Tim Bousquet

In the next few months—probably in June—the wrecking balls will take aim at the Chronicle Herald building on Argyle Street. The permits have been issued, and all that’s standing in the way of demolition of the hulking, brutal, city-killing monolith is the paper’s move to new digs.
 So, what’s to become of Argyle Street? No […]

Reacting to a Elton John concert scandal in Sudbury—city councillors there scalped their freebie tickets—mayor Peter Kelly put out the word: Halifax councillors shouldn’t expect free tix if John plays here. Where did they get that idea? Never previously reported: all 23 councillors received two free tickets to the 2006 Rolling Stones concert. Now: can […]

A couple of months ago, Halifax council was considering entering into a contract with a vendor to provide some service or another—I forget the particulars. But one of the councillors wanted to discuss it, a request that threw top bureaucrat Dan English into a logical conundrum. “This is a contractual matter, which should be discussed […]

Eyhay! Etslay avehay ayay itycay electionyay aboutyay atscay!

If all goes according to plan, downtown Halifax will be rebuilt as a Shangri-La on the Atlantic, with attractive buildings constructed on a human scale along pedestrian-friendly corridors leading to parks on the waterfront. People will live and work and play downtown in celebratory exultation, sidewalk cafes will flourish, puppy dogs will be petted, babies […]

Commonwealth Games? “No one wants to hear about that anymore,” a city councillor told me Tuesday. Okay, I’ll set it aside for a bit, and let’s talk about abandoned railroad lines instead. In June, CN announced that it was giving up the Chester Spur line, which stretches from Fairview through the Bayers Lake Industrial Park […]

Halifax councillor Gary Martin was well known for his non-stop work habits. Back in 2002, Coast editor Kyle Shaw wrote of Martin’s new job as coordinator of the city’s community response initiative: “Gary Martin answers his phone. He takes calls over lunch, he phones people back after 5pm. Martin is skilled at dealing with the […]

Founders Corner, yet another condo development going into downtown Dartmouth, sells itself as being “Smart & Green,” and the developer of the project, Nova New England of Dartmouth, uses its website to celebrate an efficient heating and hot water system. But while saving on heating bills certainly makes good business sense, the building doesn’t strike […]

One of my favourite places in Halifax is the Holy Cross Cemetery at South and South Park Streets. Its terrain, with unexpected swales and depressions and interesting hillocks, is a snapshot of what the entire peninsula must have looked like before Europeans showed up and started scraping off the highlands to fill in the gullies, […]