Senator Roméo Dallaire wasn’t thinking much about nuclear weapons when he got a call inviting him to become the Honourary Patron of the Pugwash Peace Exchange. But it didn’t take much convincing. “What I was working on (at the time) was massive crimes against humanity, which I continue to work on,” says Dallaire on the […]
Justice
Posted inNews + Opinion
The silent killers
It’s closing time at a Halifax bar and in the parking lot a fight breaks out. It’s over in seconds and the combatants scatter, except for the one they leave behind, the one they say started it all. The last they know, he’s on the ground, but they don’t think they’ve killed the guy. But […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Violence in the streets
Are you scared to walk the streets? Is the city getting out of control? What can be done about it? We invite you to continue the conversation here.
Posted inNews + Opinion
Faking it
It’s a busy Saturday night at a downtown club. The evening is cool and there’s a whiff of fall in the air. A gaggle of young women in night-club-requisite tight jeans and high heels approaches the club. One of the women is decked out in a tiara and veil. Working the door, Geoff Thompson is […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
The last best hope
Tom Martin wasn’t “full.” Not yet. He could still remember what Frank Hoskins, Sr., the legendary Halifax cop, used to tell the younger guys: No matter how much you love this job, he’d say, one day you’re gonna wake up and know you’re full. The first time Frank had said that, Martin was just a […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Drunk’d
You’d think your first time in jail would be memorable. But for many young people it’s all a blur—punctuated by a pounding headache—in the Halifax drunk tank. Halifax is known for its universities and its nightlife. It can be a messy combination. Every weekend in September, downtown fills with students looking to blow off steam […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Methology
Let’s begin with the simplest fact there is about crystal methamphetamine in Halifax: it’s not here. The Halifax Regional Police Service has never arrested anybody for possession of the drug, a powerful stimulant that’s sold in rock form like crack and can be smoked in a pipe or, when it’s in powder form, eaten, snorted […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
A dream deferred
Irvine Carvery has reason to be cautious. And he is. But he could be cynical too. And he isn’t. Since 1976, when the birth of his first son taught him the “true meaning of Africville,” Carvery has been on a seemingly doomed quest. He wants the City of Halifax to acknowledge it screwed up in […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Where the sidewalk ends
Giles Oland and his girlfriend Dawn MacPhee discovered what one expert calls “Halifax’s dirty little secret” on a Friday night last October. The couple, in their late twenties, spent a relaxing evening enjoying dinner with friends at a downtown restaurant. They stopped for a nightcap at a bar on Argyle and then, at about 1am, […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Fire hosed
Chris Dabrowski says he’s afraid he’s on the hook for $26,000—money that the computer science student doesn’t have because he didn’t have tenant’s insurance during an accidental fire set by his roommate three years ago. That’s about one-third of the amount Dabrowski’s former landlord, Jay Abbass, is seeking as subrogated costs he incurred to fix […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
A place called Home
The Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children opened in 1921. It was big, a house, really, three floors and lots of bedroom windows, on Main Street, in what is now Dartmouth. Back then it was Preston. The children it took in were orphans, mostly, and not allowed in any of the local orphanages or schools […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
CSI: Halifax
Of course this simplistic generalization is not wholly without challenge. Especially given that these are hardly gentle times we live in. For some like Rob Furlong, there exists another category, the sort most of us don’t want to get: the bad news call. Over the past few years, these types of calls have been Furlong’s […]
