Its closure has long been discussed as part of the plan for a nice new fitness facility, but now the South Park Street YMCA’s last days have arrived, and the community that’s grown up with the Y for the last 61 years is just starting to face the loss. Click here for our stand-alone features […]
longreads
Posted inLifestyle
The Sidney Crosby of dog handlers
Colton O’Shea wears a suit and tie when he’s working, and the sort of business shoes that are hardly fitting for the cardio his job entails. He’d never show discomfort though, especially since his comrades all wear collars too. As polished and unflappable as an English butler, he ensures his well-bred charges are perfectly poised […]
Posted inArts + Music
Into The Woods
Alexis Cormier is adorned with jewels, a tiny row of diamonds under her right eye. It’s pouring rain outside—by all accounts a lazy Sunday afternoon—but inside Halifax Dance, The Woods came to throw down. Speaking before the weekly rehearsal that eats up four hours every Sunday, Cormier is lively, eager to share her encyclopedic knowledge […]
Posted inArts + Music
Board game empire
We hold these truths to be self-evident, not all games are created equal. If you’re staying up all night eyes-to-screen with Call of Duty or geared up with a headset and World of Warcraft with 46 of your closest avatars, crushing candies on the commute to work or creating a Dance Dance Revolution—think about turning […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
The business of bare: Inside Ralph’s Place
She is on hands and knees, naked. Below her a man slumps over his beer bottle. He is nearly alone in the club on this bright afternoon. She crawls towards him, stopping three feet away–as close as the law allows. Her movements are almost languorous, but she lacks the confidence and practice of the other […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Holly Bartlett’s unlikely journey
Update, February 24, 2014: Halifax Regional Police and Halifax District RCMP have announced an independent review of the police investigation into Holly Bartlett’s death. For more information, click here. Work finished early that Friday afternoon, but Holly Bartlett’s day was just getting started. She had to shop for a birthday present for her six-year-old nephew—Holly […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Halifax’s garbage wars
Heather Johnston lives within smelling distance of the Otter Lake landfill. In 1993 she bought property on the edge of a wilderness area to build a house. Two years later, the city announced it was putting the new landfill three kilometres away from Johnston’s land, a few minutes down the highway from Bayers Lake. The […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
The politics of BULLSHIT
The next premier of Nova Scotia will be…a white man. He’ll take a centrist approach to all issues, developed after extensive consultation with focus groups and party pollsters. The next premier will continue Nova Scotia’s long history of millions of dollars in subsidies and tax rebates for corporations from away. He’ll be good friends with […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Plan bee
It’s early June, and Michelle McPherson is standing in an empty backyard in the north end. McPherson is a beekeeper. Until 10 days ago, her first and only beehive, almost one year old, stood under a pine tree in a corner of the yard. “A month-and-a-half ago, I realized I had a very, very strong […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Red-light greenlight: Sex work at the brink of legalization
Editor’s note, August 23: an earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Amy Lebovitch. It’s September 2010 and Rene Ross is sipping coffee from a cracked mug while she drags me through a tour of sex-work policy in Halifax, all from our booth in the Good Food Emporium on Gottingen Street. Boundaries are areas in […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Pushed out by gentrification?
Rocky Jones found a seat next to fellow activist Billy Lewis. Every chair in the room at the north branch library was full. People of different races, cultures and incomes sat with their neighbours, stood along the walls and spilled outside the door. Several young people in front of Jones held yellow signs. One read: […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Two decades of world-class delusion
After “drop the bomb,” never have three simple words so devastated a place. The first reference I can find to anyone using the phrase “world-class city” to describe Halifax comes from 1994. That July, Fred MacGillivray was hired as president of the World Trade and Convention Centre, the provincial crown corporation now called Trade Centre […]