North end favourite Dee Dee’s Ice Cream is getting new owners
After serving delicious homemade ice cream for nearly 20 years, founder of Dee Dee’s Ice Cream Ditta Kasdan is ready to retire. She assures her loyal customers that the Cornwallis Street institution is in good hands. Filling Kasdan’s shoes are Jenna Mooers, co-owner of CHKN CHOP and Lindsay MacPhee, owner of the Floatation Centre. Kasdan…
Everything you need to know about the 2022 EVERYSEEKER Festival
The artsy, out-there (yet accessible) EVERYSEEKER Festival is the type of event that challenges and feeds you, bringing together some of the most boundary-pushing artists from Halifax and the world to help you unleash your inner weirdo and make you feel something. What is the official name? EVERYSEEKER. What is it also known as? Some…
Legendary author David Sedaris is coming to Halifax June 25
Since the mid-90s, bestselling author David Sedaris has been making his readers find beauty in the banal, building a silver lining to life that’s actually comic gold. He’s written over 10 books—mostly essay collections and true stories from his own life—and is a fixture across the best radio programs in America. Now, he’s coming back…
Everything you need to know about the 2022 Halifax Independent Filmmakers Festival
The city’s annual celebration of outside-the-mainstream movies and the directors who make them, Halifax Independent Filmmakers Festival is known for bringing critically adored movies to town that audiences would be unable to access otherwise. Run by the Atlantic Filmmakers Co-operative, it’s been screening interesting, challenging and plain old cool movies for over 15 years. What…
Canada’s Online News Act must be transparent, fair and include news innovators
Publisher note from Christine Oreskovich
You can vote now for best actor in a new Screen Nova Scotia award
On Saturday, June 18 the Screen Nova Scotia Awards will be back in person after two pandemic years of happening online. Guests will pack into Schooner Ballroom at Casino Nova Scotia for a night of celebrating the talent within Nova Scotia’s film, television and animation industries. On May 17, nominees were announced in such longstanding…
Halifax will repaint Black Lives Matter murals again in 2022
Two years ago this week, George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer. He wasn’t the first person of colour to be killed by police, and he wasn’t the last. But something about Floyd’s death was different—it gave a visible push to the efforts of the Black Lives Matter movement, one that made waves…
On the final day of cop Nicole Green’s hearing, race enters the discussion
Friday was the last day of the Nova Scotia Police Review Board convened for Nicole Green, the Halifax Regional Police constable who tasered a man on Quinpool Road in December 2019. The three-day hearing was for both sides to present evidence about whether or not Green was justified in tasering a man The Coast is…
The ongoing fight for suicide prevention on Halifax’s MacKay Bridge
Amanda Dodsworth doesn’t drive across the MacKay Bridge anymore. Not since last spring. “I cry a lot when I do,” she says. In late March 2021, one of her closest childhood friends died by suicide, jumping from the bridge that looms 55 metres over the northern end of Halifax Harbour. Two bridges have spanned the…
Taser cop Nicole Green was scared of being attacked with an alleged pen
Today was the second day of the Nova Scotia Police Review Board hearing where Halifax Regional Police constable Nicole Green is attempting to clear her name. Green made a violent arrest on Quinpool Road in December 2019, tasering a man we are calling Fred, and an HRP investigation determined she used inappropriate force, earning Green…
Cop tasers innocent man, gets lightly punished, appeals to erase that punishment
At a Best Western hotel this morning in Dartmouth, after some tech delays, a panel of three white adjudicators listened to two white lawyers argue about whether or not a white cop, Halifax Regional Police constable Nicole Green, was justified in her tasering of an unarmed Black man. The HRP had already decided Green was…
We’ve never had a deadlier COVID week and Tim Houston doesn’t seem to care
The deadliest, and most confusing, phase of Nova Scotia’s pandemic began two months ago on March 21, the day premier Tim Houston removed almost all public health restrictions around masking, distancing and gathering. This was Houston’s “Mission accomplished” moment, acting as if COVID was over and we could finally get back to normal, even though…
The Dalhousie Arts Centre’s expansion might just fix Halifax’s venue crisis
Standing inside the new expansion of the Dalhousie Arts Centre, Lori Ward (senior director of development at Dalhousie University) is in a hard hat, describing the sorts of acts that’ll play at the school’s new, 300-seat Joseph Strug Concert Hall. The acoustics are some of the best in North America, Ward explains, since the building…
Shahin Sayani to depart Prismatic Arts Festival after 14 years
Founder and executive director of the Prismatic Arts Festival Shahin Sayadi announced today that he will be leaving the organization at the end of 2022. After founding the festival in Dartmouth in 2008, Sayadi has overseen Prismatic’s growth into one of Canada’s largest multidisciplinary events for BIPOC creators of theatre, dance, music, film, visual arts…
The Scotia Festival of Music plays on
Simon Docking, artistic director of the Scotia Festival of Music, can’t really pick what he’s most excited for at this year’s festival, happening from May 29-June 12. It could be Kerson Leong’s opening night set, which features an ambitious, violin rendering of Schubert that he calls “an extraordinary six-minute piece…There’s only a handful of people…
Hopscotch Festival is bringing Freddie Gibbs to Halifax July 31
Halifax, this is not a drill. Freddie Gibbs—your favourite rapper’s favourite rapper, who routinely steals the spotlight on tracks with Tyler, The Creator, ScHoolboy Q and Rick Ross—is coming to town July 31. Hopscotch Festival, the annual harbinger of fall and celebration of hip-hop, is offering the show as part of its off-season programming. The…
Everything you need to know about the 2022 Scotia Festival of Music
The biggest chamber music festival in the region, the Scotia Festival of Music offers intimate showcases and big ticket concerts with the biggest names in its genre. A staple of the Halifax live music scene, the event has been around for four decades. What is the official name? The Scotia Festival of Music What is…
Canadian Championship soccer comes to Halifax as the Wanderers face Toronto
Growing up in Halifax there wasn’t much soccer on TV, says Christian Oxner, one of the goalkeeps for the HFX Wanderers FC. The English Premier League and the Italian Serie A on Score sometimes were the only games in town. Oxner’s experience isn’t unique in Canada: there just aren’t many options to watch the beautiful…
Manchester’s brilliant anti-folk band Crywank hits Halifax tonight on farewell tour
Since 2019, fans of the horrifically named but musically genius Crywank have felt the end is near: Right before COVID, the band’s two members—who hail from Manchester and make up one of the best examples of modern anti-folk—announced the breakup that close listeners had heard coming, thanks to the several-part song “I Love You But…
Rich Aucoin announces quadruple album
Halifax indie legend Rich Aucoin announced yesterday via Exclaim! magazine that his next album will be his most ambitious yet: The sound alchemist known for throwing eras and influences in a blender to deliver sweet-as-a-smoothie power-pop, Aucoin says Synthetic will be a quadruple album, released in four parts over two years. Recorded at the prestigious…
The raccoon that helped save Robie Street
In Steve MacKay’s neighbourhood, car crashes are so common that he and his neighbours have a routine every time an accident happens. They check to see if anyone is injured and confirm someone has called 911. They bring out deck chairs and glasses of water for the drivers and passengers. “Within a minute, there’ll be…
Urban beekeeping project expands to Halifax this summer
“According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway, because bees don’t care what humans think is impossible.” Yes, that’s the intro from 2007 box office…
Review: Willie Stratton finds a new stride
Willie Stratton album release show w/Campbell & Johnston May 27, The Marquee, sonicconcerts.com Is Willie Stratton the real deal? So much of rock ‘n’ roll and vintage country-western music—the Venn diagram overlap where Stratton is planting his sonic flag—hinges on a visceral sense of authenticity. If the heartbreaks are fiction rather than lived—if the denim…
Jacob Sampson announced as associate artistic director of 2b Theatre Company
Jacob Sampson has long been a change-maker in the world of Halifax theatre, from his crowd-drawing performances at Shakespeare By The Sea to writing, staging and starring in some of the most diverse and necessary plays in recent years. From a sit-up-and-take-note turn in 2b Theatre’s 2019 production of playwright Shauntay Grant’s The Bridge to…
Bryan Adams announces Halifax concert September 3
Can-rock icon and notorious anti-vaxxer Bryan Adams is coming to Halifax on September 3 as part of his just-announced So Happy It Hurts tour. The “Summer of ’69” singer will play the Scotiabank Centre as part of an extensive coast-to-coast effort that also includes shows in Moncton, Cape Breton and Summerside. Tickets for the Halifax show,…
It looks like No Mow May on the Halifax Common, but city hall says that’s an accident
The Halifax Common is a sea of yellow dandelions swaying in the breeze, and city council just passed a budget funding an ambitious climate plan, so you might think the city is participating in No Mow May. But no, HRM isn’t (deliberately) participating in the growing movement to discourage people from mowing their lawns at…
Did you hear the one about Dartmouth’s indie comedy scene?
The route to the stage at 127B Portland Street—the former Picnic at the Dart restaurant—starts in an alcove between the Dart Gallery and a rectangular room that’s become a much-needed event venue for downtown Dartmouth. It must get crowded for comedians waiting to take the stage for the weekly show The Red Room Riots, a…
Jason Mraz adds second Halifax date to August tour
This article was independently produced by our editorial team with financial support from Ticket Halifax, your local box office for event tickets around Halifax. To find all upcoming events and get your tickets before their sold out, head over to Ticket Halifax. Well, Halifax done done Jason Mraz in, you bet he felt it: The…
Two must-see indie plays are showing in Halifax this May
While it’s over 100 days until the return of the Halifax Fringe Festival—the yearly celebration of unjuried theatre and DIY plays—fans of indie theatre will have lots to tide them over in late May. First up, over at Neptune Theatre’s Scotiabank Stage, is the world premiere of local playwright Katerina Bakolias’s ‘Til Death Do Us…
Halifax Jazz Festival announces more acts
W hen the Halifax Jazz Festival announced its return to a pre-pandemic-level event in late April, we already knew it was the sort of fun that’s worth marking in your calendar. Today’s second wave of act announcements proves our gut right, with the announcement that indie royalty Perfume Genius and The Weather Station will be…
Here’s every show, actor and director up for a 2022 Screen Nova Scotia award
Screen Nova Scotia—the industry incubator helping movies, TV series and more get made here—dropped its 2022 award nominees today, alongside an announcement it’ll be offering its first in-person award ceremony since 2019. It’s been a big year in the world of Nova Scotia film, with the province announcing major funding in the sector (a record-setting…
The Tare Shop fundraiser takes off
Halifax’s first zero-waste store, The Tare Shop, opened in early October 2018 at 5539 Cornwallis Street in Halifax’s north end. Forging ahead at full steam with the support of Halifax’s eco-conscious oceanside inhabitants, The Tare Shop opened its second location, a downtown Dartmouth branch at 21 Portland Street, in January 2021. Then came the worldwide…
Mattea Roach talks drag, hate comments and weed
This spring shall go down in history as the era of Mattea Roach. We’ll fondly remember this period as the time Halifax tuned in to watch the Jeopardy! superchamp sweep the competition night after night; fought with Torontonians over who gets to claim her as their own; and groaned when the New York Times called…
Know Your Rights campaign against racist police street checks stalled by bureaucracy
After Monday’s meeting of the Board of Police Commissioners, it’s clear Halifax will need to wait longer for one of the recommendations from the Wortley Report on police street checks to become a reality. The recommendation from the report (4.10 for the nerds) reads in part, “it is recommended that the HRP and RCMP develop…
Nova Scotia’s “discriminatorily underfunded” gender-affirming care system needs a revamp
Onna Young’s first memory of gender dysphoria is during a “puberty class” in fifth grade. “Everybody got to write down a question and have it anonymously answered,” she says. “Thirty questions went in the hat. Twenty-nine were answered, and I was held after school.” Young’s question was about whether someone wanting to transition had to…
Halifax surprise-hosts famous anti-folk act Crywank on farewell tour
Once you can get over the name, Crywank is the sort of band you tell all your friends about, a ‘just-trust-me’ look as you take the aux. Tracing the line between earnest and ironic with surgically precise lyrics, the band lives up to its anti-folk genre by mixing simple acoustics with fuzzed-out bridges, punked-up drums…
Community rallies to help Souls Harbour after fire shuts down the shelter’s kitchen
Olive Murwin cried when she arrived at Souls Harbour Rescue Mission on Thursday morning. The night before, the Cunard Street shelter was in flames. The building suffered extensive damage and its six residents had to evacuate. But the volunteer was crying tears of joy. What she saw that morning was an outpouring of support as…
Halifax’s Grand Oasis Festival promises to heat up your summer
Music festival season just got a whole lot hotter, thanks to the city’s announcement this week that the square at Grand Parade (1770 Barrington Street) will play host to 38 events and over 50 artists—all for free. The Grand Oasis is billing itself as a festival, which it is in spirit. In function, it’s a…
Halifax Independent Filmmakers Festival returns June 9-12
Back with its first in-person slate since 2020, the Halifax Independent Filmmakers Festival is ready to make cinephiles’s dreams come true from June 9-12. In a city under the heel of movie multiplexes, the annual event (run by the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative) always delivers a feast of art-house and DIY movies that critics are raving…
How bags of bugs might help save some Halifax trees
Last month, researchers started tying white bags around the buds of some trees around the city. If you noticed any of the bags, you’d be forgiven for thinking a strange new landscaping trend is taking off. “We’re big Halloween fans. We wanted to make it look like Halloween year-round,” says Jon Sweeney, a research scientist…
Nova Scotia’s deadliest pandemic phase continues even as COVID numbers drop
Cherished reader, we owe you an apology. Last week, after the province’s May 5 COVID numbers came out, we wrote a report about them for The Coast Daily newsletter but didn’t publish any information here at thecoast.ca. One moral to this story is that you should subscribe to the Daily to make sure you get…
Picture-perfect Dartmouth cherry trees are beginning to bloom
At the eastern edge of the Dartmouth Common, AKA Leighton Dillman Park, is Park Avenue. It’s quiet most of the year. Neighbourhood residents walk their dogs, students cut across the common on their way to and from school or the Sportplex. But for two weeks each May, the otherwise calm street is full of tourists…
Shad has the plan to make Halifax move
When indie rap mainstay Shad (born Shadrach Kabango) arrives at The Marquee this May 13, the triple-Juno-winner will have two set lists tucked in his back pocket. Attending a Shad show is always akin to taking a tour across the map of backpack rap, watching the ways that he’s resuscitated, sustained and expanded the genre…
Dalhousie University wants to tear down a 125-year-old home on Edward Street
Dalhousie University is growing. Enrolment numbers for Atlantic Canada’s largest university totalled nearly 22,000 students at the end of 2021, and have been increasing by at least 500 students annually for the past five years. Dalhousie is also expanding as a real estate developer, particularly around its Studley campus in south end Halifax. Last year,…
Halifax, go Beyond the Van Gogh you know
Arriving at the opening day of Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience earlier this week, I was amazed at how many cars were in the Halifax Exhibition Centre parking lot for a sleepy spring Monday morning. The hunger for Van Gogh—his works, his story, the feeling he imbues—is ravenous in Halifax: enough that, for a…
Making room at the table for diners with disabilities
It may not rank alongside beaches, Maud Lewis and lobster fishing as an integral part of Nova Scotia’s identity, but with 229,430 Nova Scotians reporting at least one disability—a full 30 percent of the population as of 2017—we have the highest percentage of people with disabilities in Canada. Despite this stat, Nova Scotians with disabilities…
Review: Keeper E.’s new album is airy, effortless bedroom pop
Thank U and Please Don’t Go, the sophomore album by Halifax songbird Keeper E., is music equally suited to waiting and to ruminating: Soft, shoegaze-y bedroom pop rendered mid-fidelity, the songs bend between morose and hopeful, between danceable and downbeat—sometimes as often as in a single line. After nabbing New Artist Recording of the Year…
Convenience store owner Joe Thomeh retires after 46 years
In 1976, Joe Thomeh opened Thomeh’s Market Kwik-Way Convenience Store at the corner of Cornwallis and Maynard Streets, in Halifax’s north end. The two-storey building with red bricks on the bottom and matching red shingles on top is now overshadowed by nearby highrises and apartment buildings. Its letterboard sign has read “MILKHOMO” for as long…
Halifax, here’s how to prepare to watch Neptune’s The Rocky Horror Show
The curtain for The Rocky Horror Show (Neptune Theatre’s latest production, its season-closing musical, on until June 26) is 7:30pm—or at least, that’s in theory. Usually, productions of the super-racy queer landmark start about an hour-ish earlier, as audience members begin filtering into the venue, dressed as their favourite characters and toting items that reference…
Demolition of Robie Street houses is rooted in renovictions
In March 2019, Vanessa moved into a one-bedroom apartment at 1566 Robie Street, a classic wood house near Bliss Street in Halifax’s south end. The home was old, but its good bones showed through a lack of upkeep. “The interior is what attracted me to that place,” says Vanessa, who only wanted to use her…
Celebrate Star Wars Day with this Dalhousie professor’s epic poem about the original trilogy
Jack Mitchell figures he was about three years old the first time he watched Star Wars. By the time he was old enough to warrant owning a lunch box—around age six—it had to be a Return of The Jedi number. Before age 10, he saw the original trilogy on the big screen. “That’s when I…
Halifax’s Letitia Fraser one of 25 Canadian artists to make Sobey Art Award long list
Letitia Fraser is one of 25 Canadian artists to make the long list for the country’s biggest prize in visual arts – the Sobey Art Award – and is one of two Halifax-based artists in the running, alongside Michelle Sylliboy.
Jane’s Walk returns to Halifax with 17 events to learn about the city
Jane Jacobs’ fight to save Greenwich Village in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and her later fight to stop Toronto’s proposed Spadina Expressway, inspired a generation of urbanists. A woman who made waves in the male-dominated field of urban planning, Jacobs sought to protect city blocks from being turned into high-rises, to keep mom ‘n’ pop…
HRM has a new approach to homelessness (again)
At Halifax Regional Council’s regular meeting on Tuesday, May 3, city representatives will discuss a staff report on housing and homelessness. The report recommends creating designated “overnight sheltering sites” in parks within the municipality and is reportedly part of the city’s changing approach to encampments “based on a reassessment over the last 6 weeks.” The…
8 Mother’s Day events happening in Halifax
Mother’s day—Sunday, May 8—is just around the corner, and we’re here to help those looking for inspiration on a memorable way to treat their built-in best friends. Luckily Halifax isn’t lacking in the event department, so there are lots of ways to shop, dine and unwind with, without or for your mom this year. And…
