About 5,500 Nova Scotia school support staff workers will not go on strike Monday after reaching a tentative deal with the province late Friday evening.
A strike would have involved support staff such as early childhood educators, librarians and student support workers.
A second attempt to attract interest in a new location for the Michael Donovan Library has come to naught, forcing government to reach out to potential landlords to see if space is available for the popular facility.
The Department of Transportation and Infrastructure says previous procurement processes failed to result in a proposal that meets the library’s operational and service requirements.
Five books covering a range of ideas and issues, from how women age to toxic hockey culture, have been shortlisted for the 2026 Balsillie Prize for Public Policy.
The annual prize awards $70,000 to a work of nonfiction that advances public discourse.
The shortlisted books are Dennis Molinaro’s Under Assault, Moira Welsh’s The Astonishing Lives of Older Women, Rick Westhead’s We Breed Lions, Jesse Winter’s Wild Fire and Tim Wu’s The Age of Extraction.
Continue reading “5 books shortlisted for $70K Balsillie Prize for Public Policy”
The union representing school support workers says it received indication from the province that the government is willing to return to the bargaining table on Thursday.
“We look forward to seeing government’s revised position and are confident that they have heard from Nova Scotians how important school support workers are to our communities,” Canadian Union of Public Employees said in a news release. “We will be happy to recommend a tentative agreement to our members that addresses their significant and serious concerns about their working conditions and compensation.”
The union representing more than 5,500 school support workers says if no deal is reached with the government and employers in the next few days, then members will walk off the job as early as Monday.
CUPE and the government as well as school boards reached an impasse in negotiations earlier this month. Positions affected include janitors, early childhood educators, cafeteria workers and more.
Key issues are quality of education and wages.
Continue reading “Nova Scotia: School support union plans for strike Monday if no deal reached”
Tara Gereaux, Michelle Good, Nicholas Herring, Nazanine Hozar and Patmeena Sabit are the five writers shortlisted for the 2026 Giller Prize.
The $100,000 award annually recognizes the best in Canadian fiction.
The 2026 shortlist features five novels, covering a wide range of material, from a historical fiction set in 1940s Saskatchewan (Gereaux’s Wild People Quiet) to a contemporary story about a road trip from New Brunswick to Toronto (Herring’s Your Breath in Charcoal) and a harrowing novel about child soldiers in the Iran-Iraq war (Hozar’s The Small Ones).
Continue reading “$100K Giller Prize announces 5-title shortlist for 2026”
Date: Thursday, November 5th, 2026
Time: 4:00–5:00 p.m. Atlantic
Location: Nicholson 821 Boardroom or join via MSTeams
Event URL: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/2278150291665273?p=5b3MlcyfDXmd7dDeeM
The work of subject metadata—assigning topic headings, adding tags—falls into the invisible background of resource discovery systems. In this talk, Dr. Julia Bullard will argue that assigning topic headings is and should be creative and ethical work, worthy of close readings and critical interventions. They will provide exemplars of such methodological windows that we can use in our everyday use of systems as well as initiate radical departures from typical practice.
This hybrid talk is offered by the Angus L. Macdonald Library at St. Francis Xavier University, in collaboration with the StFX Digital Humanities Centre, featuring Dr. Bullard’s critical perspective on the often-overlooked work of subject metadata and its role in shaping how information is organized, represented, and discovered.
Nova Scotia’s school support workers will be in a legal strike position beginning Monday, but the earliest they could walk off the job is Wednesday because doing so requires 48 hours’ notice.
The province’s regional centres for education and the Conseil scolaire acadien provincial have been in contract negotiations with the Canadian Union of Public Employees for several months.
The union represents 5,500 workers, including educational program assistants, early childhood educators in the pre-primary program, bus drivers, janitors, library support specialists, and Black and Mi’kmaw student support workers.
I Read Canadian Day is a national celebration of Canadian books for young people, with the goal of elevating the genre and celebrating the breadth and diversity of these books.
This year’s day to celebrate is November 4, 2026.
Schools, libraries and bookstores are encouraged to invite a local author to celebrate the day. Use this day to spotlight Canadian authors, their books and what a great day it is to buy a Canadian book.
More information can be found here.
The 21st annual Media Literacy Week will take place from October 26 to 30, 2026.
From misinformation to AI, today’s digital world gives us more to question than ever. Media Literacy Week helps communities across Canada build the skills to recognize misinformation, understand AI-generated content and make informed choices online. Media Literacy Week (MLW) is a national initiative hosted by MediaSmarts, with activities, workshops, resources and conversations taking place in classrooms, libraries, museums, community organizations and online spaces from coast to coast to coast. Whether you are looking to host an event, lead a workshop, share resources or participate online, there are many ways to get involved and support digital media literacy in your community.
Official promo kit
