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The Coast | News, events, restaurants, concerts and Burger Week for Halifax, Nova Scotia
Home of the Best of Halifax Reader's Choice Awards, the award-winning independent newspaper covers the Halifax news, politics, events, concerts, movies, restaurants, and nightlife scene.
Rooney Mara seeks revenge—or something like it—against her rapist in Una, a spare and beautifully photographed exploration of the complexities of trauma. When Una was 13 (played at that age by Ruby Stokes), her neighbour Peter (Ben Mendelsohn) began paying inappropriate attention to her, culminating in a sexual relationship. He ran, was kept from her…
There’s precious little comic book content in this origin story of Wonder Woman, thankfully. Luke Evans, one of the generic male movie stars currently all the rage—part of the Fast and the Furious family, he also played Gaston in Beauty and the Beast with the even more boring Dan Stevens—is William Moulton Marston, a psychologist at Harvard.…
To the gentleman with the ample supply of deep thoughts in your head- you had the most beautiful canine smile wrapped in a very charming presence. Not to mention the distinctive markings. Simply admiring. —Observer
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says oil pipelines have no place in B.C.’s Great Bear Rainforest. Opponents of the approved Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion to the West Coast and the cancelled Energy East pipeline to the East Coast argue pipelines and tankers don’t belong in any coastal areas. Research led by the Raincoast Conservation Foundation confirms…
Victoria Brumwell thinks like an artist. The painter comes from a fine art background—which helps—but what really shows her creative depth is the way she sees possibility in everyday objects. Her eponymous, up-cycled line sees her transforming thrifted jackets (and more recently, bags and boots) into wearable art in the most literal sense: Bestowed with…
Changing banks was easier than cancelling a Sackville Sports Stadium gym membership, and that could end up costing HRM over a quarter of a million dollars. A report headed to Wednesday’s Audit and Finance committee is asking city council to write-off slightly over $295,000 in outstanding accounts from the Lower Sackville fitness centre. The lost…
The adults at Dalhousie University are busy trying to clean up the mess after Saturday afternoon’s homecoming party/riot/debacle. Houses around the Jennings Street scene of pro-Dal chanting, public intoxication and mass arrest received a letter from university president Richard Florizone today, inviting them to a meeting Tuesday night. ”Dear neighbour: I want to apologize for…
We met not that long ago and apparently before. Hopefully we will meet again. I stuttered because of your beauty and my words only half came out. Hopefully we meet again so that I can speak what I want to say. —Super
Keeping with this year’s “vanish” theme, the art from Saturday night has left the city streets. Thankfully, we have Instagram to keep the memories alive. Check out highlights from Nocturne’s 10th anniversary below. A post shared by Benjamin Lemphers (@blemphers) on Oct 15, 2017 at 8:36am PDT A post shared by Laura Selenzi (@lauraselenzi) on…
Close to two dozen people were arrested Saturday afternoon as police responded to several off-campus parties being held by Dalhousie students. Halifax Regional Police estimate up to 1,500 people were a part of the unsanctioned homecoming events, which took place off-campus in the area of Jennings and Larch streets. Videos of the disturbance uploaded by those…
Sober Island Brewing Co. has teamed up with ShipBuilders Cider to collaborate on a medley of beer and cider, launching this weekend. Sober Island Brewing owner Rebecca Atkinson connected with Sean Sears of ShipBuilders through a Mashup Lab program, and Atkinson says Sears has since become a mentor of sorts. Now, they’re finally launching a…
Jeremie Saunders was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis as a baby. Predicted life expectancy: 25 years old. He’s already made it past that, perhaps driven by his intense, infectious lust for life, as laid out in the documentary SICKBOY, which follows the creation, evolution and success of the popular Halifax-based podcast he does with friends Brian…
To the guy who looked like he could rip my head off, yet was kind, and serving food at a homeless shelter. Your voice like Hal from Space Odyssey also amused me. You could totally also be in a Tim Burton movie. — #Propsallaround
Why did they even call it a library? It’s 80 percent drop-in centre. It takes concentration to do research, but when the person next to you is hammering away at the keys on their laptops, as if they are insanely angry at the document they’re editing or stealing… so you move and then two desks…
10 Moving Forward, Looking B(l)ack: Visual Art in Nova Scotia Friday Archival research shows that despite Nova Scotia’s wealth of Black artists and curators, public knowledge of their work remains limited. To change that, this North Memorial Library panel of Black and Afro-Indigenous women discuss their practice and experience in the visual arts in Nova…
Before pumpkin spice was a drinkable thing, there was the chocolatey mint Girl Guide cookie—a mark of fall as reliable as dried-out leaves crunching beneath your shoes and the excess of high-gloss decorative gourds. An addictive—especially autumn’s extra crushable minty disks, $5 a box— charitable snack for 90 years (22 for the chocolatey mint) the…
Daniel Paul found his rival in a pub in 1965. He and his brother Lawrence and their Indian Brook friend Norman Brooks were upgrading their education together in Dartmouth. Getting out of school early one day, the trio headed to Halifax’s Piccadilly Tavern on Argyle Street for a few beers. They had enough cash to…
The Dome, one of Halifax’s largest nightclubs, rolled out a controversial series of dress code and policy changes last week in an effort to upgrade its image. The club’s new dress code—announced in an infographic posted to its Facebook—includes a ban on tank tops, “undershirt” style white t-shirts, baggy or ripped jeans, sportswear, crocs and…
The kick-off for a soccer stadium on the Halifax Common won’t be happening as early as organizers had hoped. This past spring, Regional Council approved by unanimous vote a proposal for a new “temporary” sports stadium on the Wanderers Grounds. The tentative timeline marked this past September as the opening month for test events, but…
On Saturday, October 14, the 10th annual Nocturne: Art at Night casts its light across Halifax and Dartmouth for an evening of innovative, immersive, interactive installations. Featuring over 100 exhibitions across five zones, you’ve got just six hours on Saturday to soak up all the culture you can. This year’s theme is vanish—“an act of…
Exhibit 203, NSCAD Academy Building, 5163 Duke street and Citadel Hill A spotlight may bring particularly theatric or cinematic scenes to mind: Bright movie lights or a single beam illuminating a soloist on stage. Alternatively, a beacon can bring to mind images of distress: A bat signal, or a lighthouse. Mark Hines’ installation Striving for…
Exhibit 136, Museum of Natural History, 1747 Summer Street In this interactive piece, viewers are invited to assist in reconstructing a forest by travelling the city with paper lanterns. The ecosystem of an Acadian forest is a unique combination of evergreens such as red and white spruce, as well as deciduous trees like sugar maple…
Hockey and the Black Experience screening and panel discussion Thursday, October 12, 6:30pm Saint Mary’s University, McNally Theatre 923 Robie Street free By the time Kwame Damon Mason was six years old, he had already begun to notice how few Black athletes were playing professional hockey. Now, decades later, Mason’s documentary Soul on Ice: Past,…
Exhibit 117, Public Gardens, 5665 Spring Garden Road A decade ago, Martha Cooley was mugged in the city. A few years back she made a short super-8 film called Wait Outside with Your Necklaces On about that time. “I wanted to transpose that experience—it’s taken me 10 years to think about it, and what the…
Sarah Ruhl is one of the best American playwrights working today, and Virginia Woolf is one of the best English writers of all time. Their forces combined make Orlando, a stage adaptation of Woolf’s fantastical 1928 novel, a masterful experiment. Director Matthew Thomas Walker, with the company of Dalhousie’s Fountain School of Performing Arts fourth…
Exhibit 400, Common Roots Urban Farm, Bell Road at Robie Street In Folded River, artist Alex Balkam’s creative process is mined to create an immersive piece of expanded cinema. Working with Thomas Evans and Jonathan Mandeville of Passage Studios, Balkam reconstructs a version of a landscape he’s known since childhood, one that he returns to…
Exhibit 411, Northwood, 2615 Northwood Terrace “A lot of the work I do is movement-based,” says Alexis Milligan, the choreographer, actor, director and creator of Transitus, a theatre company that aims to explore how art is used as a communication tool. “Stillness, silence: How do we find those places where communications begin?” For Nocturne Milligan…
Q I’m a 25-year-old woman currently in a poly relationship with a married man roughly 20 years my senior. This has by far been the best relationship I’ve ever had. However, something has me a bit on edge. We went on a trip with friends to a brewery with a great restaurant. It was an…
Exhibit 315, Nova Scotia Centre for Craft and Design, 1096 Marginal Road The average right whale weighs between 54 and 72 tonnes; at Nocturne you’ll be given a pound of clay to make your own. It’s not much, but it’s what Andrea Puszkar and Marla Benton landed on as a tribute to the endangered mammals…
Exhibit 304, RBC Waterside Centre, 1871 Upper Water Street This interactive opera will require audience participation: A collaboration between performer Janice Isabel Jackson and visual artist Arianne Pollet-Brannen, Opera from Scrap is a durational performance whereby an opera, a character and a costume will be constructed out of scraps throughout the night. In transforming into…
Exhibit 303, Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, 1675 Lower Water Street In Long and White, ‘The road twists like a snake toward the far-off blue places’, artist Sarah Burwash’s animation takes us down a strange and looping path, causing us to wonder, “Have I been here before?” Burwash borrows the title from the autobiographical writings…
Clearcut and dried I’m happy to be reading about the most important issue in the province (“Clearcutting our losses,” cover story by Joan Baxter, Oct 5). Everything else pales when we face a future without habitats for species besides human. There are majestic beasts in this province—not just rats and squirrels/pigeons of the city. Let’s…
Exhibit 108, Public Gardens 5665 Spring Garden Road With this year’s group of anchor artists all working to activate the Public Gardens, Ursula Johnson and collaborators will be kicking up dust along the gravel paths encircling Griffin Pond. These clear paths, strict rules and enforced designated sitting areas that make up the Public Gardens are known…
Exhibit 105, Public Gardens, 5665 Spring Garden Road The wrought-iron gates of Halifax’s Public Gardens are an icon in the city’s landscape, but for Nocturne anchor artist Habiba El-Sayed, they also stand as a fruitful metaphor for decolonization. Throughout the night, El-Sayed will push hundreds of pounds of clay back and forth through the wrought-iron…
Exhibit 500, Ferry Terminal Park, 88 Alderney Drive, Dartmouth We typically understand a trophy to be something awarded with success, something you collect with an achievement or milestone, but for the organizers and participants of Trophy, these milestones may take less positive, but equally as important forms. In a pop-up tent city, 15 storytellers sit…
HAPPY BIRTHDAY Libra (Sep 23-Oct 22) “I am more interested in human beings than in writing,” said author Anais Nin, “more interested in lovemaking than in writing, more interested in living than in writing. More interested in becoming a work of art than in creating one.” I invite you to adopt that perspective as your…
I scream, you scream It may be getting crisp and cool out, but that doesn’t stop us from screaming for ice cream. It’s apple season, pumpkin season and, well, just about everything good season, and Dee Dee’s Ice Cream has our favourite fall tastes ready! Dee Dee’s is doing autumn right by serving up a…
Last weekend Chester Basin had some drinks. Tanner & Co. Brewing—the latest addition to Nova Scotia’s craft beer scene—officially launched its little operation (50 Angus Hiltz Road) with Dan Tanner, a veteran in the food and drink world, at the helm. Tanner, who’s worked at White Point Beach Resort as a food and beverage manager…
Compass Distillers is here to lift your spirits—and perhaps offer you a place to crash as well.The cylindrical tower on Agricola took over the former site of Nauss Bicycle Shop (2533 Agricola Street). Now, it’s not only a distillery, but will soon be home to a cocktail bar and an Airbnb to boot. Compass is…
