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Peter Kelly continues to fart and Halifax continues to sniff. The latest non-story in the disgraced former mayor’s future comes as someone—nobody knows who—has created a new website to “Draft Kelly” into running for mayor during next year’s municipal election. If you haven’t been on the Internet before, anyone can create a website for any reason without permission from the government. But that didn’t stop CBC and Metro from wasting space covering a bad decision an ex-Nova Scotian might potentially make in over a year. Journalism is sometimes a struggle to fill inches, so The Coast decided to help do its part (we did start this whole thing) and have created “Peter Kelly for Mayor” Tumblr, Reddit user and PlentyofFish accounts. We’re available for media interviews, if anyone would like to contact us.
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Today in normal full-on bragging, none of this humble shit, The Coast received an Association of Alternative Newsmedia (AAN) award nomination! Last fall’s mega feature “Fort Mac to Halifax: Living with Canada’s Worst Commute” not only inspired us to transform The Coast into The Sands for a week , it gave us the opportunity to present extra content online via our multimedia site, features.thecoast.ca. There, Nova Scotia nostalgics could dig into audio postcards, Fort Mac stats and of course, Veronica Simmonds’ cover story and that beautifully designed site earned us a nod in AAN’s Multimedia category. The winners will be announced at the AAN Convention July 18 in Salt Lake City, and if we win you’d better believe we’ll be yelling about it. Props to Veronica Simmonds, Erica Butler, Melissa Dube, Meghan Tansey Whitton, Elliott Magill and especially the issue’s ringleader/wrangler Stephanie Johns.
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What is your city councillor expensing to the city? We’re going to find out today at City Hall, when the auditor general presents a compliance review of expenses from councillors, senior management and staff over the last two years. Month-by-month and current year totals for councillor expenses (including travel costs) are supposed to be available from the municipality under Routine Disclosure laws. About a month ago, The Coast asked for the last couple of years of Halifax councillor expenses. We have a feeling the reason for the delay in getting a response will be a factor in AG Larry Munroe’s presentation today. As The Coast previously reported in 2010, guidelines for municipal expenses are actually well-composed (compared to our provincial MLAs), but some of the reporting is mismanaged. Hopefully Munroe will tell council to start putting municipal expenses online, in a clear, searchable format. Mayor Mike Savage already does as much.
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As much as I hate voting based competitions for music/film/art/etc awards and award money, there’s good news for a group of Halifax filmmakers (and let’s face it, we’ll take it where we can get it) in the CineCoup Film Accelerator competition. Local filmmakers Struan Sutherland and Nicole Steeves made the bloody and zen Namas-DIE (with an all-female cast) and are now in the top 15 for the prize money of $1M. The final five will be announced May 25, so read up on the local project here and vote local.
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Because you’re such a great person who deserves nice things, you can now send yourself flowers on the weekly thanks to Humble Burdock Farms’ new floral CSAs. No offence, box of local veggies, but 16 weeks of bouquets totally trump you.
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The Halifax bridge commission shuttle just got slightly less inconvenient for anyone trying to get over the Macdonald these next 18 months. Yesterday Halifax Harbour Bridges announced the free, 24-hour-a-day shuttle for walkers and cyclists will run between Wyse Road and Faulkner in Dartmouth and North and Gottingen Street in Halifax. We really expected more angry letters, voicemails and Bitches about the Big Lift’s interruption upon Haligonians, but so far there hasn’t been many angry comments floating into The Coast’s offices. That may change, come June 29 when people will have to use this shuttle instead of walking or cycling across old Macdonald.
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How do you feel about roundabouts and rotaries? Our latest PLANifax video collab presents a well-rounded discussion of the pros and cons of the circular intersection solutions.
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of our Sure Thing picks for tonight
All noises, sounds and ears are welcome at the Khyber SoundClub
Talking about Halifax’s past and current gentrification and white ignorance
This article appears in May 14-20, 2015.
