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The Coast | News, events, restaurants, concerts and Burger Week for Halifax, Nova Scotia
Home of the Best of Halifax Reader's Choice Awards, the award-winning independent newspaper covers the Halifax news, politics, events, concerts, movies, restaurants, and nightlife scene.
[Image-1] The Halifax Pop Explosion has just announced its dates for 2016. Surprise! It’s October 19 to 22. While we’re waiting patiently for the line-up to be announced, what better time to muse about who’s on our wish-list? Run the Jewels: Killer Mike and El-P are at the height of their gritty, uncompromising hip-hop game.…
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 The residents of Cole Harbour-Westphal are about to go on a $60,000 spending spree. District 4, which includes the communities of Cole Harbour, Westphal, Lake Major, Cherry Brook and Lake Loon will have its first participatory budget meeting on Thursday, April 14. The event allows area residents to decide how best to spend the…
[Image-1] Six organizations in the Annapolis Valley and South Shore regions will receive $70,000 from the province to combat sexual violence. Keith Irving, MLA of Kings South, announced the “Prevention Innovation Grants” Tuesday morning at Acadia University. The Wolfville university will receive nearly $27,000 to invest in prevention strategies focused around consent and coercion. Other…
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 Regional council has voted to overhaul HRM’s transit network—barring a couple dozen amendments it needs to investigate first. 
Halifax Transit’s Moving Forward Together plan was discussed for several hours at Tuesday’s committee of the whole meeting. The five-year plan has been in the making since 2013, and will dismantle and rebuild the municipality’s…
[Image-1] There’s finally a clear picture of those design changes being proposed for the Nova Centre. In March, the as-yet-finalized changes to the $500-million complex caught the municipality and the public by surprise when a vague description appeared on an information item that was supposed to go before HRM’s Design Review Committee. That meeting was…
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 This past Friday the Chronicle Herald published an article detailing the alleged brutality of refugee children at a local elementary school. It was widely and strongly criticized. By Saturday night the most outrageous passage—which quoted an anonymous source who said a refugee child choked a classmate with a chain while yelling “Muslims rule the…
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To my new Syrian friends—who will never read this, as it is published at a time when you do not read English—thus it is addressed to greater Halifax, on your behalf. Your families only moved into my building a month ago, but I already feel like I have known you all forever. The last two…
On Wednesday, March 16, Saskatoon classic-style rock band The Sheepdogs played one of two sold-out shows at The Marquee Ballroom, and Coast photographer Andrew Donovan (Phototype) was there in the jam-packed crowd to snap pics of canines howling at the moon. Related Stories
“The Halifax music industry is overflowing with incredible, underrated musicians who are yet to be discovered,” says Emma Cassidy, one of the 21 students in this year’s edition of the Nova Scotia Community College’s Music Business Program. Tonight at The Marquee and The Seahorse (2037 Gottingen Street, 10pm, $8/$5), students in the program are putting on…
City council has to deal with a lot of petty stuff, from potholes to leash laws. It’s not quite as glamorous as today’s federal politicians, who get to play Santa Claus and hand out a bunch of Tru-dough across the country. But local leaders rule when it comes to development, which is probably the most…
[Image-1] When Jodi Brown moved into her new home in Spryfield’s Greystone neighbourhood, she knew she would be making some changes in her lifestyle. She didn’t know that she was signing up to live with rodents. Like many tenants in public housing throughout HRM, Brown is dealing with an infestation of mice. And just like…
[Image-1] Bert and Ernie never sang about a “rubber ferry,” but there’s a possibility tourists visiting Halifax in the summer months may. Halifax Transit is toying with idea of selling rubber ferry tub toys to residents and tourists that make regular use of the ferry. A standing offer from the municipality is looking for the…
[Image-1] The most famous lawyer in the country is coming to Halifax. Marie Henein, of Toronto’s Henein Hutchison LLP, will be the keynote speaker at the Atlantic Women in Litigation conference, taking place May 5 at the Prince George Hotel on Market Street. Already a formidable legal expert, Henein became a household name over the…
Raise your hand if you’re ready to be freed of the shackles known as socks and boots. Second-hand shop—and home of Anna Gilkerson’s one-year-old clothing line AKG—Makenew 
(2468 Agricola Street) feels you on this. A scroll through its Instagram feed and you’ll swear you feel a little sunshine on your cheeks. As a perfect accent…
[Image-3] “Morning,” I say to the group of men huddled outside Direction 180 as I walk by. After years in this small city, many of their faces are familiar to me—I note that today is the first time that I’ll ask them how they’re doing. A short man with scruffy grey hair, who is 71…
[Image-1] Things have changed at the Smiling Goat Organic Espresso Bar. New owner Kit Singh took over the coffee shop at the end of January. He says he became instantly attracted to business opportunities in the city after taking a trip to Halifax in September from his home in England. “When I came to know…
[Image-1] We all love our new, international award-winning Halifax Central Library. Its first year boasted 1.9 million visits—twice what was predicted. Remember the awe you felt on your first visit? For me it was like someone was reading my mind when I overheard, “This is SO NOT the Halifax we’re used to.” This library cost…
[Image-1] It was a police emergency like few others. A man, possibly armed with a sword, had broken into a house and was fleeing the scene in a canoe on the Northwest Arm. Two police cars arrive at the Armdale Yacht Club, the officers inside looking to hitch a ride on a boat so they…
Q I am a twentysomething, straight, cis-female expat. How long do I have to wait to ask my German lover, who is übersensitive about the Holocaust, to indulge me in my greatest—and, until now, unrealized—fantasy: Nazi role-play? He is very delicate around me because I am a secular Jew and the descendant of Holocaust survivors.…
HAPPY BIRTHDAY Aries (Mar 21-Apr 19) French artist Henri Matisse (1869-1954) is regarded as one of the greats, in the same league as Picasso and Kandinsky. Even in his 80s, he was still creating marvels that one critic said seemed “to come from the springtime of the world.” As unique as his work was, he…
For Edwin Janzen, the remote control isn’t a handy gizmo that rules the entertainment centre, has an amazing knack for getting lost or calls to mind the Larry Sanders “no flipping” command. Rather it’s “a murky place of hair and filth,” says the Montreal-based artist/photographer, “almost a miniature ecosystem in its own right.” In Remotes,…

“In talking to moms that have children from newborn to seven, eight, nine years old—it doesn’t change that much,” says 
Nicole Landry. “You’re thinking about everyone else’s needs and it’s very easy to forget about yourself.” A Dartmouth-based new mom with a longtime interest in self-care and women’s health, she’s launching her quarterly subscription box—Oh…
The beer with the name you couldn’t pronounce in December is back, and after a long winter stuck in a Glenora whisky barrel it’s older, wiser and full of alcohol—exactly how you’ll feel after your first sip. If you’re lucky enough to get one. We’re talking about Triskaidekaphobia, an imperial brown ale brewed up by…
No need to pinch yourself, you’re not dreaming. This is what 1673 Barrington Street—the longtime home of Certainly Cinnamon—looks like now. Its transition from deserted cafe to moody hangout is at the hands of bartenders Adam MacLeod and Michael Hopper and Field Guide owners Dan Vorstermans and Ceilidh Sutherland, who’ve teamed up in the name…
“The whole process was exhausting,” says Erin Costelo. “Everything was on my shoulders, so I had a lot of pressure. It was the hardest record I’ve ever made, because it felt like so many decisions and so much work.” Insert every aphorism, saying and inspirational meme about the payoff of hard work right here, because…
The curtain rises on a young Shrek, bathed in the dazzling light of a crescent moon. According to the original song that his parents are singing, he is seven. And so are most of the people in the audience. Here, at the opening night of Shrek The Musical, I expected to see more jaded millennials—people…
