The goaltender position is typically treated like a specialized profession on a hockey team, and that includes having specialized gear. Where the other players—the skaters—wear equipment designed to offer protection without compromising skating and shooting speed, goalies have big, thick gear to help block pucks and absorb the force of slapshots. And while the price […]
Matt Stickland
Matt spent 10 years in the Navy where he deployed to Libya with HMCS Charlottetown and then became a submariner until ‘retiring’ in 2018. In 2019 he completed his Bachelor of Journalism from the University of King’s College. Matt is an almost award winning opinion writer.
Posted inNews + Opinion
Everything you need to know about HRM council’s Sept 29 meeting
Shorter-than-normal council meeting this week as the potentially contentious public hearings all got postponed. Public hearings need a minimum amount of notice given to people who want to attend. A last-minute postponement means that if the public hearings had gone ahead, they wouldn’t have counted, legally speaking. In spite of what you may have read […]
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Nova Scotia budget update highlights province’s class divide
Nova Scotia’s finance minister Allan MacMaster gave a fiscal update to reporters at Province House on Thursday, Sept. 29. The province is facing a higher-than-projected deficit this year, up $48 million. MacMaster says this deficit is due to things like $59 million less from personal income tax (AKA low wages) and cancelling the out of […]
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Austerity is coming to the HRM
Editor’s note: The original copy of this story said the city was reporting a $3 million surplus for the first quarter. The city is in fact reporting a $3 million deficit, the story has been corrected. The municipal audit and finance standing committee met this morning to discuss the grim future Halifax is facing. In […]
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Car-free Spring Garden Road failure exposes flaws in HRM thinking
It was an ambitious project that started one Monday in July, and was supposed to continue for nearly a year. But in spite of untold hours of public servant labour spent on planning, it didn’t last one week. At the time, the city put on a brave face, talking about regrouping and trying again soon. […]
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Everything you need to know about council’s September 13 meeting
Bit of a short meeting of Halifax Regional Council today. Not much on the agenda, and the stuff that was on the agenda largely passed with only minor debate. For a recap of the meeting, as well as notable debates and the latest councillor ratings, please read on. The rest of this space will be […]
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Board of Police Commissioners has no control over moonlighting cops
Halifax Regional Police does, in fact, have a policy governing police moonlighting in grocery stores, but no one is allowed to see it—yet. It was brought up at this week’s Board of Police Commissioners meeting by city councillor/board chair Lindell Smith because of recent media attention. The only available public policy on cops using taxpayer-funded […]
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Why Canada’s environment minister shouldn’t call himself an activist
Prior to The Coast’s interview with Steven Guilbeault, the federal minister of environment and climate change, his staff sent a file called “Guilbeault narrative and brand (BDC)(MA).docx.” “Minister Guilbeault is an activist,” it starts. This narrative/brand document is supposed to sow the seeds of optimism in the face of the climate crisis. “People must be […]
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HRM transportation committee talks transit safety, recruitment
The transportation standing committee has requested a staff report on “opportunities and challenges related to public safety in the Halifax Transit system and options to mitigate these challenges.” “The pandemic has hit everybody; I think folks are a little shorter with one another,” said Councillor Tony Mancini when putting the motion up for debate. He […]
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Everything you need to know about Halifax Regional Council’s August 23rd meeting
There will be no notable debates or council ratings this week. This Tuesday, instead of watching council, I was attending the funeral of a friend. Kathleen Jones, you will be missed. There’s always latent anger with funerals. Especially ones for people who were “supposed” to die after the people who attended their funeral. So if […]
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Everything you need to know about Halifax Regional Council’s August 9 meeting
Council is back for a meeting that almost didn’t happen. In this meeting, councillors reviewed a major policy document, allowed rooming houses, talked about parking (natch), and gave some money to community groups. Although the regional plan review is large, it is not yet law, and the issues it will inevitably cause won’t really be […]
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The politics of imagination
There’s a joke on the internet in left-wing circles: “How did you get radicalized?” And the reason it’s a joke, albeit not a funny one, is because the answer is always something mundane. For example, there is probably someone reading this article who knows just enough about surveillance capitalism; has just enough information on how […]