You are eight years old and today is the first day of fishing season. Your father has finally taken you out with him and even bought you your own pole. Though you’re too young to understand adulthood, you can tell that this is how you become the person you hope to be. Your chest swells […]
Chris Parsons
Posted inNews + Opinion
Free speech warriors fighting a selective battle
Nova Scotia loves to get on the bandwagon a few months or years after a trend has hit its saturation point everywhere else. It’s a few years late, but we’re still all in on hamburgers, re-opening coal mines and building failing convention centres. The latest cool thing from last year is enlisting to fight in […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Class warfare and the Irving Shipyard
With the holidays coming to an end, negotiations between the Irving family’s Halifax Shipyard Inc. and its unionized workers are set to resume this month with the help of a mediator. In December, the workers, members of UNIFOR Marine Workers Local One voted overwhelmingly in favour of a strike mandate after the employer tabled a […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Tax avoidance is legal and that should make you furious
Earlier this month the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released the Paradise Papers—a massive leak of documents that show just how pervasive legal tax avoidance through offshore banking has become. Some of those whose dealings in Bermuda have been questioned have defended themselves by explaining that their critics’ outrage is misplaced since sending money offshore […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Dalhousie University shouldn’t be running its own court system
It’s rarely a good thing when Dalhousie University gets a lot of national attention. Unfortunately for Dal, two big stories plunged it back the national spotlight last week. First, a bunch of drunk, rowdy students tried to Make Dal Great Again by hosting Queen’s-style homecoming parties on the roofs, lawns and streets of a residential […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Sidney Crosby is wrong: Sports have always been intertwined with politics
In the lead up to the public relations event Tuesday with president Trump, Sidney Crosby kept digging a hole and doubling down on the idea that visiting the office of an elected official was somehow an act totally devoid of politics. More than that, he made the puzzling claim to the Associated Press that he […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Advice for young radicals
Are you an aspiring political activist going to university or college in Halifax? Congratulations on starting down a path that will ruin your life! I spent more years than I wish to publicly admit volunteering and working as a political organizer on university campuses; as an elected student activist, a union shop steward and students’ union […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Pathetic, dumb and dangerous: The Proud Boys make their debut in Halifax
On July 1, a group of Indigenous activists and their allies gathered at the statue of Edward Cornwallis that inexplicably still stands in downtown Halifax to commemorate and mourn the genocide of Canada’s First Nations. In the midst of the sombre ceremony, a group of five idiots in matching polo shirts showed up singing, waving […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Deciphering which election promises will be kept, and which will be forgotten
My day job involves speaking to Nova Scotians who are struggling to access public health care and trying to help them organize to demand better service in their communities. Unsurprisingly, I’ve been on the road a lot this month and I’ve heard frustrating, often heartbreaking stories of people whose communities, and too often their family […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
We will have another Westray
25 years ago the Westray mine exploded in Plymouth, Nova Scotia killing all 26 miners who were down below. It will happen again. The last five years have seen an unprecedented attack on labour rights in the province. The Liberal government has passed at least nine separate pieces of legislation to limit the rights of […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Nova Centre is just the latest in long line of big, bold failures
By virtually any measure the Nova Centre in downtown Halifax has already been a bad deal for the public. You can debate how bad it’s been, and you can wonder how we ended up in this mess, but we can all agree that it’s been bad. It’s also the latest in a long line of […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Evidence out-of-control: a provincial inquiry is needed into HRP’s drug exhibit audit
Last summer The Coast revealed that an internal audit conducted by the Halifax Regional Police had found widespread problems with the security and record keeping inside the HRP’s Drug Vault—the storage area that holds evidence seized in drug crimes—including missing drugs and cash. Now it turns out the problems have existed for much longer and […]