🗞️ Tent eviction deadline looms

Good morning!

Last week, some of you let us know that you were having issues opening links in the Coast Daily newsletter. We apologize for that. The explanation is a rather boring one, but here’s the gist: Every email software comes with its set of quirks, and as our software provider tinkers to make improvements (ones we love!), that occasionally means that bugs arise. And last week, that led to issues with links. (Boo!)

We brought it up right away with our email software host, and they’ve fixed the issue. Thanks for your patience—and please keep letting us know if you ever encounter issues with accessing the Coast Daily newsletter.

– Martin

🌡️ Traffic & Weather

Today: 🌨️ 1°

Tomorrow: ⛅ 7°

Next Day: 🌧️ 10°

7-day forecast

🚗 Driving today? Check out the current traffic conditions and ongoing road closures.

CITY HALL

Bringing people back to sidewalks and buses

The city’s Transportation Standing Committee met late last week, and the main order of business was what happens to sidewalks during construction. Right now it’s typical for a construction site to take over the adjacent sidewalk and direct people to the other side of the street, but the committee decided that going forward Halifax’s sidewalks should remain accessible during construction. The committee got a report outlining proposed rule changes to make this happen, including things like maximum ramp slope and cane-detectable infrastructure requirements, and is sending the report to council to approve the new rules.

At the behest of the city’s Active Transportation Advisory Committee and the CNIB, this standing committee is also going to explore how to make bus stops less dangerous for people without full sight. That is to say the committee asked city staff to investigate the bus stop situ and write a report.

In other transportation news, the city is back to pre-pandemic ridership levels on public transit and will no longer use those numbers as a baseline. (Good!) But there’s still a ways to go: At its peak during the 1940s, Halifax Transit’s predecessor had a ridership of 31 million rides per year, for a population of 120,000. Now, with a population of 500,000 across HRM—and with some councillors acknowledging we should treat our climate emergency with the same urgency as a World War II-level event—we’re at about 29.2 million riders a year. Or, in other words, today’s ridership is a bit below Halifax’s peak levels, even though the population is more than four times larger.

Coast reporter Matt Stickland will have more on the Transportation Standing Committee’s latest meeting soon on TheCoast.ca.

SPONSORED BY ELEVATION PICTURES

Witness the Incredible Journey: 500 DAYS IN THE WILD, in theatres March 1

Award-winning director and cinematographer Dianne Whelan is the only person to complete this epic journey of discovery—hiking, biking, paddling, snowshoeing and skiing across the country.

For a woman in her 50s who is not an extreme athlete, it was sometimes gruelling, occasionally harrowing, often exhilarating and always surprising. She started out alone, disillusioned with the state of the world and worried about climate change, to look for different ways of caring for the land and each other. She ended the journey a bit wiser, more hopeful, in love and with a passion to share this story.

Experience her journey, the film is in theatres March 1.

🤔 Need to know

⛺ As today’s eviction deadline looms, Halifax says nearly half of the HRM’s tent encampment residents have moved into indoor shelters.

🏠 Meanwhile, the province says it’s “reflecting” after plans for a temporary shelter village in Lower Sackville prompted significant pushback from some residents.

🩰 Live Art Dance presents Ballet Edmonton, coming to Halifax on March 22nd at the Spatz Theatre, 8:00 pm! Get your tickets TODAY!*

💊 The federal Liberal government and the NDP have struck a deal on pharmacare, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh says.

🍜 Take noodle appreciation to a whole new level during Oodles of Noodles, March 6-10 on Quinpool Road! Every day is a good day for noodles.*

*Sponsored Post

SPORTS

Halifax Wanderers preseason kicks off with high hopes of title contention

Four months removed from a disappointing Canadian Premier League first-round playoff exit, the Halifax Wanderers are back—and looking like a team with something to prove.

Mid-last week, the Wanderers opened training camp ahead of their sixth CPL season. The soccer club will continue to train in Halifax for most of the next month, before setting off for Toronto, Seattle and Vancouver for a series of exhibition matches in the lead-up to their season opener on Apr. 13 against the team that brought their star-crossed 2023 campaign to an end: Pacific FC.

Memories of the Wanderers’ playoff loss haven’t faded.

“We were so close,” defender Cale Loughrey (pictured above left) told The Coast in the latest Wanderer Grounds podcast. “That’s just football for you. We hit the crossbar [at least] twice and were all over [Pacific]… we’ve just gotta make sure that we don’t give them the chance this year.”

Full-back Zach Fernandez was equally blunt in sharing his goals for 2024.

“Bring back a championship to Halifax,” he told The Coast after Friday’s training session. “That’s our main goal.”

Wanderers head coach Patrice Gheisar will have plenty of talent to choose from in picking his starting lineups in 2024: CPL Players’ Player of the Year contenders Dan Nimick, Massimo Ferrin and Lorenzo Callegari are all back, and sporting director Matt Fegan has bolstered the squad with the additions of defender Julian Dunn (formerly of Toronto FC and Norway’s HamKam) and winger Ryan Telfer, among others.

Speaking with The Coast at the BMO Soccer Centre, Fegan said that adding veteran experience was among the Wanderers’ top off-season priorities.

“We were one of the youngest teams, if not the youngest team in the league last year,” Fegan tells The Coast. “In that area, we’ve found some players we felt could really contribute to the group and guide us to that next level.”

Hear more from Fegan and Loughrey in the latest Wanderer Grounds episode.

🗞️ In Other News

🏡 A suite of possible zoning changes could soon rewrite Halifax’s neighbourhoods. The CBC takes a look into what the changes would mean for your ‘hood.

🏛️ Nova Scotia MLA Brendan Maguire has left the Liberals to join the PC Party, where premier Tim Houston announced he would become the minister of community services.

⚡ An energy task force suggests Nova Scotia should have a not-for-profit operator with an “open competition” for power infrastructure—not just Nova Scotia Power.

🛩️ Canadian low-cost airline Lynx Air is no more—the company filed for creditor protection late last week.

SPONSORED BY SUPPORT4CULTURE

Support4Culture proudly supports culture and heritage

Support4Culture is a proud supporter of the African Nova Scotia Seafaring Project and other important cultural initiastives. Preserving the heritage of communities in Nova Scotia helps to tell the stories of the past and build a better future. See the impact Support4Culture makes here.

🍴 Where To Eat & Drink

🍴 After more than three years of renovations, Pazzo Ristorante will officially open its Barrington Street doors this Tuesday, Feb. 27.

🍩 Maria’s Pasta Bar & Pantry makes a bomboloni that will make you cry out “bellissimo!”

🍜 Asian fusion restaurant Broth House has a noodle dish and pork bun Dine Around deal worth slurping up.

⚓ What’s In The Harbour

🚢 The 132-metre-long Onego Deusto cargo ship arrives in Halifax from Gothenburg, Sweden, around 6:15am.

🚢 The Contship Art container ship berths at the Fairview Cove Terminal around 6:20am. It arrives from New York and embarks for Kingston, Jamaica, by 10pm.

🚢 The 14,222-tonne Sonderborg container ship arrives from Saint Thomas, US Virgin Islands, around 9:15am.

👀 In Case You Missed It

💸 Nova Scotia’s opposition leaders say the current government has “set the political culture back” decades with its untendered contracts—an issue the province’s auditor general flagged earlier this month.

📲 Dating can be awkward at the best of times—and then, there’s online dating. The Coast’s readers share their Tinder red flags and other quirks of the digital dating era in our Sex + Dating Survey.

💻 Speaking of online… last week, national Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre says his party would introduce a digital ID system to verify the identity of anyone who watches online porn—a move that has prompted responses from his MPs.

🎷 The Halifax Jazz Festival has a new leader in charge—and she tells The Coast she has big plans for the long-running festival’s future.

⚽ The Halifax Wanderers will play semi-pro club CS St-Laurent in the opening round of the Canadian Championship. The match will be scheduled for April or May.

That’s it!

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