Sonia Edworthy likes tours—earlier this summer, she led teenagers on a “gentrification tour” of Halifax’s north end, for example. That attraction is why she’s back at it coordinating Eyelevel Gallery’s Go North! tour of artists’ studios and galleries this Saturday. It’s the first of two days of events—Sunday is the North End Street Festival on […]
Lis van Berkel
Posted inNews + Opinion
World class
Smriti MehraPassport: India Smriti Mehra says her films are not hers. Not because they’re Dogme films, that cinematic genre where the director must not be credited. Is it humility then? “Not really,” says the petite Indian of her creative role in making Neerinakallu (Water Stone), a beautiful “non-fiction film” which traces the movement of clothes […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Something in the air
Andrew Wright is a brave man. On a sultry June day, the manager of Chebucto Community Net is scaling ladders to the highest part of the roof of Fenwick Tower, Halifax’s tallest building, sussing out the best spot for an antenna. He’s rolled his blue shirt sleeves high up his thick arms. A white Chebucto […]
Posted inArts + Music
The destruction, rebuilding, vindication and progression of Lindsay Willow
Lindsay Willow is not who you think she is. For one thing, she’s not a jock; she’s a gym teacher, in part because she couldn’t imagine being stuck in a classroom all day. She’s a lesbian too. And she didn’t molest 17-year old Nadia Ibrahim, although that was the misguided allegation of John Orlando in […]
Posted inArts + Music
Rita education
Outskirts, Tower of Silence,Side Street, Defunct, Urban Scroungers, Destruck, The Artificial Marsh. The titles of Rita McKeough’s artwork hint at the artist’s preoccupation with architecture. Or with spaces and bodies and how they fit together—or clash. Long Haul, slipping by, Wave Over Wave, Shudder, Shiver, Take it to the Teeth. They’re all art installation performances—presented […]
Posted inLifestyle
Sense of direction
Leaning over the counter at Direction 180, a man tells a nurse he dreamed she was rocking a baby inside a church. “I think I’m the baby in the dream, and you were saving me and comforting me,” he tells her. “You look after us guys like a mother would. And besides, coming here every […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
The green mile
The greening of the Grand Parade is an idea both promoted and protested—promoted by environmentalists who want to see it turned into a car-free space, such as a skating rink, and protested by some Halifax Regional Municipality councillors who don’t want to lose their parking spots. But a “green corridor,” the result of a study […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Twisted design
What stops Halifax architects Craig Mosher and Niall Savage from embracing heritage defenders is bigger than the chain-link fence that surrounds the Texpark site on Hollis and Sackville Streets; it’s their imaginations. As modernist architects, both put function before form. They prefer straight lines. They emphasize shape, light and transparency before things like the decorative […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Fire hosed
Chris Dabrowski says he’s afraid he’s on the hook for $26,000—money that the computer science student doesn’t have because he didn’t have tenant’s insurance during an accidental fire set by his roommate three years ago. That’s about one-third of the amount Dabrowski’s former landlord, Jay Abbass, is seeking as subrogated costs he incurred to fix […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Hot hot heat
Peter Blackie is uniquely positioned in three ways: He’s project architect for the new Creighton Street house he’s planning to move into later this year. Secondly, the site couldn’t be any closer to work; it’s a stone’s throw from the window of his office at MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects. And his might be the first geothermal-heated […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Modern inconveniences
If you dial up Ashton Convenience Store in Upper Nine Mile River, a recorded voice boisterously declares the number out of service. I curse Aliant and Eastlink—I’m not sure which is responsible for these aggressively friendly recordings, the telecommunications multinational or the Halifax-based cable company. I wish I could turn the clock back to an […]
Posted inArts + Music
Rogue airwaves
Michael Catano’s voice starts to fade on the car radio just before Portuguese Cove. Static overtakes the CKDU-FM station coordinator’s cheery read of more than a dozen names of listeners who support Moxieland, an eclectic cartoon/pop program. Host Stephen Cooke, a Chronicle-Herald reporter who started his CKDU show in the late 1980s, is inching the […]
