Editorial

As you thumb through our “Back to School” guide, here’s food for thought from Marshall McLuhan: “School is the advertising agency,” McLuhan wrote, “which makes you believe you need the society as it is.” Yes, prison-like high schools equipped with surveillance cams and ruled by fascist vice-principals make perfect sense as ad agencies for our […]

“I came here as a foster child and my mumma’s buried down there,” Wendy Campbell told me last Saturday in the graveyard at Tracadie United Baptist Church near Lincolnville, a tiny black settlement in Guysborough County. “This lady took me and raised me as her own and Lincolnville is my community.” Now Campbell fears that […]

“We continue to view poverty as the fault of the individual and ignore the social and economic systems and mechanisms that are so often responsible for it.” Those are the words of Fred MacKinnon, a passionate advocate for social justice who worked as a senior civil servant for more than half a century. MacKinnon, who […]

Ahmed Assal’s human rights case was destined to be a media circus. That it happened in the middle of the slow news days of summer only added fuel to the hype. Even Fox News’s website picked up the Halifax story, summarizing Assal’s position in a particularly lampoonable way: “A man in Canada is claiming that […]

So, the Halifax-Dartmouth Bridge Commission wants to phase out tokens in its campaign to get more people to sign up for MacPass, the electronic payment system that lets drivers breeze through the toll booths without a care in the world. “MacPass is by far, from the bridge commission perspective and for the majority of our […]

All hell broke loose 16 years ago when I produced a report on the pro-Israeli bias of Peter Gzowski’s Morningside, CBC Radio’s leading current affairs show. I was producer of Media File, a CBC program that reported on the newsmedia. After the report aired, the shit hit the fan inside CBC. I spent days penning […]

Sunday is a big day for Daniel MacIvor, the writer/actor. It’s his birthday—he was born 44 years ago in Sydney, Cape Breton—and he’s marking it with a performance of his play Cul-de-sac at Neptune’s Studio Theatre. The show is the Halifax debut of the acclaimed Cul-de-sac, and one of the last events of Pride Week. […]

Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some, like Peter Kelly, have greatness thrust upon them. Well, almost. Halifax peaceniks are striving to thrust some measure of greatness upon the Supercity mayor, but so far, he’s refusing to accept it. Kelly is balking at joining Mayors for Peace, an organization campaigning for the abolition […]

Imagine a big glass of beer. No, bigger. This thing is a litre, about three bottles worth of beer. Can you see all that delicious amber liquid, bubbles dancing to the top, the glass breaking out in a cold sweat, sitting on the table in front of you on a hot July day? Now how […]

“Save the Internet!” That’s the rallying cry of one of the strangest coalitions in US history. “Save the internet!” chant the trigger-happy Gun Owners of America, echoed by the lefty lawyers of the American Civil Liberties Union. The Bible-thumpers in the Christian Coalition are singing from the same “Save the internet” hymnbook as the suave […]

Journalism’s cool club, the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, allowed The Coast to join its rarified ranks three years ago. Actually, to be perfectly cocky, they welcomed us with open arms, calling The Coast “the classic admissions-committee no-brainer.” Since then, we’ve gone to AAN’s annual club meeting to rub shoulders and share common problems with our […]

My heart bled for that hapless gal on the radio the morning after Tuesday’s provincial election. When a reporter informed her Nova Scotians had elected another minority government, the poor thing cried out, “What a bloody waste of money!” She was dead wrong, of course. In my own riding of Waverley—Fall River—Beaver Bank, the NDP’s […]