Donna Jewers, Public Safety and Policing Consultant, who’d been CC’ed in all the previous emails, noted, “The best practice that we learned from Windsor-West Hants is to have PSC involved with discussions from the beginning... if Windsor/WH did not “consolidate” and change their name then the 70/30 split would probably have been allowed to continue, as it was a result of the name change that PSC determined it was a ‘new’ entity that impacted the 90/10 cost-share ratio. Due to that reference, it resulted in a $1.5 million increase in policing for the same service.” 

Putting aside “consolidate” in air quotes, this is outstanding. These emails demonstrate that consolidation cost Windsor-West Hants 1.5 MILLION DOLLARS for exactly what they had before. Windsor West Hant’s Operating Budget for 2023/24 is $31.1 million dollars, they’re paying $5.5M for policing.  Under a 70/30 split the exact same level of policing would cost $4.2M, meaning the Regional Municipality of West Hants loses over a million dollars every year because Nick Barr and the rest of the DMAH didn’t know any better. They rushed through an extremely complicated process without nearly enough due diligence and the people who suffer are the taxpayers of Windsor-West Hants.  

If the people of Windsor-West Hants look around their community and try to imagine how a million dollars every year could be put to work to benefit the community and wonder how the hell was that allowed to happen? Why didn’t I get a vote on this? What other hidden costs did consolidation bring? They aren’t alone. Unfortunately, the residents of Antigonish may soon be asking those same questions.  

From a CBC article in 2021 on the aftermath of consolidation, West Hants staff said expenses rose by $2 million “due to the Mandated Education Contributions and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police contract” (Remember the Education Contributions Nick Barr said won’t rise as a result of consolidation in Antigonish?). ‘Efficiencies’ saved West Hants $500,000 on the operating budget, which, for all of you business majors, is actually a lot less than $2 million. The ‘Best Practice’ the DMAH learned in West Hants cost taxpayers $1.5 million dollars a year. Who knows how much the “Best Practice” they learn in Antigonish will cost? 

Public knowledge of the work our elected--and especially our unelected--government does is crucial to a functioning democracy. Not knowing what our government does hurts us. To quote Nick Barr one more time, from an email to Ross MacDonald and Glen Horne on September 8, 2021, “We certainly don’t want anyone to be left with the impression that we’re hiding anything from the public.” What’s the public’s impression?  

The DMAH and Communications Nova Scotia were contacted for a quote for this story. They declined an interview and ignored most of my questions. All the emails I got were from copies of records under the FOIPOP Act (Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act), of which only one of the copies is available online. 

Department of Municipal Affairs and Housing phone number: 902-424-6642. The person who answers your calls has nothing to do with the proposed amalgamation of Antigonish, but they can connect you with someone who does. 

On the Proposed Amalgamation of Antigonish

On October 20, 2022, the Municipality of the County of Antigonish and the Town of Antigonish passed resolutions asking the province to introduce special legislation to amalgamate them. In the County, Councillors Mary MacLellan, John Dunbar, and Gary Mattie voted against the proposition, Councillors Shawn Brophy and Harris McNamara abstained, and Warden Owen McCarron, Deputy Warden Bill MacFarlane and Councillors Donnie MacDonald, Hugh Stewart, Remi Deveau voted for it. At the time of the vote, Hugh Stewart was Deputy Warden and Bill MacFarlane was a Councillor. The Town also voted in favor of the resolution. Mayor Laurie Boucher, Deputy Mayor William Cormier, and Councillors Andrew Murray, Mary Farrell, voted for the motion while Councillors Sean Cameron, Donnie MacInnis and Diane Roberts voted against it.

This decision came over a year after both councils voted unanimously to explore consolidation. On May 15, 2022, a Town Council motion to have a plebiscite was defeated. In response to the previously mentioned October Resolution, a lawsuit was filed against the County, claiming the council had acted illegally. On December 6, 2023, Justice Gabriel declared that it was legal for the County to ask the province to pass special legislation. He said the issue of a plebiscite was not for the courts to decide.

On January 24, 2024, Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing John Lohr wrote a letter to the mayor and warden, asking them to reaffirm the council’s resolution. Both councils are set to vote via Zoom on January 30, 2024. Even though Justice Gabriel’s ruling is currently being appealed, Lohr promises that if the councils renew their ask, “The Province is prepared to introduce special legislation during the next session of the Legislature, commencing on February 27.”

 Ironically, it was on February 27, 2018, that future Premier Tim Houston gave an impassioned speech critiquing the Minister of Municipal Affairs, at the time, on the proposed amalgamation of Houston’s riding of Pictou: “This government is obsessed with amalgamation. First it was the Health Authority, then it was the school boards, and now they're pushing the concept of municipal modernization... the heart of the problem is amalgamation itself. In a 2016 plebiscite the people of Pictou County made their feelings very clear, Mr. Speaker - two-thirds of the voters rejected a proposal for municipal amalgamation in the county. Any change to our governance structure should start with the people - what the people want. It shouldn't finish there... [the Minister could] just reiterate that he will not dictate terms or force amalgamation on Pictou County or any jurisdiction in this province.” Six years later, it is Houston’s own Minister of Municipal Affairs that is planning to pass legislation to amalgamate the County and the Town of Antigonish without a plebiscite. Has Premier Houston been in Halifax so long he’s forgotten that Antigonish County is also a jurisdiction in this province?  

This trajectory would mirror the process that created the West Hants Regional Municipality in 2020. If the legislation passes, the municipal elections in the Town and County scheduled for October 2024 will be postponed until the Spring of 2025. During that period, the Municipality of the County of Antigonish would be governed by a “Transition Committee” consisting of the mayor, the warden, and other municipal officials.

The Municipal Government Act (MGA) provides two avenues for municipalities in Nova Scotia to amalgamate, Parts XVI & XVII. There are some differences between the two processes, but both require the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board (NSUARB) to take a prominent role, order studies and reports to determine if amalgamation will be in the best interest of the residents, and to hold hearings before rendering a decision. In Part XVII, the NSUARB must organize a plebiscite (a vote on amalgamation). In Part XVI it is not mandatory to order one. The plebiscite held in Antigonish in 2006 was ordered through Part XVI. The vote failed.

The proposed special legislation will circumvent the existing MGA, will not require a study to be done by the NSUARB to determine if it is in the best interest of the Town and County, and will not require a plebiscite. Simply put, the Government of Nova Scotia would pass legislation to join the Town to the County.

 The NSUARB approach and the special legislation approach are referred to as ‘Amalgamation’ & ‘Consolidation,’ respectively, by the Town and County of Antigonish. According to Antigonish.ca: “Whereas amalgamation or dissolution is a process where the NSUARB makes the decisions. With consolidation, the province would create special legislation to empower the “Transition Committee” that represents both municipal councils. The Transition Committee would have the authority to determine what the new Municipality would look like. The [NSUARB] would still be involved in reviewing elector district boundaries, but much of the detailed work of the merger would be coordinated locally.”

This definition is unique to municipalities in Nova Scotia. The difference between consolidation and amalgamation varies depending on where and in what context it is being used; the Canadian government’s definition of both terms as relates to business mergers is not synonymous with the definition on the Antigonish website.

Kevin Latimer, Coordinator for the Windsor-West Hants Consolidation, wrote an article, “Nova Scotia restructuring offers new model for consolidation”, which was published in Municipal World in September of 2019. This article was shared with the Town Council before they voted to explore consolidation. In the article, Latimer uses both consolidation and amalgamation without explaining any difference between the terms.

On September 12, 2021, Glen Horne, Chief Administrative Officer of Antigonish County wrote an email, in which he says, “Good morning Ross & Nick- We have identified the need to clearly distinguish between amalgamation and consolidation as we prepare our early communications.” Ross MacDonald, Municipal Advisor, and Nick Barr, Director Governance & Advisory Services, employees at the Department of Municipal Affairs and Housing (DMAH) and report to Minister Lohr.

That same day Nick Barr wrote back, “Glen, the truth is that we started to use the word “consolidation” because, to your point, the word “amalgamation” has a very negative connotation for many residents [emphasis added]. That said, my advice is not to get too caught up in a debate over terminology but focus on process.” Here Barr admits to changing the terminology the government uses to inform the public because of its negative political connotation.

The next day at 8:43 a.m., hours before both councils voted towards exploring consolidation, Glen Horne wrote, “We can draft something ourselves [about consolidation vs. amalgamation] if necessary based on our understanding of the processes, However, I thought it would have greater standing and avoid some criticism from opponents if it came from the DMAH, as the authority on municipal reform and a neutral party in our ongoing conflict [emphasis added]... I hope I have made my request more clear.” The Oxford Dictionary’s definition of the word ‘propaganda’: “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.”

StFX students who live in the Town of Antigonish may be surprised that the town might no longer exist when they come back to school in September. An analogous situation would be if the StFX Students’ Union, which we elect every year, passed a resolution asking the province of Nova Scotia to dissolve it and join another union. Now, the U holds referendums yearly on particularly important issues, but imagine they decided against letting students vote on joining another union. That is in essence what the Town of Antigonish is asking the province to do.

Town of Antigonish Mayor Laurie Boucher highlighted in our interview, and on other media, that one of the benefits of special legislation is that it allows the Transition Committee to work on consolidation without the NSUARB. The Antigonish website states that, “The Transition Committee would have the authority to determine what the new Municipality would look like... much of the detailed work of the merger would be coordinated locally.” Critics of this process argue that this means a small group of people will create the municipality with far less oversight compared to what they would have under the traditional MGA process.

Warden Owen McCarron of the Municipality of the County of Antigonish said he’d be in touch for an interview but did not get back to me.

Mayor Boucher also pointed out that the Town and County conducted an extensive consultation process with residents in the Spring of 2022, as well as setting up a website, Antigonish.ca, which explains to the residents the benefits of consolidation. The website is easily accessible. Notably, in 2006, the NSUARB recommended amalgamation as a measure that would benefit both the Town and County of Antigonish.   

The consultations that were had with the public were concerning the creation of a Regional Municipality, like Halifax. However, the councils voted for the dissolution of the Town into the County to save money on policing costs. The mayor argues that in practice the difference is purely superficial, and all the core ideas remain the same; amalgamation will still follow the Town and County’s “7 Guiding Principles regarding Consolidation” (available on Antigonish.ca).

 One key difference between a Regional Municipality and a County is that a Regional Municipality (Class A) is given priority in applying for grants compared to a County (Class B). Grants are vital for the economic wellbeing of the Town and County. According to the mayor, “There might be something that would affect [grant application] but it wouldn’t affect it that much.” Councillor Sean Cameron disagrees: “If we were a Regional Government, it wouldn’t have an effect. But if we’re a Municipality of course it would.”  

It rubs some Antigonish residents the wrong way that amalgamation was not an issue on which the mayor, the warden, or any of the councillors campaigned. It was not a part of either council’s strategic plan. A petition with over 4000 signatures was circulated among the residents of Antigonish demanding a vote on amalgamation. A Mainstreet Poll was conducted in the Spring of 2023 as well, and had 70.4% of Antigonish residents in support of a plebiscite.

Assuming that Antigonish is dead set against using the MGA and having a plebiscite, there are still municipal elections scheduled for October, which would allow the mayor, warden and councillors to make their position on consolidation known to voters and ensure the new council had a democratic mandate. Councillor Cameron argues that even if the councils pass another resolution, the province shouldn’t introduce special legislation until the residents of Antigonish have a vote on the matter.  

Kat Muth, a third-year Nursing student at StFX, moved to the Town of Antigonish in May of 2021. She was excited to vote in the upcoming municipal elections and would be severely disappointed if she didn’t get the opportunity, “The fact that they're trying to pass the legislation when they should be listening to the people that actually live here is wrong.” Muth is concerned by the possibility that the town she calls home, which has existed for over a hundred years, will be dissolved without a vote or the consent of its residents.

In an op-ed from April 28, 2023, the mayor and warden wrote, “Historically, plebiscites have a low participation rate that undermines the legitimacy of the outcome.” It is important to note that both councils were elected with less than a 35 per cent turnout in 2020, amid a pandemic. In a report, Brighter Community Planning & Consulting, who were hired by the Town and County, wrote “Plebiscites are a blunt tool to engage the community, they may polarize residents instead of listening to their concerns and addressing them effectively in the decision making process.” This notion, that voting is somehow an ineffective way of practicing democracy, is something all Canadians should pay attention to. The mayor pointed out to me that plebiscites are not typical in Canada, especially at a municipal level. This is true, but should it be?

Antigonish residents may be split on whether they want to amalgamate, or how they want this amalgamation to take place, with either the NSUARB or the Transition Committee taking a central role in this process. But it doesn’t really matter. Whether the Town of Antigonish will dissolve and join the County is not an issue residents of either municipality will vote on. If the councils pass another resolution, the only Antigonish residents who can vote on Antigonish’s future are MLA Michelle Thompson (902-863-4266) and Greg Morrow (902-424-4388), MLA for Guysborough-Tracadie. Mr Morrow represents the eastern part of Antigonish County, including Tracadie, Linwood and Havre-Boucher.

Edit: This article has been edited for accuracy. The previous version inaccurately described Michelle Thompson as the only MLA from Antigonish.

WUSC at StFX: Celebrating 40 Years, Lasting Friendships, and X-Rings

StFX’s WUSC Society has a lot to celebrate this fall. Two of their Student Refugee Program students and three of their executive members all received their X-Rings this December 3rd. Angelique Uwamariya and Anyich Panchol are two Student Refugee Program (SRP) students in their fourth year here at X. These two received their X-Rings alongside WUSC Co-Presidents Sierra Banks and Chloe Oleksiuk as well as the society’s vice-president Kristen Marshall. Recently, I got to ask these students about receiving their X-Rings and their time with the WUSC society.

            The WUSC (World University Service of Canada) is a Canadian non-profit organization dedicated to helping youth around the world gain access to education. So far, the program has empowered over 2000 young refugees from 37 countries and now supports over 150 students per year through their partnerships with over 100 Canadian post-secondary institutions.

            Another celebration for the WUSC is that the society is commemorating their 40th anniversary at StFX. StFX is currently home to eight students from different countries around the world who are financially supported by the society. The WUSC also runs social activities to help integrate the SRPs within our community, such as their recent ‘Paint and Sip’ night at Candid Brewery.

Angelique Uwamariya, an SRP student in the nursing program, is originally from Burundi. She came to StFX through the WUSC program in 2018. She says that she is extremely grateful for the program’s support in helping her move to Canada to pursue her university education. Specifically, Ms. Uwamariya is very appreciative for everyone who has helped fundraise and support her journey here at StFX. She credits the WUSC with helping her be “one step away” from achieving her “dream of becoming a nurse” and says the society not only supported her financially, but emotionally, too.

            Anyich Panchol, who is also an SRP student in the nursing program, is from South Sudan but was born in Kenya. She came to StFX through the WUSC program in 2019. Ms. Panchol tells me that when she first came here, she wasn’t exactly sure about Antigonish. However, with some help from the WUSC, she says that she has “learned to appreciate the small community and classroom sizes and how easy it has been to navigate through the town.” Ms. Panchol also conveys her extreme gratitude for the WUSC society and says that she has “met amazing people who played a significant role in her academic journey.”

            Both Ms. Uwamariya and Ms. Panchol express their excitement about having received their X-Rings. Ms. Uwamariya tells me that she has been looking forward to getting her X-Ring since first year and that it will be a reminder of “all the years, friends, and good memories [she has] had in her undergraduate studies.” Ms. Panchol says that her X-Ring will always serve as a reminder of where she had the opportunity to pursue her post-secondary education.

For the executive members involved, the WUSC is more than just something to add to their resume. Ms. Banks says that our school motto—Quaecumque sunt vera, meaning “whatsoever things are true”—is “a reminder to do the right thing, to do the right thing for the right reasons.” She says her work with the society has given her the opportunity to live this motto and see the true embodiment of Xaverian traits. Ms. Marshall explains that she has watched the society grow immensely over the last few years and that she is thankful for the opportunity to have contributed to such important work. Ms. Oleksiuk says that the society has been “one of the most fulfilling experiences” of her life and that it has been extremely rewarding to make a positive impact in the school, community, and in the lives of the international students.

            Both the executive members of the society and the SRPs say that they have come to see each other not just as peers or co-workers, but as friends. When I asked about one thing they have learnt from the SRPs, Ms. Banks expressed that “they have taught me to value my educational experience more than I ever did before. These women have worked so hard to get to where they are now and are still working so hard. They can move to a completely different country, start studying, working, engaging in the community, and still excel at all they do.” Pursuing a career in education, Ms. Banks says that learning about the SRPs’ value for education has contributed to her passion for teaching and will stay with her forever. Ms. Marshall similarly notes that “What I admire most about our students is their work ethic.” After graduation, Ms. Marshall—who is in the Human Kinetics program—will be pursuing a career in health care. Since some of the SRPs have similar aspirations, she says they have often leaned on each other for mutual support. Ms. Oleksiuk, who is in the Health program, says that some of the SRP students started in the same year as her, giving them the opportunity to “grow together over the last four years.” Ms. Oleksiuk added that she takes extreme pride in the SRPs’ journeys and that she is “enthusiastic about witnessing their future success and flourishing.”

            In my interactions with both the executive members and the SRPs, they all had nothing but positive things to say about their time with the society. The executive members all encouraged anyone who is interested to get involved and Ms. Oleksiuk hinted that they have some exciting events coming up next semester. If you’re looking for a way to get involved and make an impactful difference, the WUSC may be the right fit for you.

‘TIS THE SEASON: EMBRACING THE MAGIC OF CHRISTMAS

As the air turns crisper and the days grow shorter, there's a palpable sense of anticipation that fills the atmosphere. Yes, the Christmas season is upon us once again—a time cherished for its warmth, joy, and the spirit of giving.

The approach of Christmas brings with it a series of delightful traditions that span cultures and generations. From adorning homes with twinkling lights to the familiar tunes of beloved carols playing in the background, there's an undeniable charm that accompanies this festive season. For many, it's a time of rekindling connections, as families and friends come together, sharing stories, and creating new memories. The scent of freshly baked cookies wafts through kitchens, and the sound of laughter echoes through homes adorned with festive decorations.

Central to this season is the act of giving. It is not just about the tangible presents wrapped in colourful paper but also the intangible gifts of love, kindness, and compassion. It's a time when hearts open a little wider, reaching out to those less fortunate, spreading goodwill and cheer. In addition to the exchanging of gifts, the beauty of Christmas also lies in the moments spent around the dinner table, sharing meals and exchanging anecdotes. It's in the warmth of a hug, the sparkle in a child's eyes at the sight of Santa, and the nostalgia evoked by familiar traditions.

Moreover, the Christmas season symbolizes hope—a beacon of light amidst the darkness, reminding us to believe in miracles and embrace the magic of the season. It's a time for reflection, gratitude, and appreciation for the blessings in our lives. As the days draw nearer to the 25th of December, let's embrace the essence of Christmas. Let's extend kindness to strangers, express gratitude for the love we receive, and cherish the moments of togetherness with our loved ones.

In a world that often seems chaotic, the Christmas season serves as a gentle reminder to pause, reconnect, and spread joy. So, let the twinkling lights, the aroma of pine, and the joyous melodies uplift your spirits as we step into this enchanting time of the year.

NAVIGATING THE ONSLAUGHT: FACING EXAMS AS THEY DRAW NEAR

As the academic semester progresses, there comes a point when students find themselves at the threshold of examinations. This juncture, while anticipated, often brings with it a tide of mixed emotions—excitement, anxiety, and an overwhelming sense of responsibility.

The approaching exams tend to act as a catalyst, nudging students into a heightened state of productivity. Suddenly, study sessions become longer, libraries overflow with diligent scholars, and the ambiance of coffee shops transforms into a haven for intense focus. For some, the looming exams act as a source of motivation, pushing them to delve deeper into their subjects, revise diligently, and seek guidance whenever needed. However, for others, the pressure can be daunting, leading to anxiety and feelings of being overwhelmed.

Managing this period effectively is crucial. Organizing your schedule is very important. You can break down the syllabus into manageable chunks, creating a study schedule that accommodates regular breaks for relaxation and rejuvenation. Prioritize topics based on importance and allocate adequate time for each. You can also practice by engaging in past papers, mock exams, or sample questions to familiarize yourself with the exam format and refine your time management skills. Practice not only reinforces your knowledge but also helps in identifying areas that need more attention.

In addition, do not hesitate to seek support and to reach out for help. Consult professors, tutors, or classmates if there are concepts you find challenging. Explaining topics to others can also solidify your own understanding. Furthermore, maintaining wellbeing, amidst the academic rush, is vital to prioritize self-care. Ensure sufficient sleep, a balanced diet, and regular exercise to keep your mind sharp and focused.

Finally, remember to embrace positivity and cultivate a positive mindset. Visualize success, stay optimistic, and believe in your capabilities. Self-doubt can be crippling—replace it with confidence in your preparation. Remember, exams are not just a measure of your knowledge but also a test of your ability to handle pressure and apply what you've learned. Approach them with a calm demeaner, knowing that you've done your best to prepare. In the end, it’s crucial to understand that exams are a part of the learning process. They do not define your worth or intelligence. They are checkpoints, guiding you on your academic journey. As the exam date draws nearer, embrace the challenge with diligence, determination, and a sense of resilience. After all, it's not just about the outcome but the journey of learning and growth that accompanies it.

GOOD LUCK!

Life at X! International Student Version

In the heart of Nova Scotia, the decision to make Antigonish and StFX my academic goals, stands as one of the most enthralling choices I've made to date. From the moment I set foot in this quaint town, saturated in the magnificent glow of the orange sun, I sensed an undeniable magic that went beyond the boundaries of mere geography. The Keating Center, with its top-notch infrastructure, welcomed me, and for the first time, I understood the absolute notion of love at first sight.

The crisp autumn air showcased the true essence of autumn, painting each blade of grass and every leaf in hues that almost seemed almost unreal to me. Everything I saw on social media about the town of Antigonish and StfX was a living reality now. The campus, with its harmony of historical charm and modern vitality, unfolded before me like an endless path of paradise waiting to be walked. It wasn't just a university; it was a manifestation of community, a living reality to the intricate dance between old traditions and the rhythm of a university student life in perfect sync. I soon discovered that it was more than a scenic backdrop, rather it was a wide array woven with historical richness and reverberating with modern day’s ethos. Its top-notch infrastructure, a perfect blend of timeless elegance and modern functionality, reverberated in the footsteps of the students and the people of the town, who walked its streets in eras long past, was in perfect harmony with the vibrant energy of student life.

Walking the StFX campus felt like a journey through a cultural crossroads. In the classes and lecture halls, students from different corners of Canada and across different countries met, each bringing unique perspectives that transformed academic discourse into a vivid plate of ideas. The university's commitment to inclusivity reverberated through the wide array of student societies, creating a rich and vibrant community that showcased the global diversity it held. Beyond the academic environment, the town of Antigonish revealed a rich heritage rooted in the heartbeat of the Mi'kmaq people. Cultural events painted the town with astounding colors, offering a jaw-dropping glimpse into the everlasting connection between the land and its original inhabitants. The first week was filled with activities and informative sessions, which eased the transition for international students like myself, which nurtured the fear of an international and cultural shock into a sense of belonging.

Antigonish, more than a picturesque locale, emerged as a living testament to the intricate play of heritage and progress. The symbiotic relationship between the town and StFX University showcased the narrative of cultural coupling, where the rich history of the past and the modern day’s environment went together harmoniously to create a perfect sync and dynamic community—a microcosm reflecting Canada's commitment to embracing diversity.

As time unfolded, I realized that StFX not only embraced but actively nurtured the rich cultural identity of Antigonish. The university's collaboration with local organizations reverberated in perfect harmony, weaving a deep relationship that nurtured the shared heritage of campus, town, and the Mi'kmaq.

Venturing beyond academics, my journey into the cultural ethos of StFX deepened through volunteer experiences. From contributing to Kevin's Corner to serving as a Returning Officer for the Students Union, each role became a line in the intricate fabric of my StFX journey. Involvement in various student communities expanded my horizons, revealing an intricate nature of planning within the Students Union that propelled me to exceed my perceived capabilities. These volunteering experiences not only enriched my time at StFX but also fostered a keen insight and vision for the years ahead.

Long before I knew it, I had my first glance at winter in Canada. Though it’s only November, as someone hailing from a moderately hot climate environment, the lowest temperatures I faced was 18 degrees celsius. And I’ve been told it gets as cold as minus 40 on some days, however I look forward to my first winter here and hope I don’t find myself welcoming any frost bites. The landscape, the people, and the experiences blend together, leaving an everlasting mark on the chapter of my university life. With great enthusiasm, I have been in the Town of Antigonish for just about 2 months but yet my journey has always felt like I belong here. I have not known what I have in store for me, for this enthralling, enriching and nurturing journey, I look forward to with great enthusiasm towards the rest of my journey as a student at X and being part of the beautiful town of Antigonish.

Interview with Angus Kennedy and ALPACA

Earlier this semester, in late September, I had the chance to interview Angus Kennedy, a fourth-year Honours Biology student, who is a recognized student leader and pioneer on campus. Mainly as president and founder of the Antigonish League of People Advocating for Climate Action, a student society (ALPACA StFX) and community organization (ALPACA) at StFX and in Antigonish. He is currently working on his honours thesis and is also the Captain for the X-Men Rowing Club team. Ethan Copp (Class of ‘24), who has also been on the StFX Men’s rowing team since his first year, is featured in this article as well. Finally, I was able to reach out to some esteemed StFX alumni, Alex Cook (Class of ‘23) and Peter MacGregor (Class of ‘23), who are featured at the end of this article.

Why did you start ALPACA in the first place?

      In the summer of 2021, I was driving home from a landfill that I had been using as a site of a study I was doing. I was listening to the radio with my field partner and the CBC was reporting on the most recent IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report. They were reporting that the IPCC found we were already past some of the climate change tipping points that they had previously warned of. I was frustrated. I knew we were not changing things as fast as we needed to. I started thinking about what could be done and I thought about activism and advocacy. I brought this idea to some friends of mine who had similar environmental inclinations, Peter MacGregor, Ethan Copp, and Alex Cook. Together we decided to start the Antigonish League of People for Climate Action (ALPCA) later changed to the Antigonish League of People Advocating for Climate Action.

Why are you still running it?

      I'm still running it because, simply, I have not yet left Antigonish, and I still feel I have much to contribute to this group and the environmental movement in Antigonish.

Why do you think it's important to keep it going?

      We need to keep going because there is still so much work to do. To be frank, it doesn't feel like we have accomplished many concrete things at StFX since our inception. We have put on events, made progress on some projects, and built momentum and organization, but we are far from the accomplishments we hope to achieve.

      Momentum can die quickly for movements at post-secondary institutions. Students graduate and then whatever project they had been working disappears. So, we need to keep ALPACA or an environmental group like it going, so that when one group of students graduate the movement doesn't need to start all over again.

Do you worry at all about it not continuing when you leave StFX? Why or why not?

      I have worried about it not continuing after I left StFX. When we started everyone involved was a part of my immediate friend group. Last year a lot of them graduated. This year though we have a good number of 2nd and 3rd years getting involved, which puts my mind at ease. I think that ALPACA will be in good hands when I leave, and I wish them the best of luck.

What are some of the goals of ALPACA? Have some of those goals been accomplished?

      ALPACA's broad goals are, as outlined in our constitution: 1. To serve and protect the environmental needs of the Town and County of Antigonish, their wider communities, and the world as a whole, and 2. To promote accountability and ambition on environmental goals and benchmarks within the Town and County of Antigonish, as well as their surrounding communities.

      Those goals are a little abstract to declare as accomplished, but we do have some specific projects that we are looking at. Those projects being Divest@X, a project to get StFX fully divested from fossil fuels, the replacement of the heating plant on campus, making transit in Antigonish more efficient and accessible, and stopping Atlantic Gold's gold mine project near Archibald's Lake in Guysborough County. The only of those that is resolved is the gold mine project. I'm unsure how much you can attribute that to us, but Atlantic Gold, to our knowledge has given up there. The other projects are still being worked on.

Finally, I reached out to Ethan Copp, Alex Cook and Peter MacGregor to learn about what they are up to these days.

Ethan Copp is a fourth year Honours Climate and Environment (CLEN) student from Palmer Alaska. These days, he says that he is “working on completing my degree and doing research on air quality in Kincaid Park in Alaska”. Upon completing his degree, he intends to “go home and pursue graduate school at Alaska Pacific University in the Outdoor and Environmental education program”. Additionally, it is his final year of rowing, so he is finishing with his last few regattas as well. 

Alex Cook and Peter MacGregor have both relocated to the western side of Canada for the year upon graduating last spring. I was curious to see what they were up to, knowing that they were heavily involved as organizers within ALPACA, and remembering them as being leaders and mentors in and out of the StFX Rowing team. I asked them what they were doing now. Here is what they had to say:

“My name is Alex and I recently graduated from StFX with a Bachelor of Arts, Major in Psychology. I was a part of ALPACA for two years, as the social media coordinator and the Fridays for Future organizer with Franny [MacGregor]. I am currently taking a year off school, where I am living out West and working! I am planning on coming back to StFX in the Fall of 2024 for the BEd program. My name is Peter and I also graduated from StFX this spring! I graduated with an honours in biology. When I was a part of ALPACA I sort of helped to organize all different facets of the club, but focused mainly on our work with the Saint Mary's Association and Archibald Lake. I am living in Revelstoke for the winter to enjoy the mountains and winter there while I figure out what my next step will be!”

A Couple Spontaneous Days in Scotland

When you can barely keep your eyes open on the plane ride home, you know that it was a good trip. Recently, I traveled to Edinburgh, Scotland; a place that has been on my bucket list for years. During my study abroad, I made it my goal to travel as much as I could while still being able to study and go to (most) classes. My trip to Scotland was somewhat booked on a whim, but I’ve now realized spontaneous decisions are, oftentimes, the best decisions. A week prior, my friend and I decided that we wanted to take a trip to Edinburgh, so that’s exactly what we did. For a £50 return flight, we couldn’t turn the offer down.

When we landed in Edinburgh, we got in late and ventured to our hostel in the heart of the city. This was my first time in a hostel, and, honestly, not my last. I was hesitant to stay in a room full of fifteen strangers (sorry Mom), but truly, it was worth the price. The next morning, we got up early and took a trip to the Edinburgh Castle. If you ever find yourself in Edinburgh, you should definitely take a trip to the castle as it has spectacular views of the city and provides a detailed insight into the history of Scotland. After we spent the morning at the castle, we walked around the city and went to a pub for lunch. If you ever find yourself in the UK, the pubs here are a staple. The pub can be a great place for a quick bite to eat, a drink with friends and family or a place to go for a fun night out. In other words, no matter the occasion, the pub is the place to be.

Later that afternoon we walked around the city, visited the Scott Monument, and took a tour of the Edinburgh Dungeons. If I thought we couldn’t fit more into our day, I was wrong, because we had a busy night ahead of us. We went out for dinner at an upscale pizza joint and headed out to–you guessed it–a Pub. Our goal was to do a pub crawl; however, we only made it to one. Even though we only ventured to one place, it was a good choice. The pub was filled with live music, and we danced the night away until 2:30 am.

I woke up the next morning tired, but ready to conquer the day. We walked around the city, did some shopping, and headed to Upland’s Roast, a small coffee shop on campus at the University of Edinburgh. I think I had the best hot chocolate of my life. 10/10. Later, we headed to Glasgow to visit some friends. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it back on the 11:45 pm train from Glasgow back to Edinburgh. Am I surprised? Not at all.

We woke up bright and early the next day to catch the 7:30 am train back to Edinburgh to head home. From planes, trains, and automobiles it may have been the longest day of my life. However, our short, eventful, and jam-packed trip to Edinburgh was definitely worth the £50 return flight. If you ever get the chance to go to Edinburgh, or, go on any spontaneous trip, do it. You won’t regret it. Even though everything may not go as planned, you’ll have some good laughs and make some pretty good stories along the way.