In the early 1990s, Halifax was living the “next Seattle” indie rock legend. Bands like Sloan, Thrush Hermit and jale were influencing kids who would soon embrace the possibility of professional careers in music. The popularity of rock and punk in Halifax made way for Cafe Ole, Condon MacLeod’s crammed music club on Barrington Street […]
longreads
Posted inArts + Music
Quiet on the set a year after Stephen McNeil’s fateful budget
Mark Furey speaks with conviction about the bright future of movie-making in Nova Scotia. “The film and television incentive fund is here to stay,” says the provincial business minister. And you’ve gotta believe he believes it. Last April, after the Liberal budget killed the film funding program that had been luring major productions to the […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Going against the tide: The fight against Alton Gas
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In the fall of 2014, construction started on a brine discharge pipeline next to the Shubenacadie River, an hour north of Halifax. The development, by a company called Alton Gas, hadn’t yet received full government approval, and it was met with swift protest. A camp was soon erected that was largely occupied by local […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
How I helped the Cuban Five escape from a Cold War prison
Halifax: December 17, 2014 Inside the second-floor King’s College boardroom, close to a dozen of us huddled around a meeting table, wake-up coffees in hand, listening while our university’s director of finance walked us through her PowerPoint presentation of bad news we already knew, but in far more excruciating detail than any of us wanted […]
Posted inFood + Drink
Halifax’s market ability
Farmers’ markets have been a part of the patchwork of Halifax’s business and social communities since 1750. To put that in historical perspective, Halifax was founded in 1749. The first market was on Bedford Row, between Upper Water and George Streets. In the 1850s, after the city of Halifax had incorporated, a City Market Building […]
Posted inArts + Music
A decade of $Rockin’ 4 Dollar$
Every Monday night there is a pilgrimage to downtown Halifax. It’s undetectable at first—a slow, leather-and-denim-clad flock making its way over the Citadel from the north end, running for the Dartmouth ferry terminal, stumbling in thin throngs from the university neighbourhoods. They might be carrying instruments. They will certainly be a little bit tipsy. The […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Halifax’s drinking problem
The photo is colourized and a little fuzzy, but the image is crystal—two girls wait for their drinking cups to fill, the picture of Victorian trim-and-tidiness, in front of the grotto, the old concrete and granite recessed drinking fountain at the Halifax Public Gardens. Their attire—white, puffy-sleeved dresses, stockings and straw hats—suggests a picnic. But, […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Family secrets after the Sixties Scoop
My heart is racing. I’m sitting across a conference table from P, a social worker, in the meeting room of the Elsipogtog child and family services centre. He pushes a thick file of papers towards me, held together with an alligator clip. I’ve asked for these pages, because I need to know more than what […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
“What are they going to do…kick every guy out of fourth year?”
Four Dalhousie faculty members have come forward to file a formal complaint against the members of the “Class of DDS 2015” Facebook group. An email released just before noon from DalhousieStatement@gmail.com states the complaint has been made under the university’s code of student conduct, and not their sexual harassment policy. The complaint asks that confidentiality […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
The always-on stalker
In the middle of the night on a quiet, residential street in Halifax, a 28-year-old man climbed the steps of a white house with a red door. In the apartment upstairs lived a 30-something woman he found on Craigslist a couple hours earlier. The ad said, “I need it.” He replied by email. He was […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Legalized loan sharking
Thomas Gaillard’s troubles with payday loans began in 2008 when the financial meltdown on Wall Street sent Canada’s economy into deep recession. As tire sales slumped, the Michelin plant in Waterville where Gaillard worked cut its production, and workers took turns staying home for a day each week. Weekend and holiday shifts were also cancelled. […]
Posted inArts + Music
Garry Neill Kennedy: The last king of NSCAD
Is it easy to surprise Garry Neill Kennedy? Probably not. The self-described “78-and-a-half”-year-old has seen it all, from his days as the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design president through his long years as university professor and artist. But students from Printed Matter at the University of British Columbia, a course he taught with […]