To understand the growing right-wing movements in this province, I subjected myself to the convention for Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada at the Atlantica Hotel in Halifax on Friday, January 18. Fully aware of the United States’ MAGA movement and the disgusting politics of the alt-right, I was still not prepared for what I […]
Opinion
Posted inNews + Opinion
Letters to the editor, January 31, 2019
Bite this drug plan Canada is the only member country of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development that has universal healthcare that excludes prescription drug coverage. In Canada, drug costs are the fastest-growing health expenditure—they recently surpassed physician costs. A universal pharmacare plan would save money and yield more benefits. In 2015, Canadians spent […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Doing less means more for city streets
Transport diversity? Just cram more into our streets! Add a transit priority route, cycle lanes, more space for pedestrians. But we’ll need to keep everyone happy by maintaining plenty of room for traffic—including those precious dedicated turning lanes—and oodles of on-street parking fit for a fleet of Yukon XLs. All of this and more for […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Letters to the editor, January 24, 2019
Get rail The argument Martyn Williams puts forward in his “Forget commuter rail” piece—that a Bedford train isn’t fair to people who live elsewhere and thus have to “carry on with the cramped car commute”—is so perplexing to me (Fix the City issue, January 10). These transitions do not happen overnight. As of now the […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
The Wet’suwet’en struggle is far from over
Sixty-five kilometres up a logging road near Houston, British Columbia, just beyond a river from which you can drink directly, lies an unceded territory actively defended by its original people. To enter, you need to go through a free, prior, and informed consent protocol designed to keep people out who do not benefit the land […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Letters to the editor, January 17, 2019
Stop the pipeline To Members of Parliament, I can’t believe the government which represents me would perform such colonial violence as it is currently—in support of a liquid natural gas pipeline—on Wet’suwet’en territory. Wet’suwet’en people and those at Unist’ot’en Camp are defending their land from environmental destruction, the land which they never ceded. They have […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Speaking for The Coast: To me you are perfect
Something didn’t feel right when we sat down to bounce around ideas for this year’s Well Being Guide. While the annual issue has changed over the years—from a sports and fitness focussed attempt to get readers moving their bodies during the most hibernatable months of the year, to a more well-rounded wellness round-up with advice […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Nova Scotia’s approach to data protection remains stuck in the past
South of the border, U.S. president Donald Trump is facing a barrage of mockery for the fact that his proposed border wall is “a 1st-century solution to a 21st-century problem.” Perhaps we shouldn’t be so quick to judge, given the way our own government struggles to implement technology. On Tuesday, Catherine Tully, Nova Scotia’s information […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
SCIENCE MATTERS: Pipeline blockade is a sign of deeper troubles
Recent controversy over a natural gas pipeline blockade and the differing priorities of hereditary chiefs and elected band councillors illustrates a fundamental problem with our systems of governance and economics. Elected councils for the Wet’suwet’en and other Indigenous bands have signed lucrative “impact benefit agreements” with TransCanada (now called TC Energy), builder of the Coastal […]
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Halifax’s snow job on citizens
After listening to all of the conversations surrounding the poor snow clearing jobs after the recent snow/rain storms, I have come to the conclusion the public is getting a snow job from our elected representatives when trying to explain why we are getting such poor service. Every time, when asked about improved services, the first […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Forget about commuter rail
Won over by the irresistible romance of railway? I’ll try to conjure up the experience of what might be to come. Chuffing slowly but surely along by the shores of the Bedford Basin, you soon leave the crappy sprawling environs of Bedford behind you. Hark! The call of an eagle penetrates the soft rhythmic clatter […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Totem poles and online threats
In 2017, I wrote a poem called “What Good Canadians Do” for the Canada 150 events that were held on the Halifax Common. It was a part of my official duties as the city’s poet laureate. I was tasked with writing something celebratory about a country that was built on the removal and eradication of […]
