Ben MacLeod 馬志斌
@BenMacLeod
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Hong Kong / Halifax, urban & transportation things
Joined November 2011
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my comments at Halifax regional council this morning on safety and inclusivity in municipal workplaces
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younger Canadians: please just build more housing 💀
the government: we're excited to introduce ✨ lifelong debt ✨
Important update: Canadian financial institutions are now offering 30-year mortgages for first-time buyers purchasing a new build!
This will help younger Canadians enter the housing market sooner and lower their monthly payments.
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inexpensive HEPA air purifiers have been found to virtually eliminate airborne SARS-CoV-2 in hospital wards, but our collective refusal to acknowledge the reality of this pandemic basically precludes effective action to reduce infection in healthcare settings
he had aquired covid in the hospital for the second time, and plummeted to end of life after they stopped the antivirals. i did everything i could to keep him safe and the hospital allowed him to be maimed and killed by coronavirus. it didn't have to be like this.
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Dad recently spent a month at the Halifax Infirmary. the provincial director of infection prevention and control told me they "discourage" HEPA purifiers because "they can generate air currents that may lead to the spread of pathogens". I have no faith in our leaders and systems.
Just had a ‘passionate conversation’ w/ a nurse who tried to shame a patient into removing a personal HEPA from their room. She scoffed at patient & carer N95s & declared, unprompted, that she doesn’t have to wear one.
The HEPA stayed.
I am tired of fighting with fools.
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Halifax residents really seem to care about unclean drinking water. Why don't we care about unclean indoor air?
Everyone in the Infirmary's 33-bed neurology/stroke ward (unit 7.4) currently has COVID-19 because the air in the Maritimes' largest hospital is unsafe. (1/3)
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Just an update to avoid any unnecessary calls to emergency services – I reported this to 911, and also swam over and doused the fire pit (which was still smouldering and very hot) so it should be OK now.
received the emergency alert as I sit here watching some gentlemen start a fire in Long Lake Provincial Park 😐
#halifax
@HRMFireNews
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received the emergency alert as I sit here watching some gentlemen start a fire in Long Lake Provincial Park 😐
#halifax
@HRMFireNews
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@annwmac
you're really trotting out the old "millennials expect everything for free" trope in 2024 huh
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Huge turnout for
#CriticalMass
in Halifax in support of safer streets and in solidarity with injured cyclist Rob Klue (1/6)
#bikehfx
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The last bit of concrete wall came down last night. The interchange is no more. 🤸🏼♂️
(photos:
@hfxgov
, Mike Donahue)
Cogswell Interchange milestone: this week, crews will start demolishing the last remaining substantial concrete structure – the hulking, 200-metre-long retaining wall on Upper Water St
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This video gives a better idea of the number of people who showed up to yesterday's
#CriticalMass
to demand safe streets in
#Halifax
/Kjipuktuk
#bikehfx
🚴
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this sum is 31 times what the province has earmarked for new public housing during a housing crisis
Our government is investing $483.3 million in highways across our province. These investments make our roads safer and more efficient for Nova Scotians. Our Capital Plan is building up Nova Scotia.
Read the full plan:
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after ~55 years, the third and final Cogswell overpass is no more
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I wonder when an NS provincial party will finally realise, as Poilievre and Trudeau have, that this simple message – "we will build more housing, faster" – is how to win over younger voters in 2024.
We’re building a lot more public transit — and a lot more housing next to it.
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A friend working at the Dartmouth General says there's a COVID outbreak on the 4/F cardiac unit. COVID is a vascular disease that increases the risk of heart problems. We could end this – we know how to prevent transmission. Unceasing outbreaks in health care is a policy choice.
Halifax residents really seem to care about unclean drinking water. Why don't we care about unclean indoor air?
Everyone in the Infirmary's 33-bed neurology/stroke ward (unit 7.4) currently has COVID-19 because the air in the Maritimes' largest hospital is unsafe. (1/3)
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I wrote Fillmore in 2021 about the spiralling cost of housing in Halifax. I pleaded for measures "at all levels of government to dramatically increase [housing supply] and discourage behaviours that drive up the cost of housing". No reply, no material action. Things got worse.
STATEMENT → I am very concerned about the decision to designate 9 more encampment sites across the municipality including locations across Halifax and Dartmouth.
In HRM, no one should be living in a tent in a park.
Thread ↓
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Quick concept: the conspiracy theorist's interpretation of the 15-minute city, but masterminded by Galen Weston Jr
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Halifax has unanimously passed the proposed Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF) zoning reforms. I was really impressed by many councillor's remarks this afternoon and I feel a little more hopeful about this city. 🥳
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At Halifax council next week: a conceptual plan for Strawberry Hill. Property owners are proposing 14 buildings with 3,656 homes plus commercial space at street level
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I never again want to hear anyone in Halifax complain that cyclists flaunt the rules
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glad to hear that the *hospital's* infection-control protocols are gradually catching up with those of my local artist-run centre 😷
#SaltingTheVibes
NOVA SCOTIA Masks 😷 are coming back to Healthcare Sept.26th
“Masking is required in all inpatient and ambulatory areas where clinical care is provided. Masks may be removed at nursing stations, break rooms and meeting rooms when no patients are present.”
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my teacher at Citadel drove into the city daily from Hammonds Plains because she didn't want to raise her kids in a polluted urban environment. she told this to a classroom of (non-driving) peninsula students subjected to all the noxious externalities of suburban car culture 😞
REMINDER: Those choosing to live in the subsidized suburbs for a bigger house and yard are NOT also entitled to free-flow car traffic capacity (aka “easy car commute”) into the city at the expense of the taxes, health, safety & quality of life of city-dwellers.
HT
@IanLockwoodPE
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The belittling of "COVID alarmists" near the end of this piece saddens me.
@Tim_Bousquet
describes the Examiner as a "adversarial" news site that aims to hold the powerful to account. I believed him, and I subscribed. (1/7)
There were 2 academic articles studying long COVID and kids — 1 was retracted, the other wasn’t. by
@Tim_Bousquet
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We tend to elevate these wishy-washy concerns about traffic and "neighbourhood character" from comfortable homeowners who benefit from sustained housing undersupply. I want to hear from regular people facing the reality of renting in a city with a shockingly low vacancy rate.
What 'transformational' Halifax zoning changes could mean for your neighbourhood
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Cycled over to the Dartmouth Hilton to check out the PP rally. Some protesters have arrived. Hilton security threatened to call the police
#halifax
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Windsor Street
@sobeys
has been extensively renovated at least three times during my lifetime, yet these popular pedestrian accesses from North Street have never seen any improvement. This is an urban store with heavy walk-in patronage.
#halifax
#carculture
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@theresa_babb
@HRMFireNews
Yes, I have called! I also swam over and doused the fire pit with more water so it should be fine.
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The new Scotia Square bus terminal on Barrington is coming along and the sidewalk is significantly wider now 🥳
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Halifax Water is under pressure to explain what went wrong yesterday and how a repeat event will be prevented in the future.
Why do we turn a blind eye to analogous dysfunction in the public health care system? As a society, we are miserably failing the most vulnerable. (3/3)
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I lived next to a shelter; it was fine. My brother lives opposite one of the emergency housing sites and it's fine. these public meetings invite NIMBY vitriol that is not only ugly but utterly senseless. what do these residents think takes place near existing shelters...?
What on earth do people in Sackville think is happening???
They are unhoused people, not a camp full of serial killers.
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Video of the Dunbrack Greenway, which opened last year. Despite its short length (400 m) the path makes an important strategic connection, allowing cyclists to reach Spryfield from the Chain of Lakes Trail, bypassing the notorious Armdale roundabout.
#bikehfx
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I find this development a bit sad because the original proposal was for 48 apartments. Around 2019, Killam updated the design reducing the unit count to only 12 enormous, ultra-luxury rentals.
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parents of Halifax – the new inclusive playground (apparently the first in the city) at the George Dixon Centre Park is huge and impressive. it's not yet open but the hurricane knocked down the construction fencing so i took a look.
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Spring Garden transit mall, day 4🚗
The city has placed giant advisory signs at both ends of the street. Some lanes leading to the
#carfree
area have been closed with traffic cones. Drivers are now swerving around the cones and entering the transit-only zone anyway (video below)
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Great piece by
@jen_keesmaat
on the myth of cars and personal liberty: "It’s time to reclaim our freedom, our sense of adventure in our everyday lives by embracing the walkable, cycling city. To do so, we need to embrace a fundamental redesign of our streets."
We designed Canada's cities for cars, not people – and the people are dying | Jennifer Keesmaat
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can't get too excited in the absence of an explanation as to why this has been prioritized over the unfunded BRT network, which would have a larger catchment, benefit more people, and facilitate dense housing development over a wider area
Mill Cove Ferry Will Navigate Nova Scotians from Bedford to Downtown Halifax:
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Unit 7.4 houses stroke victims. COVID-19 increases stroke risk. We know how to prevent transmission of airborne disease in indoor settings: by cleaning the air. Yet the health authority failed to act, and now all the patients have COVID. (2/3)
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Google Earth captured an
@hfxtransit
bus using the new Bayers Road bus lanes (highlighted) to bypass car congestion – the bus more than likely carrying more people than the entire queue of cars.
#cdntransit
#halifax
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my humble proposal to transform the Halifax Common into a Walmart parking lot inches closer to reality
Parks Canada asked to expand Citadel Hill parking lot for Halifax health-care workers
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Cogswell Interchange milestone: this week, crews will start demolishing the last remaining substantial concrete structure – the hulking, 200-metre-long retaining wall on Upper Water St
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Many newcomers have to bus out here to get a local ID card. Imagine this being one of your first experiences in Nova Scotia. This Access NS location is a provincial embarrassment
@ns_servicens
You don't realize how unfriendly Bayers Lake is to pedestrians until you walk 15 minutes in a bike lane because there is no sidewalk.
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I encountered a lot of car nonsense today. But coming across these posters always cheers me up.
@TheWarOnCars
@StrongTowns
@OhUrbanity
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trying to calm down after encountering my personal worst-ever run-in with motorist road rage
ALMON STREET, again. I was going straight (from the correct lane) while the driver was intent on going straight from the right-turn lane.
somehow this sent her into an unbridled rage
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@annwmac
I don't know who you're talking to because I never complained about the concept of a mortgage. I've tried to buy many times. The problem is that there aren't enough homes. When you made offers in the 1980s were you ever outbid by 15-20 other prospective buyers?
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New Port City (Ghost in the Shell), inspired by 1990s Hong Kong
Artwork via
@reallyriekeles
's excellent book "Anime Architecture"
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the Barrington Greenway is the most underrated, joyful way to reach downtown Halifax in the summer 🌞
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fringe cycling extremist prepares to enjoy casual pastime in rush-hour multi-lane car traffic
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Can we please fix Upper Water St with a physical intervention,
@hfxgov
? Enforcement alone is not working – they were ticketed but they don't care. this is a daily occurrence that impacts not only cyclists, but pedestrians too.
Honest question – why doesn't the city consistently use strategically placed bollards (or even signposts) in new bikeway design to avoid this predictable, recurring problem? there must be a reason...?
(Upper Water Street bike lane, built just last year)
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came across this 1983 pic of Halifax:
- interesting to see the waterfront boardwalk coming together, but still so fragmented
- didn't realise that the brick sidewalk paving was once so extensive
- wonder when they stopped using those big "X" road markings
(photo: Gary Corbett)
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Waterloo Region, Ontario built a light rail system for less than what Nova Scotia is currently spending to construct new highways.
Meanwhile
#Halifax
's modest proposal for a bus rapid transit (BRT) network remains unfunded two years and counting
#nspoli
#hfxplanning
#cdntransit
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NIMBY pushback already resulted in this proposal being scaled back from 800 apartments (including affordable housing) to 154 units
the neighbours, who are comfortably housed, have no incentive to support any housing on the site
Neighbours don’t like proposed Lower Sackville development by Yvette d'Entremont
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Concept for a Halifax bikeway schematic that applies a simple hierarchy to the (semi-fantasy) network. Trunk routes (red) travel longer distances, akin to London's "cycle superhighways". Local routes (green) make shorter, neighbourhood connections.
#bikehfx
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A snapshot from the Cogswell webcam this evening
the cars shown leaving downtown
#Halifax
are carrying perhaps 18 people, while the six
@hfxtransit
buses are easily transporting 150-350 passengers – using roughly the same amount of road space as the cars.
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but the result of gross negligence and maladministration, and a failure to ensure safe access to basic pillars of any society that claims to uphold human rights — health care, education, elderly care. We aren't "worried", Tim, we are angry. I thought you would be too. (7/7)
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@thegreatsophini
congratulations and thank you for speaking out about this. I quit my dream job in the public sector last year under the same circumstances 🫠
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whoever is putting these posters up truly chooses the best locations for maximum impact 💀🚗
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Disappeared sculptures of
#Halifax
– thread
"20th Century Student" by Reg Dockrill, unveiled in 1968 at the new student union building, removed in 2012 due to corrosion.
(Photos: Dal University Archives)
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none of this is incurable or even difficult – worsening homelessness, traffic violence, unmitigated spread of airborne disease in schools and workplaces: these are all deliberate policy choices by mediocre "leaders" who should be held to account for needless death and suffering
Eventually, someone will look at Nova Scotia as a case study and come to the conclusion that a lack of political will is what caused unmitigated infection and mass disability.
The province experienced the best of containment and the worst of giving up.
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One year ago today Suete Chan, 27 was killed on a marked crosswalk on the urban highway that is Pleasant Street. Driver ticketed $697.50. This occurred a block from where Gary Rogers, 57 was killed in a hit-and-run in 2019
#hfxplanning
@safe_hrm
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Here are my full comments from yesterday's marathon public hearing on Halifax's proposed HAF reforms. The hearing will continue at 1:00 pm today and council will likely debate the motion tomorrow.
Residents, developers express concerns about Housing Accelerator Fund in Halifax
by
@Suzanne_Rent
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Halifax – we need to vote in a diverse council this October with young people, renters, councillors who don't personally benefit from maintaining an unjust status quo
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I went to see the Alstom hydrogen train at Rockingham Yard. thank you
@safe_hrm
for the tip 🚄
Commuter train destined for somewhere, definitely not here😭
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"cities aren't loud: cars are loud" 🚲
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My favourite transit mall – 16th Street in
#Denver
, opened in 1982. Once a congested urban car sewer, now a wildly successful destination.
Spring Garden could be a transformative civic project on par with the Halifax Central Library. Optimistic we can still make it happen 🥲
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the pedestrian beacon recently installed at one of the city's most treacherous crosswalks appears to have been hit already 🫠 Joe Howe/Bedford Hwy
#halifax
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Two years ago: Spring Garden Road went car free, briefly
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Another reminder that Halifax approved a comprehensive bus rapid transit (BRT) network years ago that hasn't been built owing to a lack of funding from a provincial government that would rather dump seemingly infinite resources into highways
#nspoli
(1/5)
@harbourdischar1
@SamAustinD5
$$$ held up by the Province. They have the BRT application. Feds are threatening to pull this funding entirely.
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Tonight's
#CriticalMassHfx
. Thanks to everyone who came out in support of safe, all-ages, protected bike lanes on Almon Street. (1/2)
#bikehfx
#Halifax
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I went to check out construction of the Burnside Expressway (Highway 107 extension), which parallels the Magazine Hill road.
No money for bus rapid transit in Nova Scotia but abundant resources for destructive, unnecessary, sprawl-inducing highway megaprojects
#hfxplanning
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Barrington and Blowers this morning
1) lucky the guy crossing in front of this truck is so tall
2) why are there advertisements in the pedestrian way
3) the NFB building has been under construction for EIGHT years now
4) how is a blind person supposed to navigate any of this
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waiting for the minister of community services to brush off student homelessness as being "part of the natural evolution of autumn"
A Halifax organization that operates homeless shelters and supportive housing has been asked to help university students find places to live. NSCAD University says it doesn't have residences and housing is increasingly challenging to secure.
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I started this rough parking inventory in relation to the transit-only Spring Garden project. Seems timely to post now as some are again claiming that parking is scarce.
Would the loss of a few more parking spaces on Morris – to save the trees – make such a difference?
#bikehfx
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hello youths of Canada, we may have destroyed your futures, but not to worry. You can, having been permanently shut out of home ownership, apply for government legal assistance when you are inevitably exploited by landlords 😃🇨🇦
Renters are facing rising rents across the country, and they need support. Today, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced measures from the upcoming
#Budget2024
to protect renters and make the rental market fairer for every generation. Details:
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they dug up the underground fuel tanks at the Inglis St. Irving 👀
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I wonder why my ex-employer continues to struggle with high turnover and staff illness, very mysterious~
Ferry Service has been cancelled tomorrow, April 27, 2024, from 6:00 pm till midnight, due to staffing.
Shuttle service will be provided every 15 minutes starting at 6pm.
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Spring Garden Road, probably Canada's premier commercial street east of Quebec, goes
#carfree
tomorrow. It will remain open to pedestrians, cyclists, and Halifax Transit buses.
Here's what the street looks like now.
#cdntransit
#hfxtransit
@hfxplanning
#bikehfx
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regular reminder that the Canadian housing crisis is not an inevitability, it is a policy choice maintained by all levels of government to further enrich (and otherwise serve the interests of) the established class at the expense of everyone else, especially young people
How much longer will older Canadians deny the harm they’ve done to the next generation?
In the latest World Happiness report, Canadians over 60 were measured as the 8th happiest globally.
Canadians under 30?
🚨58th🚨
Do our leaders realize how bad this is?
@MikePMoffatt
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the redevelopment of Lacewood Terminal (2015) was kind of a wasted opportunity to help create a walkable town centre for Clayton Park. An island surrounded by nothingness, the terminal attracts rowdy teenagers with nowhere else to hang out, placing an unfair burden on transit.
OK but what if incidents don't decrease. Will we then look at underlying causes, such as youth hanging out at Lacewood having nowhere to go?
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This reminds me of the NIMBY backlash against the 65-unit, affordable, LGBT-inclusive seniors' housing project that the United Church proposed for the corner of Willow and Windsor streets a decade ago. The church eventually gave up and sold the site, which is still a vacant lot.
Hey everyone, just putting this sign up letting you know the city is planning on doing something indisputably good for people who desperately need housing... and WE hate it!
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Halifax drivers, not content with only having trashed Spring Garden:
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A few of my Hurricane Juan pics, showcasing the finest in digital photo quality circa 2003
#fiona
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that was cool
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@pottie_riley
@terrykhoyt1
@HRMFireNews
Yeah I called 911 as 311 didn't pick up. The fire is out but the dispatcher asked if I could stick around and keep an eye on it so i'll do that.
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instead of building public housing like the province did for decades, Houston sits on his hands knowing that municipal councils will absorb much of the blame for what increasingly amounts to a humanitarian crisis
The housing crisis facing Nova Scotia and the rest of the country is everyone's problem and not a time for pointing fingers, Premier Tim Houston told reporters Thursday before criticizing Halifax Regional Municipal council for almost three minutes and ac…
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