The only secure treatment facility in Nova Scotia for youth in care is once again the spotlight this week, as a court of appeal hearing examined how youth are sent to the facility—and whether the care they receive there can be truly expected to meet their needs. Wood Street Secure Care is where youth in […]
Moira Donovan
Posted inNews + Opinion
Develop Nova Scotia’s inaccessible information
The meeting minutes of Develop Nova Scotia are a pretty prosaic affair. Participants discuss their contract with Grant Thorton for auditing services; preparations for the move to a new office location; the ‘lots of progress’ being made with the Queen’s Marque development. In short, they resemble the kinds of meeting minutes you could expect to […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
City hall loosens requirements for criminal record checks
As anyone who’s ever pounded the pavement (or keyboard) in search of employment knows, job hunting can be a profoundly dispiriting exercise. For the nearly four million Canadians who’ve served sentences meted out to them by the criminal justice system, there’s an additional barrier. Canadians with criminal records have little protection from discrimination by potential […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Record of employment
Recounting the history of his involvement with the criminal justice system, Steve Deveau traces a line stretching nearly all the way across the country. First, in Yarmouth, where his mother was a single parent and “there was a lot of addiction around the house, lots of different forms of abuse from people who were hanging […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Refugee mental health care adds insult to injury
[Image-1] Roughly a year ago, the first government-sponsored Syrian refugees began to land in Canadian airports. Their arrival was greeted with jubilation by Canadians who saw it as a sign of a new direction for the country. Seemingly in testament to the fact that the federal government had turned over a new leaf, funding for […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Speaking the same language
The Melli family think about their journey in terms of routes. There are the one they took to flee their apartment in a suburb of Damascus, and the roads that take each member of the family through HRM to their respective language classes. Then there are the daily adjustments to an unfamiliar place that nonetheless […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
These first-time voters are excited for HRM’s election (even if no one else is)
[Image-1] What were you excited to do when you turned 18? For Josh Creighton, the answer is pretty obvious. “I’m more excited to vote in [the municipal election], because I feel like this—it’s closer to home,” says Creighton. “I love the idea of a councillor, how they’re in charge of this area, and their role is […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
HRM’s rural/urban struggle is real
[Image-1] Few things are more divisive than amalgamation. In the 20 years since the diverse communities of Halifax County were brought together by then-premier John Savage into the mega-blob of the HRM, criticisms of the amalgamated municipality—whether that’s resistance to signs that say ‘Halifax’ in a Dartmouth park, or protests of municipality-wide bylaws—have come up […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Trying to fix voter turnout
[Image-1] Municipal politics determine roads, police, garbage collection, the legality of urban chickens and myriad other services that make up daily life—so why is it so hard to get people to care about municipal elections? Past elections have shown it’s very hard indeed. In Halifax’s 2012 election, voter turnout was just shy of 37 percent, […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
No safe way home
[Image-1] Take a cab. It’ll be safer. For many people out at night, looking for a secure way home, it’s a familiar refrain. Lately, a different kind of phrase is becoming familiar. And for some women, the safety promised by taxis has been anything but. Since the start of 2016, five sexual assaults have been […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Seeking shelter from the storm
[Image-1] Affordable housing is one of those terms that seems to mean less every time you use it. At least, that’s how Elaine Williams sees it. “When they say ‘affordable housing,’ that drives me crazy.” Williams has lived in Mulgrave Park, at the northern end of the Halifax peninsula, for decades—45 years, to be […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Freelance reporting comes with some heavy costs
[Image-1] When a newspaper starts to crumble—as seen recently with the Chronicle Herald—the burden falls squarely on the journalists on staff, who face apparently endless cuts and ever-increasing workloads. But the unravelling of traditional media has also affected those who aren’t even employees: that is, freelance journalists. According to an email obtained by the CBC, […]
