Welcome to episode two of The Coast’s 25th-anniversary podcast. This week arts editor Tara Thorne and city editor Jacob Boon talk about Friends and Rita and Friends. We look back at Shakespeare by the Sea, watch as the city makes its first failed effort to make amends for Africville and discuss the practicalities of racing […]
Racism
Posted inNews + Opinion
Two more ex-councillors speak up about discrimination inside HRM
Two former city councillors are joining with one of their past colleagues in demanding a public inquiry into racism within HRM’s workforce. Previous downtown and south end councillors Dawn Sloane and Sue Uteck, along with Equity Watch co-founders Jackie Barkhouse and Liane Tessier, held a press conference outside City Hall on Thursday afternoon to describe […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
How Halifax failed Randy Symonds
Marie Symonds hates the bus. Growing up, her kids were told to always be careful taking transit. If anything happened, keep calm and call her. “You never know what’s going to happen when you get on the bus when you’re Black,” she says. About a year ago, her daughter Carole was taking a bus to […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Confidential hotline, external consultant promised to address racism in HRM’s workforce
Halifax’s chief administrative officer is trying to quell growing public outrage now that the racial discrimination inside city hall’s workforce has come to light. In a public update sent out Monday afternoon, CAO Jacques Dubé says a new confidential hotline will go live next month for employees to report abuses when they aren’t comfortable going […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
No public inquiry into Halifax Transit racism says CAO
The municipality’s top manager and the transit union’s president are both laying the blame on each other for the decades of racial harassment that occurred inside Halifax Transit. Despite the confusion, chief administrative officer Jacques Dubé doesn’t think a public inquiry is needed to find out who should be held accountable. “We’re not considering that […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Maximum damages sought in Halifax Transit racism case
A Halifax Transit employee is asking for maximum damages after facing years of threats and racial harassment. The complainant is seeking the maximum allowable damages of $367,000 for psychological injuries sustained over a period of almost 20 years at Metro Transit (now Halifax Transit) and another $1 million in lost earnings and pension. The man’s […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Lawyer slams HRM’s freedom of speech defence for racial abuse
The municipality apparently feels its employees have a Charter right to call each other racial epithets. It’s the bizarre defence that lawyers representing HRM used during an independent board of inquiry into complaints of racial discrimination at Halifax Transit’s Burnside warehouse. As exposed earlier this week in the board’s decision, Black and Indigenous employees in […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Halifax fires transit supervisor
A supervisor at the Burnside bus garage has been terminated after a board of inquiry found him responsible for multiple instances of racial discrimination and harassment over the past 18 years. The Coast has learned that Halifax Transit employee Arthur Maddox was fired last week, just days before the scathing board decision by barrister Lynn […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
History lessons and white academia
“White teachers taught in residential schools, why shouldn’t white profs teach about its history?” It’s a satirical headline from Walking Eagle News, written about the recent controversy at Mount Saint Vincent University and the lack of Indigenous voices in academia. But the joke also speaks to the uneasy and ongoing tradition of white Canadians taking […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
City hall employees protest racism in the workplace
The municipality admits it’s not going a good enough job in creating a diverse and supportive work environment, and is promising—once again—to do better. The acknowledgement comes after 20 public employees demonstrated outside City Hall on Tuesday in protest of racial discrimination inside HRM’s workforce. The mostly African Nova Scotian group was speaking out against […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Jamaican Cultural Association wants official apology from Smith-McCrossin
The Jamaican Cultural Association of Nova Scotia wants an official apology on the floor of the Legislature from Elizabeth Smith-McCrossin. A press release from the not-for-profit says JCANS representatives recently met with the Cumberland North MLA about her comments that legalizing cannabis could make Nova Scotia unproductive like Jamaica. During a debate on Nova Scotia’s […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Matt Whitman stands by white supremacists’ message
All the people who don’t like Matt Whitman just don’t know the “real” Matt Whitman. So says Matt Whitman. “They just know the guy that criticized an RCMP officer for giving someone a ticket,” says the councillor. “Or the guy that ran around his car with his 19-year-old son after coming from a funeral.” Or […]
