Hold onto your sailor caps. Rumour is the Harper government will announce which lucky shipyard will be awarded the much-coveted $25 billion warship contract next week. Three companies are vying for the contract to build the 20-navy-ship armada: Irving-owned Halifax shipyard, BC’s Seaspan Marine Corp. and Quebec’s Davie Yards. The runner-up will land an $8 […]
Mairin Prentiss
Posted inNews + Opinion
Making poor people poorer
Misdirecting marks like a carnival caller, the Department of Community Services announced new regulations this month that will revoke the right for income assistance recipients to appeal for essential health items under special needs funding—providing examples such as hot tubs, medical marijuana, swimming lessons, and gym memberships as items that will no longer be covered. […]
Posted inArts + Music
Some people really love a parade
A swagger-filled Mz. Vicki Star-DeNight sits, casually shirtless, at his kitchen table taking puffs on a cigarette balanced between fingers with magenta-painted nails. He’s attended Halifax Pride for 21 years, witnessing the parade’s evolution from radical marches to the gilded affair it is today. “Once upon a time, before we had our rights, a […]
Posted inArts + Music
Jim MacSwain’s new work evokes Hitler and the Hindenburg
Soft-spoken and prim, Jim MacSwain doesn’t make films with kids in mind. “Oh, no,” he says. “They’re for experimental off-the-wall avant garde crazies.” Without skipping a beat: “That’s my target audience.” The veteran filmmaker and former director at Centre For Art Tapes is starting the process to make his latest stop-motion short, The Lighthouse Keeper, […]
Posted inLifestyle
Ultimate Championship Wrestling hits Halifax
Off the beaten path of Spryfield’s main drag, down a quiet suburban street, both prizefighters and plebes gather under the blaze of fluorescent lights in the Lion’s Club to throw their weight around in the ring and throw delighted scorn from the sidelines. The Lion’s gymnasium is the regular stomping grounds for a loose band […]
Posted inLifestyle
A Can-Con holiday
Hudson’s Bay point blanket A Canadian home is not complete without one. Preferably tossed across an elk-leather chair and looking right at home with that bear skin rug and mounted deer head (both trophies from a bow-hunting trip in Athabasca). Great for that fur trade era outpost-look. Any patriot would swoon. The Bay, Mic Mac […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Prank Town
Now kids, college is not all about schtupping and perfecting your recipes for bathtub gin. When you arrive at your noble institution this year and start unfurling your Bob Marley and Magic Eye posters, don’t forget the third and crucial element that makes up your university experience: a good ol’ fashioned pranking. Our universities aren’t […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
College comedies
A Chump At Oxford (Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, 1940) The classic comedy duo play a couple of deadbeat ninnies so down-and-out they resort to temping as street cleaners. Fortuitously, they foil a bank robber by neglecting to pick up banana peel. The grateful banker then fulfills their dreams of getting an education, but before they […]
Posted inLifestyle
Grocery store aphrodisiacs
OYSTERS Casanova’s ace-in-the-hole for bedding the ladies, oysters are chock-full of zinc, which increases libido for both genders. My sources suggested novices fry ’em instead of eating them raw, but either way most of our energy was spent on the half-hour struggle just to pry them open. Potent, perhaps not; but delicious nonetheless. Results: Listlessness […]
Posted inLifestyle
John Dunsworth was once a Mall Santa
You probably know him as Mr. Lahey, the tipsy trailer park supervisor from Trailer Park Boys. But perhaps you once sat on his jolly ol’ lap at the mall and put in a special request for an Atari and a Lite Brite. Actor John Dunsworth reigned the red velvet chair in Halifax’s West End Mall, […]
Posted inLifestyle
Hidden Halifax
Almon Billiards and Social Club 6050 Almon Street, 454-7665 Turn down an alley on Almon Street and with any luck you’ll run into the right kind of outlaws and scofflaws. “Either you know where it is or you don’t,” remarks Dick, an Almon Billards’s bartender, with raised-eyebrow sarcasm on how to find the club. Behind […]
Posted inLifestyle
Rural culture in the Czech Republic
Two years ago I impetuously joined a group of Dalhousie University history and theatre students who were travelling to a small Bohemian town in the Czech Republic to study Baroque culture. My desire to go to the Czech Republic had nothing to do with the pursuit of higher education, rather it was flimsily based on […]