Tonya Wimmer has gotten used to being the bearer of bad news. Every time someone spots a dead right whale in the Gulf of St. Lawrence—which has happened eight times this year alone—her Halifax-based organization, the Marine Animal Response Society (MARS), gets the call. Then it’s Wimmer’s job to notify scientists, government officials and conservation […]
correction
Posted inLifestyle
Cannabis review: Indica and sativa don’t mean much in a world gone hybrid
Durga Mata 2 Producer: Namaste Price: $9.99 for one-gram pack Ebb & Flow Producer: Reef Price: $48.99 for 3.5-gram pack ($13.99/gram) Sweet Tartan Producer: Highland Grow Inc. Price: $25.18 for pack of three pre-rolled joints ($16.79/gram) From chief cannabis researchers in Berkley’s analytical labs, to a study from Dalhousie Agriculture on strain genetics, more and […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Nova Scotia’s prisons still awful
Hey great news everyone, over half the prisoners in the province are on remand and the guards watching them are improperly trained. This comes from auditor general Michael Pickup’s latest report, which lays out a stark portrayal of Nova Scotia’s correctional facilities and their deficiencies in safety, security and training. Policies for the use of solitary […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Central Nova Correctional Facility unveils $6.8-million renovations
Burnside’s prison is hoping to shed its infamous and violent reputation with the help of an expensive makeover. The Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility gave a media tour of its $6.8-million renovations Tuesday morning. The upgrades are part of a new way of facilitating inmates’ living quarters, designed to prevent violent altercations and quickly suppress […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Impounded dogs are at the mercy of slow-moving courts
[Image-1] CORRECTION: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated Bastarache visited her dog at Wyndenfog. All visits with Chomper took place at Homeward Bound. Wyndenfog was also incorrectly identified as a pound. It is in fact a boarding kennel. The Coast has removed these references and apologizes for the errors. Chomper was seized by […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Celebrating Johanna Dean
As rush hour ends on May 28, a crowd of about 300 cyclists pedals along Dartmouth’s Windmill Road at a jogger’s pace. At times a bike bell rings out and others chime in. It is cool but sunny, much like the afternoon Johanna Dean passed away. A week earlier, just before 3pm, the 30-year-old elementary […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
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 […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Meghan Fish Contemporary Art + Projects: CORRECTION
Meghan Fish Contemporary Art + Projects will be showing its inaugural exhibition until April 23 at the art space 2053 (Gottingen Street, 877-5002). Fish displays a variety of painting, photography and new media by artists from across the country, as well as a number of local artists. The gallery is open (Tuesday to Saturday, 12pm […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Apology to Corporate Research Associates Inc. and Don Mills
A recent blog post, written by Tim Bousquet and published at thecoast.ca May 26, was unfair to local polling company Corporate Research Associates and its president, Don Mills. The bulk of the blog post repeated excerpts from a press release from the citizens’ group Save the View. That press release claimed that a CRA poll […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Corporate Research Associates poll is completely meaningless
The Chronicle-Herald, CBC and Metro have completely botched their reporting of a Corporate Research Associates poll that supposedly showed a collapse in support for the provincial NDP. In truth, the NDP may or may not be losing support, but the polling data doesn’t support either conclusion. At issue are the responses to one of three […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Black firefighters enraged
[image-1] Management at the Halifax Fire Department has again failed to properly address racist behaviour, say black firefighters. Last month, a black firefighter assigned to Station 50 on Hammonds Plain Road picked up a clipboard with the daily checklist for fire truck inspection, and discovered a racist and sexist “poem” written on the back of the clipboard. The firefighter immediately reported the incident to superiors but management did not issue a condemnation of the incident until after the Halifax Association of Black Fire Fighters complained. The week delay angers the HABFF, as an immediate and public management condemnation of racist
Posted inBest of Halifax
Best Book
“Made of wet boots and rain and shiny black ravens on chimney smoke lanes,” sang Tom Waits in his song “November.” We recommend you dig out Waits’s Black Rider album to spin while you dig into Steve Vernon’s book—published by Nimbus—on the darker corners of our seaside town, the restless spirits that stalk our old […]