🗞️ Dal's divestment problem

Good morning!

With tomorrow marking the start of Easter weekend, The Coast Daily is taking a short break. We’ll be back in your inbox on Tuesday, Apr. 2. (Unless, that is, you’re a Coast Insider—in which case, you’ll be getting our weekly Insider Newsletter this Saturday.)

Whether you celebrate Easter or are merely glad for a statutory holiday (or a holiday pay bump, if you’re working over the weekend), I hope it’s a restful few days for you and your loved ones. I, for one, will be eating chocolate and solving crossword puzzles.

– Martin

🌡️ Traffic & Weather

Today: ⛈️ 10°

Tomorrow: 🌧️ 13°

Next Day: 🌧️ 3°

7-day forecast

🚗 Driving, biking or busing today? Check out the current traffic conditions and ongoing road closures.

EDUCATION

Time for Dalhousie to divest from fossil fuels, student protestors say

A group of Dalhousie students has a message for their university’s administration: Get out of oil.

On Wednesday afternoon, members of DalZero—a newly-formed group of sustainability, political science and international development students—marched from the Student Union Building to president Kim Brooks’s office, calling on Dalhousie to sell off the $30.2 million in endowment funds currently invested in the fossil fuel industry.

DalZero’s members are demanding the university divest fully from fossil fuels by 2040—a step that campaign coordinator Caitlin Lawrence says other Canadian universities have already taken.

“The University of Laval is already carbon neutral, and they've fully divested from the Carbon Underground [a list of publicly-traded companies with the largest coal, oil and gas reserves],” Lawrence says, speaking with The Coast. “So we do know that it’s possible to divest from fossil fuels.”

University and college campuses across Canada have seen a rise in calls for similar divestments in recent years, including at Acadia University and St. Francis Xavier University. Dal has mulled divestment as far back as 2014, when—despite the advocacy efforts of Divest Dal—administrators decided, “considering all the impacts,” they ultimately didn’t “feel that pursuing divestment is the right approach for the university.”

Ten years later, the university tells The Coast it’s ready to meet with students “to chat about the university’s carbon reduction efforts as well as the university’s student wellbeing efforts.” But Dalhousie stopped short of mentioning divestment in its statement offered to The Coast.

Lawrence believes it’s time for change.

“We don't want any more money being slicked with oil—because it’s 2024,” she tells The Coast. “It’s undeniable we're in a climate catastrophe. If you look at Nova Scotia over the past summer, we had record-breaking fires, floods, and an increasing number of powerful storms and hurricanes.”

🤔 Need To Know

☔️ Environment Canada has issued a special weather statement for much of western Nova Scotia, extending just south of HRM. The forecast calls for “prolonged rainfall” between 40 and 60 mm through Friday.

📈 Nova Scotia’s government announces it will index income assistance to keep pace with inflation, starting at 2.5% for 2024-25.

🇨🇦 The Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 is one of Halifax’s gems. Visit the only national museum east of the Ottawa region.*

📝 The RCMP’s commissioner says his police force’s response to earlier reform calls has “not always been fulsome.” The Mounties released their latest strategy in response to a public inquiry following the 2020 Portapique mass shooting.

*Sponsored Post

MUSIC

The many faces of Hawksley Workman

Canadian singer-songwriter Hawksley Workman has never shied away from a bit of good-natured myth-making. At various times in the 49-year-old’s career, he has playfully suggested that he learned music as a custodian at a tap-dancing academy, once held a world record for parasailing and danced for the Dutch royal family—none of which is true.

But his own story—the real one—is every bit as fascinating.

From a rural Ontario upbringing to church theatre to the heights of fame in Paris, France, Workman’s path has led him to opening for David Bowie and Morrissey and—at one time, he says—holding the dubious honour of the most illegally-downloaded album in Canada.

Through JUNO acclaim and industry pitfalls—Workman says he went through a four-year depression after his most commercially successful album—he has pushed onward, forever reinventing himself: He has been a producer, podcaster, author, one-man theatre performer and a musical shape-shifter, as likely to release a country record as he is to go full-on cabaret-glam.

Ahead of Workman’s show at the Light House Arts Centre (next Saturday, Apr. 6), he caught up with The Coast to tell his story—warts and all.

🗞️ In Other News

🚢 Halifax Harbour Bridges says a deadly bridge collapse like the one in Baltimore is unlikely to happen here.

💧 Some Dartmouth residents are concerned after noticing construction run-off had turned their neighbourhood’s lake brown.

🌊 Last summer’s floods are prompting more Nova Scotia volunteers to undergo water rescue training.

🏠 Families who lost their homes to Nova Scotia’s wildfires are pleading for property tax relief, citing worries that some homeowners who rebuilt will pay nearly double the taxes over the next decade.

💰 Prime minister Justin Trudeau told premiers opposed to Canada’s carbon pricing policy that he’s open to suggestions—as long as the alternatives are “credible.” He also refuted claims that carbon pricing is driving inflation, calling the assertion “demonstrably false.”

💸 Nova Scotia is writing off more than $11M in “uncollectable debts,” including certain unpaid fines and loans.

SPONSORED BY CROWTHER & BRAYLEY

Crowther & Brayley online auction

Artwork by Jack Gray, Maud Lewis, Edith Smith, Dusan Kadlec, Alan Wylie, Robert Boyer, John Cook, Anthony Law, Eric Riordon, Joe Fafard, exceptional Lorenzen mushrooms jewellery, Hermes scarves, Georgian silver, antique oriental rugs, Asian items, good argillite totem pole.

Bidding opens Friday, March 29th. Preview auction here.

🗓️ Things To Do

Looking for something to do this long weekend? Check out these Coast picks:

🗓 Mötley Crüe Tribute: Tonight, head to the basement of the Economy Shoe Shop for a special ‘80s tribute show performed by Kyle Boudreau (The Frequency), Troy Arseneault (Alert the Medic), Sam Jam (The Legendary Goldblooms) and Quenny Stevens (The Royal Volts) | Mar. 28 | 10pm | $17.31

🗓 Halifax Mooseheads: The Herd open their QMJHL playoff run against the Acadie-Bathurst Titan with back-to-back home games this Friday and Saturday | Mar. 29-30 | 7pm | $28.25 (discounts for youth, students and seniors)

🗓 The Full Monty: Neptune Theatre’s newest show is a “boisterous, pop-rock-musical send-up of gender expectations and stereotypes… that takes it all off” | Until May 12 | Showtimes vary | From $38

Find more Halifax events in The Coast listings.

⚓️ What’s In The Harbour

🚢 The 120-metre-long Nolhan Ava ro-ro/cargo carrier is expected to arrive in Halifax from St. Pierre and Miquelon around 9am.

🚢 Remember the ONE Ibis—the container ship that was initially scheduled to come into Halifax on Tuesday? Well, make that Thursday. It’s due from New York City around 10:15am and set to depart again for Singapore by 11pm.

➡️ The CMA CGM Brazil container ship leaves Halifax for New York City around 10:30am.

🚢 The MSC Sao Paulo V container ship is expected to arrive in Halifax from Quebec City around 3:15pm.

🚢 The 294-metre-long NYK Romulus container ship is slated to berth at the Fairview Cove Terminal around 3:20pm. It’s inbound from Atwerp, Belgium.

➡️ The Oceanex Sanderling ro-ro/cargo ship leaves Halifax for St. John’s, NL, around 6pm.

🚢 The 55,828-tonne Atlantic Sky container ship is due in Halifax from Norfolk, VA, around 9:20pm.

👀 In Case You Missed It

📉 Halifax Transit caught flak at its Budget Committee session for a number of reasons—including doubling down on less-popular routes and predicting a per-capita drop in ridership.

🚨 Halifax police found no threat after a weapons call prompted Dalhousie University to tell staff and students to “shelter in place” and stay clear of the Killam Library on Tuesday.

📈 Canada’s population is estimated to have hit the 41-million mark, less than a year after cracking the 40-million threshold.

That’s it!

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