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 […]
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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 inArts + Music
Hannah Moscovitch leads a theatre revolution from Halifax
There was a time—before her Governor General win, before she’d co-write a musical that’d take New York by storm, before she was a known quantity even outside the sphere of Canadian theatre—that playwright Hannah Moscovitch would sit in an idle Halifax cafe, clattering away on a laptop while her copy of Cape Breton’s most famous […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
RCMP leader ridicules officers after Portapique
Say what you like about the Mass Casualty Commission—call it expensive, disrespectful or a let down—you can’t deny there’s a lot to read on the commission website. And at the end of October, another 2,000 or so documents were made public, adding to the pile of statements, decisions, transcripts, foundational documents and such related to […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Saving Canadian hockey from a goalie crisis
The dressing rooms in the Cole Harbour Place arena are long and narrow. The dressing room smells faintly of stale urine and sweat. The locker room is under the stands, the ceiling is slanted, giving the room a cramped feel. It doesn’t help that tonight the room is packed with men. Todd Bengert is tall, […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Does Canada need King Charles?
Growing up in India, Aro Narendran was always taught that the British rule over his country was unquestionably bad. History classes were clear that colonization was a dark and terrible period in India. “You’d have been called crazy if you thought otherwise,” he says. When he moved to St. John’s, NL for university, Narendran, who […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
From China, with Pride
Victor Jin is lying awake when he’s startled by a noise. He bolts up from his mattress on the floor. “The back door is made of glass; it would be easy to break,” he thinks, and rushes downstairs to check for an intruder. No burglar is smashing through the door. Victor, 30, is alone. It’s […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Media, money and misdirection: our Titanic investigation wraps
Last week, Halifax found out the city was getting a $300 million Titanic tourist attraction, complete with a hotel, restaurant and aquarium. We’d be treated to “the best of food and wines from Nova Scotia and around the world,” “escape hatches and virtual reality rooms” and a “revolutionary 4Dp holographic stage,” whatever that is. These […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
How the city blew its budget for modular housing
August 18, 2021, was a defining moment for Halifax. That was the day city hall decided to evict houseless people from public lands, sending municipal workers and police out at dawn to tear down shelters and tents. And it was that Wednesday afternoon hundreds of citizens amassed at the former Halifax Memorial Library, hoping to […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Immigrants in Halifax share the struggles to become permanent residents in Canada
Nova Scotia’s population reached 1,000,000 in 2021, which was “a significant moment in our province’s history,” as premier Tim Houston says. Helping fuel this growth was the record-breaking number of 9,020 permanent residents who were welcomed to Nova Scotia in 2021. But those who have gone through the process of applying for a permanent resident […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Nova Scotia’s infertility emergency
When Aimee MacDonald and her wife Allison MacLennan were going through the years-long process of getting pregnant with assisted reproductive therapy, they decided to keep it quiet. “This was a journey that we took alone, no one really knew we were doing this,” MacDonald says. There were a number of reasons for keeping the experience […]