Last Thursday, the Halifax Association of Black Firefighters and the Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency Department officially buried the hatchet, effectively setting aside a human rights complaint the black firefighters had filed against the department. As The Coast detailed in 2009, the black firefighters’ complaint cited a series of racist incidents dating back to 1996 […]
Tim Bousquet
Posted inNews + Opinion
The shame of slut-shaming
The Rehtaeh Parsons story has brought out a lot of attention on bullying, but not enough on what I think is the core issue: misogyny. The misogyny comes before the bullying, and the bullying doesn’t happen at all without the underlying misogyny. While the guilt or innocence of Rehtaeh’s alleged rapists is a matter for […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
How much money do dead people have? And how much of it is stolen?
How much money do dead people have? Remarkably, we’re finding it difficult to get an official answer to that question. Of course, the dead can’t take it with them, which is why we have the byzantine probate process, which regulates how wills are administrated, and what happens if someone dies without a will. Today, we […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Don’t muck around with successful Youth Advocate program, says expert Michael Ungar
The first rule of life is, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But Halifax council today is being asked to do just that: take one of the most successful crime reduction strategies in the country and muck up its administration, just because. At issue is the Youth Advocate Program. Started with help of a […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Why the city should spend over $5 million to buy a gravel parking lot
As vacant lots go, the Texpark site at the corner of Granville and Sackville Streets is the epitome of Halifax’s “missing teeth”—an otherwise prime development lot that sits empty, without buildings or even landscaping. A dented and rusting chain-link fence surrounds the gravel lot, which is rented out for parking, but it’s not hard to […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Get your personal Coast reporter
Hello, readers. Here’s a chance for you to have a Coast staffer or intern work as your personal reporter. Every week, we have a small feature in the news section called “Municipal Malfunction.” To be honest, we don’t think we’ve achieved everything that’s possible with this feature, and we think, with a little help from […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Dan Savage discusses Rehtaeh Parsons
On his latest podcast, Coast columnist Dan Savage speaks with Slate editor Emily Bazelon on sexting, slut-shaming, bullying and suicide. Listen to the pod cast here.
Posted inNews + Opinion
Earth Day 2013
We are facing multiple environmental crises. Above all, we face irreversible climate change, and a cascading series of related human catastrophes— drought in agricultural zones, rising sea levels flooding out cities and entire countries, the loss of drinking water for hundreds of millions of people as glaciers disappear and rivers dry up—if we don’t act quickly. […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Reading between the pipelines
South of the border, American environmentalists are perhaps better organized than ever before, at least around climate change policies. Their most pressing target is the proposed Keystone Pipeline, built by energy giant Enbridge, which would carry diluted bitumen from the Canadian tar sands to refineries in Texas. The bulk of the project consists of reversing […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Six Metro Transit buses have caught fire since July
Wednesday afternoon, a Metro Transit bus caught on fire in Bedford. Two passengers and the driver escaped the bus unharmed, and firefighters extinguished the blaze without further incident. That fire is the sixth time a bus has caught on fire since last summer. Additionally, Metro Transit has experienced three “stack fires” in bus exhaust systems […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Denial of service attack interrupts provincial website and email
A denial of service attack took down the provincial website for about 10 minutes this morning, confirms Brian Taylor, a spokesperson for the Chief Information Office, which oversees all IT operations for the province. Starting at about 9:50am, all provincial websites were inaccessible, and the provincial email system was down as well. A denial of […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
The Rehtaeh Parsons story in context
As the Rehtaeh Parsons tragedy becomes known, Halifax suddenly finds itself on the world stage, being called “Canada’s Steubenville.” Is that a fair characterization? In terms of the general outline of events, as we know them now, probably. Allegedly the victim of a rape by four high school students, and then secondly victimized by the […]
