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The Coast | News, events, restaurants, concerts and Burger Week for Halifax, Nova Scotia
Home of the Best of Halifax Reader's Choice Awards, the award-winning independent newspaper covers the Halifax news, politics, events, concerts, movies, restaurants, and nightlife scene.
Our national political arena often seems dominated by unproductive partisan potshots and misplaced accountability, with corporate interests prioritized over people’s. Behind the noisy partisan sniping, a quiet majority—70 to 75 percent of Canadians—is largely disengaged from politics, according to McAllister Opinion Research. It’s not that people don’t care about climate change, affordability, equity and creating…
Hundreds of Haligonians gathered at Grand Parade Square on Friday to mourn the destruction caused by climate change and request government action. “The planet is in crisis, there is no planet B and unless we take that seriously then our home is gone,” said David Walmark, an attendee of the rally. “Everybody can do their…
An infinite future of changes to Halifax and Dartmouth’s streetscapes and planning zones got their first big seal of approval this week. After months—really years…decades even—of back and forth on big ideas and tiny details, Package A of the city’s Centre Plan was unanimously passed by regional council this week. The plan aims to streamline…
From the Brazilian dance troupe Focus Cia de Dança kick-starting Live Art Dance’s new season to Sugar Sammy bringing down the house at Spatz Theatre, it’s a red-hot weekend. Sugar Sammy Friday The funny guy The New York Times calls “a fearless comic with a talent for provoking both laughter and outrage”, Sugar Sammy brings…
Vote the climate The mess made by my generation and those before me has fallen to the generation that includes people who are too young to vote. Even without the voting privilege, they have decided to do what we could not—protest. They are doing so with a mass student strike. And I hope it brings…
Written and directed by Dartmouth-based filmmaker Heather Young, (Dog Girl, Milk) Murmur—which opened this year’s FIN Atlantic International Film Festival—tells the beautifully bleak story of Donna (Shan McDonald), a kind-hearted woman whose loneliness is palpable. She doesn’t appear to have anyone in her life except her daughter, who refuses to answer her calls or texts.…
The Location Matt Likely has spent years working his way up the gilded ladder of the film industry, starting as a graphic designer “making signs that are used in the background of a movie,” to roles like artistic director or production designer. When luminary auteur Robert Eggers decided that Yarmouth—in particular, what Likely describes as…
A few days before the Halifax stop of their Climate First Tour, renowned scientist and author David Suzuki and Stephen Lewis, humanitarian and former ambassador for Canada to the United Nations, spoke with me over the phone from Vancouver. While we were speaking, millions of people around the world were striking for climate action, inspired…
On a Friday afternoon in February, 17-year-old Citadel High School students Willa Fisher and Julia Sampson stood among the 300 hundred youth they’d organized chanting for Halifax’s first Fridays for Future student strike. Now, with three strikes under their belts and the support of a community of resources, Fisher and Sampson are organizing their most…
HAPPY BIRTHDAY VIRGO (August 23-September 22) In 1959, scandal erupted among Americans who loved to eat peanut butter. Studies revealed that manufacturers had added so much hydrogenated vegetable oil and glycerin to their product that only 75 percent of it could truly be called peanut butter. So began a long legal process to restore high…
SEPTEMBER Africville: A Spirit that Lives on – A Reflection Project MSVU Art Gallery, Mount Saint Vincent University, 166 Bedford Highway, Aug 17-Nov 10 Atmospheric Events Dalhousie Art Gallery, Dalhousie Arts Centre, 6101 University Avenue, Aug 30-Nov 24 21 Days to Make or Break a Habit For the first 21 days of November 2018, artist…
Do you feel encouraged by talk of the Green New Deal? I feel a tremendous excitement and a sense of relief, that we are finally talking about solutions on the scale of the crisis we face. That we’re not talking about a little carbon tax or a cap and trade scheme as a silver bullet.…
Atmospheric Events Daily to Nov 24 Dalhousie Art Gallery It’s hard to love a brute—at least, hard to love a Brutalist building. Severe concrete structures like the one that makes up the Dalhousie Arts Centre—home to the University’s art gallery—have fallen out of fashion. They are seen as ugly remnants of misguided 20th century socialist…
Q My son has always liked handcuffs and tying people up as a form of play. He is 12 now, and the delight he finds in cuffing has not faded. He lobbied hard to be allowed to buy a hefty pair of handcuffs. We cautioned him strongly about consent—he has a younger brother—and he has…
SEPTEMBER Vortex w/Enemy Designed, Ignightor Gus’ Pub, 2605 Agricola Street, $8, Sep 20,10pm Kids Losing Sleep w/Social Smokers Club, Izra Fitch The local four-piece Kids Losing Sleep calls its brand of Warped Tour-inspired punk “heartbreak you can dance to.” Gus’ Pub 2605 Agricola Street, $8, Sep 21, 10pm NAMU Prismatic Arts Festival brings this traditional…
When Hurricane Dorian hit Nova Scotia on September 7 as a post-tropical storm, it reminded many of destructive Hurricane Juan. It was also a taste of what the future holds. Climate change is contributing to the increasing frequency and intensity of tropical storms and hurricanes. As the planet warms, we can expect more storms like…
SEPTEMBER The Last Wife The Merritt Award-winning, Dora Award-nominated Stephanie MacDonald takes pride in playing tough women—”like your cousin who isn’t gonna let that shit slide at family dinner,” she tells The Coast. Here, she brings her considerable talent and same ain’t-no-pushover attitude to the role of Catherine Parr in Neptune’s season opener, The Last…
Brawta Jamaican Jerk Joint 1567 Grafton Street Baking was always a side hustle for Christine Allen, a hobby she’d been working at since she was a six-year-old in Jamaica, burning things in her mother’s kitchen. Heavily influenced by the women in her life and their handed-down recipes, Allen’s first foray into selling her food—long before…
The questions pondered on the upcoming Devarrow album are more than just hashtag millennial problems. When indie folk singer-songwriter Graham Ereaux started recording songs for a new Devarrow LP, the original plan was to create a narrative-based record built around a person moving from small town to big city and the often conflicting concepts of…
Wild Within November 14-16, 8:00pm Alderney Landing Theatre, 2 Ochterloney Street, Dartmouth $17-$28 www.moceandance.com The ties between ourselves and the natural world are vast and deeply connected to a part of us we might not be conscious of—but what does that bond look like? This is a question Mocean Dance’s co-artistic director Sara Coffin hopes…
You may have glimpsed Mckayla Eaton hunched over her laptop at Uncommon Grounds or Trident Booksellers & Cafe. But while you were focused on your daily caffeine fix, Eaton was thinking (and writing) about something a bit more magical than a caramel macchiato. Eaton’s debut novel, Summoned, is the first book in a young-adult fantasy…
No one who understands science questions whether humans are causing the climate to change to our detriment, mostly by burning fossil fuels. The evidence is indisputable. It’s been verified and accepted by every reputable scientific institution in the world, and by almost every government except the current, fact-averse US administration. The only real debate is about how…
Follow the road to fun The Quinpool Road Mainstreet District Association is teaming up with the HFX Wanderers to bring the most action-packed Quinfest to date! It’s their way of saying thank you to the wonderful community members for supporting them all year long. The family-friendly event brings fun to the open street, and this…
The closest thing to getting inside Ian Matheson’s brain is spending some time at the Propeller Arcade. The Propeller Brewing Company staffer and resident pinball nerd was the champion behind the north end brewery’s no-frills, ultra-lax basement bar, which opened about nine months ago. Now he’s helping it level up. “We thought it would be…
Are You Kidding Me?!: Chronicles of an Ordinary Life Lesley Crewe has written a boatload of novels. One of them, Relative Happiness, was made into a feature film and enjoyed by audiences at the (then) Atlantic Film Festival in 2014. Crewe is known for her long-form fiction, but she’s also known for taking the details…
Wed Oct 2-Sun Oct 6 Afterwords Literary Festival The brainchild of some of very best and brightest folks putting pen to paper—Stephanie Domet, Sue Goyette, Stephens Gerard Malone, Rebecca Thomas and Ryan Turner—Afterwords aims to bring top-notch writers, both local and visiting, off their pages and into listening rooms around town. Treat your brain to…
Shelly Sarwal didn’t view her death as a tragedy. But, that doesn’t mean she wanted to die. As she points out in Her Last Project, which chronicles the last year and half of her life after being diagnosed with Multiple System Atrophy (MSA)—a rare and incurable neurodegenerative disease—she just wasn’t given a choice in the…
Hannah Kovacs’ career path might have been, as she puts it, “very non-linear” but eventually it led her back home. The born-and-raised Haligonian, who spent the last number of years living in Toronto, fell for fitness after dabbling in a few other worlds—earning a Masters in policy, working for a tech start-up and exploring the…
Interfaith gathering and climate action rally A moment of silence to honour victims of the climate crisis kicks off this gathering, followed by speeches from climate activists and faith leaders on how meaningful action can be made. Fri Sep 20 Noon-1pm Grand Parade Square 1770 Barrington Street Free Youth National Die-In Fri Sep 20 3:30pm…
