In the days after the Common concert funding scandal came to light last week, I noticed a new parlour game being played everywhere I went. The goal sounds simple: Name a contender who can challenge mayor Peter Kelly in next year’s municipal election. However, it’s surprisingly hard. Just a short list of names keeps coming […]
Peter Kelly
Posted inNews + Opinion
Peter Kelly’s dissembling explanation
What did Peter Kelly know and when did he know it? That question will determine if the Halifax mayor will survive the Common concert funding scandal. Kelly’s story seems to change as time goes on, but as I understand his line is basically that he knew that Power Promotions was being advanced loans somehow through […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Mayor Peter Kelly was in the loop
Mayor Peter Kelly knew that the CAO’s office was funnelling money through Metro Centre to Power Promotions, a city document shows. But Kelly did not alert the full city council of the improper practice, and did not speak publicly of the matter for the next seven months. The document is a July 21, 2010 letter […]
Posted inArts + Music
All Scrabbled up
Word up, Kelly Perhaps the most surprising thing (besides Peter Kelly’s appearance) at last Saturday’s Scrabble with the Stars was the triple-score word-making prowess of actor John Dunsworth. Holy shit. Like a Scrabble-Jesus sent from above, the game fanatic and board collector laid his hands down on players’ tiles, identifying seven-letter words in seconds, settled X-word debates without flipping open a dictionary and scored 150-plus point turns. Even if you lost hard (ahem) it was for a good cause: Performing Art Lodge is dedicated to building affordable housing for artists in their senior years; painting and performing rarely comes with
Posted inNews + Opinion
Province, City come to agreement on Bridge Terminal
Halifax mayor Peter Kelly confirms that the city and the province have sorted out their differences with regard to Dartmouth Common issues, and the Bridge Terminal reconstruction plans are continuing without further change. In June, Halifax council approved a plan to place an expanded Bridge Terminal on Common land, in a configuration that stretched the […]
Posted inLifestyle
Halifamous Foodies: Peter Kelly
Peter Kelly (Mayor) Like most people, I love to eat fresh local produce whenever possible but, unfortunately, I don’t have a patch of soil to grow my own. Happily, my father doesn’t live too far away and he has a large garden, which I “raid” frequently. He grows everything, from strawberries and raspberries to cucumbers, […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Dexter throws potential wrench in Bridge Terminal plans
This is all very rushed… Apparently, premier Darrell Dexter was on CTV news tonight, and said that his office opposes changes to the land use bylaws that make the new terminal possible. (See here for more detail.) You’ll recall that after initial plans to have the Bridge Terminal travel alongside Nantucket Street were met by […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Peter Kelly
2010 grade: C 2009 grade: C- 2008 grade: D 2007 grade: D You know what would be super cool? If we had a mayor who was busted for trying to smuggle a gun onto an airplane. Alas, we’ve only got a mayor who distractedly brings a forgotten bullet through security. But that’s Peter Kelly for […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Photos: An Apology for Africville
This morning, as I walked over to the Gottingen Street YMCA with the Halifax North Memorial Library women’s group and MP Megan Leslie, I was thinking about Halifax artist Cathy Busby’s project Sorry. Her exhibition of public apology photographs and text—from Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction to Stephen Harper’s apology to First Nations Canadians—has shown around the world. We live in a media-saturated society where there is a formula for public atonement: Tiger Woods needs practice, I’m afraid. Peter Kelly didn’t even deliver the only apology today—Yoshimi Inaba, CEO of Toyota, announced that he is “deeply sorry” for his company’s malfunctioning
Posted inNews + Opinion
Chequebook politics leaves city staff short changed
Last week, city staff announced that the pay rates for Halifax councillors had been improperly calculated, and so every councillor serving since 2005 would receive a one-time payment making up for lost pay. The payments totalled $246,096.16; some councillors received as much as $8,000, but most considerably less. Councillors used to set their own pay […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Mark Parent: HRM back-tracking on wilderness park is “height of political Machiavellianism”
Earlier this year, the province officially designated 1,350 hectares west of Bayers Lake Industrial Park as the Blue Mountain-Birch Cove Lakes Wilderness. The designation capped a two-year effort that began under former minister of the environment Mark Parent. But last month, Halifax mayor Peter Kelly told the CBC that he won’t agree to the city […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Duffy haunts City Hall
Before he retired earlier this year, Chronicle-Herald columnist Peter Duffy was internationally renowned for such groundbreaking journalism as his first-person account of being anally raped by a ghost, a single-entendre report on the opening of the Dartmouth Hooters and a softball interview with white supremacist Jared Taylor. This week that expertise is being taken to […]