Kyle Shaw

A general admission ticket for the upcoming Keith Urban concert costs $119, but even if you wouldn’t spend a cent to see Urban and the rest of the “Country Rocks 2008” lineup, you’re still paying for the show. There’s a social cost to giving away the public Common for a commercial event (the Rolling Stones […]

Critical mess Complaining about the roads is a national sport in Halifax.Now that it’s the summer paving season, drivers find it hard to go any distance without hitting annoying construction delays, which is great complaint fodder. The rest of the year, they can gripe about all the potholes messing with their precious suspension. When the […]

Bill Phillips has a thing for public parks. He walks in them, he sits in them, he enjoys the view. And he’s a crusader for keeping public parks open to the public. One evening a few weeks ago, the Armdale resident was taking a walk through Fleming Park when he noticed something strange at the […]

Thank god for rising oil and gas prices. SUV sales are down, people are getting leery of suburban sprawl, businesses are trying to use less fuel. The sorts of changes that environmentalists have been advocating for years—to fight global warming—are now going mainstream because of a little pain at the pumps. The end of the […]

Welcome to The Coast’s 666th edition, the Issue of the Beast. A couple weeks ago was the paper’s 15th anniversary, and around then I was in a meeting with some local business owners and I mentioned the birthday. The group burst into applause, a thankfully brief ovation that I felt a little embarrassed accepting for […]

Bigfoot is at the Spring Garden Road library (in the Don Hunter book Sasquatch, for example). Ditto the Loch Ness monster, the fountain of youth, Oak Island’s treasure and the Bermuda Triangle (this last is available on DVD in an episode of Scooby-Doo, where are you!). The library’s holdings on the mythical and mysterious are […]

The premier was so upset with a recent headline in The Chronicle Herald atop a story on energy conservation that he had his office send letters to 24 other newspapers to explain himself. The headline said “take the bus” in paraphrasing the premier’s comment, “take up the opportunity for transit.” —from the Herald on May […]

War. Famine. Blackout. The rising price of oil has some heavy implications. But what’s the one that North Americans are freaking over? The high cost of gasoline. Politicians of all stripes, presidential candidates to premiers, are facing calls to lower gas taxes from a consistently whiny group: Those among us who are convinced cheap gas […]

The most exciting thing happening in Halifax development is, strangely enough, a bureaucratic exercise—the HRM by Design planning plan. (The new Farmers’ Market comes in a close second.) HRM By Design started in July 2006, asking for public ideas on improving the city’s urban core, continued through more brainstorming sessions and updates, and almost two […]

From the bridge on Young Avenue, the Port of Halifax looks impressive. It has plenty of docks jutting into the world’s deepest natural harbour, ready to welcome even the most gigantic container ships. There are tall red and white cranes to unload the colourful stacks of containers like Lego blocks, and trucks and trains to […]

Back in the day, Henry Ford had a problem. The automobile inventor couldn’t find enough good workers to keep his factory churning out Model Ts. So on January 5, 1914, he unveiled another invention—the minimum wage. By paying at least $5 per day when the going rate for labour was closer to two bucks, he […]

In a more corporate setting, the question being posed would involve the terms “management team” and “commitment.” But this is a meeting to talk about raising money for the new Seaport Farmers’ Market, so what the prospective investor asks is more like “Are you going anywhere, Fred?” Standing in front of about 20 people Thursday […]