Stephen Harper started offending large parts of the nation almost as soon as he became a national political leader. Out east, we particularly remember him mouthing off about Atlantic Canada’s supposed “culture of defeat.” Nova Scotian politicians responded quickly to that one, passing a resolution in the provincial legislature criticizing Harper and “his own Party’s […]
Kyle Shaw
Loving the arrival of this mysterious climate event people are calling "spring".
Kyle was a founding member of the newspaper in 1993 and was the paper’s first publisher. Kyle occasionally teaches creative nonfiction writing (think magazine-style #longreads) and copy editing at the University of King’s College School of Journalism.
Posted inNews + Opinion
Greed acres at Health Canada
Few things in this world function so well as the natural food system. Sunlight and water rain down to feed plants, which convert solar energy to food energy as they grow. Animals then live off that energy by eating the plants, or eating animals that eat the plants. Animal turd and movement in turn spread […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Smoking mad
There is a surprise at the end of Watchmen, the movie. After two-plus hours thick with beatings, war, gore, maiming, mass murder and other on-screen violence—not to mention sex and plenty of naked Dr. Manhattan’s big blue Empire State Building—the filmmakers get squeamish about…smoking. Deep in the end credits is a disclaimer assuring audiences that […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Democracy 251
When Rodney MacDonald calls the election that every political watcher expects him to call sometime in the next few months, the economy is sure to be a major issue. That’s a given, considering the world’s financial meltdown and the shockwaves being felt across the spectrum from individual workers to entire industries. But the premier of […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Buy local by all means
When Barack Obama says “Buy American,” countries that want to sell to America freak out. This week, between Obama signing his $787 billion (US) stimulus plan into law and his trip to Canada, media in our country have talked of little else besides how Buy American provisions of the stimulus might hurt us. But as […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Bigger rigs coming to a road near you
The province’s Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal department just announced that it’s letting a pair of companies drive truck trains on main highways. The “long combination vehicles” are basically two shipping containers pulled by one truck cab, the industrial version of those crazy tourists you see driving around with a car hitched onto the back of […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Is this a friend or foe of dogs?
I don’t know what exactly this vanity plate is trying to say. This roomy vehicle is a “canine’s lair”? Or this creepy black car belongs to a “canine slayer”? One thing’s for sure: the motor vehicle registration folks should offer a copy editing service.
Posted inNews + Opinion
Oxford Laundromat getting spruced up
There’s been a change of ownership at the Oxford Laundromat, which has been in its digs at 2983 Oxford since the Capital grocery store vacated the space almost 20 years ago. Staff tell us the new owner is starting a renovation Friday, January 30, with hopes that the updating won’t interfere too much with regular […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Bush whacked
George WTF Bush spent the last few weeks of his failed presidency on a public relations campaign, trying to paint his time in America’s highest office as something other than a failed presidency. His main tactic was to portray himself as a war president—the tireless leader of a nation dragged into battle by the September […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Loonie bar scene
Haligonians don’t have a drinking problem. We drink, we get drunk, we fall down. No problem! Oh, and we go a little crazy for cheap drinks. We sometimes have bar brawls. We’ve been known to get a little bit horny, melancholy, belligerent and/or delusional about our hotness when we’ve had a few. And we tend […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Present tension
With 250 years of democracy under our kilts, does history hold the provincial Tories back?
Posted inNews + Opinion
Student alliance schools Halifax
You’d expect Halifax to give more of a shit about its student community. Tens of thousands of vibrant minds arriving each September, as natural as the tide coming in, are a resource to make any other city drool. But not this town, where municipal services like Metro Transit and the police go beyond apathy to […]