Night walker
To the editor, I still remember the warnings I heard during frosh week about how to stay safe in Halifax. As a cocky teenager, I ignored the warnings. Still, after 10 years of 3am strolls home, often across the Common, I’ve never been attacked. I don’t mean to place blame on any of the victims,…
Highs and Lowes
Dear Lezlie Lowe, I wish I’d had the chance in the last few weeks to meet you in the streets. I would not have mentioned slugs or crocs or Brazilian waxes. No, if I had met you on the street, I would have talked to you about your winning trilogy on the face of AIDS…
Highs and Lowes
Dear Lezlie Lowe, I barely remember the column you did on slugs or the one on the crocs and I do remember laughing (just a little) at the de-bushing column. I can tell you for certain, though, the one I will remember most is “Our Dumb Year” (December 28, 2006) because I’ve been saying the…
Open for business
To the editor, The recent article “Hammering Away” (by Erica Butler, January 4) about the Dexel Developments YWCA job site needs some clarification on several points. The campaign by the Carpenters, Millwrights and Allied Workers’ Union actually appears to be directed towards Spears Framing Limited and not Dexel Developments. Spears Framing Limited began operating in…
Letters to the Editor
I would like to respond to your paper’s suggestion that anti-crime lighting be installed on the Common. First, we must demand that freedom to walk the streets be a basic right of citizenship. It is intolerable that a wealthy, stable city cannot summon the will to protect its people from a tiny minority of thugs.…
Letters to the Editor
VISIT MY WEBSITE www.corporatebully.ca By PAUL FRASER
Letters to the Editor
January 8, 2007 To The Coast, I wanted to briefly touch on the closure of The Khyber Club mentioned in two recent articles in your paper. First off, I would like to thank you for giving credit to the In the Dead of Winter Festival, which was a beautiful event demonstrating the incredible folk talent…
Too few cooks
Dear Liz Feltman; Thank you so much for your recent article about what is wrong with the food industry in Halifax. I am a working cook in this city, and I could not agree more that we are severly underpaid. We are the most underpaid “Red Seal” accredited proffession. When you compare our wages to…
Helen Hill, rest in peace
Halifax and New Orleans are united in grief over the murder of Helen Hill early yesterday morning. When she and her husband Paul Gailiunas moved to Halifax in the ’90s, they touched people through their arts (she a filmmaker, he a musician), their generosity (she a teacher, he a doctor), their activism, their kindness. And…
Letters to the Editor
To the editor,I just wanted to share my recent experience, in the hope that others will think twice before eating at the Lacewood Drive location of Cora’s Breakfast and Lunch. On my most recent visit to Cora’s, I was shocked to find myself chewing on three pieces of glass half way through my meal. Fortunately,…
Letters to the Editor
I can still remember the warnings given by the RA’s during frosh week:”Don’t walk around on the waterfront at night”, “Stay away from the Commons after dark”, and other wisdom on how to stay safe in the city of Halifax. And being the stupid cocky teenager that I was, I ignored the warnings. Still, after…
13 photographs that changed the world
Neatorama has posted a list of 13 photographs that they claim changed the world. Somehow, the photo of this dude’s haircut didn’t make the list.
The Queens
After watching Helen Mirren in The Queen and Dame Judi Dench in Notes on a Scandal (go see this movie if/when it comes to Halifax. She’s wicked), I have to say that those two British ladies have more acting chops in their tiny tea-drinking fingers than a entire pot of Hollywood soup. Whatever that means.…
The last jump
Several local bands travelled further and for longer, but none ventured as far north in 2006 than melodic rock act Turnstiles. The quartet fulfilled a desire to tour across Canada this summer, and topped it off with three shows in Whitehorse. Now, life circumstances have deteriorated any hopes of the group following up its LP…
The fix is in
It’s 2007, we’re fixing Halifax, and it seemed as good a time as any to check in on one of our favourite disappointments from 2006, the sprawling abyss (slash parking lot) on the corner of Spring Garden and Queen. As you may or may not recall, the lot was discussed last spring in a series…
Welcome to the TV graveyard, bitch!
The OC has been cancelled. Fucking figures. After a pair of mediocre-to-ridiculous seasons, the teen drama has hit a creative high, bringing back the fun and zazz of its glorious debut season. Some wire stories are linking the falling ratings to Mischa Barton’s quitting — she couldn’t even DIE convincingly — but the show has…
Resolute
Two weeks ago in this space, we made up a bunch of shit about a new funding body, a new repertory cinema and a new slate of local programming on the CBC. (It was the Fiction Issue, people. We thought we were being pretty outlandish, but some either missed it in an eggnog haze or…
The next act?
The Canadian film industry is holding its collective breath this week as representatives of the Canadian actors’ union and movie producers return to the bargaining table for a last shot at creating a new labour agreement and averting an industry-wide strike that could take place at midnight on Monday, January 8. On Wednesday, January 3,…
The missing link
When writing about the airport, I’m obliged first to point out the larger environmental context of the place. Air travel, notes British Guardian columnist George Monbiot, “is currently responsible for 3.5 percent of the total human contribution to global warming. This could rise to as much as 15 percent by 2050.” Monbiot calls for an…
SAVAGE LOVE
Dan Savage keeps it short and sweet.
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Rev up that RRSP for a long ride, Taurus, says Rob Brezsny.
Hammering away
For going on 10 weeks, members of the Carpenters, Millwrights and Allied Workers Union have been regularly picketing a construction site at the old YWCA lot on the south end of Barrington Street, protesting the contractor’s use of non-union labour to build a new seven-story luxury apartment complex at the site. “We believe that the…
Too few cooks
HRM is a great city for epicureans, culinarians and gourmands—in general, anyone who loves food and loves to eat. Sure, there are things that could and should be fixed (service, anyone?), but in a town that offers everything from the most delightful donairs to the most fabulous foie gras, diners have it made. HRM, sadly,…
Dreamgirls
Seeing through “buzz” (the promotional hype that constitutes most movie-writing) is a necessary aim of criticism. But lapdogs don’t want good movies. They want Dreamgirls. Bill Condon’s adaptation of the Broadway musical, based loosely on the career of The Supremes, distorts the legacy and major cultural impact of black music. It looks and plays like…
Good and plenty
All anyone hears in the hip-hop scene lately is how much success Nova Scotia has had exporting artists to the rest of the country. Now Nova Scotian hip-hop fans get a chance to see what their neighbours to the west have to offer when the Good Times Tour kicks off at the Seahorse in Halifax…
Advance screening
Ten years ago, the Maritime Film Classification Board made the news when it banned Anjelica Houston’s Bastard Out of Carolina, an adaptation of the acclaimed novel about child abuse, from local screens. That decision was soon overturned by bureaucrats further up the chain of command—Nova Scotia’s government runs the censor board on behalf of the…
Halifixes
Add lighting on the Common During the day the Halifax Common can be a great place to get some fresh air, play a little baseball or walk your dog. But at night, it can be a little sketchy: It’s dark, it’s large and it scares the hell out of some people. It poses a great…
