PERCY PARIS blows tourism op while LGBT-friendly whale blows rainbow

The biggest PRIDE WEEK in Atlantic Canada is Halifax's and it turns 25 this year.

By sheer coincidence, a year old amateur video of a NOVA SCOTIA whale blowing a rainbow has suddenly gone viral and is featured in all the big foreign media - outside of Canada and Nova Scotia of course.

Webber finds while Libs bled to NDP in last week of election,Green vote went up

New Brunswick historian and political scientist Patrick Webber who has an abiding interest in the smaller/newer parties of Atlantic Canada (he has an article in the current issue of ACADIENSIS) has done a riding by riding study of the advance polls results a week before the June 2009 election in NS.

He finds, overall, that the Libs bled 10% of their support to NDP between then and election day, while Green vote went UP not down - a total surprise, as tiny parties traditionally lose half their support as polling day approaches.

Looking at it on a riding by riding basis, he found the Liberal loss of support to the NDP, in that last week, moved a few seats to NDP from PCs, so ironically the Liberals got what they felt they badly needed - to come out slightly ahead of PCs to become the Official Opposition.

But being the Third Party in the House never hurt John Hamm in 1999 though....

Greens cheer as Jack is re-elected for another term

Who is the best vote getter the federal Greens in Canada have right now ?

Most Greens, upon reflection, would say "Jack Layton" .

Because of the vicissitudes the GPC is going through right now, the reasons for their current exalted standings in opinion polls must surely lie more with how Canadians view their third party than how they regard their fourth national party.

This weekend's NDP Convention in Halifax showed us a lot more Jack than we have seen lately and as a result we can expect his personal approval ratings to fall even further.

Jack , at least as Jack-the-Leader-in-Public, has an prompt answer for every problem and seems to be entirely unreflective.

One simply never hears him say, " I'm not sure we have an answer for that, let me think a little about that, it seems to have no easy sollution that will make most everybody happy."

Most people respect Jack Layton as the leader of a party with a long worthy tradition of keeping the other guys honest but would hate to see him given the reins of power.

OBAMA IS NO 'DP' & NEITHER IS JACK

The decision of the NDP not to decide on a name shortening also gave Greens hope this weekend.

Having a party name that isn't turned in a set of initials is a godsend for Greens.

Ditto for the Liberals, Conservatives, Labour, Republicans and Democrats.

No one calls the Liberals the LPs or the republicans RPs.

Only parties with three word names suffer that fate : CCF and NDP for example.

But almost every New Democrat rejecting the dropping of the new off their party name claimed they feared being called DPs.

In the 1950s, DP was the "N" word for Canada.

But the Canadian 'Democrats' claim that they fear they'd end up being called DPs is just a smokescreen : NDPers actually seem to like being known by their initials !

Why, when it only conjures up fearsome organizations like KGB and KKK with similar three letter names, is beyond explanation.

But Greens can be grateful for the NDP decision not to decide.

And for the fact that only 11% of the NDP delegates said "Jack, its time to go."

They won't have to face Democrats as they chase votes in the next year - but they will get to face off against 'Smiling Jack' one more time....