Caora McKenna
Caora was City Editor at The Coast, where she wrote about everything from city hall to police and housing issues. She started with The Coast in 2017, when she was the publication’s Copy Editor.
Posted inNews + Opinion
Are Halifax cops any less racist since the street check report came out?
More than two years after a landmark report analyzed data to prove that Halifax’s police services discriminated against Black people when performing street checks, no one can prove that discrimination has ended in other police stops. In his report that analyzed 142,456 street checks that occurred in Halifax between 2006 and 2017, University of Toronto […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
What does “defund the police” mean to you?
Three hundred and sixty-five day ago, George Floyd was murdered by police officers in Minneapolis. Floyd’s death brought momentum and weight to a conversation about police brutality that Black and Indigenous Haligonians had been trying to have in our city for years. After thousands kneeled in silence, hundreds marched, and many more protested in person […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Halifax passes long-awaited accessibility strategy
When the province passed the Act Respecting Accessibility in Nova Scotia in 2017, it told municipalities to do two things: Set up an accessibility advisory committee and build an accessibility strategy. Halifax, quite chuffed about having an accessibility advisory committee since 1997, got to work pulling together all the pieces that would make up its […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Bike Again gets to stay put
Halifax’s feel-good bike collective will get to stay in its Charles Street home for a while longer. The Coast reported in March about the potential sale of the property where the volunteer-run collective rents its bike repair garages. At that time, Raoul Tanyan, the volunteer coordinator with Bike Again, told The Coast: “as a collective, […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
What’s coming to regional council tomorrow
After wrapping up budget deliberations for the 2021/22 fiscal year at its last meeting, Halifax Regional Council will be getting back to work tomorrow with a regular all-councillor meeting. Here’s a preview of what’ll be discussed and voted on at the Tuesday, May 18 meeting. HRM’s accessibility strategy The strategy includes 31 recommendations slated to […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Four paid sick days make tiny dent in hard reality for Nova Scotia’s low-wage workers
W hen H1N1 arrived in Canada, its brief but brutal visit gave Canada a taste of the pandemic to come. Chantelle Comeau was a line cook in Halifax at the time, and she got sick. Her full-time position didn’t come with any sick days—so she had to cash out a week’s vacation in order to […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
10 things in Halifax’s 2021/22 budget to be hopeful about
This week, after months of presentations and debate, Halifax Regional Council unanimously passed its budget for the 2021/22 fiscal year. The grand gesture of the budget process exists to increase transparency around how Halifax spends its money. All told, HRM is gonna spend $833 million on services and programs; $178 million on building new stuff […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
How much money will HRM’s lower tax rate really save me?
Anyone on the Zoom calls during last year’s COVID-19 recast city budget meetings will tell you it was a grim time. The pandemic’s arrival and impending impacts to HRM’s revenue on things like transit and rec programming had councillors holding their breath as they made cuts to the budget and approved a 1.4 percent increase […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Shaming, blaming and vigilante justice is not going to get us out of this third wave
Pandemics, as you may know, are ancient. And the ways we respond to them today are often still based on the ancient methods: quarantine, self isolation and physical distancing. The biblical myth says “You remain unclean as long as you have the disease, and you must live outside the camp, away from others.” Interpreted one […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
“I just want people to love us like they love our food”
Haligonians, like all Canadians, are fond of thinking of themselves as “better than Americans.” This thought comes with a gentle self-congratulatory pat on the back, and a brazen lack of awareness about the ways anti-Asian racism permeates the membranes of our city. When a racist, misogynist 21-year-old murdered eight people, six of Asian descent, in […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
If you’ve maybe been exposed you’ll most likely have to isolate until you get your test result
A Coast analysis of the Nova Scotia Health Authority’s “Potential COVID Exposures” site shows a major change over the last week in what Nova Scotians should do if they might have crossed paths with the disease. On April 19, only six percent of exposure sites recommended those who’d been there self-isolate while waiting for their […]