The ancient Greeks had a word, kairos, to denote time—specifically, “the opportune and decisive moment.” The North Atlantic Kairos chemical/oil products tanker was projected to arrive in Halifax as early as late Sunday afternoon, inbound from Come By Chance, Newfoundland, but instead—and indeed, by chance—reached Halifax Harbour at the inopportune hour of 11:15pm. That’s on […]
Kyle Shaw
Loving the arrival of this mysterious climate event people are calling "spring".
Kyle was a founding member of the newspaper in 1993 and was the paper’s first publisher. Kyle occasionally teaches creative nonfiction writing (think magazine-style #longreads) and copy editing at the University of King’s College School of Journalism.
Posted inNews + Opinion
What’s the story behind the French naval ship in Halifax’s waters?
If you took a stroll along the waterfront near the foot of Morris Street on Monday morning, you’d have walked right past it: A 40-metre patrol vessel painted Navy grey, flying French and Canadian flags and docked within a skip and a jump of the Bicycle Thief. Ordinarily stationed out of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Correction to The Coast’s reporting on suspended Ozempic doctor
Whether or not you are a subscriber to The Coast Daily newsletter, I want to be forthcoming about an error in today’s edition of the newsletter, which was sent out earlier this morning, April 10. Due to an editing error, we gave the incorrect name of the physician who has been suspended from practise due […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Nova Scotia’s worst shipwreck sets the tone for Halifax Harbour this week
This week gets off to an unusually quiet start in the harbour. But that’s a fitting way to honour the weekend’s anniversary of a massive shipwreck in the North Atlantic. The doomed vessel was a proud steamship of the White Star Line, sailing from England to New York, and when it went down taking hundreds […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Nova Scotia reaches 800 deaths on quiet COVID anniversary
Nova Scotia’s very first cases of COVID-19 were announced Sunday, March 15, 2020. The province’s newest weekly disease numbers were released at the data dashboard Thursday, March 9, 2023, making it the last pandemic report before the three-year COVID anniversary. So what is the pandemic news three years in? Pretty darn good, actually. There were four COVID […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Province blames record COVID death count on “a lag in reporting”
COVID hasn’t given many surprises lately in Nova Scotia. An outbreak of Kraken subvariant infections, which seemed to be an imminent threat at the start of 2023, thankfully hasn’t happened. There was an increase in new cases around the December holiday season, then cases stabilized to about 650 per week. The number of people admitted […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Coast readers: Drinking less alcohol is definitely a thing
You almost have to feel bad for alcohol. After a couple flush years in the early part of the pandemic that saw consumption go up, along comes 2023 and the booze news is bad. First the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse and Addiction brings out new guidelines for drinking and health that say “it is […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Year 4 of COVID starts under a Kraken cloud
Update Jan. 6: Nova Scotia has had two confirmed cases of the Kraken variant, the province tells The Coast, so this story has been changed to reflect that. To recap: 2020 introduced COVID-19 to a world of humans who had no immunity to the virus. 2021 brought vaccines to help humanity gain immunity without infection. […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Nova Scotian COVID in 2022: Deaths, cases and hospitalizations
Note: After weekly updates throughout 2022, this page is no longer being updated. The following charts are a record of Nova Scotia’s COVID activity for the year; for the latest numbers in 2023 go to this page. In the beginning—Nova Scotia’s first cases of COVID-19 were reported on March 15, 2020—the province was diligent about […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Making sense of this nonsensical COVID year
Thinking back, way back through the thick mists of pandemic time, at the start of 2022 everything about COVID made sense. Nova Scotia was in the middle of a tidal wave of omicron cases—there were more infections reported in the first week and a half of January (8,996) than in the first year and a […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
The top 10 most popular Coast stories of 2022 according to Google Analytics
1 Mattea Roach talks drag, hate comments and weed By Kaija Jussinoja May 17 The most-read Coast story of the year is a recap of Halifax-raised Jeopardy! Champion Mattea Roach’s Reddit “ask me anything” session, done shortly after Roach’s record-setting time on the show ended. One thing we learned is that Roach didn’t study much […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
5 glimpses of the late, great Jane Kansas
Born June 5, 1954, a Saturday, Jane Kansas died more than 68 years later on December 18, 2022, a Sunday. The last few years had seen her declining from various ailments; it was kidney failure that took her at the end, at the Valley Hospice in Kentville. Her writing is full of such details, although […]