Urban Home has closed its doors and vacated the high-profile premises at the corner of Cunard and Agricola Streets. The furniture store had a rough go off it from the start; its announced opening in February 2011 was delayed four days, then earlier this year the store shut down for renovations that dragged on for […]
Tim Bousquet
Posted inNews + Opinion
Raymond Taavel vigil
Tuesday night, 1,000 people filled Gottingen Street in front of Menz Bar to remember and celebrate the life of Raymond Taavel, the gay man who was murdered outside of the bar in the early hours of the day. Here are some of the images from that remembrance. I’m sure I’m getting some of the names […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Raymond Taavel killed on Gottingen Street
Developing story Raymond Taavel, a long-time and respected fixture in Halifax’s gay community, was killed last night outside Menz Bar on Gottingen Street. As of this writing (noon on Tuesday), Halifax police have only issued one statement, saying that a 32-year-old man is in custody. A CBC news report, however, describes circumstances that suggest Taavel […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Keep it together
De-amalgamating the Halifax Regional Municipality is the worst thing we could possibly do for this city. I don’t want to re-fight the 1996 forced merger of the cities of Halifax and Dartmouth, the town of Bedford and Halifax County, except to note that while it was heavy-handed and rushed, it was an attempt to address […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Big stink at Halifax city hall
Big odour problems at the Otter Lake landfill are at the heart of a nasty bureaucratic showdown in city hall, with a city commission charged with overseeing landfill operations taking the unusual step of hiring a lawyer to fight CAO Richard Butts. Back on Sept 28, 2010, city council agreed to a no-bid contract worth […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
The Chronicle Herald gets it all wrong
There’s nothing wrong with one newspaper criticizing another, and certainly I think The Coast is as open to critique as anyone else. Still, it would nice if criticism thrown our way at least pretended to adhere to the fundamental tenets of journalism. At issue is a Chronicle-Herald article published late Thursday, following up on my […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
From Nova Scotia with love
High Arctic, 2002: A team of researchers from the United States and Greenland studies the movements of narwhals through Baffin Bay and the maze of straits and bays of northern Canada. The researchers attach Seimac SSC3 transmitters to the whales. Manufactured in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, the transmitters send signals to satellites orbiting high above, and […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
A real crime
Six weeks ago today, The Coast published the results of my exclusive investigation of mayor Peter Kelly’s failure to properly execute the will of Mary Thibeault. (“A trust betrayed,” February 16). That article showed how, after her death, Kelly had transferred over $160,000 from Thibeault’s bank account, placing the money in the control of himself […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Halifax election not at risk, says city clerk
Last weekend’s NDP leadership vote was the target of a “deliberate large-scale Distributed Denial of Service attack that attempted to deny NDP members access to the online balloting system,” says a press released issued Tuesday by Scytl, the company hired to conduct the e-voting. Scytl is a Barcelona, Spain-headquartered company, and the largest e-voting firm […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Halifax’s stadium dreams are smashed
On December 7, 2010, Grant MacDonald, addressed the Halifax city council. MacDonald is the director of Major Events & Community Partnerships at Trade Centre Limited, the provincial crown corporation that has expertise in major sporting and concert events, and council had asked MacDonald to research the possibility of the city bidding on the opportunity to […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
City Hall update
The YMCA/CBC project notwithstanding, Halifax council is now in a bit of a holding pattern before the annual budget debates begin in April. There are, however a few issues slowly making their way through the process, as follows: Stadium Council was originally scheduled to review stadium options this Tuesday (March 20), but nothing was presented […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Profile: Canadian School of Lutherie
Even with the google map app on my iPhone, I got lost trying to find the Canadian School of Lutherie (19 Pettipas Drive, Unit Z, 481-0170) in the Burnside business park. It’s sort of behind Akerley Boulevard, not so far back as the jail, but stuck randomly in a stretch of identical warehouses along a […]