Biggest 2024 news stories in the Maritimes from A-to-Z: Part 3

CTV News Atlantic wraps up its alphabetic coverage of the biggest Maritime stories of 2024. Check out the first two parts here and here.

Quick response team: The Saint John Police Force, citing rising crime rates, established a four-person team that would patrol the uptown and Waterloo Village areas and establish relationships with people experiencing homelessness. The proposed plan, which would cost an estimated $460,000, is still awaiting approval from Saint John council.

Rhodes Scholars: Claire Wilbur and Alyssa Xu – two lifelong friends from New Brunswick – both earned the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship this year. They will start their studies at Oxford University in England next fall.

“I’m just tickled pink about the opportunity and it’s that much more exciting that I get to go with one of my oldest friends,” Wilbur told CTV News Atlantic.

SailGP: The Halifax Harbour is no stranger to vessels cruising its waters and this summer it welcomed an armada of world-class racing sailboats. SailGP made its Canadian debut in Halifax last June, attracting more than 80,000 spectators and raking in more than $14 million in revenue.

The global event plans to return to Canada in 2026 and Halifax is preparing to make a bid to be the host city again.

Taylor Swift: The pop star’s globe-spanning, culturally dominant Eras tour didn’t make a stop in Atlantic Canada this year, but plenty of Maritimers flocked to shows in Toronto and Vancouver. One Nova Scotia couple even got engaged at a show during a performance of “Lover.”

UNESCO: Multiple Maritime icons received international recognition in 2024. Africville was designated Canada’s first UNESCO “Place of History and Memory Linked to Enslavement and Slave Trade.” The community served as the home for many Black Canadians in Halifax for more than 100 years before the city demolished it in the 1960s.

The No. 2 Construction Battalion, which was Canada’s first and only all-Black battalion, was added to UNESCO’s “Memory of the World Programme.”

Prince Edward Island’s most famous character, Anne of Green Gables, entered a national databank. The original manuscript for the novel was added to the Canada Memory of the World Register, becoming the first P.E.I. document to do so.

Violence: In the span of a month, three people were killed at the hands of their partners in separate murder-suicides across Nova Scotia. The Nova Scotia legislature adopted a bill declaring domestic violence an epidemic last September in response to a recommendation from the Mass Casualty Commission, which investigated the 2020 shooting that claimed 22 lives.

Walmart: Gursimran Kaur, a 19-year-old employee, was found dead in a walk-in oven at a Halifax Walmart in October. Police have ruled the death to be not suspicious.

X-rays: The Horizon Health Network in New Brunswick now allows patients to book their own X-rays. The program started as a pilot project in Saint John in late 2023.

Nova Scotians can also access their X-ray results through the YourHealthNS app.

Yacht: Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s yacht the Samsara docked in Halifax last June. The vessel is reportedly valued at $150 million.

Zero carbon: Two new warehouses opened in Halifax’s Bayers Lake Industrial Park in 2024. The buildings include a rooftop solar array. The developers say tenants’ utility bills could be cut by as much as 75 per cent compared to similar size buildings.