Four words have been etched in marker on a whiteboard in Noah Booth’s Halifax basement for years: Kayak the Eastern Shore. The words were there, scrawled in black, long before the 32-year-old geologist ever tried sea kayaking—never mind a 15-day ocean voyage. They were there longer still before Booth and his partner, Rachyl MacPhail, started […]
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Posted inNews + Opinion
School’s out for the year! Should Halifax get an “L” in school infrastructure in 2023?
Don’t shoot the messenger, but school’s back in session Tuesday. Before we say goodbye to 2023, let’s gaze back longingly into the halls of learning and growing that got us through another year, bidding farewell to schools that closed and welcoming in ones that opened. So, how did 2023 balance out? According to the Department […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
8 ways to save money on heating this winter
We’ve had a milder mid-December with daytime highs reaching 13C and 11C earlier this week, but as the days churn on toward the coldest time of the year, there’s one thing on many Haligonians’ minds: Heating costs. The price of home heating oil has “never, never been this high,” Scotia Fuels general manager James Farquhar […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Daring to question city hall’s new-car habit
During the HRM’s final budget preseason meeting, on December 12, councillor Trish Purdy caught a lot of stick. Tuesday’s budget meeting was the Capital Updates and Advance Tenders meeting. The capital update is bleak: We need a lot of capital projects—arenas, libraries, fire stations and the like—but we have no money. We have no money […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Stop the build on new French-language school on the peninsula, says suspended school board member
Parents of Francophone children on the Halifax peninsula face a bleak reality: switch their kids out of French schools before Grade 10 in order to assimilate them into English schools, or send them on a bus to the nearest French high school–l’École secondaire Mosaïque in Burnside. Frustration has reached a boiling point over years drawn […]
Posted inBest of Halifax
Best of Halifax 2023 Readers’ Choice Awards winners
We’ve been doing this for 29 years, The Coast and the people of Halifax working together to create the city’s biggest spotlight. The Coast has the easy job—hosting the Best of Halifax survey, counting the votes, having the honour of presenting the results. It’s you (or if not actually you, thousands and thousands of Coast […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
The saga of Otago Drive part 3: Unsafe by design
To recap earlier chapters of this special three-part feature, part 1 answered the question “Who cares about a speed hump?” and yesterday, part 2 explored “Halifax’s plan for a strategic bankruptcy.” We hope you enjoy today’s conclusion. The city of Halifax streams almost all of its meetings. This is helpful on weeks when life is […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
The saga of Otago Drive part 2: Halifax’s plan for a strategic bankruptcy
In case you missed it yesterday, part 1 of this special three-part feature answered the question “Who cares about a speed hump?” Read on for part 2, and be sure to come back tomorrow for part 3, “Unsafe by design.” According to city staff, the speed hump on Otago Drive was built in service of […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
The saga of Otago Drive part 1: Who cares about a speed hump?
The first chapter in a three-part series that continues tomorrow and Friday. Protected from the cold bite of the wind by the windshield, the clear blue sky looks extra clean, the way it sometimes does in the winter. It fills your view as you crest Breakheart Hill. The steep hill got the name because it’s […]
Posted inFood + Drink
Yeah Yeahs Pizza and 2 Crows Brewing are coming to Halifax’s west end—and sooner than you think
Josh Nordin can’t quite part with the VHS tapes. Nor, perhaps, the crayoned-over paper plates. If you set foot in Yeah Yeahs Pizza’s Barrington Street or Ochterloney Street shops over the past six years, chances are you aren’t ready to part with them, either. They’re part of the lore of the place—the literal walls, as […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Suspended school board member in Halifax still advocating for French-language education on the peninsula
UPDATE Nov. 22: An English translation of the interview has been added to this story—the text is below, under the original French audio version. It may surprise you to learn that there is no French-language high school on the Halifax peninsula. Not one. Parents, care-givers and students who go to primary school in French inevitably […]
Posted inArts + Music
Sam Roberts Band chase reinvention—and find it—on The Adventures of Ben Blank
Sam Roberts can write a song anywhere. True story: The down-to-earth Montreal rocker penned his breakout hit, 2002’s “Brother Down,” while living under a friend’s foosball table. (“It’s a memory I’ve tried to repress for the past 20 years,” Roberts jokes, speaking with The Coast over Zoom from his Notre-Dame-de-Grâce studio.) Over a quarter-century-long career […]