North end residents dreamed big about the future of St. Pat’s-Alexandra at a meeting last night, but heard they may have to compromise on their housing goals. About 70 people attended the consultation at the Halifax North Memorial Public Library to yet again speak their minds on the future of the former school site. It...
Medieval maps and Kazakhstani Cows: Morning File, Friday, July 4, 2014
News 1. Convention Centre war escalates There appears to be worry in mucky muckdom over the Nova Centre. Reportedly, the Stonecutters met Saturday and agreed to buy a full-page ad in the Chronicle Herald. The ad denigrates Heritage Trust for impeding all progress and erasing Halifax from the map by asking the court to review the Nova Centre approval. […]
Scapegoating Heritage Trust
It’s Beat Up on Heritage Trust time. Again. This time it’s a full page ad in the Chronicle Herald signed by seemingly everyone in town connected in some way to the development industry, including Sarah Dennis, the Herald’s owner and publisher, and her husband Mark Lever, the company’s president. The ad attacks Heritage Trust for asking for […]
Victoria Hall has been converted into apartments
Victoria Hall is up for rent. The Gottingen Street heritage building that once served as housing for low-income senior women is currently being renovated into a market-rate apartment building. A couple weeks ago, Home Rents rental specialist Debbie White took me on a tour of the nearly 33,000 square foot French chateau-style building. The 50...
A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum: Morning File, July 3, 2014
News 1. Peter Kelly has a new job. I was at a Canada Day barbecue Tuesday, watching the fireworks from a Gottingen Street balcony, when a friend who lives in a Sackville apartment building told me that the guy coming around to spray his building for bugs looks a whole lot like former Mayor Peter […]
Former Mayor Peter Kelly has a new job
彼得·凯利找到了一份工作。前市长now working at a pest control company owned by his former employee, Stephen Taylor. Residents say Kelly has shown up at their apartment buildings donned in protective gear and carrying a tank, spraying for bugs. Taylor has long been a dedicated supporter of Kelly. Taylor worked...
Franklin Holtforster, the manager of the disastrous Bluenose II restoration, calls himself a Rapacious Capitalist Bastard
“You know how construction projects always go to hell and are over budget and always late? Ours don’t,” Franklin Holtforster told the Ottawa Business Journal in a puff piece on Holtoforster’s company, MHPM Project Managers Inc. MHPM is of course the firm “managing” the disastrous (re?)construction of the Bluenose II. Explains writer Rob Gordon in today’s Globe […]
Hippy punching & crappy Chinese food: Morning File, July 2, 2014
News 1. People don’t like fracking Chronicle Herald reporter Selena Ross follows up on the release of a report on the socioeconomic effects of fracking, noting that people who commented to the panel were quite skeptical: “In submissions, the writers often saw the dangers of fracking in the context of their own lives, describing risks […]
Happy James McGregor Stewart Day!
Today would’ve been James McGregor Stewart’s 125th birthday, and 15 people met this morning next to his grave in Camp Hill Cemetery to honour him. Stewart was a founder of a law firm that is a predecessor to today’s Stewart McKelvey, Nova Scotia’s topmost corporate lawyer, president of the Canadian Bar, and was named a Commander of the British...
Long weekend edition: Morning File, Monday, June 30, 2014
News 1. An article in the Chronicle Herald attempts to update us on court proceedings involving alleged invasion of patients’ privacy at Capital Health; a worker is accused of improperly accessing medical records of other workers. This is an important issue, and one that rightly should be followed by the local paper of record. Alas, the un-bylined piece […]