DARRELL DEXTER
On June 9 the NDP won its first majority in Nova Scotia ever and
RodMac was sent packing. While we’ve considered this to be good news, a
Deloitte consultants’ report is suggesting that the province will be in
the hole to the tune of $1.3 billion in three years. What to do, what
to do? That loud, cracking sound you’ll hear in the coming weeks will
be from election promises breaking, relating to a balanced budget and
taxes untouched.
SEWAGE
Remember in January when the multi-million dollar sewage plant
failed? We waited into the summer to better understand what happened.
Oh, it wasn’t that the city didn’t know, they just wouldn’t tell us. A
forensic audit was performed—to the tune of hundreds of thousands of
dollars—and its results not released to the public. This forced The
Coast’s news editor and now resident expert on shitstorms, Tim
Bousquet, to look into the matter. In an August cover story he
explained how bad planning and multiple design failures led to the
current situation.
It remains to be seen if any kind of consensus can be reached on
whether it could have been prevented. The mayor’s office is suggesting
we plug our noses and look forward to next year when the problem will
be fixed. In the meantime, we wait for the lawsuits.
TALL SHIPS
Mid-July was the peak of event activity in Halifax. We had Paul
McCartney and KISS on the Common—more about that in a bit—and
sandwiched in-between was JazzFest and Pride and Tall Ships. This town
was lousy with sailors, beatniks, horn-players, boomers and demons.
Despite the obvious sewage problem—concentrating the untreated
effluent to just a few output pipes, many of them in the downtown
area—Tall Ships wasn’t spoiled by the occasional stench. It was an
impressive collection of ocean-going sailing ships of the past and
present, the waterfront boardwalk spilling over with visitors
vicariously dreaming of a life on the waves. And in case you missed it,
the sails will be back again in 2010, which apparently will be an even
larger regatta than this year.
RAIN
Average rainfall for June in Halifax: 107mm.
2009 rainfall for June in Halifax: 170mm.
The days were wet and close. In the last couple of weeks of the
month, the sun was a rumour. Then it became a myth. July was a little
better, not much. In August we had a heat wave, about 10 days of
wonderful, sunny, hot weather. Then the underperforming Hurricane Bill
showed up—or Wet Willy as we like to call him; the lesser-ballyhooed
Post-Tropical Storm Danny was actually much more of a nuisance the
following week—and it’s been distinctly fall-like ever since.
CONCERTS
Joel Plaskett and Wintersleep played, and then Paul McCartney
performed 36 songs in a hell of a show. July 11 was beautiful with a
cool evening, and while the Common event site was full of people, the
non-ticket-holding community came out, lined the streets surrounding
and draped Citadel Hill to enjoy the crystal-clear sound. When
McCartney pulled from deep in his songbook, it was hard not to swoon a
little to hear “Eleanor Rigby,” “Yesterday,” “Live and Let Die” and
“Helter Skelter” played by the man who wrote those classics (or
co-wrote them, as the case may be). People who were there won’t soon
forget it. There was a lot of concern for the state of the Common, but
even after KISS rocked Halifax on a much rainier day the following
Saturday, lessons of the past seem to have been learned as the damage
to the land was nowhere near as bad as for, say, Keith Urban. There was
also Virgin Fest on Citadel Hill, which went half-price 48 hours before
showtime—slow ticket sales, we presume—and then free when headliner
The Tragically Hip had to cancel due to a family emergency. The muddy
venue did not deter fans of Dinosaur Jr, Metric or The Offspring from
showing up. Halifax also saw US rock supergroup Chickenfoot, the Summer
Rush show at Alderney Landing (a source on the inside told The Coast
that Akon smelled really good) and in August, Modest Mouse played a
very sticky show at the Forum during that heatwave. August also saw
AC/DC perform in front of those about to rock in Moncton. We know
people who went and they, indeed, did rock.
MOVIES YOU DIDN’T MISS
If you weren’t in Halifax this summer, you may have seen these
movies where you were: Cheri, Stephen Frears’ and Christopher
Hampton’s period drama starring Michelle Pfeiffer; Tetro,
Francis Ford Coppola’s return to directing; Japanese thriller Blood:
The Last Vampire and Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend
Experience. And the summer movies we wish we’d missed? How about
The Proposal, Whatever Works and Wolverine?
SIDNEY CROSBY
Everyone saw how the Pittsburgh Penguins came from behind in the
2009 Stanley Cup finals to take down the reigning Detroit Red Wings,
who’d disappointed the Pens the year before. On Friday, August 7, Cole
Harbour’s favourite son brought the cup home—on his birthday, no
less—flown in on a Sea King and paraded all the way to Cole Harbour
Place to the cheers of an estimated 80,000 people. For many, it was the
best day of the year, let alone the summer.
This article appears in Sep 3-9, 2009.