“O wad some Power the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us!” Robbie Burns composed those immortal lines before the advent of today’s powerful international media. These global village chroniclers are certainly giving Canadians the gift of seeing ourselves—and the picture’s not pretty. Apparently we’re seen as corrupt villains bent on derailing […]
Canada
Posted inNews + Opinion
Summit talk starts to heat up
Negotiations are heating up in Copenhagen. Tuvalu has demanded that any agreement coming out of negotiations be legally binding. Their reasoning: they’d prefer not to sink. Back in 1992, at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, parties signed a treaty called the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Signatories agreed to create protocols setting […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Newcomer support groups merge
Beginning this week, recent immigrants to Halifax can look forward to new and improved support for their newcomer needs. Two organizations committed to helping people settle into their new lives are officially amalgamating to better serve under one name. The Immigrant Settlement and Integration Services (ISIS) was formerly spread over two shops—the Metropolitan Immigrant Settlement […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Did Hillier’s “murderers and scumbags” comment encourage Canadian arrests of innocent Afghans?
Rick Hillier, former chief of the Canadian defence staff, dodged questions in Halifax on Saturday about the torture of prisoners handed over by the Canadian military to the Afghan intelligence service. Hillier was asked by The Coast why the Canadian forces followed a cumbersome six-step method of informing the International Red Cross each time a […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Unembedded in Afghanistan
[Editor’s note: On May 29, 2010 this story won the Canadian Association of Journalists award as the country’s best Print Feature, the second CAJ prize Matthieu Aikins has won in two years. This piece is also one of five Coast articles selected as finalists for the 2010 Atlantic Journalism Awards. All five stories are collected […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Nepalese refugees welcomed to Halifax…
A group of Nepalese/Bhutanese refugees will start new lives and form a new immigrant community in Halifax, after spending nearly 20 years in refugee camps. Twelve government-sponsored refugees arrived last week, joining the 20 who arrived in May. “We’re assuming that we will get more,” says Sarah Cooper, settlement worker at the Metropolitan Immigrant Settlement […]
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…while a Mexican couple faces deportation
Verónica and Oscar Velasco live in a basement apartment in Dartmouth, off a street named after a flower. Like many couples in the HRM, their apartment is littered with toys and books and other remnants of young children. Unlike other couples, however, they may face deportation from Canada. Verónica and Oscar fled Mexico as refugees […]
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Not-so-Jolly Rogers
Although the theme of this year’s tall ships is naval, the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic will still be presenting its usual pirate mascot alongside a costumed naval captain on the boardwalk this year. Museum curator Dan Conlin says the public’s interest in pirate culture remains as strong as it ever was, though he’s quick […]
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$300 milion for…
Thank God for Danny Williams. And for the people of Quebec. And for Bill Casey. And, of course, for Stephen Harper, whose stubborn, sweater’s-off-now arrogance helped save us all from a fate worse than George Bush—which is to say a Stephen Harper Conservative majority government. It is easy to imagine what might have happened Tuesday […]
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What others are saying…
Here’s a copy of an open letter from 85 Canadian economists on the current economic crisis and what Canada’s government should do about it. It was put together by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a progressive think tank: The deepening global financial crisis, the decline in world commodity prices, and the growing possibility of […]
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The Great Interview Gaffe of Election 08
How beside the point will the final days of the federal election campaign get? Consider the latest hiccup in a hurricane over a botched question-and-answer Thursday (October 9) involving local CTV anchor Steve Murphy and federal Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion. During the taping of an interview with the Liberal leader, Murphy asked: “If you were […]
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Dream team
Perhaps it’s a sign of what a centre-left coalition might be able accomplish in Ottawa. Or perhaps I’m just desperate to find some hope somewhere… The Montreal Rocket, a Quebec Major Junior Hockey League team, have two players—Pierre-Antoine Dion and Nick Layton—who not only share the last names of two of Canada’s federal party leaders […]
