“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 […]
Voice of the City
Posted inNews + Opinion
No consent, no pipeline
The year I was born, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were 356 parts per million. The safe upper limit was 350 ppm. Since then, globally, we have increased that concentration to 410 ppm. This is a climate changed. When I heard about Justin Trudeau’s decision to buy out the Trans Mountain pipeline from Kinder Morgan, I […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Relying on a statue in a park to tell our history is lazy
Thousands of tourists will visit Halifax this summer and return home without learning an inkling of its history, all because a statue is locked in storage in Burnside. I kid, of course. If you’re a tour guide or historian who needs a statue to accurately and comprehensively share the story of Halifax, you need to […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Civil servants lied to the police and that needs to be addressed
It’s been a few months now since a 19-year-old Nova Scotian’s family home was raided over a rarely used “unauthorised access to computer” charge, which is a federal offence carrying up to 10 years in prison. There’s a hole in the middle of this whole story that needs to be addressed: civil servants lied to […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Our sad, shameless attempts to try and impress Chelsea Peretti
It makes sense that Matt Whitman would want to get Chelsea Peretti to hang out with him. When Peretti tweeted that she was going to be in Nova Scotia, Whitman offered to be her tour guide for his district. Whatever you think of the councillor, he never gives up an opportunity to be visible. But […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Dump trucks and social dumping
The large dump trucks of construction waste thunder by my Schmidtville window with a downshifting growl on the grade outside my house. One every six minutes, by my count. It’s not warm outside so my windows are closed. But just wait for the warm days when I have to open them. When this round of […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
How Halifax welcomed the Maroons
In late July 1796, on a “glorious day of warmth and sunshine,” three large transports brought 549 Trelawney Town Maroons to the harbour of Halifax. Some Maroons left valuable land and well-furnished home in Jamaica while others carrier their property—slaves—with them. The Maroons came with two white superintendents and 25,000 pounds of Jamaican currency as […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
When the men we love hate women
We were presented with 32 witnesses and an overwhelming amount of evidence that painted a gruesome picture. The Crown described how Nicholas Butcher read Kristin Johnston’s private messages, stalked her, sat outside in his car watching her through a window (with a kitchen knife in the console of his car, next to the driver’s seat), […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Customers of the state
We’re used to being thought of as customers—that the money we spend comes with certain entitlements, and that we should wield influence over those we spend it with. In the sense of expenditures on regular goods and services, this is largely true—justly or unjustly. Those of us who’ve worked in a service profession have no […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Saying goodbye to a changing city
Halifax has many rites of passage. One of them is to move to Toronto for a stint that may last forever. Five years ago, we added another rite of passage: Penning a Dear John letter about how the city has let us down and pushed us to the door. Today, the city is in the […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
No, Christians are not being persecuted in Canada
I was late to the story on Easter Sunday. By the time I rolled over and scanned Twitter, just before noon, news of the Easter morning vandalism on two local Catholic churches had spread far enough that it was the first news I read. It was awful to see an action full of hate, in […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Hiring white men in Toronto to tell our stories: A part of our heritage
Heritage Minutes: If you lived in Canada in the ’90s and had a TV, you’re probably familiar with them. Closing with the tagline “a part of our heritage,” the Minutes’ subjects include the invention of basketball, the origin of the word ‘Canada,’ the Halifax Explosion, the Underground Railroad and many more. Historica Canada began to […]
