The wave of reconciliation is shallow, but it’s spreading. So says Wyatt White, the Halifax Regional Municipality’s first-ever Indigenous advisor. White, who hails from the Listuguj Mi’kmaq First Nation on the New Brunswick/Quebec border, is a former aboriginal affairs advisor to Environment Canada and to the provincial department of Education. He recently sat down with […]
Cornwallis
Posted inNews + Opinion
David Hendsbee surprised Halifax didn’t use a red tarp to cover Cornwallis statue
Days after calling Indigenous protestors “hotheads on the warpath,” Halifax Regional councillor David Hendsbee privately joked with his council colleagues about smoking a “peace pipe” and expressed surprise that the tarp the municipality used to cover the statue of Cornwallis wasn’t red. The comments were made this past summer after hundreds of protesters gathered in […]
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We stand with El Jones
As faculty members at Mount Saint Vincent University and concerned members of the Halifax community, we write to express our outrage at the racist caricature of El Jones, our colleague at MSVU, that appeared in the pages of Frank Magazine. The cartoon showed Jones, along with Halifax’s poet laureate Rebecca Thomas and others, at a […]
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When Daniel Paul found Cornwallis
Daniel Paul found his rival in a pub in 1965. He and his brother Lawrence and their Indian Brook friend Norman Brooks were upgrading their education together in Dartmouth. Getting out of school early one day, the trio headed to Halifax’s Piccadilly Tavern on Argyle Street for a few beers. They had enough cash to […]
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Cornwallis panel needs to proceed slowly, cautions HRM councillors
It’s been over a week since Halifax Regional Council voted for an expert panel to examine how the city commemorates its problematic founder, but there’s still no word on who will take part. Officially, HRM has four names selected. Those individuals are being contacted by city staff for confirmation. Another four names will be selected […]
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Update: Matt Whitman all-lives-matters Cornwallis panel
Update: Mason clarifies his since-deleted tweet was agreeing only that Whitman, Adams and Hendsbee need public shaming, not that they are shitheads. The councillor previously told The Coast he stood by his comment when asked about “shitheads” Tuesday evening, but today says he thought we were referencing a different comment. “Sorry, totally my bad,” Mason tweets. […]
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Eight-person expert panel proposed to determine the fate of Cornwallis
Eight people will help decide Edward Cornwallis’ place in history, but it’ll be up to the 16 members of Halifax Regional Council to follow through on the expert panel’s advice. The municipality has released its tentative terms of reference for the special advisory committee it hopes to task with examining Halifax’s commemoration of its controversial […]
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10 things that happened at city council
ACCESSIBILITY INACCESSIBLE Steve Craig is fed up with the lack of accessible transportation options in HRM. It’s been three years since the Lower Sackville councillor tried to expand the city’s door-to-door paratransit service, and now he’ll have to wait at least a few more months for an outside consultant’s strategic review of Access-a-Bus service. “I’m […]
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White supremacy doesn’t stop at the border
One of the voices behind Tuesday evening’s demonstration in solidarity with Charlottesville says fascism and white supremacy isn’t isolated to the deep south. “It’s important to recognize the way the forces that animate the far right and white supremacists in the United States don’t stop at the border,” says Brad Vaughan, who’s with the local […]
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Watch this: Cornwallis protester disrupts council, records video
Instead of a press conference and symbolic tarp, members of the public who repeatedly disrupted Tuesday’s meeting of Regional Council were escorted out of council chambers by security. Trish MacIntyre, a Métis activist with Halifax Anonymous and one of the organizers of last weekend’s protest at Cornwallis Park, was at City Hall to watch mayor […]
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Cornwallis tarp already removed
Only a few hours after being covered up, the statue of Edward Cornwallis has already been unveiled. Municipal workers, under orders from mayor Mike Savage, draped the controversial monument with a black tarp during a protest early Saturday afternoon. It was a compromise from municipal officials hoping to keep the peace as nearly 300 people […]
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Daniel Paul on protest to topple Cornwallis statue: “If it goes, it goes”
The man who for decades has led the charge to bring Edward Cornwallis down from his pedestal isn’t opposed to a little civil disobedience. Organizers of a divisive protest happening this Saturday are hoping to topple the bronze, south-end statue, which they say “for too long has been representing genocide in M’ikma’ki.” Mayor Mike Savage […]