Like drinking? Like matching t-shirts? You do? Well then, brace yourself for Friday night, when Halifax will attempt to enter the Guiness Book of World Records for hosting the world’s largest pub crawl. If successful, we shall rip the honour away from Maryborough, Australia, which has been acting too damn smug lately, anyway.
If you don’t have a ticket to said pub crawl—and don’t bother looking; tickets are quite sold out—prepare to drunkenly party with 3,200 of your nearest, dearest Haligonian friends. Actually, if you don’t have a ticket, it might be best to hide under your bed and wait for the insanity to pass.
Also, an update to the ticket-holding public, regarding the fate of your $20 admission price: when the pub crawl was first announced, organizers said that significant proceeds from ticket sales would donated to Mothers Against Drunk Driving—but MADD makes it a point not to accept any donations from the liquor industry, or from liquor-focused events.
Like, for example, the world’s largest pub crawl.
So, after your shirt, cover, crawl schedule and Guinness World Records Certificate are paid for, who gets the money?
“Right now, it has yet to be determined,” says crawl organizer Jonathan DeYoung. “But, we have had a number of different charities step up and say that they would accept the cash.”
DeYoung says that his business, High Impact Promotions, will select a charity sometime in the weeks following the crawl. He’s also looking for an alternative benefactor that would in some way relate to the pub crawl theme, similar to MADD. For example?
“We’ve looked at the Canadian Liver Foundation,” he says.
The more you know
A hearty Coast welcome to incoming Freedom of Information review officer Dulcie McCallum. McCallum started in her new position on Monday.
Not gonna lie, we’re big fans of Freedom of Information here. In the past, we’ve championed former FOI review officer Darce Fardy. Fardy has since gone on to found the Right to Know Coalition of Nova Scotia, a group dedicated to the ideal that governments should be transparent and held accountable for their actions. As we said, big fans.
But as much as we care about FOI, many people still don’t understand exactly what it is, or how to make use of the FOI review office. McCallum considers raising public awareness a big part of her new job.
“We’re going to try to put together an outreach program at a community-based level—not just so that we can generate more reviews for our office, but so that more people know how to use us to access their government,” she says. “When I first got the position…everyone was very proud of me, but they weren’t always exactly sure what it is that I’ll be doing.”
In 2002, John Hamm’s PC government raised the access to information fees from $5 to $25. Critics say the fee increase wasn’t properly justified, and that it represents a symbolic eff-you to transparency. McCallum plans to review the situation.
“Anything that promotes the interest of the public would be how I come at it,” she explains. Generally, she believes the province is moving in the right direction. “I think it’s crystallizing, what should properly be kept private by government and what should be made readily available to people.”
Make yourself readily available. Email: [email protected]