“Adam’s fall” Matthieu Aikins’ award-winning feature on suicides from the Macdonald Bridge is a heartbreaking read even now, a decade after its publication. A year after Aikins’ story was printed, the bridge commission finally decided to install safety barriers along the old bridge to prevent future deaths. Seals of approval One of the most-read stories […]
Fort McMurray
Posted inNews + Opinion
The side of town you don’t hear about
[Image-1] Born and raised in the Wood Buffalo region, drag queen Iceis Rain (AKA Massey Whiteknife) is an award-winning performer, business tycoon and youth advocate. Rain took some time to tell The Coast about McMurray’s LGBT scene, the best spots to meet new people and why our perceptions of life out west aren’t really accurate. […]
Posted inLifestyle
Keeping safe in the sands
[Image-1] It’s harsh work. High pay for long hours in sometimes torturous environments. Every year more husbands, wives, sons and daughters head out toil away in the oil sands. They may end up trading their health for a chance at a decent career—if they survive. Workplace fatalities in Alberta have hovered around 50 for the […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Over a barrel, from Alberta to New Brunswick
[Image-1] The tar sands may be 4,600 kilometres away, but they’ll feel a lot closer should the proposed Energy East pipeline finally get built. The proposed TransCanada artery can carry over a million barrels of crude oil a day from the prairies to eastern Canada. But the cost may be too high. TransCanada formally applied […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
When a stranger comes home
[Image-1] “One year, I remember being away for eight months. “That’s the year the duffel bag never left the foot of the bed. Any conversations I had with my wife boiled down to grunts and money. I’d come home, we’d have a honeymoon for three days, then one day we’d wake up and we were […]
Posted inArts + Music
Montauk via Fort Mac
“I’ve been slightly intoxicated and requested ‘Barrett’s Privateers’ before,” says Cape Breton-born Fort McMurray transplant Carman MacDonald. “What can I say? It happens.” That’s not to say it happens often. For MacDonald, waves of homesickness aren’t as common as you’d think. An amateur bodybuilder, metal vocalist for the band Montauk and plumber who has made […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
You have to leave to live here
UPDATE March 31, 2015: The special online version of our story “Fort Mac to Halifax: Living with Canada’s worst commute” was nominated today for Best Multimedia Feature by the Atlantic Journalism Awards. Congratulations to all Coasties, and there were many, who worked on this project. Remember when Stephen Harper’s griping about lazy Atlantic Canadians? “There […]