A Pearl by any other place?

Quick now, who was Gavin Rainnie? Rainnie Drive? Doesn’t tinkle any bells yet? How about that short street that skirts the northern base of Citadel Hill from the new Halifax Common roundabout at North Park and Cogswell to the corner of Brunswick and Duke, the one thousands of us pass through daily on our way […]

Who killed Mills Brothers?

Who killed Mills Brothers? The iconic Spring Garden Road women’s retailer — which launched in 1919 when “carriage trade” was still more literal than metaphorical — shuttered its sliding doors Tuesday. It disappeared into receivership, putting 20 employees — some of whom had greeted customers for 30 years — out of work. Perhaps it’s because […]

CBC Nova Scotia’s Halifax election financing database: lessons learned

Do you know how many of the donations to winning candidates in the 2012 Halifax municipal election came from companies “involved in development?” Do you know how much money your district councillor received from this dog’s breakfast of “involved” developers, construction companies and real estate firms, each with self-interests in sundry proposals, projects and permits […]

Mike Savage Part 1: Not quite his father’s son

It’s hard to imagine a 30-minute conversation with former mayor Peter Kelly that could skip seamlessly: from the rebuilding Halifax Mooseheads; to a previous life as a backbench opposition MP (“the only less relevant position being a backbencher on the government side”); to the job of Halifax mayor (“I like it, sometimes more than I […]

Selected dispatches from last week’s “whoopsie” file

How many Conservative cabinet ministers does it take to mislead Canadians? Last weekend, Stephen Harper trotted out his own trusty troika — Defence Minister Rob Nicholson, Veterans Affairs Minister (sic) Julian Fantino and Justice Minister Peter MacKay — for a $200 million photo op/announcement during the Halifax International Security Forum, a.k.a. Peter’s Playground (official cost: […]

NSP and the convention centre: failures to communicate

What we have here, suggested Nova Scotia Power President and CEO Bob Hanf, is a failure to communicate. Lack of manpower? Don’t worry. Storm-unhardened infrastructure? Be happy. Despite close to a week to prepare for the Hurricane Arthur that had whooshed into a post-tropical shell of itself by the time it made landfall, NSP’s communications […]

Heritage Trust v Joe Ramia and the Be-Bolders

So Joe Ramia, developer of Halifax’s new, significantly publicly financed $500-million convention-centre-hotel-office-residential-retail behemoth, is suing Heritage Trust and its 27 volunteer directors for what could be tens of millions of dollars for their “persistent efforts to quash downtown development” — especially his. Last week, 300 of Halifax’s self-anointed finest—“just rattle your bracelets,” as John Lennon said—cheered […]

07/07/2014
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Mike Savage, Peter Kelly, Rob Ford and keeping the bar low

Perhaps it’s as simple as the fact Mike Savage is not… oh, there are too many to choose from. His predecessor, for starters. Peter Kelly, the unlamented former mayor of Halifax whose major lasting legacy was his longevity in an office for which he was so obviously unsuited. He, belatedly, had the good sense to […]

A mayor we can laugh with… Hey, it's a start

The good news — for all concerned — is that Mike Savage is not Brad Pitt. The better news is that he isn’t Bruce Banman either. Banman is the beleaguered mayor of Abbotsford, the currently virally — not to forget bacterially — in-the-news B.C. community where city officials recently scattered chicken manure around a homeless encampment […]

06/10/2013
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How does Emera afford to put its name on our skating oval?

It doesn’t You do. One way or the other… Solidarity Halifax’s quixotic campaign to rename the Commons skating oval isn’t likely to find many takers among cash-starved city councilors, but it should give the rest of us pause. How is it that Emera, the parent company of Nova Scotia Power, the private utility that keeps […]