Weekly COVID deaths, cases, data in Nova Scotia (May 25 update)
Shortcut to data visualizations Cases 2023 Deaths 2023 Hospitalizations 2023 Pandemic infections Weekly deaths Pandemic patients Death toll The omicron variant arrived in Nova Scotia at the end of 2021—Dec. 8 by the province’s official count—making 2022 the first full year of the omicron COVID pandemic. 2023 will be the second, unless either the disease…
UPDATED: What we know—and don’t know—about the Christmas Eve homicide, so far
On the night Ryan Michael Sawyer was killed at the corner of Prince and Brunswick streets, he left his parents’ suburban Halifax home wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs hat and a black-and-white checkered flannel shirt, The Coast has learned. Sawyer ate dinner with family and friends downtown, then wandered over to the Scotiabank Arena with…
The Halifax Board of Police Commissioners broke the law
The city’s Board of Police Commissioners voted to break the law Monday by passing the Halifax Regional Police budget. This is not just the opinion of your outside observer. The two lawyers on the board, Harry Critchley and Gavin Giles, both pointed out that the board, in passing this budget to council, would be breaking…
On budgets, public safety and using hearses as ambulances
In a meeting dominated by a discussion of what public safety is and what it will mean in the future, HRM’s budget committee discussed the first three business unit budgets up for consideration. Two of them—city finance department’s $15.4 million budget and the city legal department’s $8.8 million budget—both passed through the committee with minimal…
Here’s where to see the buzziest 2023 Oscar nominees in Halifax
Ok, Halifax it’s time to get serious: We’ve got 41 days until the 95th Academy Awards ceremony—which is going to be coming at you live on March 12, via whichever of your friends still has cable. Movie buffs already know what that means but for the rest of us, here it is: If you act…
5 takeaways about Halifax’s rental housing picture, based on the CMHC’s latest report
It’s not often our Maritime city gets to claim a “first” in Canada, but here we are: The average price of a two-bedroom rental unit in Halifax climbed more over the past year than in any of Canada’s largest municipalities, according to the latest Canada Mortgage & Housing Corporation rental market report. If you rented…
We received a video tip. Help us identify what’s in it.
function ShowAndHide() { var x = document.getElementById(‘SectionName’); if (x.style.display == ‘none’) { x.style.display = ‘block’; } else { x.style.display = ‘none’; } } The cellphone video snippet lasts four seconds and contains no sound. In it, a man in a blue Toronto Maple Leafs ball cap and a checkered flannel shirt struggles while he’s subdued…
Halifax’s road safety inaction is killing people
“Numbers never lie,” the Mexican-American novelist Luis Alberto Urrea wrote in The Devil’s Highway, “they simply tell different stories depending on the math of the tellers.” When Halifax premiered its Road Safety Dashboard in 2020, two years into a long-term plan to eliminate traffic-related injuries and deaths on the region’s streets, the intent was not…
The long-term problems of short-term thinking
Halifax council’s Wednesday budget meeting was a briefing from the city’s accountants explaining the financial difficulties in the days, weeks, months and years ahead. The main tension in the 2023 budget, as it has been for many years, is that the city is not currently sustainable. It’s important to make a few distinctions here, because…
Here’s all the nominees for the 2023 East Coast Music Awards
The East Coast Music Awards are heading to Halifax this spring, meaning that from May 3-7 the local scene is going to simmer even hotter with showcases, industry events and, yes, the awards ceremony itself. Yesterday, a press conference from the awards revealed the full list of nominees. Nova Scotia lead the pack with over…
Power to the tenants! Rental regulation coming to Halifax
The start of the HRM council meeting was delayed Tuesday morning because of the city’s reliance on car infrastructure (a driver hit another driver on one of the bridges). Since we all need cars due to lack of transit, and a lot of us need to go across one of three choke points in the…
Six new releases we can’t wait to hear in 2023
Let 2023 be the year you get out of your playlist rut, thanks to a bevy of upcoming releases from some Halifax music scene mainstays. From singles to side projects to LPs, here’s what some of Team Coast’s favourite local acts are promising to release this year: Cape Breton band Villages—known for its updated, rock-tinged…
Alehouse bouncers await February plea date for assault charges
Halifax Alehouse bouncers Alexander Pishori Levy, 37, and Matthew Brenton Day, 33, will wait until Feb. 17 to enter their pleas in connection to assault charges the two face stemming from an October incident at the pub. Both Levy and Day were scheduled to appear at the provincial courthouse on Spring Garden Road on Monday…
Fiscal peril looms as HRM passes capital budget
Editor’s note: During the budget process, each of the HRM’s business units (libraries, police, transit, etc.) will present their budgets and will (likely) ask for more money. When council approves each of these individual department budgets, they are only approved in principle pending the final vote on the budget as a whole. Unless otherwise stated,…
Welcoming the Year of the Rabbit
Gong Hei Fat Choy! Happy Year of the Rabbit! Yesterday—Sunday, January 22—marked the beginning of the Lunar New Year Festival. Whether you call it Chinese New Year, Korean New Year or Vietnamese Tết, people all over the world have kicked off this 15-day celebration welcoming the first moon of the lunar year. For the Gregorian…
Halifax, here’s your going out guide for Jan 23-25
January lives up to its mental image as a dry month, a time for trimming away the extras, when you look around the world of events. There’s simply not as much going on as the other 11 months of the year. This isn’t me hating on the month: After December’s hectic pace, it feels like…
Renting in Halifax in 2023? Bring cash—and lots of it
Haligonians bemoaning the cost of housing in the HRM now have definitive proof: The average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in our small Atlantic city is higher than in Kelowna, Kitchener, Calgary, Ottawa and pretty much everywhere that’s not Greater Toronto, Vancouver or Victoria. Per the latest Rentals.ca report, a national overview of rental…
How a simple poll about snow explains atrocities
In this week’s Coast reader poll, we asked about the weather. Specifically snow, and the lack thereof. Given that “Halifax has been very warm so far this winter and meteorologists say the city is on track to have its least snowy year ever,” we put the question to you: “Are you happy there’s less snow…
Neon Dreams’ new record is the sonic sunshine you need to hear
If sunshine had a sound, it’d be the opening warbling reverb and trilling guitar of Halifax-formed, internationally-beloved Neon Dreams’ latest album, Love Child Baby Dolphin. From the moment the needle drops on the opening track “Little Dance”, your skin starts absorbing the Vitamin D. Anthemic strings that sound loaned from Carly Rae Jepsen meld with…
Big changes coming at the African Nova Scotian Music Association
The shake-up in Halifax’s culture sector—in which many executive directors and managers of the biggest arts organizations are leaving their chairs—is now one count stronger: It’s been announced that the African Nova Scotian Music Association’s is seeking a new executive director. Related Outgoing chair and executive director Lou Gannon has helmed the organization for over…
Nova Scotia’s government says it will spend “tens of millions” to fix emergency department woes. Will it work?
Nova Scotia’s health minister stopped short of describing the province’s latest health spending announcement as a “blank cheque,” but that might as well have been the message Wednesday as premier Tim Houston’s government shared its latest plans to “go like hell” in addressing a health-care system sorely in need of mending. On Jan. 18, health…
Halifax architect Brian MacKay-Lyons appointed to the Order of Canada
Lines so crisp they paper cut the sky, colours so in tune with their surroundings they feel lifted from nature, banks of windows flooded with light: Chances are, you know a building designed by MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple when you see it—if for no other reason than the strong visual style has become a stalwart of east…
Halifax, here’s your weekend guide for Jan 19-22
January lives up to its mental image as a dry month, a time for trimming away the extras, when you look around the world of events. There’s simply not as much going on as the other 11 months of the year. This isn’t me hating on the month: After December’s hectic pace, it feels like…
Hey Halifax, here’s how to dance away your winter blues
If the winter blues got you bad, it’s time to strike back, step up and, in the words of Taylor Swift, “shake it off.” Yup, a cure for the long nights and grey skies can be found by dancing the night away—or so argue the following events, which make room for the release that only…
G-Unit’s Tony Yayo announces Halifax concert
If you’re in the mood for a little Throwback Thursday fun, level8 night club (the after-dark destination that’s, yep, located on the eighth level of 1800 Argyle Street) has your back: The venue has announced it’s bringing G-Unit’s Tony Yayo to town on Thursday, February 16. Part of 50 Cent’s expansive crew that ruled early…
Nova Scotia’s emergency departments are facing a “complete unravelling”
If you visited a Nova Scotia emergency department for a health concern in December, your odds of leaving the hospital alive were the lowest they’ve been in the past six years. That’s according to Nova Scotia Health numbers recently obtained by the NS NDP through a Freedom of Information request. About one in 666 Nova…
First look at East Cup Cafe—Halifax’s newest coffee roastery
Ahmad Issa still remembers the smell of Turkish coffee wafting through his childhood home in Jordan’s capital, Amman. It was his father’s favourite. The aroma—earthy, nutty—lingered in Issa’s memory when he relocated to Halifax in the 1990s. It was that same indelible fragrance that started a lifelong love affair with the coffee beans that would…
Canada’s first collage-focused gallery opens in Halifax this month
The sunlight is pouring through the windows inside 5663 Cornwallis Street’s suite 101, splashing on the hardwood floor and puddling on a folding table that’s littered with bits of newsprint and bottles of glue. A wall-mounted magazine rack shouts headlines in a variety of fonts from the far corner, while the gallery-white walls boast works…
Halifax, here’s your going out guide for Jan 16-18
January lives up to its mental image as a dry month, a time for trimming away the extras, when you look around the world of events. There’s simply not as much going on as the other 11 months of the year. This isn’t me hating on the month: After December’s hectic pace, it feels like…
The World Juniors brought Halifax money, crowds and a homicide case. Was it worth it?
One city block and 11 days apart, in the shadow of Citadel Hill, two scenes played out in Halifax’s downtown that will linger in the minds of Haligonians for years to come. The first scene, on Jan. 5, you’re likely to remember: Overtime. Canada vs. Czechia. A Dylan Guenther gold-medal-winning goal. Thousands cheering at Rogers…
Halifax Pride’s upheaval: what we know so far
In the mid-holiday haze of a waning 2022, many Haligonians’ thumbs stopped, mid-doom-scroll at the sight of it: An Instagram post that stood out so wildly from the typical late-year feed of festive scenes that it felt like the social media equivalent of a record scratch. A wall of text, written first-person but without a…
Nocturne and Halifax Independent Filmmakers Festival announce calls for admissions
Both Nocturne Halifax and the Halifax Independent Filmmakers Festival announced today that they’re looking for new, exciting artworks to consider for their respective events this year. Visual art festival Nocturne posted on Instagram that it is currently seeking submissions from BIPOC-identifying artists who are early to mid-career for an upcoming public art installation that’ll be…
Everything you need to know about HRM council’s Jan. 10, 2023 meeting
The property tax people gave a presentation to council on Tuesday. Lloyd MacLeod, director of assessment with the Property Valuation Services Corporation, explained to HRM councillors that PVSC values homes lower than most people expect because the valuations lag a bit. People’s property values have gone up, as has been reported in the media. MacLeod…
Nova Scotia’s primary health care picture has never been worse
If you’re reading this in Nova Scotia in 2023 and you don’t have a family doctor or nurse practitioner, take this small grain of comfort: You’ve never been less alone. As of Nova Scotia Health’s latest report, there are now more than 129,000 Nova Scotians on the province’s waitlist for a primary care provider. That’s…
Theatre Nova Scotia announces new executive director
It seems the sea change in Halifax’s culture sector won’t be slowing down in 2023. While last year saw many of the city’s arts organizations switching up their top seats, Theatre Nova Scotia announced today it’s bringing a new executive director on board. Like the other changing-of-guards that’ve taken place everywhere from FIN Atlantic International…
Health care is the most pressing issue of 2023 (for real)
In last week’s Coast poll, we asked our readers “What major issue do you most want to see our politicians address in 2023?” Overwhelmingly—with 43% of all votes cast—you responded that health care was the most pressing concern, above the housing crisis (39%), climate action (13%) or food security (5%). And this was before we…
No adequate measure of police performance in the HRM
On Dec. 22, 2022, The Coast published a very deep dive into the role police play in society. That is, the role they are expected to play vs. the role they actually play in comparison to how much we, the taxpayers, are paying for policing services. One of the things The Coast tried to find…
Alcohol and Gaming investigating Alehouse after Christmas Eve homicide
Nova Scotia’s alcohol and gambling regulator is probing the events surrounding Ryan Michael Sawyer’s death outside the Halifax Alehouse in the early morning hours of Dec. 24, The Coast can confirm. The province’s Alcohol, Gaming, Fuel and Tobacco division received a liquor licensing complaint against the Alehouse (a historic-themed tavern at 1717 Brunswick Street) on…
Halifax, here’s your going out guide for early January.
January lives up to its mental image as a dry month, a time for trimming away the extras, when you look around the world of events. There’s simply not as much going on as the other 11 months of the year. This isn’t me hating on the month: After December’s hectic pace, it feels like…
Halifax is getting another new comedy club in 2023
Throughout 2022, Halifax’s legendary comedy scene proved it still knows what’s funny, expanding its scope with a host of comedian-run open mic nights and new, indie venues around the city. As a new cohort of comics emerged, the scene found itself reinvigorated. The trend is showing no signs of slowing down as a new year…
The best resolution for 2023? Making plans to see friends—and keeping them
It was mid-November when I got the text, the final in a small flurry of life updates that read something like “I miss you! Let’s try for 2023?” My friend, the sender, meant it when they said they wanted to catch up. During COVID, our bond deepend a lot and we toggle between sending each…
Year 4 of COVID starts under a Kraken cloud
Update Jan. 6: Nova Scotia has had two confirmed cases of the Kraken variant, the province tells The Coast, so this story has been changed to reflect that. To recap: 2020 introduced COVID-19 to a world of humans who had no immunity to the virus. 2021 brought vaccines to help humanity gain immunity without infection.…
Everything you need to know about the 2023 Open Waters music festival
As wide-open as a new year feels, as fresh as a January snow, the Open Waters Festival is an annual offering of adventurous music. And what do we mean by that? Well, Upstream Music Association (the crew behind the fest) have spent the last 30-odd years making Halifax a hub for, as they put it,…
Halifax, here’s your weekend guide for Jan 5-8
Yes, yes, the nights are long and the days cold, but that excuse isn’t gonna cut it this weekend: There is simply too much interesting, noteworthy stuff happening in Halifax for you to spend time couch-bound. Instead, light up the group text with some of the following options—including concerts featuring everyone from indie rock darlings…
HRM councillor Pam Lovelace sent a cease-and-desist to her constituents
The letterboard underneath Beacon Electric and Whirlpool Corporation’s company signs on Hammonds Plains Road used to read: “Been here since 1988 now have worse councillor so far.” Until last week. On Dec. 29, Halifax city councillor Pam Lovelace posted to Facebook that she had taken legal action against Beacon Electric and Whirlpool for libel because…
5 new Nova Scotian and Canadian TV shows to watch now
The post-holiday haze, the January blahs, the still-long evenings that have a dark sky pressing against the windows by 4pm: Whatever you call this time of year (the last one was especially catchy, no?) there’s only one way to get through it. This, my friends, is peak TV season. Before you brush this off as…
Good Robot’s opening a new space next to the Halifax Common—and the brewery wants your input
Halifax’s north end is getting another brewery space. Good Robot’s co-founders have taken over the former Hook ‘Em and Cook ‘Em seafood bar at 2223 North Park Street, The Coast has learned. And while there’s no firm news on when the site might reopen under Good Robot’s stewardship—nor whether it will bear the same Good…
What Halifax’s scene needs in 2023
The crisp freshness of a new year is here, a blank page of possibility awaiting. New notebooks are cracking their spines as plans are hatched and goals are set out in permanent ink. As the calendar flips, there’s no shortage of things Halifax could choose to focus on, from enabling food security to keeping the…
6 new Halifax restaurants and cafes to get your mouth watering in 2023
The Atlantic Ocean never rests—and neither does Halifax’s food scene. Our harbour city may be smaller than some of its Canadian peers, but damn if it doesn’t punch above its weight when it comes to dining out. If you followed Halifax’s food happenings in 2022, it seemed like every other week arrived with the opening…
Halifax, here’s your weekend guide for Jan 12-15
January lives up to its mental image as a dry month, a time for trimming away the extras, when you look around the world of events. There’s simply not as much going on as the other 11 months of the year. This isn’t me hating on the month: After December’s hectic pace, it feels like…