Lowefiles

The wait is over. I’m leaving this space as a columnist. What’s that I hear? Gasps? Sighs? The odd meh? Ahh…but there’s the din too, I am certain, of cheering. I just trolled through my email “letter” archive from 2009 and was reminded of a mere sprinkling of my journalistic sins—that I am, apparently, a […]

You are moving. You’re packing and digging and cleaning. You find a pair of knee-high wool cross-country ski socks, tag still on, with a receipt. The slip says they were bought in 1994. Do you… a) toss them in the trash? b) put them in a bag for charity? c) trot off to the store […]

It’s like Tom Fleet doesn’t know what he’s got in his hot little hands. Or maybe it’s that dry ice—the must-have of heavy-metal roadies and scary-movie set decorators—is just so been-there-done-that for Fleet that he simply can’t share the enthusiasm we everyday Halloween-lovin’ schmucks feel about the stuff. “Yeah, I sometimes use it at Halloween,” […]

Graham Murphy’s cell phone is ringing.It’s inventory time at JA Snow Funeral Home and the number of caskets and urns isn’t adding up. “Sorry about that,” he says, hanging up with well-whaddya-gonna-do? expression. Murphy is the general manager at JA Snow, Halifax’s oldest undertaker, now owned by Alderwoods Group Canada, Canada’s second-largest funeral home operator. […]

>Jen Stotland plucks a loose, lovely light purple petal from a bed in the Public Gardens. “Mallow,” she says, placing it quickly in my open palm. Eat it? Yup. The whole thing? Just pop it in your mouth. You can eat the leaf too. I do. “It’s a little bit slimy,” she says. “It’s really […]