On Friday night, April 5, at the Metro Centre, the Halifax Mooseheads—the number-one-ranked team in all of Canadian junior hockey—begin the second round of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League Championships. The team steamrolled through the first, no-need-to-break-a-sweat, tune-up round, sweeping away the Saint John Sea Dogs in the minimum four games, outscoring their opponents […]
AJA
Cousin & wife
A group of volunteers sits in a circle of chairs in the lunch room of The Red Cross in Halifax. They’re all activists for different kinds of equality: an environmentalist; a social worker; a children’s rights activist; a gay rights advocate and a youth worker with the YMCA named Fadi. Fadi, 28, is a Kuwaiti-born […]
A trust betrayed: Peter Kelly and the estate of Mary Thibeault
When Halifax resident Mary Thibeault died in her St. Petersburg, Florida, winter home, she left an estate valued at over half a million dollars and a will naming 13 people and five charities as beneficiaries. One of the beneficiaries was Halifax mayor Peter Kelly. Thibeault called Kelly a friend and valued his judgement: In addition […]
Manufactured Slum
“There’s a lot of quiet desperation in this neighbourhood,” says Kees Zwanenburg. The priest of Holy Trinity Emmanuel church, Zwanenburg’s one of the most qualified to gauge the state of the souls who live in the north end of Dartmouth. Just a stone’s throw from the church is Victoria Road, and across that busy thoroughfare […]
Coast writers are Atlantic Journalism Award finalists
Once again showing that it punches above its tiny weight, The Coast has recently been nominated for three Atlantic Journalism Awards for work done in 2010. Contributing editor Bruce Wark is a finalist in the Enterprise Reporting category for “Blow job,” his August 5 examination of the potential pitfalls of wind power. In the same […]
Peter Kelly’s failure of will
Ninety-one-year-old Mary Thibeault died in her mobile home in St. Petersburg, Florida, on December 7, 2004. A former motel manager, Thibeault was evidently frugal. She had saved about a half-million dollars in cash, which she had squirrelled away in bank accounts, and had acquired two tiny properties—one in her native Halifax, one in Florida—worth a […]
Blow job
There are ironies everywhere if you notice them. Like the Dutch windmills on June MacDonald’s yellow tablecloth. MacDonald, a 64-year-old retired school teacher with twinkling eyes and good-humoured determination, has been fighting for more than a year against the installation of windmills near her home in Baileys Brook, Pictou County. But they’re nothing like the […]
Sable Island’s cod killer?
One morning in early April 2003, the villagers of Smith Sound, Newfoundland, awoke to a glimpse of what it might have been like to live there 500 years earlier. The sound was brimming with cod, as far as the eye could see. Villagers rushed out in their boats, scooping the fish up in nets and […]
How to kill 220,000 seals on Sable Island: the DFO plan
[image-1] A massive seal slaughter on Sable Island would involve bringing in mobile crematoriums and modified tree-harvesting equipment, and would cost upwards of $35 million, according to a study commissioned by Fisheries and Oceans Canada. The 2009 study, obtained through an Access to Information request, examined the costs and logistics associated with “managing” the grey seal population on the fragile island, a whelping ground for the world’s largest grey seal colony. For years, the fishing industry has been lobbying the DFO for a seal cull on the island, arguing that seals, not humans, are to blame for eating too many
Stephen Kimber crowned
The Coast was up for five awards at last Saturday night’s Atlantic Journalism Awards. With Coast colleagues Stephen Kimber and Tim Bousquet both nominated in the feature writing category, competition might have gotten ugly. But at the awards gala the whole Coast contingent, which included Kimber, Bousquet (also nominated for continuing coverage) and Sue Carter […]
Is Corey Wright the wrong man?
My blood is my ink / My tears are my tales / I did a couple years in jail / But I shall prevail —rhymes by Corey Wrght AKA Vinny Deniroz He smiled. Big smile. “What you doing after?” It was nudging four in the morning on Saturday, November 4, 2006, closing time at Rain, […]
Coast writers recognized
Being part of Team Coast means being surrounded by some of the most creative and talented people I know. It means being united in the cause of covering the hell out of Halifax, and knowing that although work can get stressful, at least it’s never boring. Can it get any better? Actually, it just did. […]

