Twenty seventeen was a momentous year for Nova Scotia wine. At home, we organized a successful Atlantic Canada Wine Symposium, hosted the WineAlign National Wine Awards and launched our 2016 Tidal Bay, the sixth vintage of our appellation wine. Our wineries released innovative new styles like Pétillant Naturel and excelled with new-to-us grape varieties like […]
Year In Review
Posted inFood + Drink
902 BrewCast’s unranked favourite beers of 2017
Spindrift Brewing’s Killick Session Lager You knew this was coming. The BrewCast-proclaimed beer of the summer and a staple of every list we compiled. Refreshing, crushable and in an adorable 12oz can, this one had to be here. BrewCast consensus Big Spruce Brewing Co’s One Hundred This beer takes being local very seriously. One hundred […]
Posted inFood + Drink
Constant cravings
Year-end articles are supposed to be all about lists of best restaurants, dishes, drinks and experiences. I could easily spend a few thousand words sermonizing on the greatness of Highwayman, the fried chicken at Backoos, Goseface Killah and summer afternoons under stringlights at the Stillwell Beergarden, but why bother? That run-on sentence has the same […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Before the murder and after, the life of Tyler Richards
In the mural painted in his honour, Tyler Richards looks out over his community with a pensive, protective glare, a basketball clenched between his palms. He can see the Steps—the childhood meeting place where he and his friends would congregate and play, a place Mulgrave Park kids before Richards’ generation and after have used as […]
Posted inArts + Music
Top 40 albums of 2015
Adria Young’s Top 10 Babysitter, Babysitter (Psychic Handshake) Drake, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late (OVO/YMCMB) Freak Heat Waves, Bonnie’s State of Mind (Hockey Dad) Future, Dirty Sprite 2 (Epic) Hag Face, R.I.P. (Psychic Handshake) Justin Bieber, Purpose (Def Jam) Nap Eyes, Whine of the Mystic (You’ve Changed) New Fries/Old & Weird, Juice (Pleasance […]
Posted inArts + Music
Top 10 movies from 2015
Amy If you had any wistful feelings about Amy Winehouse’s talent falling from the earth, they likely turned to white-hot rage after viewing Asif Kapadia’s exploration of the life leading up to her overdose. A puppet of her father and her husband, Winehouse’s onscreen personality turns from healthy spitfire to skeletal mess in a slow […]
Posted inArts + Music
Top 10 plays of 2015
A Good Death (DaPoPo Theatre) The fact that I’m still thinking about this play, the first of over 100 I saw in the past year, is a testament to its power and beauty. Kim Parkhill’s finely crafted script explores the emotionally fraught topic of assisted suicide. An impressive all-female cast and gorgeous production design. —KW […]
Posted inFood + Drink
Growing a beer garden
If Norma Desmond was a city street, dreaming of a return to star billing—a return to the halcyon days when CDs and books would bring people to stores and the windows of pool halls and artsy bars glowed with life—she wouldn’t have been Sunset Boulevard, she woulda been Barrington Street. Barrington has creaked along over […]
Posted inArts + Music
Top 10 visual arts happenings of 2015
Lisa Lipton, Hoop Dreams For some, the highlight of Nocturne was sitting on Citadel High’s bleachers buzzed out of our minds watching basketball. But not just any basketball game—Lipton staged a championship series between three fictional teams, bringing together many talented locals to create a multi-disciplinary performance piece, lulling viewers into a trance-like state with […]
Posted inArts + Music
Ben Caplan, performer of the year
No matter the stage, the place or song, folk powerhouse Ben Caplan seeks to thoroughly entertain. “It’s important to treat every show like an island,” he says. “Every gig has to be its own unique moment and I strive to reinvent the show every night, even if it’s the same set list, musicians and songs.” […]
Posted inArts + Music
Top 10 books released in 2015
Elizabeth Hay, His Whole Life (McLelland & Stewart) It’s the mid-1990s and Quebec is poised for its second referendum when Jim travels with his parents to his mother’s childhood home on a lake in Ontario. What follows next is the everyday meat of any family saga as Jim comes of age and finds out more […]
Posted inArts + Music
Top 10 comics released in 2015
Astro City (Vertigo) Writer/creator Kurt Busiek has been scripting his masterpiece anthology series for two decades, and if you’ve never read it then you’ve been missing out on one of the best comic books of all time. I’ll say that again: of all time. Astro City explores every corner of its titular city and the […]