The enshirtification of the T-shirt industry - Halifax Examiner

Update:

In a statement Friday night, Premier Tim Houston said he had accepted Brad Johns' resignation as a minister in his cabinet. Houston said "domestic violence is an issue our government takes very seriously." The statement continued:

We will continue to work with partner organizations to do everything we can to support the important work being done in response to the Mass Casualty Commission's final report and in response to the ongoing epidemic of domestic violence across Nova Scotia and Canada.

Yesterday was the fourth anniversary of the mass shooting that claimed the lives of 22 Nova Scotians.

Brad Johns, Nova Scotia's Justice Minister, commemorated it by saying he didn't think domestic violence is an epidemic, and that we have bigger issues.

"We have issues around guns, we have issues around drugs. We have issues. There's a lot of issues. Violence in general."

He gave a rueful chuckle as he said this. You can watch the video on CBC, if you haven't already. The chuckle is towards the end.

Of course this didn't sit well with, well, anybody.

Adsum House posted a statement on their Instagram and Twixxer (I refuse to call it X) accounts, which said:

We are shocked and angered by Minister Johns' flippant remarks about domestic violence…The people we meet every day, the stories we hear, the statistics we read, the lived experiences of more than 40 per cent of all Canadian women confirm that domestic violence, is indeed, an issue of epidemic proportions.

You can read their entire statement here.

NDP leader Claudia Chender posted on social media, "Given Minister John's comments today, on the anniversary of Portapique, we are asking for his immediate resignation."

Liberal leader Zach Churchill had a similar message:

Later in the day Johns sort of apologized, but not really. In a statement attributed to him, he said he had made comments that "were wrong and have caused pain. Domestic violence is a serious issue in Nova Scotia."

The statement from Johns continued:

I want survivors of domestic violence to know that they will be supported when they come forward and have confidence that when they do, they will be believed and treated respectfully.

The pervasiveness of domestic violence and the harm it causes in our communities is not something that should ever be minimized and I am truly sorry that my words did so.

This government, my department and I agree that domestic violence is an epidemic.

Following a community town hall meeting about the Bear Head Energy wind project Thursday evening in Pictou County, the following exchange took place between Tim Houston and a CBC reporter:

CBC: Do you stand by Brad Johns after his comments today? And will you keep him as justice minister?

Houston: I think the minister apologized for his comments. I do believe that there's a serious issue with domestic violence in the province, for sure. It is an epidemic. The minister has apologized for his comments and we'll chat with him. But I want Nova Scotians to know that we understand how serious the issue is, and it's a priority of ours to address it.

CBC: So what do you say to survivors of violence who might be afraid to report through the system that is under Brad Johns's department after he said this comment?

Houston: Well, listen, there's a whole process in place. People should come forward. They will be respected. They will be listened to. I've said as premier that I know how serious this issue is. I agree with the Mass Casualty Commission that it is epidemic. We work with those organizations in the province, provide support to them in a number of ways, including financial support for a number of organizations. So, the minister has apologized for his comments. He was wrong in his comments. And I've tried to try to set the record straight on how I personally feel and how our government feels.

With files from Joan Baxter

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2. Premier gets earful about proposed wind project

Joan Baxter went to the Blue Mountain and District Fire Department hall Thursday evening, along with more than 200 others, to talk to Houston about the 100-turbine Websters Corner wind project Bear Head Energy is proposing for the Blue Mountain area of Pictou County.

It probably didn't go the way he would have hoped.

One woman at the meeting asked Houston what benefits Nova Scotia would get from wind energy that would be used to produce hydrogen and ammonia for export, and why Nova Scotians should sacrifice their land for such a project when the wind energy wasn't going into the province's grid.

Houston called it a kind of "energy export" and said hydrogen and ammonia were just a different kind of export from Nova Scotia, which, he added, also exports tires made at the Michelin plants, and lobsters caught here. 

Houston noted that Nova Scotia burns a lot of coal, and the hydrogen could be a new source of energy. "There could be a time we're all driving hydrogen fuel cell cars," he said, eliciting some catcalls.

Click or tap here to read "Premier gets earful at town hall about proposed Pictou County wind project."

We've taken Baxter's related article from March 18th, "Premier Tim Houston backs out of Hamburg hydrogen conference" out from behind the paywall, along with the companion article on March 19 by Karin Finkenzeller, "Canadian and German officials pursue dream of cross-oceanic 'green' hydrogen trade."

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3. Financial subsidies for farmers aren't encouraging a transition to more plant-based agriculture

A MacEachen Institute for Public Policy and Governance project led by Dalhousie University researchers Dr. Kathleen Kevany and Dr. Talan Iscan is examining the impact of agricultural incentives on climate and health, Yvette d'Entremont writes.

The project team's early analysis shows most financial incentives are going to animal agriculture. Kevany described this as "out of alignment" with Canada's Food Guide, released in 2019. 

"We have a plan to encourage Canadians to eat well through the new Canada's Food Guide, and we have data that supports that evidence," Kevany said. "And we have data also that indicate where we're headed with food production. So we're inquiring into whether or not we can see some alignment or misalignment with that data."

Kevany also says it's urgent that public resources be used to support healthy diets, and wants to see the Maritimes build greater regional resilience in its food systems.

Click or tap here to read "Nova Scotia researchers explore ways to support agricultural sector, meet Canada's climate goals and nutritional needs."

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4. Nova Scotia Teachers Union, province, reach agreement in principle

On Thursday, Tim Houston made an announcement that the province and the union representing its public school teachers have reached an agreement in principle on a new contract, Yvette d'Entremont reports.

Houston said the government's focus was on reaching a deal that was fair to teachers, along with ensuring improved classroom conditions for both students and teachers.

"Teachers will see our shared commitments in the coming days when the agreement is finalized and the NSTU shares it with them," he said. "But I think they'll be pleased, and I hope they will be."

d'Entremont spoke to NSTU president Ryan Lutes, who said he was "cautiously optimistic," and described it as a positive step.

"No one wants to be going down a path towards potential job action," Lutes said. "That's where I think teachers thought that we were. And frankly, that's where I thought that we were, too, because there was such little movement on government's side before."

Click or tap here to read "Nova Scotia Teachers Union, province, reach agreement in principle."

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5. Carbon tax

In March Tim Houston told the House of Commons finance committee, "The carbon tax is detrimental to Nova Scotians." He says that's because "We're a rural province, we have to drive."

Larry Hughes writes:

While undoubtedly true, it seems strange that the carbon rebate (something the premier keeps failing to mention) doesn't offset at least some of the 17.61 cents per litre carbon tax Nova Scotians pay for gasoline purchases.

Which raises an interesting question. Does the carbon rebate cover the carbon tax costs of someone living and driving a car or a truck in rural Nova Scotia?

With the help of some very nice charts and graphs, Hughes breaks down the Canada Carbon Tax Rebate, the carbon tax, the differences between the two (for three different types of households,) the carbon tax on transportation (for different vehicles, distances, and households,) and in the end wonders if we should axe the tax.

It reminds me of those math problems in school:

If car A is travelling north at 40mph, and Car B is travelling south at 60km/hr, at which point will they meet? And I would invariably draw an arrow pointing at a McDonald's.

Click or tap here to read "Nova Scotia's premier, rural driving, and the carbon tax."

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The enshirtification of the T-shirt industry

I often get emails asking, "How can I buy Halifax Examiner stuff?" or "Why don't you have a merch page anymore?" Let me explain what's happening with that.

(In case you didn't catch the byline at the top of Morning File, it's Iris again. Hi!)

You've probably heard Cory Doctorow's word "enshittification," perhaps here in one of Philip Moscovitch's essays, or the one where Tim Bousquet talked about the enshittification of time. It's a great word.

What's happening in the printable T-shirt industry is a similar pattern of decreasing quality and ethical sketchiness. You could call it "enshirtification". 

I know something about T-shirts, because 100 years ago I worked as an illustrator and screenprinter, in a little print shop (now long gone) on Agricola Street. We printed shirts, hats, posters, promotional stuff, glassware, even balloons. (My boss had me half convinced we blew them up before we printed them. But of course they're printed flat, with stretchy ink. Haha). 

A few years later I started my own T-shirt line. It featured cartoons of cows (Picowsso, Moozart, Milk Jagger…remember when cows were a thing?) and my designs were in stores all over Canada for a while. That was exciting, until the GST came along. Small wholesalers like me were expected to absorb the new tax, because the retailers didn't want to pay more. 

Then NAFTA took effect. Some Canadian brands that produced quality T-shirts (like the Harvey Woods shirts I used) couldn't compete with brands manufactured in Mexico with cheaper labour, so they either went under or got swallowed up by bigger brands. Then I discovered a local printer was bootlegging low-quality copies of my shirts, which I couldn't do anything about. That sucked all the fun out of it, so I packed it in. 

In 2016 Tim (Bousquet) said he wanted to give away Halifax Examiner T-shirts to new annual subscribers during our November subscription drive, so I offered to take care of it. Who knew T-shirt folding would be such a transferrable skill?

Tim had been getting shirts printed at Fresh Prints, a different print shop on Agricola Street. They already had the artwork from a previous print run, so we asked for more of the same, and they started printing. Tim then hauled several boxes of them over to my place. For weeks my partner and I ate our meals in front of the TV because the table was buried under T-shirts. 

It was wild. Over 100 new subscribers jumped at the offer that November, and many current subscribers bought T-shirts. In December we continued the deal so people could give their friends and family members subscriptions and T-shirts as gifts. 

A postal clerk had told me it would be impossible to send T-shirts as lettermail. She didn't know who she was dealing with. In the evenings I would fold dozens of shirts as flat as possible and pack them into padded envelopes. Then I would stack rows of them with heavy books on top to squoosh out the air so they would fit through Canada Post's "slot of doom." In the morning I would load up my granny cart and haul that batch to the post office. 

After the subscription drive, we decided to put up a merch page on the website, selling T-shirts, hoodies, and mugs. And that's how it went for a few years.

In May 2021 we had a great viral moment when the first COVID vaccine came out. Perhaps you'll remember how Ray "The Influencer" Plourde posted a photo of himself getting vaccinated wearing his Halifax Examiner T-shirt. 

That was fun, and great publicity, both for us and for the vaccines. Suddenly everyone wanted a vaccine selfie in an Examiner T-shirt. Good times. 

But over the years we noticed something about the T-shirts. They were becoming enshirtified. The fabric was getting thinner, and they kept getting smaller. This meant a lot of emails back and forth with customers, measuring and comparing T-shirts to make sure they got the right size. This used to be easy. Now it was confusing and complicated.

This was not the printers' fault. We wanted a quality T-shirt at a price that was low enough that we could afford to give it away, and that we could sell at a reasonable price our customers wouldn't mind paying.

But we weren't thinking about the real cost. 

One day in December 2020, a subscriber emailed me and kindly suggested I look into the T-shirts that we were putting our logo on. So I did. And I discovered that the industry had morphed into something heinous since I'd left it. 

By 2007 this brand, like many others, had closed their unionized factories in Canada and the US and opened sweatshops in Honduras, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Bangladesh. While their workers make poverty wages and are harassed (or worse) for trying to unionize, these companies have backed military coups, helped overthrow governments, and parked their profits in Caribbean tax havens.

Finding good replacement shirts isn't easy. Even companies that claim to be "sustainable" can be sketchy. Avoiding Chinese cotton grown with forced labour is admirable, but if you're using American cotton while offshoring the manufacturing to Haiti where you pay people $5 a day, you can sprinkle "eco-friendly," "socially conscious," "responsible mindset" platitudes all over your website, but your company still sucks.

Who knew printing a simple logo on a simple black T-shirt could be so complicated? 

So that's why there's no Examiner merch anymore. Supporting these kinds of companies did not fit with our ethics, and we just couldn't do it.

But we have a plan…

After much research, we've found some potential sources for union-made brands located in Canada and the US. Once we've checked them out thoroughly, and we're happy they're as ethical and un-sketchy as possible, we'll start to offer items with the Halifax Examiner logo on them again. 

Besides T-shirts and hoodies, we could have ball caps, and knit toques for the winter. Maybe a tote bag, as long as it's a size and quality that you'd actually carry around and not just store other tote bags in. Hopefully some other stuff, eventually.

What would you like to see?

Naturally these items will cost more, but they will be worth it. It'll be like the old days, before fast fashion, when getting a new T-shirt was a treat. 

Did you ever have a T-shirt that you loved so much you wore it all the time? One that you would put on straight out of the clean laundry basket?

Well, I can't promise that you will get the same feels from an Examiner T-shirt, but you will feel good enough wearing it that a year later it will still be in your rotation, and not in a Frenchys bin or, dog forbid, a landfill.

In case you're wondering, I have never seen any of my designs stuffed on a rack or in a bin at a Frenchys.

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NOTICED

In case you missed it, the parody Twixxer account @DimHouston posted this:

Brad Johns's passive-voiced non-apology is up there with, "Sorree you're upset that my car drove over your lawn and wrecked your rose bushes."

And I'm not sorry for saying this.

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Government

No meetings

On campus

No events

In the harbour

Halifax

07:00: Silver Arctic, cargo ship, arrives at Pier 42 from Saint Pierre

07:30: Oceanex Sanderling, ro-ro container ship, moves from Anchor to Fairview Cove West

07:30: STI Hackney, oil tanker, moves from anchor to Irving Woodside

07:30: Atlantic Sail, ro-ro container ship, sails from Fairview Cove West for Liverpool

09:00: Algoma Mariner, bulk carrier, arrives at Pier 26 from Montreal

10:00: NYK Rigel, container ship, arrives at Fairview Cove east end from Antwerp

12:00: EF Ava, container ship, arrives at Pier 42 from Portland

14:00: BBC Rhonetal, cargo ship, sails from Pier 9C for sea

15:30: MSC Sines R, container ship, sails from Pier 41 for sea

15:30: Morning Lynn, car carrier, sails from Autoport for sea

16:30: Silver Arctic, cargo ship, sails from Pier 42 for sea

16:30: NYK Rigel, container ship, sails from Fairview Cove for sea

17:00: Oceanex Sanderling, ro-ro container ship, sails from Fairview Cove for St. John's

17:00: EF Ava, container ship, sails from Pier 42

Cape Breton

08:00: Sea Installer, platform, moves from anchor to Atlantic Bulk Terminal

12:00: STI Miracle, oil tanker, arrives at Everwind 2 from sea

13:00: Algoma Value, bulk carrier, arrives at Coal Pier from Point Tupper

14:30: CSL Metis, bulk carrier, moves from Anchorage F to Quarry

14:30: Algoma Integrity, bulk carrier, sails from Quarry for sea

Footnotes

thanks phil and yvette

writing morning file is hard

haiku are easy