Fabien Cousteau often sailed with his grandfather Jacques Cousteau on the Calypso. Now, Fabien Cousteau works to save ocean life through the promotion of aquaculture, and is the keynote speaker this week at a symposium organized by the Aquaculture Association of Nova Scotia (Friday, 2pm at the Rebecca Cohn). Is Cousteau using his famous name […]
Tim Bousquet
Posted inNews + Opinion
This week at city council
This year, we’re going to ramp up The Coast’s council meeting reporting. Instead of just one or two articles in the “dead tree” paper, expect much more analysis and comment of council proceedings, with a weekly on-line report posted in this space. This will allow me to touch on issues that I’ve previously ignored. This […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Uptown off drugs
Using a successful US drug-intervention program as a model, a collection of community organizations is working with the Halifax police department to address so-called “open market drug dealing” in Uniacke Square. The program is called the Uptown Drug Market Intervention Pilot Project, and it is the first of its kind in Canada. Uptown uses a […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
T.J. Maguire’s plan for Barrington Street
In today’s feature story, there’s a short article on the various plans for downtown Halifax over the years. We mention that T.J. Maguire has produced an extensive study of those plans; see them here. Also, we mention that Maguire sent us a plan for downtown from 1970, which is discussed in the Atlantic Advocate magazine. […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Victoria Park: the park that works despite itself
One of the oddest urban spaces in Halifax is Victoria Park, which works as a park seemingly despite itself. “It’s the neglected little sister,” says Spring Garden Area Merchants Association president Nancy Tissington. “The Public Gardens gets all the attention, and Victoria Park is forgotten about.” Tissington is talking about neglect from the city, not […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
The Dartmouth Common is a dangerous, underused park.
In Dartmouth rises a bluff that provides a spectacular view of the Halifax Harbour. To the south you see Georges Island, McNabs Island and, on a clear day, even the lighthouse on Devils Island, at the harbour entrance. Turning northward, you’ll see the towers of downtown Halifax, then a perfect view of the Macdonald Bridge […]
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How downtown gets planned, and then ignored
We’ve got a plan to save downtown Halifax! This plan will make downtown more pedestrian-friendly and add lots of street furniture (that’s bureaucratese for “benches”) and plenty of street trees. Once the plan is implemented, we will have a greener, prettier downtown, all the businesses will thrive and everyone will be oh so proud of […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
How to fix the city: We get our urban parks and green spaces all wrong.
We have an absurd view of parks in Halifax. With some few exceptions, vending is frowned upon, and alcohol is flat out illegal. Moreover, we paint all parks with the same expectation: they are green wildernesses first, and people fit in only so far as the green wilderness is maintained. This would be a much […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
The Oval: a round-about route to successful park building
Judging by simple daily attendance figures, the most successful park in the urban area is, hands down, The Oval—it gets upwards of 5,000 visitors a day. “The Oval was the right prescription for the North Common, because it is a regional attraction,” says the city’s park guru, Peter Bigelow. “There are 50,000 people who can […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Green space is wasted space
Perhaps the most pointless expression of the “green wilderness before people” sensibility is the “green space” requirement the city places on property developers. In theory, the idea makes sense: development leads to the “concrete-ization” of the city, and we’re tying to blunt the edges of that with some green here and there. In practice, however, […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Life’s a beach!
When we started researching this feature, we put a call out on Twitter, asking people which is their favourite urban park. The Oval was the overwhelming winner, but second place was a surprise, to us anyway: People really like Sands at Salter, the beach-themed park on the waterfront. Sands at Salter is a byproduct of […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Most provincial SAP workers turn down job offers from IBM
Part of the agreement between the provincial government and IBM for outsourcing the province’s SAP program included the stipulation that government workers be offered offered jobs at IBM, at their current rate of pay. Some 72 provincial SAP workers were offered such jobs, but only 28 have accepted employment at the company. That leaves 44 […]