Editorial

Just after 10pm on October 4, 1967, 12-year-old Chris Styles spotted something weird through his bedroom window overlooking the Dartmouth side of Halifax Harbour. “It was a round object, glowing orange, the colour of iron heated in a forge,” Styles writes. He ran down to the harbour to get a closer look. From a distance […]

There’s something comfortably old-shoe about attendingan NDP gathering in Halifax. You’re almost certain to run into someone you know. The neighbour down the street you saw mowing his lawn in the rain last week, the young couple with the toddler who just bought the fixer-upper on the next block, the sales clerk from the drug […]

The president of Maple Leaf Foods sat in front of a TV camera a couple of weeks ago to deliver a sombre apology. “To Canadians who are ill and to the families who have lost loved ones, I offer my deepest sympathies,” he said. “Words cannot begin to express our sadness for your pain.” Michael […]

You’d expect Halifax to give more of a shit about its student community. Tens of thousands of vibrant minds arriving each September, as natural as the tide coming in, are a resource to make any other city drool. But not this town, where municipal services like Metro Transit and the police go beyond apathy to […]

Here we go again: Multinational giant outbids Canadian outfit and workers take a hefty pay cut. Except that’s a deep, dark secret you’re not supposed to know. In this case, the workers are the 10 to 12 parking enforcement officers who patrol Halifax streets. For the past 40 years, they’ve been wearing the uniform of […]

A general admission ticket for the upcoming Keith Urban concert costs $119, but even if you wouldn’t spend a cent to see Urban and the rest of the “Country Rocks 2008” lineup, you’re still paying for the show. There’s a social cost to giving away the public Common for a commercial event (the Rolling Stones […]

Paul and Barbara-Anne Chapman say even a dog has more rights than their daughter. When the British couple arrived at Halifax airport July 12, their Labrador retriever sailed through customs. But an official with the Canada Border Services Agency demanded to know why they were bringing their seven-year-old daughter Lucy into the country. “Why shouldn’t […]

Critical mess Complaining about the roads is a national sport in Halifax.Now that it’s the summer paving season, drivers find it hard to go any distance without hitting annoying construction delays, which is great complaint fodder. The rest of the year, they can gripe about all the potholes messing with their precious suspension. When the […]

It’s been almost 19 years since the House of Commons voted unanimously to seek the elimination of child poverty by the year 2000. Yet nothing has changed. In 1989, 11.7 percent of Canadians under 18 lived below the poverty line. Today it’s still 11.7 percent. Meantime, the so-called war on child poverty has morphed into […]

Bill Phillips has a thing for public parks. He walks in them, he sits in them, he enjoys the view. And he’s a crusader for keeping public parks open to the public. One evening a few weeks ago, the Armdale resident was taking a walk through Fleming Park when he noticed something strange at the […]

Finally something to cheer about. The McRodneyites are considering lifting the ban on uranium exploration in Nova Scotia! The government launched its review of the ban after reports that there may be a shitload of the valuable mineral buried in central NS. If exploration confirms this, there would be intense pressure to mine the stuff […]