[Image-1] Halifax will join cities across the country on Saturday to protest a bill giving Canada’s intelligence agency sweeping surveillance powers. A broad coalition of citizens and advocacy organizations are concerned the federal government’s Anti-Terrorism Act will create a secret police force and impinge on democratic dissent. Simultaneous demonstrations are planned in cities across Canada […]
Canada
Posted inNews + Opinion
Child soldiers receive “full complement of horrors”
[Image-1] There are hundreds of thousands of child soldiers across the world. Roméo Dallaire wants Canadians to know those kids aren’t any different than our own children. The retired Lieutenant-general is speaking in Halifax this Tuesday at an event coordinated by his Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative. His aim is to influence young people at […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Family secrets after the Sixties Scoop
My heart is racing. I’m sitting across a conference table from P, a social worker, in the meeting room of the Elsipogtog child and family services centre. He pushes a thick file of papers towards me, held together with an alligator clip. I’ve asked for these pages, because I need to know more than what […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Labour groups are working hard to build an election
[Image-1] Avid players of the blood sport that is politics are busy preparing for the campaign leading to the next federal election, a voting day that’s still months away. Not all are platitude-spouting candidates or party strategists. But each crew—every clique in our political system—has this in common: an agenda. Many business interests, lobby groups, […]
Posted inLifestyle
Pot promos get nipped in the bud by Health Canada
[Image-1] Haligonians who buy their pot legally probably noticed changes to their dealers’ websites last month. On January 12, it became more difficult for medical marijuana users to figure out what they’re inhaling, extracting or otherwise consuming. Over the last year or so, Health Canada has cracked the whip on these private companies’ advertisements, telling […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
What drives cartoonists
My first death threat came when I was 23 years old. I was a naive tyro cartoonist for the Vancouver Province—a morning daily. Several more threats of bodily harm were directed my way, ceasing on the west coast when I joined the Toronto Star. Still more threats came at me there (not all from the […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
It’s 2015 and a scalping law is still on the books
[Image-1] Sometimes the media ocean churns up a long-forgotten bit of news jetsam from its briny depths. Such a regurgitation happened recently when this 2000 story on Nova Scotia’s scalping law showed up in my newsfeed. According to CBC’s 15-year-old story, First Nations chiefs asked the premier to remove the province’s 250-year-old scalping law from […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
The side of town you don’t hear about
[Image-1] Born and raised in the Wood Buffalo region, drag queen Iceis Rain (AKA Massey Whiteknife) is an award-winning performer, business tycoon and youth advocate. Rain took some time to tell The Coast about McMurray’s LGBT scene, the best spots to meet new people and why our perceptions of life out west aren’t really accurate. […]
Posted inLifestyle
Keeping safe in the sands
[Image-1] It’s harsh work. High pay for long hours in sometimes torturous environments. Every year more husbands, wives, sons and daughters head out toil away in the oil sands. They may end up trading their health for a chance at a decent career—if they survive. Workplace fatalities in Alberta have hovered around 50 for the […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Over a barrel, from Alberta to New Brunswick
[Image-1] The tar sands may be 4,600 kilometres away, but they’ll feel a lot closer should the proposed Energy East pipeline finally get built. The proposed TransCanada artery can carry over a million barrels of crude oil a day from the prairies to eastern Canada. But the cost may be too high. TransCanada formally applied […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
When a stranger comes home
[Image-1] “One year, I remember being away for eight months. “That’s the year the duffel bag never left the foot of the bed. Any conversations I had with my wife boiled down to grunts and money. I’d come home, we’d have a honeymoon for three days, then one day we’d wake up and we were […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
You have to leave to live here
UPDATE March 31, 2015: The special online version of our story “Fort Mac to Halifax: Living with Canada’s worst commute” was nominated today for Best Multimedia Feature by the Atlantic Journalism Awards. Congratulations to all Coasties, and there were many, who worked on this project. Remember when Stephen Harper’s griping about lazy Atlantic Canadians? “There […]
