“I just remember walking across the field because I knew it was imminent,” says Jacquie Thillaye, the president of the Halifax Skate Park Coalition. It was late October in 2006 and though the official opening of the Halifax Skate Park had been pushed to June 2007, due to a delayed construction schedule, everyone knew the […]
Carsten Knox
Posted inArts + Music
Industrial devolution
“The dearth of long form is killing the industry,” says Kris Gilbert, in one long, exasperated breath. She’s the marketing manager for William F. White, one of the leading equipment suppliers to the film industry in Nova Scotia. Her company has been struggling to survive a long and painful drought in the film business, one […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
A matter of principle
This is a story about a man and an idea, an idea that became a story, a story that became a media circus and the important issue that got lost in all of that. We’ll start with the man. Physically, Wade Smith towers an inch taller than the six feet St. Francis Xavier University’s online […]
Posted inArts + Music
The screens of summer
May Shrek the Third (directed by Chris Miller) Two weeks ago Spider-Man 3 ushered in this sequel-saturated summer. Some may be stinkers but others we just can’t resist. The first Shrek made my teeth ache, but the second one had more mature gags and the incomparable presence of Antonio Banderas as Puss in Boots, who […]
Posted inArts + Music
Pinsent tense
Gordon Pinsent was one of many Canadian thespians who guest-starred on the long-running, much-adored TV drama Road to Avonlea. Though the iconic, Newfoundland-born actor doesn’t recall having had a scene with Sarah Polley, then one of the young Avonlea stars, he knew her through her family, many of whom worked in the business. “I knew […]
Posted inArts + Music
Year of the Dog & Next
Peggy isn’t the sort of character you see in the centre of movies. She’s the best friend, the ear, the shoulder, the confidante. Peggy lives an unexciting life working in a faceless corporate office nestled in a suburban sprawl. Her only comfort is her beagle Pencil, and his death sets her on a path to […]
Posted inArts + Music
Doomstown’s day
“This is what they tell me,” says David “Sudz” Sutherland from the office of his production company in Toronto. “This is the first time that they see something that looks like it took place in their neighbourhood. In a Canadian context instead of an American context.” Sutherland is talking about Doomstown, the film he wrote […]
Posted inArts + Music
Bow down
Prodigy isn’t a label with which Celeste Williams is terribly comfortable. But she has heard it ascribed to her. “Usually people who use a word like that don’t even know what it means,” she says, laughing. The violinist, 18 as of last Saturday, has a confidence in her speech and grace in her limbs that […]
Posted inArts + Music
Moss lady
It’s hard not to envy Australia. Its film industry produces a healthy number of talented performers who go off to Hollywood to become international stars, just like ours do here in Canada. But then Guy Pearce goes home to make The Proposition, Cate Blanchett does Little Fish and Heath Ledger stars in Candy—all antipodean stars […]
Posted inArts + Music
Crazy/dutiful
“We’re the best there is. You’d be crazy to fuck with us,” announces a Canadian infantryman in a moment from The Crazy Eights, a documentary made for the CBC about a company of soldiers in Afghanistan. This is the down and dirty reality of what it means to be a fighting man in a conflict […]
Posted inLifestyle
Well versed
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” says Lorri Neilsen Glenn. The Halifax poet laureate is quoting Joan Didion in the midst of a discussion about her own writing. She punctuates the words with her hands as if conducting an orchestra. Glenn is an astonishing listener, incisive in her comments. Her eyes don’t waver, […]
Posted inArts + Music
Fin land
Rob Stewart’s face is lean, hollow-cheeked, with flashing green eyes below black hair spiked like a sea urchin. The 27-year-old’s speaking cadence isn’t a far cry from Keanu Reeves’s, but you’d be mistaken if you took him for some beach bum with a sideline in nature photography and a passing interest in fish. The beginning […]
