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An independent, adversarial news site in Halifax, NS

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Prisoners, acting mostly on their own, are changing the legal landscape of Nova Scotia’s jails

August 7, 2020 By Tim Bousquet 1 Comment

Today, Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Kevin Coady published a decision, saying that the way two prisoners at the Burnside Jail are being held in solitary confinement is unfair, and he wants the jail administrators to address the situation, and if they don’t within 14 days, he wants to see the prisoners in court, potentially […]

Filed Under: Featured, News Tagged With: Andre Gray, Burnside jail, Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility, Claire McNeil, Dylan Gogan, Dylan Roach, East Coast Prison Justice Society (ECPJS), El Jones, habeas corpus applications, Hanna Garson, Justice Elizabeth Van den Eynden, Justice Gerald Moir, Justice Kevin Coady, Justice Peter P. Rosinski, lockdown, Maurice Pratt, Rae’heem Downey, Richard Verge, segregation in prisons, Solitary confinement

New phone line helps monitor conditions in jails during COVID-19

May 29, 2020 By El Jones Leave a Comment

The Halifax Examiner is providing all COVID-19 coverage for free. A new phone line has been launched by East Coast Prison Justice Society (ECPJS) to monitor conditions in provincial jails during the COVID-19 epidemic. Sheila Wildeman, Chair of the ECPJS, says that the line grew out of a planned project to monitor provincial jails. When […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: coronavirus, COVID-19, East Coast Prison Justice Society (ECPJS), Hanna Garson, Harry Critchley, NS prisons, pandemic, prisoners and coronavirus, Sheila Wildeman

Clearing out the jails

In an extraordinary effort to avoid a COVID-19 outbreak, many prisoners were released this weekend.

March 24, 2020 By El Jones 1 Comment

The Halifax Examiner is providing all COVID-19 coverage for free. This weekend, something extraordinary happened in a Dartmouth provincial courtroom. Since the onset of the COVID-19 epidemic, advocates have publicly called for the province to address the danger of the virus spreading in provincial jails. Over the weekend, Chief Judge Pamela Williams met that call, […]

Filed Under: Featured, News, Province House Tagged With: Ashley Avery, Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility (Burnside), consent release, Coverdale Courtwork Society, COVID-19, East Coast Prison Justice Society, Elizabeth Fry Society, Hanna Garson, Harry Critchley, Justice Pamela Williams, Legal Aid, prisoners and coronavirus, Sheila Wildeman

Ramadan in jail: prisoners in Burnside are being denied the right to practice their religion

May 13, 2019 By El Jones Leave a Comment

Malik is calling from the jail asking for the numbers of any Muslims he can contact just to talk to, maybe hear some Quran from. The last time he prayed with community was during Ramadan last year, and since then, his requests for spiritual services have been denied. Last year, Muslim prisoners at Burnside (Central […]

Filed Under: Commentary, Featured Tagged With: Asaf Rashid, Aya Al-Hakim, Burnside jail, Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility, Hanna Garson, Idil Abdillahi, Ramadan, Rana Zaman

Hanna Garson: a young lawyer dedicated to the long, slow fight for prison justice

April 15, 2019 By El Jones 1 Comment

It’s a Tuesday morning, and I’m sitting in courtroom 302 of the Halifax Supreme Court watching two prisoners, Geevan Nagendran and Tyquan Downey, face the lawyer for the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility (Burnside). I text Hanna Garson, “I’m watching the most upsetting habeas in court right now.” She texts back, “what courtroom?” Two minutes […]

Filed Under: Commentary, Featured Tagged With: Adam Norton, Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility (Burnside), Claire McNeil, Dylan Gogan, East Coast Prison Justice Society, Eileen Collett, Elizabeth Fry Society, Emma Halpern, Geevan Nagendran, habeas corpus, Hanna Garson, Jessica Rose, Justice Chipman, Legal Aid, lockdown, Maurice Pratt, Planetta Hughes, Sarah White, Schulich School of law, Sheila Wildeman, Tyquan Downey

El Jones gets at the human core of the issues and people she writes about

Morning File, Tuesday, November 6, 2018

November 6, 2018 By Tim Bousquet 5 Comments

News 1. El Jones I first met El Jones when I worked at The Coast. Our meeting was not in person, but virtually — I remember that I asked her to write a guest commentary, and a couple of days later she came back with a poem, which she sent me via a Facebook message. […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Burnside explosion, Chad Harvey Leopold, Duane Eddy, El Jones, Friends of the Northumberland Strait, Grace MacCormick, habeas corpus applications, Hanna Garson, Justice Peter Rosinski, Matthew Coaker, Matthew Grimm, Matthew Lambert, Maurice Pratt, Michael Gorman, Northern Pulp Mill effluent pipe, Randolph Riley, Robert Sanford, Sarah White, Stephen Archibald and Kent Monkman, Supreme Court mootness hearing

Habeas corpus hearing illuminates jail conditions

September 18, 2018 By Tim Bousquet Leave a Comment

Highlights from this story: • a prison official agreed with the statement that “several” prisoners at the Burnside jail have died in the past week * (see note below) • the three-week lockdown at the jail started when an inmate allegedly said that “someone is going to die” after the peaceful protest was ended • […]

Filed Under: Featured, News, Province House Tagged With: Brad Ross, Burnside Jail lockdown, Burnside jail protest, Chris Deal, Duane Eddy, Grace MacCormick, habeas corpus applications, Hanna Garson, Justice James Chipman, Kaz Cox, Leonard Greenough, Matthew Grimm, Matthew Lambert, Maurice Pratt, Nelson Callish, Randy Riley, Robert Sanford, Sarah White

A prisoner on prisons: “Habeas Corpus in a Nutshell”

Dylan Gogan was incarcerated in terrible conditions, unable to access the most basic resources, but taught himself case law from scratch and changed how Nova Scotian prisons operate.

October 28, 2017 By El Jones 5 Comments

The Journal of Prisoners on Prisons released a special issue on October 19th. From the press release, This special issue, titled “Dialogue on Canada’s Federal Penitentiary System and the Need for Change,” features dozens of contributions written by criminalized women and men currently incarcerated in Correctional Service Canada (CSC) institutions. The writings document the counterproductive changes […]

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Ashley Smith, Breese Davies, Claire McNeil, Dylan Gogan, Dylan Roach, East Coast Prison Justice Society, El Jones, Habeas Corpus in a Nutshell, Hanna Garson, Journal of Prisoners on Prisons, Rachel Fayter, Sean Kelly, Sherry Payne, Solitary confinement

PRICED OUT

A collage of various housing options in HRM, including co-ops, apartment buildings, shelters, and tents
PRICED OUT is the Examiner’s investigative reporting project focused on the housing crisis.

You can learn about the project, including how we’re asking readers to direct our reporting, our published articles, and what we’re working on, on the PRICED OUT homepage.

2020 mass murders

Nine images illustrating the locations, maps, and memorials of the mass shootings

All of the Halifax Examiner’s reporting on the mass murders of April 18/19, 2020, and recent articles on the Mass Casualty Commission and newly-released documents.

Updated regularly.

Uncover: Dead Wrong

In 1995, Brenda Way was brutally murdered behind a Dartmouth apartment building. In 1999, Glen Assoun was found guilty of the murder. He served 17 years in prison, but steadfastly maintained his innocence. In 2019, Glen Assoun was fully exonerated.

Halifax Examiner founder and investigative journalist Tim Bousquet has followed the story of Glen Assoun's wrongful conviction for over five years. Now, Bousquet tells that story as host of Season 7 of the CBC podcast series Uncover: Dead Wrong.

Click here to go to listen to the podcast, or search for CBC Uncover on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast aggregator.

The Tideline, with Tara Thorne

Two young white women, one with dark hair and one blonde, smile at the camera on a sunny spring day.

Episode 79 of The Tideline, with Tara Thorne, is published.

Grace McNutt and Linnea Swinimer are the Minute Women, two Haligonians who host a podcast of the same name about Canadian history as seen through a lens of Heritage Minutes (minutewomenpodcast.ca). In a lively celebration of the show’s second birthday, they stop by to reveal how curling brought them together in podcast — and now BFF — form, their favourite Minutes, that time they thought Jean Chretien was dead, and the impact their show has had. Plus music from brand-new ECMA winners Hillsburn and Zamani.

Listen to the episode here.

Check out some of the past episodes here.

Subscribe to the podcast to get episodes automatically downloaded to your device — there’s a great instructional article here. Email Suzanne for help.

You can reach Tara here.

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Recent posts

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  • Halifax residents rally to save Dalhousie-owned Edward Street home from demolition May 12, 2022
  • Walking through the stories of the volunteers of the North End Services Canteen May 12, 2022

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