This story was updated in June 2023. It was first published Aug. 3, 2022. Ah, the Halifax Harbour. My first memory of it isn’t riding the ferry, watching fireworks over it or crossing the bridge, although I’ve done all that too. No, for me, it’s this 2006 commercial where an anthropomorphic wave tells Haligonians to […]
Victoria Walton
Victoria was a full-time reporter with The Coast from April 2020 until mid-2022, when the CBC lured her away. During her Coast tenure, she covering everything from COVID-19 to small business to politics and social justice. Originally from the Annapolis Valley, she graduated from the University of King’s College School of Journalism in 2017.
Posted inGuides
Crystal Crescent is the non-judgemental nude beach you were made for
This story was updated in June 2023. It was first published July 15, 2022. Skinny dipping. Washing your birthday suit. Taking a midnight swim. Going for a strip ‘n’ dip. Bathing in the buff. Swimming naked has many names, and many meanings. People consider it an exhibitionist endeavour, fringe fad or impulsive action to challenge […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
How the city blew its budget for modular housing
August 18, 2021, was a defining moment for Halifax. That was the day city hall decided to evict houseless people from public lands, sending municipal workers and police out at dawn to tear down shelters and tents. And it was that Wednesday afternoon hundreds of citizens amassed at the former Halifax Memorial Library, hoping to […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Halifax will repaint Black Lives Matter murals again in 2022
Two years ago this week, George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer. He wasn’t the first person of colour to be killed by police, and he wasn’t the last. But something about Floyd’s death was different—it gave a visible push to the efforts of the Black Lives Matter movement, one that made waves […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
The ongoing fight for suicide prevention on Halifax’s MacKay Bridge
Amanda Dodsworth doesn’t drive across the MacKay Bridge anymore. Not since last spring. “I cry a lot when I do,” she says. In late March 2021, one of her closest childhood friends died by suicide, jumping from the bridge that looms 55 metres over the northern end of Halifax Harbour. Two bridges have spanned the […]
Posted inArts + Music
Shahin Sayani to depart Prismatic Arts Festival after 14 years
Founder and executive director of the Prismatic Arts Festival Shahin Sayadi announced today that he will be leaving the organization at the end of 2022. After founding the festival in Dartmouth in 2008, Sayadi has overseen Prismatic’s growth into one of Canada’s largest multidisciplinary events for BIPOC creators of theatre, dance, music, film, visual arts […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Urban beekeeping project expands to Halifax this summer
“According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway, because bees don’t care what humans think is impossible.” Yes, that’s the intro from 2007 box office […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
The Tare Shop fundraiser takes off
Halifax’s first zero-waste store, The Tare Shop, opened in early October 2018 at 5539 Cornwallis Street in Halifax’s north end. Forging ahead at full steam with the support of Halifax’s eco-conscious oceanside inhabitants, The Tare Shop opened its second location, a downtown Dartmouth branch at 21 Portland Street, in January 2021. Then came the worldwide […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Nova Scotia’s “discriminatorily underfunded” gender-affirming care system needs a revamp
Onna Young’s first memory of gender dysphoria is during a “puberty class” in fifth grade. “Everybody got to write down a question and have it anonymously answered,” she says. “Thirty questions went in the hat. Twenty-nine were answered, and I was held after school.” Young’s question was about whether someone wanting to transition had to […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Picture-perfect Dartmouth cherry trees are beginning to bloom
At the eastern edge of the Dartmouth Common, AKA Leighton Dillman Park, is Park Avenue. It’s quiet most of the year. Neighbourhood residents walk their dogs, students cut across the common on their way to and from school or the Sportplex. But for two weeks each May, the otherwise calm street is full of tourists […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Dalhousie University wants to tear down a 125-year-old home on Edward Street
Dalhousie University is growing. Enrolment numbers for Atlantic Canada’s largest university totalled nearly 22,000 students at the end of 2021, and have been increasing by at least 500 students annually for the past five years. Dalhousie is also expanding as a real estate developer, particularly around its Studley campus in south end Halifax. Last year, […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Convenience store owner Joe Thomeh retires after 46 years
In 1976, Joe Thomeh opened Thomeh’s Market Kwik-Way Convenience Store at the corner of Cornwallis and Maynard Streets, in Halifax’s north end. The two-storey building with red bricks on the bottom and matching red shingles on top is now overshadowed by nearby highrises and apartment buildings. Its letterboard sign has read “MILKHOMO” for as long […]