Its was the best of times, it was the worst of times. But mostly the worst of times. Still, these were interesting times, and we had a lot of fun reporting on 2012. Here are the highlights: January The year started with the province announcing that it is cutting university budgets by three percent. “Universities […]
Tim Bousquet
Posted inNews + Opinion
Getting home on New Year’s Eve
It’s that time of year again: amateur drinking time. That means the roads are clogged with a bunch of drunk drivers. Don’t be one of them, OK? Jeesh, this is 20-fricken-12—there’s really no excuse for it. Unfortunately, Operation Red Nose, where you entrusted your car to complete strangers, has gone kaput because it couldn’t secure […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
IBM deal details emerge
The eight-year agreement giving provincial payroll rebates to IBM started on November 1, 2012, a week before premier Darrell Dexter made the deal public. The Coast acquired that agreement through Freedom of Information legislation. But citing provisions in the legislation that protects “information that would reveal the substance of deliberations of the Executive Council or […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Big pot bust: 28 arrested, including prominent citizens
Two US states are decriminalizing marijuana in response to ballot initiatives, and there’s a significant move to decriminalize pot in British Columbia. But here in Nova Scotia, the justice system is still prosecuting pot crimes as if it were Nancy Reagan’s America. It doesn’t matter that the vast majority of people—some polls place it as […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Will Halifax lose shipbuilding work?
There has been much local anticipation for the federal shipbuilding contract, which earmarks $25 billion in new ship construction to the Irving Shipyard in Halifax. Everyone, from the premier down to real estate speculators, has celebrated the contract as the foundation for the success of the local economy. But now a prominent military analyst is […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Hali-pocalypse!
The supposed Mayan doomsday prediction is complete nonsense. The Mayans used at least three calendars, only one of which ends on December 21, 2012. And that calendar “ends” this week in exactly the same way that our calendar ends on December 31—true, the 2012 calendars become worthless, but you simply start a 2013 calendar. Moreover, […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Bloomfield redevelopment plan approved
A redevelopment plan for the former Bloomfield School site was approved by Halifax council Tuesday, but not without considerable controversy. The school was closed in 1988, and in the following years the city mostly ignored the property. But a number of non-profit and community groups leased space in the three buildings on the site, and […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Halifax is a solar city
Halifax council Tuesday approved the Solar City program, which means that up to 1,000 houses will be equipped with solar water heating systems in HRM. Solar City was the brainchild of Richard MacLellan, the city’s manager of sustainability, who realized that Halifax wasn’t meeting its potential for using solar energy, in part because regular people […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
It matters whether a person or a machine hands you a ballot
Yesterday, I had a conversation with someone who said there was a big under-reported problem with our most recent election. This person claimed that there numerous instances of people who voted electronically, but whose ballots weren’t counted. The problem was that if, either online or over the telephone, you cast a ballot for mayor, then […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
The Western Common is a colossal mess
I often hike around the Five Bridges Lakes Wilderness. The Bluff Wilderness Trail is simply amazing, but lately I’ve been poking around the Old Coach Road, which was a 19th century stage road across the Chebucto Peninsula. The remaining bits of the Old Coach Road stretch from the Indian Lake Golf Course in Goodwood to […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Halifax and youth crime: a case study
“People have every reason to be angry about this case,” writes judge Jamie Campbell at the beginning of a 38-page decision involving a 17-year-old boy who was involved in the brutal killing of an elderly woman in Dartmouth two years ago. I could write much about this situation, but I prefer to simply post the […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Do-nothing council: more pay but less work
City councillors recently received a bump in their pay, and are now receiving just over $77,000 annually. The work load at city council meetings, however, has been slashed to unprecedented lows. In the four meetings since the October elections, council has dealt with just one significant issue: the Skye Halifax proposal. Otherwise, the collective council […]