Unravel Jan/Feb 2022 - Telling Halifax Stories

UNRAVELHALIFAX.CA

JAN/FEB 22

Artists like Eriana Willis and Advocates of Truth are at the forefront of Halifax’s musical transformation

DID HALIFAX GET THE SPRING GARDEN ROAD REVAMP RIGHT? P. 54

WRITER HANNAH MOSCOVITCH ON CONSENT AND PERSPECTIVE P. 17

THE TENDER WORK OF A DEATH DOULA P. 28

YOUR CULINARY ADVENTURE STARTS HERE.

the issue

Features

Departments

28

5 UNRAVEL Snow-choked sidewalks send a signal about who we value

THE TENDER WORK OF A DEATH DOULA With gentle guidance, the

10 THE LIST

journey through life’s final stage

Can’t-miss events

can be peaceful and comforting

12 THE BACKSTORY

34

Recalling the glory days of newspapers in Halifax

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT Diverse, vibrant, and unique

16 THE PERSPECTIVE

— Halifax’s music scene has

Hitting the language barrier

transformed, thanks to rising stars like Eriana Willis and

17 THE CONVERSATION

Keonté Beals

Changing the way we look at each other

44

20 THE HOUSING MARKET

A SPACE WHERE NOVA SCOTIANS SEE THEMSELVES

Upwards from here 25 THE VIEW

“Glass-half-empty guy” Scott

Vibrant hip-hop inspired art

McCrea on his aspirations for Queen’s Marque, the city, and

27 THE SOUND

the province

Canadian politics demystified

50

60 THE FLAVOUR

JUST KEEP PADDLING

Valentine’s satisfaction

Competitive canoer Bret

62 THE FLAVOUR

Himmelman opens up about

Serving up joy

mental health, gruelling trainmaking waves in a tough sport

54 TOWERING AMBITIONS Imagine Spring Garden Road is a $10-million streetscaping project the likes of which Halifax has never seen. And it’s almost controversy-free.

Have we figured out how to do these things?

Ian Selig

ing, financial challenges, and Hannah Moscovitch

jan/feb vol 2 / issue 1

66 THE STANCE Road romance vs. planetary survival

62

On the cover Artists like Eriana Willis and Advocates of Truth (from left: Shadrack Kayombo, brothers Gallyna and Rajab Ally, Andrew Dhams) are seizing new musical opportunities.

Photo of Eriana Willis: Pam Sampson / Photo of Advocates of Truth: Mitch Valcourt

Kat Frick Miller

Balint Vekassy

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ABM leads IT solutions for today’s fast-paced businesses

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or 30 years, ABM Integrated Solutions, a Halifax-based IT solutions provider and integrator, has been serving large and small organizations across a wide range of industries in Atlantic Canada.

Today, ABM Integrated Solutions has evolved beyond what it means to be a technology outsourcer into an organization dedicated to delivering technical excellence across the Atlantic region. “Our mission is to be a reliable and trusted partner for our customers, providing technology solutions and services to empower their success,” says Craig Lynk, President ABM Integrated Solutions.

ABM aligns strategically with small and medium-sized businesses (SMB), delivering technical integrations, solutions, and platforms. ABM understands the pace of change and the ongoing challenges organizations face within the new digital economy. Technological challenges and advances are constant, and to stay competitive, businesses today need to remain current. In many ways, organizations’ technical programs need to secure and drive a successful business strategy.

That’s why today, ABM considers itself more than just another technology company, but rather an organization that supports a wide range of SMB customers as a partner, delivering exceptional IT solutions tailored to the individual needs of their customers. “We help organizations be their best by doing what we do best,” says Mr. Hall-Hoffarth, “we provide inclusive programs designed to enable the organization and allow companies to focus on their business goals and objectives.”

But don’t just take his word for it.

Cortney Burns, the Director of Finance and Administration at the Greater Moncton International Airport, had this to say, “as with most organizations, cybersecurity is a critical focus for Greater Moncton International Airport (GMIA). ABM provides technical guidance and expertise, with a focus on ensuring our systems and information are protected from unauthorized access, both inside and outside of our organization. With the support of ABM, we implemented several security initiatives that have improved our technical readiness and increased our security posture to support key business initiatives. ABM continues to be a valuable resource in meeting the needs of GMIA.” One recent ABM client, Cherubini went further to say, “we had a complex system integration that required a high level of technical expertise and knowledge we couldn’t field in-house,” said Michael Gasparetto, the company’s Managing Director. “ABM not only solved our problem, but they also worked with us to greatly improve our overall IT infrastructure and service promise.”

To do what Mr. Hall-Hoffarth says, “we do our best to understand and support our customer’s needs.” ABM frequently works with world-class partners such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), the global edge-tocloud platform-as-a-service company that helps organizations accelerate outcomes by unlocking value from all of their data, everywhere. “We’ve found ABM’s particular ability to execute complicated infrastructure projects to be extremely beneficial,” said Paula Hodgins, President of HPE Canada.“The efficiencies are passed on to clients in reliability and valueadded functionalities. which, in the long run, means cost-competitiveness.”

Within all of this, Mr. Hall-Hoffarth says, “reliability and customercentricity are the keys to our success.” “We work with businesses to understand not only their immediate needs but also their long-term objectives. We continue this collaborative approach to find the best solutions within our partner networks, working closely with HPE, Aruba (a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company), and Fortinet (to name a few) to

"We are a reliable and trusted partner to our customers. We provide technology solutions and services to empower their success."

deliver best-in-class, cost-effective solutions. Then, we apply an integrated, tailored approach to drive service excellence and bottom-line results for our customers.”

In fact, ABM’s Managed Services and Service Desk offerings are specifically designed for SMBs that require in-depth analyses and ongoing support for their growing technology needs, aligned with real-world outcomes.

But what does this mean?

ABM can bring efficient and accessible cloud computing solutions to businesses, providing secure, effective computing options that help reduce IT overhead, enhance security, and improve bottom-line profitability. As part of ABM’s suite of offerings is the ABM Advantage Basic Plan, which allows clients to focus on cost management while also providing them with options to choose from a large selection of IT products and services. To go a step further, ABM’s Advantage Plus Plan leverages the company’s technical expertise to eliminate distractions associated with selecting and managing products and services aligned with business outcomes. ABM also offers the Advantage CIO Program, which goes beyond software, hardware, and support services. The CIO works directly with a client’s leadership teams to forecast business change, create long-term IT roadmaps, and oversee large-scale development projects.

ABM also focuses on safeguarding valuable stakeholder relationships in a variety of ways by conducting comprehensive security assessments for their customers. Additionally, as a Fortinet partner, ABM can provide monitoring services to ensure a client’s environment remains secure. In fact, ABM’s Peace of Mind offers professional security assessments that help instill confidence for all stakeholders.

The bottom line is, regardless of the need or the scale of the solution – whether it be a large, complex project in a fast-paced environment or a smaller initiative with a tight timeline – ABM supports customers by providing effective solutions designed specifi cally for an individual business’ needs.

“Whether a business is expanding an office, taking its on-premise servers to the cloud, or requiring the expertise of a virtual CIO, we have integrated technology plans that will meet the need,” Mr. Hall-Hoffarth says. “For SMBs, the accelerating pace of IT change is a fact of life. We know this from our experience, and we have the technical expertise and knowledge to help your organization prosper, both today and tomorrow.”

What we value We can’t end winter, but we can, and should, do more to let Haligonians move freely around their city

A

By Trevor J. Adams tadams@unravelhalifax.ca

s I sat down to write this column, Halifax got its first major snowfall of the season.

About 32 cm of snow fell. HRM suspends its sidewalk clearing standards at 30 cm (meaning plowing deadlines are extended), so more than 24 hours after the snow stopped falling, many sidewalks were still impassable.

Social-media active councillors faced their own blizzards, as people bombarded them with messages about pedestrians walking on roads cleared for cars, alongside snow-filled sidewalks. People described being housebound, forced to miss work and appointments.

As the most Twitter-active councillors, Waye Mason and Sam Austin took the heat. They posted about service standards and costs. Mason tweeted that “main street sidewalk and bus stops are by and large clear.” Readers responded with photos of snow-choked sidewalks and bus stops.

Discourse grew passionate. “I can’t eliminate winter,” Austin tweeted. “So it’s a question of what the reasonable time period is before we clear. You keep making an emotional appeal and I keep asking you the policy question.”

Of course, constituents don’t get paid to make policy.

If you rely on a car to get around, you might not see why this is a big deal.

What’s a day or two of impassable sidewalks?

If you’re car-free, you already understand that periodically being housebound, or forced to walk in traffic and scrabble over snowbanks, is a nightmare.

Your risk of falling or having a driver hit you goes up. If you use a wheelchair, many neighbourhoods become unreachable. Most people don’t have the freedom to take a couple days off work and cancel their appointments whenever it snows.

HRM’s frequently suspended sidewalk clearing standards send clear signals about who our government values. If you’re a motorist, you’re important. Within a few hours of clear skies, you can carry on with your life as normal.

If you’re not a motorist, your mobility isn’t as important. You lose your freedom for much longer.

The solutions aren’t complicated. Ensure sidewalks on key arteries are cleared at the same time as roads. Hold the contractors to stricter standards. Get better value for citizens.

These discussions always come down to money. And there is always money for the things government wants.

Last August, the police violently removed people from homeless encampments, most notably the one next to the old Spring Garden Road library. A Freedom of Information request by the NDP reveals that the operation involved 64 officers, and cost $50,000.

Was that great value for the money spent? Did it give anyone the freedom to go about their lives in this city, to work, go to appointments, and see loved ones?

Unravel HIGHLIGHTS

Unravel NEWS

Unravel ONLINE

Road romance vs. planetary survival: Pauline Dakin takes a hard look at her love of the open road on page 66.

Renters won’t see a difference for a while, but more apartments and homes are coming. See what 2022 holds in Janet Whitman’s latest Housing Snapshot on page 20.

Nic Power was once Halifax’s top cop — but the truth about his storied career is more complicated.

Read an excerpt from Bob Gordon’s new book The Bad Detective: unravelhalifax.ca/ book-excerpt-the-bad-detective

JAN / FEB 2022

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A full-colour guide to all things Cape Breton, for mainlanders and Capers alike!

VOL 02/ ISSUE 01 • DATE OF ISSUE: JANUARY 2022 PUBLISHER Fred Fiander • fredfiander@unravelhalifax.ca EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Crystal Murray • crystalmurray@unravelhalifax.ca SENIOR EDITOR Trevor J. Adams • trevoradams@unravelhalifax.ca CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Jodi DeLong • jodidelong@unravelhalifax.ca Janet Whitman • janetwhitman@unravelhalifax.ca VICE PRESIDENT OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Linda Gourlay • lindagourlay@unravelhalifax.ca

IT’S TRACY & MARTINA, HUN!

A Guide to Cape Breton Livin’ Tracy & Martina $24.95 | humour 9-781-77471-070-8

ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Susan Giffin • susangiffin@unravelhalifax.ca Pam Hancock • pamhancock@unravelhalifax.ca Stephanie Balcom • stephaniebalcom@unravelhalifax.ca Connie Cogan • conniecogan@unravelhalifax.ca SENIOR DIRECTOR CREATIVE DESIGN AND PRODUCTION Shawn Dalton • shawndalton@unravelhalifax.ca ART DIRECTOR Mike Cugno • mike@acgstudio.com PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Nicole McNeil • nicolemcneil@unravelhalifax.ca

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PRODUCTION AND DESIGN ASSISTANT Kathleen Hoang • kathleenhoang@unravelhalifax.ca DESIGNERS Roxanna Boers • roxannaboers@unravelhalifax.ca Jocelyn Spence • jocelynspence@unravelhalifax.ca

Help Give Back This Season Saltbox Essential IPA, honouring our essential workers.

A portion of every can sale is donated to an essential organization.

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THE VOICES

ROBYN McNEIL is a Nova Scotian writer and editor. She lives in Halifax with an awesome teen, a mischievous cat, and a penchant for good stories, strong tea, cheeseburgers, yoga, graveyards, hammocks, gardening, gaming, herb, and hoppy beer.

KAT FRICK MILLER is an artist based in Kjipuktuk/Dartmouth.

Her illustrated works include the 2021 short film Last Fish, First Boat and the 2018 illustrated book If I Had an Old House on the East Coast.

AMEETA VOHRA is a news and sports writer with work published throughout North America. Her Halifax Magazine story “Thunderstruck” was a 2020 Atlantic Journalism Awards silver medallist.

BROOKLYN CONNOLLY is a freelance journalist based in Halifax. She’s the 2021 recipient of the Investintech – CAJ data journalism scholarship, and has written for the CBC, the Guardian (U.S.), the Chronicle Herald, and the Nova Scotia Advocate, among others.

BRUCE MURRAY has been creating food and lifestyle photography for more than 20 years in the Maritimes and in his original studio in Vancouver. visionfire.ca @VisionFire.

JANET WHITMAN Contributing editor Janet Whitman is a cityand nature-loving journalist who divides her time between Halifax and her cottage on the Northumberland Shore. She’s happiest digging in the dirt, picking up a hammer, or messing around in the kitchen.

PAULINE DAKIN is a journalist, professor of journalism at the University of King’s College, and the award-winning author of Run, Hide, Repeat: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood.

MARIANNE SIMON is a writer and subeditor and has published many children’s stories, articles and poems in magazines and newspapers. Her interests include teaching and conducting Englishconversation classes.

COLLEEN MACISAAC (they/ she) is an MFA candidate at NSCAD University and multidisciplinary artist working across theatre, illustration, comics, performance, animation, graphic design, media arts, and drawing. littlefoible.net

KATIE INGRAM is a freelance writer, author, and journalism instructor based in Halifax.

ALEC BRUCE is an awardwinning journalist whose bylines regularly appear in major Canadian and American publications.

He is completing a master of fine arts (2022) in creative nonfiction at the University of King’s College in Halifax.

Visit Unravel ONLINE Visit unravelhalifax.ca for more stories by our featured contributors and sign up for the unravel newsletter.

JAN / FEB 2022

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Atlantic Canada’s April 8, 9

'A SHOW We’re coming back!

After two years of COVID-19 restrictions, we are overjoyed to announce that the beloved spring Saltscapes East Coast Expo will be back in April of 2022.

We’re back in a way that reflects what Atlantic Canada needs right now. We’re back in a way that will bring us together over the things we love the most: our

Join us at

HALIFAX

For more information, contact Lisa lsampson@saltscapes.com

Ultimate Buy Local Show and 10, 2022

OF HANDS' home and lifestyle. We’re back in a way that celebrates our region and the hard work we’re all doing to make our place in the world better.

A show of hands please! Who’s joining us April 8-10 and more than 500 East Coast businesses for the ultimate buy local weekend?

Follow us on

EXHIBITION CENTRE 902 464 7258 ext. 1803|saltscapes.com

THE LIST

Top

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1

Ta’n me’j Tel-keknuo’ltiek (Da’n mej Del-geg-newol-tee-egg): How Unique We Still Are CONTINUING, MARITIME MUSEUM OF THE ATLANTIC

This ongoing exhibition reflects how Mi’kmaw people remain connected to the lands and waters of Mi’kma’ki. Mi’kmaw single-word concepts are represented through personal testimony and histories of Mi’kmaw people, featured objects, artifacts, images, and artwork. These experiences and understandings are rooted in cultural expressions that connect past, present, and future in this place.

“As a Mi’kmaw woman ... I always struggled with the lack of visible representation of Mi’kmaw,” says guest curator Salina Kemp in a statement on the Maritime Museum’s website. “As a young academic I learned the importance of historical representation in helping our society to understand our shared history. As a visiting curator I have been honoured to be provided this opportunity to highlight some of the moments and people which are impactful and worth remembering.” maritimemuseum.novascotia.ca

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The Discovery Centre

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Golda Schultz JAN. 26, ST. ANDREW’S UNITED CHURCH

Cecilia Concerts presents South African soprano Golda Schultz, joined by pianist Jonathan Ware, as she performs works by Boulanger, Clarke, Mayer, Schumann, and Tagg.

It’s a rare chance to see a unique talent before her journey to stardom takes her out of Halifax’s reach.

“This fast-rising operatic soprano has since become the darling of Manhattan, and also of London, Paris, Berlin, Zürich, Copenhagen, Vienna, and everywhere else she has graced a stage,” says a media statement from promoters. “She currently can be seen and heard performing the role of Clara in The Met Opera’s ... production of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.” ceciliaconcerts.ca

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Bahamas JAN. 12 TO 14, DALHOUSIE ARTS CENTRE

The tickets keep selling so organizers keep adding dates, with this visit from indie/folk legend Bahamas now up to a threenight stand. Special guest Ariel Posen joins him on the Still Sad tour. bahamasmusic.net

Beyond Human Limits: Extreme Sports CONTINUING, DISCOVERY CENTRE

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RAW Photography

Len Wagg, Communications Nova Scotia

Dario Acosta

Plays, concerts, and sports — can’t-miss events to put in your calendar

This exhibition gives visitors the chance to (virtually) experience the planet’s most extreme sports: race backcountry slopes, balance along a highline, scamper in the footsteps of a parkour athlete, or pilot a wingsuit. A perfect blusteryday diversion. thediscoverycentre.ca

JAN / FEB 2022

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The Waterline: Islands and Connectivity CONTINUING, ART GALLERY OF NOVA SCOTIA

From the idyllic to the isolated, this exhibition highlights interpretations of islands from many different artists, including Gerald Gloade, Sylvia D. Hamilton, Doris Wall Larson, and more. “Islands can carry vastly different meanings depending on someone’s background or history,” explains the exhibit summary. “‘Island mentality’ can refer to a community that isolates itself as exceptional to the rest of the world, or an individual who may avoid others due to feelings of loneliness, fear, or inferiority.” artgalleryofnovascotia.ca

The Offspring JAN. 29, SCOTIABANK CENTRE

If you’re an aficionado of high-volume, high-energy, roofblowing stadium concerts, it’s been a tough couple of years.

Get your fix with the pop-punk legends best known for the 1998 monster hits “Pretty Fly (for a White Guy)” and “Why Don’t You Get a Job?” ticketatlantic.com

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Halifax Mooseheads

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Halifax Thunderbirds FEB. 12 AND 19, SCOTIABANK CENTRE

COVID-19 forced the National Lacrosse League into hibernation last year. Now that it’s back, Thunderbirds fans are flocking back to Scotiabank Centre. See the hometown side in action against the Philadelphia Wings on Feb. 12 and the Georgia Swarm on Feb. 19. halifaxthunderbirds.com

Bigstock.com/ Victor1153

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Halifax Mooseheads FEB. 5, SCOTIABANK CENTRE

It’s always a rollicking time when cross-province rivals Cape Breton visit Halifax. Expect another chippy, high-intensity grudge match, as the teams continue their battle for majorjunior hockey supremacy and a chance to play for the coveted Memorial Cup. halifaxmooseheads.ca

Age of the Mastodon OPENING FEB. 26, MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

Thousands of years ago, giant mastodons lumbered through ice-age Nova Scotia. As the climate and coastline changed, the behemoths could no longer survive here, but their legacy remains. Scientists have uncovered their traces around the province. Learn what they’ve discovered, and what it tells us about today’s climate challenges. naturalhistory.novascotia.ca

10 AUS Basketball Championships FEB. 25 TO 27, SCOTIABANK CENTRE

Atlantic Canada’s top university basketball teams return to Halifax to battle for the regional titles. The East Coast’s top men’s and women’s teams will go on to play for the Canadian crown at the national championships in Edmonton and Kingston, Ont. atlanticuniversitysport.com

Editor’s Note: The pandemic continues to quickly evolve. Event details are subject to change; confirm before making any plans.

Sometimes the difference between a good relationship and a great one is subtle.

Cox & Palmer makes the difference crystal clear - that’s why Atlantic Canadians have relied on us for more than 165 years.

Our lawyers draw on a deep understanding of their clients’ needs to provide strategic legal advice when it matters most.

At Cox & Palmer, great relationships lead to great results.

JAN / FEB 2022

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Bruce Murray/VisionFire Studios

THE BACKSTORY

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TURN THE PAGE Not too long ago, newspapers were king in Halifax — looking back at a dramatic transformation

BY KATIE INGRAM

A

s the role of the newspaper continually changes in Halifax, one thing remains the same: there is always room for alternative news coverage.

From the mid-19th to the early 20th century, Halifax was home to five main papers: the Morning Chronicle and its afternoon counterpart the Daily Echo, the Halifax Herald and the Evening Mail, and The Acadian Recorder.

Others came and went, including the Halifax Citizen, the Halifax Morning Sun, the Dartmouth Journal, and the Unionist and Halifax Journal, plus faith-based papers like the Church Guardian.

The big five newspapers were the kings of East Coast media for many years. For example, the morning-afternoon duos of the Herald and Mail and the Chronicle and the Echo each had circulations of about 10,000 in 1901.

The reason behind this success is twofold, explains historical author and journalist Dean Jobb.

“First, it was the the only mass media: no radio, and it would be decades before television, so that’s how people got their news,” he says. “The other ... underlying factor was, at the turn of the century — early 1900s — the press was still partisan. In major cities, you would have a Liberal newspaper and a Conservative newspaper going head-to-head, promoting their party’s interest.”

Political involvement in newspapers waned in the 20th century, giving more editorial freedom. “It was possible to have an independent paper,” says Jobb.

However, readership started declining around mid-century, amid competition from exciting new technology like radio and TV. (Sound familiar?) And by becoming nonpartisan, many lost the loyalty of their core audiences.

By the mid-1900s, the Acadian Recorder no longer existed and the remaining four of the big five consolidated in 1949 to become the Chronicle Herald and the Mail-Star.

Jobb says that was a widespread trend after the Second World War, with many towns seeing once robust newspaper scenes consolidated to a single publisher.

Alternatives have come and gone, including the 4th Estate which lasted from 1969 to 1977, the Daily News from 1974 to 2008, and the still-publishing Coast.

“The trend towards one-newspaper towns meant a monopoly in newspapers, and that does attract competitors, if they see a chance,” says Jobb. “It can be both a feeling that there’s stories that need to be told or are under reported.”

THE BACKSTORY This timeline offers a snapshot of many of the newspapers serving Halifax over the years; it isn’t intended to be a comprehensive list.

1813

1823

1824

1864

1874

The Halifax Gazette releases its first issue and is the first newspaper in Canada. It became the Nova Scotia Royal Gazette in 1867 and is now a government paper.

The Acadian Recorder is founded.

The British Colonist, a tri-weekly paper, launches.

The Novascotian, originally known as the Colonial Herald, releases its first issue.

In 1827 Joseph Howe would purchase the paper. It would famously publish a letter in 1835 that would see Howe on trial for a libel, which he would win — a landmark victory for freedom of the press.

The Morning Chronicle releases its first issue. Its afternoon counterpart would be the Evening Mail.

The British Colonist closes.

ps.c ystam deven

om

1752

1874 The Morning Herald and Commercial Advertiser launches, eventually becoming the Halifax Herald.

Its later afternoon counterpart would be the Daily Echo, forerunner of the Star.

1949

1930

1920s

1901

1893

January 1888

The Halifax Herald buys the Chronicle and Star, resulting in a morning edition called the Chronicle Herald and an afternoon one called the Mail-Star.

After the death of owner C.C. Blackadar, the Acadian Recorder closes, relaunching as an afternoon paper in 1932.

The Novascotian, which became Nova Scotia’s Farm and Home Journal, shuts down.

The Dartmouth Patriot is founded and the Atlantic Weekly ceases publication.

The Atlantic Weekly, headquartered in Dartmouth, is founded.

The Echo, previously known as the Citizen and Evening Chronicle, releases its first issue.

1950

1969

1974

1977

1982

1993

The Dartmouth Free Press is founded.

The Fourth Estate, a newspaper that called itself a “second viewpoint” for Halifax, releases its first issue.

The BedfordSackville Observer launches. It later became the Halifax Daily News.

The 4th Estate shuts down.

The Dartmouth Free Press shuts down.

The Dartmouth Patriot shuts down.

2004 The Mail-Star is discontinued.

2019

2017

2008

StarMetro shuts down.

Transcontinental Publishing sells its Atlantic papers, both weeklies and dailies, to the Saltwire Network, the then-new parent company of the Chronicle Herald.

Metro launches as the Daily News closes. A commuter newspaper with a mix of original journalism and syndicated content, Metro would eventually become StarMetro.

Left to right: Acadian Recorder, 16 January 1813, Volume 1 Number 1; The Daily Echo, February 1888, Volume 1 Number 1; The 4th Estate, 17 April 1969 Volume 1 Number 1 Nova Scotia Archives

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Chronicle Herald

This space was used until 2008, when the Herald offices moved to Joseph Howe Drive.

Herald / Evening Mail

William Dennis bought this former Halifax Herald office in 1900.

Acadian Recorder

The Acadian Recorder’s office was at this location from 1900 to its initial closure in 1930.

The Chronicle / Echo

In 1907, the Chronicle’s offices were at 85–93 Granville St.

The Daily News

The offices of the Daily News when it shut down in 2008.

Halifax Citizen

The Halifax Citizen’s offices, in 1876, were at 159 Hollis St.

Halifax Citizen

In 1871 the Citizen was located in this area, at 25 Sackville St.

Halifax Sun

In 1867, the Sun was located at the corner of Granville and George streets.

Halifax Sun

Before 1867, the Sun was at somewhere near 158 Hollis St.

Halifax Herald

A 1926 city directory lists the Halifax Herald offices at 42–50 Sackville St.

Nova Scotia Information Service Nova Scotia Archives no. NSIS 14945

The Chronicle

A 1926 directory lists the Chronicle (Chronicle Co. Ltd) at 85–93 Sackville St.

4th Estate

5211 Blowers St.

Novascotian

5140 Prince St.

John Bushell’s Print Shop Bushell was the publisher of the Halifax Gazette and likely published his newspaper at his print shop at the corner of Grafton and Duke streets.

Metro

Majority-owned by the publisher of the Toronto Star, Metro operated at 3260 Barrington St.

THE PERSPECTIVE

The mother tongue Newcomers encounter many obstacles in Halifax. Among the biggest is the language barrier

BY MARIANNE SIMON

W

hen you immigrate to Halifax, one of the first expectations you encounter is that you speak English, or you’re learning it as quickly as possible.

As Rita Mae Brown, the American feminist writer says, “Language is the roadmap of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.”

Nelson Mandela, the former president of South Africa, makes it even more explicit. “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.”

But learning a new language poses different problems to different people. It seems that some learn fast, but for some others, it’s a struggle. Somim Park (name changed) is an immigrant who cannot speak English fluently even after coming to Canada from South Korea 3.5 years ago.

“I’m very shy and don’t interact with people easily,” she says. “ For the first two years I didn’t even want to come out of the house. My only contact then was the landlady who took me and my husband in as paying guests. She tried to teach me the basic spoken English, but for me learning it was very difficult.”

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The language barrier isolated her.

“I longed to speak my mother tongue,” she recalls.

“I missed my family. I didn’t understand most of what people around me were saying. I had to study their facial expressions and gestures to understand whether they were being friendly or hostile. Whenever I thought of learning English, I felt miserable and wanted to go back to my homeland.”

Park has a work visa, but finding work is hard.

“I knew very few English words and didn’t know how to make proper sentences,” she explains. “With such poor knowledge of the language, getting a job was almost impossible. So, I sold small curios and home decorations at the farmers market. Then I sold apples and strawberries from a temporary roadside fruit stall. I also worked as house help sometimes.”

In South Korea, she was a nurse. “I would like to do the same work here in Canada,” she says. “For this, I have to improve my English. ISANS (Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia) conducts regular classes in nursing for immigrants. I hope to take these classes some day.”

To improve her English, Park listens carefully to her colleagues when they speak to her, and reads simple books. She used to take English classes through Zoom from the Central Library in Halifax. She’s most comfortable in the company of other immigrants because she can understand their conversation better and they are aware of her problems expressing herself in English.

“My biggest problem is speaking,” she says. “I’m not sure which words to use. People often misunderstand me or become offended when I speak to them. When I take a long time to answer their questions, they lose interest in me and go away. All this makes me very sad.”

Park believes getting the permanent residency status will help her in her present situation. It will open up new avenues for her and maybe better job opportunities.

About her life in Canada, she says, “I like it very much here. People are friendly, child care is good, and life in general is less stressful. I hope to live here for a long time and raise a family.”

THE CONVERSATION

The Conversation: Hannah Moscovitch The award-winning writer works to change the way we look at each other and our relationships

Ian Selig

BY AMEETA VOHRA

Siri Stafford

H

annah Moscovitch’s writing journey began while studying acting at the National Theatre School of Canada. She discovered a passion for creating stories, beginning a journey that led her from her home in Ottawa to Toronto and then Montreal, before settling in Halifax 2013.

In 2007, she became a full-time writer, penning many powerful stories for TV, opera, and stage. And her work is changing the way audiences see themselves, and each other. She recently won a Governor General’s Literary Award for drama for her play Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes.

With more than 14 years of writing experience, Moscovitch has a unique perspective on power dynamics, racism, social inequality, injustice, and power struggles, drawing on her experiences and her childhood.

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THE CONVERSATION

902-499-1323 Jarrett@reddoorrealty.ca reddoorrealty.ca

Hannah Moscovitch (left) with fellow Nova Scotian Ann-Marie Kerr during a 2018 production of Secret Life of a Mother in 2018.

Premise of Sexual Misconduct: “It’s a romance between a professor and an undergraduate student in his second-year modernist class. The story takes place from John’s masculine point of view. He’s the professor, so you follow him. He speaks to the audience, and you see the romantic view, including all his struggles around whether it’s OK to have an affair with a 19-year-old student, and will he get fired for it, because it’s university policy that you don’t have sex with your student. You follow it through the romance, and then the end of the romance and then you meet Annie and John, four years later in a hotel. Annie hasn’t seen John in three years, and she questions him about why he had this affair with her when she was 19 years old, now that she’s 23 years old. They fight and he walks out. In the very last scene of Annie coming in her 30s now to tell John that she’s written a play about what happened from his point of view because she was trying to understand what happened between them … A woman wrote it in order to understand her own experience.”

Flipping the power dynamic: “Before #MeToo was happening, I was working on this play, and in that period of time, I thought, the audience is going to be so shocked to hear that this young woman had mixed feelings about this affair with her professor and that it’s going to have this feeling of her exposing him to view ... I was writing this in 2014 and 2015, and then put-

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Joy von Tiedemann

Dahlia Katz

Alice Snaden and Matthew Edison in a 2020 production of Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto.

ting this up in 2019. (During that time there) was such a revolution in how people were thinking, and about whether people felt like women should be believed when they said that life experience was complicated ... and this man who had power over me was coming out and saying, ‘We should have sex’ and I went along with it, because he was the adult and as a child, I just assumed he knew better about what sexuality should be because he was teaching me. I wanted to express all of that, because there’s a way in which we show young women having sex with older men in our culture that’s like, ‘I’m so into it,’ as opposed to ‘I have really complicated feelings.’”

On highlighting power, racism, inequality, and injustice: “There’s always a desire on my part to show a more nuanced version, to show an unusual voice, to hear something we haven’t heard about what the world is ... I always want to go into those places …

Flattening the story out that has nuance and complexity. I am often interested in that, and it just happens to align with those kinds of ethics that I want there to be (so it’s) an original authentic story rather than a story that just affirms the cultural norms.”

What readers should take away from Sexual Misconduct: “I was trying so hard to go

‘this is what it’s like to go from being in a male perspective to be in a female one.’ This is what it feels like. There’s a destabilization or a revolution happening, where we’re going, ‘this was how we thought, and now we’re going to think like this, some of the time, we hope we’re going to be able to see from two points of view, not just one.’ I was really after that in particular ... This play is not about me or my personal experiences.

There are elements of it — I have personal experiences that align with what happened in the play, and so I’m able to talk about exactly what it’s like when a girl goes through an experience, grows up, becomes a woman and is able to reflect on it, from the point of view of no longer being a child in a relationship with an adult, but being an adult, looking back on having been a child in a relationship with an adult.”

Winning the Governor General’s Literary Award: “I was waiting for a call from my doctor to renew a prescription. I pick up the phone and it was the Governor General’s Office saying I won, so they got like a full shock reaction because I hadn’t looked at the number. I had no idea as I picked up the phone what was coming. Then I cried and told them how much it meant to me.”

The impact of art on advocacy: “There’s

this kind of a culture that we live in and ... racism is permitted within this culture ...

So, it feels actually more important than you would think that the story be different than the stories we used to tell … It feels important that we get those stories right and then we tell a story that is the story we want going forward ... And that we tell stories that are inclusive and diverse.”

On optimism: “I’m in my 40s and there’s been this long trajectory ... It was a such a monolithic world that I lived in when I first started out writing. You would get yelled down so quickly if you said ‘Oh, should we maybe like not tell a sexist story here?’ Like immediately get screamed to hell and also, all artistic directors were men, and all producers were men, and all critics were men — like it was just so one thing and they were all white.”

Five years from now: “What I hope is that the trajectory that I have seen continues and does not backtrack ... I’m optimistic that rather than contracting, everything will continue to open, and I say that knowing that in our era, there’s an undertone and not even an undertone of Nazis and ... there is an incredible backlash. I’m just trying to be hopeful that in five years, things will have gotten more open.”

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THE HOUSING MARKET

Upwards from here Renters won’t see a difference for a while, but more apartments and homes are coming

BY JANET WHITMAN

W

ith Premier Tim Houston’s aim to more than double Nova Scotia’s population to two million by 2060, Halifax homebuilders and residential real-estate developers better get on the hop.

Most of the influx will want to settle in the city and its suburbs, an area that’s already short an estimated 25,000 houses, apartments, and condos.

Cranes on the skyline and holes in the ground might have created the illusion of a building boom over the past decade. But the actual number of housing units constructed each year hasn’t changed much in the last two decades, until 2021.

It could mark the start of a period of sustained production that’s consistently higher than previous peaks, “finally catching up with the population growth numbers, which have been in unprecedented territory for about five years now,” says local housing expert Neill Lovitt. “With continued low vacancy rates and plenty of buyers for every listing, the trend will hopefully continue.”

Labour shortages, rising interest rates, which increase the cost of borrowing for builders, supply chain snags as the world emerges from COVID-19, rising costs, or even stagflation (a combination of slow growth and rising prices) are potential headwinds.

“These are tumultuous times and it is very hard to say how things will play out,” says Lovitt, vice-president of planning and economic development with real-estate consultancy Turner Drake & Partners Ltd. “We expect some variability from year to year, but the longer-term trajectory should continue to be upwards from here.”

It needs to be.

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Some quick, back-of-a-napkin calculations by Lovitt figure a million more people in Nova Scotia would create the need for another 500,000 dwellings.

In the last few years, 90 per cent of people moving to the province ended up in Halifax. Lovitt expects areas like East Hants, Bridgewater, and Windsor to woo more newcomers in the next waves.

Trying to absorb even half of the province’s ambitious population growth goal means Halifax would have to more than double the roughly 200,000 dwellings it has now for its nearly 415,000 inhabitants, he says.

That would translate into a development rate of about 6,250 units a year, a significant ramp up from the average of about 2,600 new dwelling completions each year for the past five years.

Houston, leader of Nova Scotia’s PC party, is aware of the need. He’s installed former Liberal cabinet minister Geoff MacLellan to chair a new housing taskforce for possible end-runs around Mayor Mike Savage and HRM Council on proposed residential developments. (The worry, of course, is that environmental concerns would fall by the wayside and gentrification would come at the expense of diversity and affordable housing, not to mention the potential for government duplication of efforts, such as the municipality’s regional plan for future growth).

Besides ensuring Halifax has enough housing to woo newcomers, Houston wants to cool off the hot housing market that’s making the city unaffordable for an increasing number of Haligonians.

The upshot? Lovitt says Halifax will probably see more development areas open up “in the next little while.”

By the numbers 400–800: the overall trend for number of housing units per quarter over the past two decades, absent a few peaks and valleys, with 2021 poised to be a breakout year

18,500 the record number of construction jobs in Halifax in 2021, up

17%

459,938: preliminary estimate for Halifax’s population as of July, an all-time high that’s a 2.5% jump (11,394 more people) from a year earlier

since 2016

$528.1 million

value of building permits issued for detached homes and apartment construction in 2021 through September

$628.9 million

6,265 the number of dwellings under construction in the municipality as of October, up from 5,512 over the same period in 2020 and 5,209 in 2019

value of housing building permits in all of 2020

2,235

$761.0 million

the number of dwellings completed between January and October, up from 2,137 over the same period in 2020 and 2,172 in 2019

in 2019

1,194 the number

detached homes completed through October, compared to 916 for all of 2020 and 773 for 2019

apartment units completed 1500

1000

500

0

2021

2020

2019

detached homes completed

846 916 773

846 the number of

2000

1,194 1,638 1,674

of apartment units completed through October, compared to 1,638 for all of 2020 and 1,674 for 2019

2021

2020

Sources: Turner Drake, Halifax Partnership, CMHC, StatsCan

2019

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THE VIEW

Barrington street cityscape

BY BOMA NNAJI

Title: Barrington street cityscape Date: 2018 Medium: Acrylic on canvas Size: 24” by 36”

A strong interest in people — the human spirit and its relationship with its environment — drives Boma Nnaji’s art. With expressive colours, he examines daily subjects in a contemporary style, drawing strong influence from his fascination with graffiti art, which grew during the ‘90s hip-hop cultural explosion, as art became a visual complement to the music of the day. He lives and works in Halifax.

From the artist: “The downtown core of every city is an expression of the collective energy and human life force in a continuous rhythmic dance. The need to express this feeling has always been overpowering, so I took up the challenge the moment I had the opportunity.

The ... painting features contrasting colours that capture the delicate balance between an upbeat but sometimes melancholic city.”

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THE SOUND

Canadian Politics Is Boring A recent immigrant takes listeners on a tour of his new country’s government

BY TREVOR J. ADAMS

N

ot long after Rhys Waters and his family immigrated from Wales to Nova Scotia, COVID-19 hit.

He’d been trying to learn more about his new country’s politics, with little success, so his pandemic project became Canadian Politics Is Boring, a very tongue-in-cheek podcast about how the country is governed, featuring Waters and his decidedly apolitical friend Jesse Harley, a local filmmaker.

It began as a way “just to pass the time, have some fun, focus on doing comedy work,” Waters said on The Rick Howe Show in 2020. “It seemed like a really good way of forcing myself to learn about the topic and then also share what we were learning with others.”

But it’s taken on a life of its own, finding a loyal and fast-growing following.

Recently their show cracked Apple’s Canadian top five, was number-one trending on Spotify, and became Canada’s third ranked comedy podcast.

For an eye-opening start, begin at the beginning with “The Early Drunk Adventures of Sir John A. Macdonald.” The name sets the tone. canadianpoliticsisboring.com

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The tender work of a

death doula

With gentle guidance, the journey through life’s final stage can be peaceful and comforting

BY BROOKLYN CONNOLLY ILLUSTRATIONS BY COLLEEN MACISAAC

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N

ights inside the Colchester East Hants hospital’s palliative care unit are long, dark, and quiet. There are no beeping machines or doctors rushing to save lives, and if there’s an ambulance, its sirens are never louder than a person’s last breath.

Cindie Smith knows, because that’s what she’s listening to tonight. That, and the count in her head.

Exhale … one, two, three …

A nurse tells Cindie that her friend’s changing breath is “just a part of this process.” She hasn’t been active for a day and a half now, and there’s a growing pause between her exhales and inhales. Her eyes are closed, and her face is a fading map of wrinkles. Smith holds her hand and waits.

Four, five, six, seven …

Newborns take 30 to 60 breaths per-minute, lowering down to about 12 to 20 breaths per-minute for the average adult. It dwindles like energy does: slowly and hardly noticeable. The body’s breath becomes its natural clockwork. It’s no wonder breathing is loudest in the room of a dying person.

Eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13 …

A breeze makes its way through the open window.

It’s late, and the trees outside are lost in the night’s darkness. Cindie’s eyes begin to close, and she stops her count. Gently squeezing her friend’s hand, Cindie takes a final moment of stillness before her voice brings life to the room. “Now you have the answer to every question,” she says to her.

Her friend’s life has dwindled down to that last exhale — the one before Cindie started to count. It was when she’d experienced life’s one promise: death.

Cindie takes a moment before leaving to notify a nurse.

u Before the technological advancements of the 20thcentury — when many hospitals were built and the future of medicine looked hopeful — women stood at the forefront of health care.

It was a woman’s responsibility to tend to the sick, pregnant, and dying, using skills that had been passed down by the generations of women before them. In ancient Greece, they called these women “doulas,” which translates to “a woman servant or helper.”

Sometime in the last hundred years, the meaning changed.

Now it refers to the trained non-medical professionals that support their clients before, during, and after childbirth. And a new movement is redefining the term once again, to include more than one kind of traditional doula. End-of-life doulas (otherwise known as death doulas or death midwives) are rising with the newfound death wellness movement.

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It started in 2003 with Henry Fersko-Weiss in New York City. Fersko-Weiss was the manager of Continuum Hospice’s social workers when he identified a gap between medicine and hospice care: neither catered to end-of-life patients’ personal, spiritual, or emotional needs.

He went on to create the first death doula program based on the approaches of modern birth doulas. Like birth doulas, death doulas create a plan with their clients that outlines their wants and needs while the client can give informed consent. They are active listeners that help dying clients to find peace at the end of their life.

Death doulas also do legacy work with a client, discuss meaning, and explore what’s important to the client before and after death.

In 2015, Fersko-Weiss, along with Meredith Lawida and Janie Rakow, founded the International End of Life Doula Association, or INELDA, as a nonprofit corporation. In the following three years, the organization trained over 2,000 people (including hospital workers).

Death doulas are gaining global recognition.

In 2017, the University of Vermont’s medical college became the first school to offer a professional doula Grief is seen as a certification program.

The next year, end-of-life burden and death has doulas joined the National Hospice and Palbecome a medical liative Care Organization in Washington, D.C. to failure. Instead of create a council. According to the Dying Well 2019 talking about it, Global Wellness Trend report these doulas are death lingers in working throughout the U.S., U.K., Canada, Ausour subconscious tralia, Brazil, and Mexico.

Death doulas remind us of the value of compassion and ask: how do you want to die?

In surveys, most people say they want to die at home, surrounded by their loved ones. But only 15 per cent do.

Instead, most reach their lives’ most natural conclusion in a hospital, hospice, or a long-term care facility. Doulas work to help meet end-of-life wants and needs. The spark behind the modern movement is simple: a good death is essential to a good life.

In the final days, wants matter — and sometimes what’s wanted can’t be found inside even the calmest of hospital units.

u Cindie drives in silence.

It’s 6:50 p.m. when she pulls into her client Bonnie’s driveway. Not long ago, Bonnie pulled into that same driveway, parked her car, and went inside. She opened her door to her husband laying dead on the kitchen floor. As a middle-aged man, his heart attack came as a surprise.

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That’s why Bonnie’s meeting with Cindie tonight: they’re going over the final draft of her end-of-life personal directive. Bonnie knows that death is just as unexpected as life.

“It’s really important that I hear rain in my end of life,” Bonnie says. She’s sitting with Cindie at her kitchen table, sipping an orange pekoe tea. The radio plays softly in the other room. “If it’s not raining, an online audio recording would be fine. It just brings me peace,” she says.

An end-of-life personal directive is a legal document. It outlines a person’s medical and personal wants and needs. Without having the document written and witnessed, it’s nothing more than a person’s wishes. It’s important, but Cindie believes that the conversation that comes from writing the document is even more important.

Western society rarely talks about dying. Grief is seen as a burden and death has become a medical failure. Instead of talking about it, death lingers in our subconscious minds.

Sheldon Solomon, professor of psychology at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, U.S.A., has developed the Terror Management Theory. His belief is that death anxiety is the driving force behind our everyday actions.

We eat foods we don’t enjoy, we go to the gym, and work a job with a salary large enough to support our habits to delay death. Naturally, it’s death that we fear.

Except our fear only manifests the things that kill us, like anxiety, denial, and anger. After spending years studying the effects of death awareness on our mental and behavioural wellness, Solomon argues that death awareness makes us better people. The sooner we acknowledge our own mortality, he believes, the more grateful we become for our own experiences.

Cindie jots down a few notes, lifts her head and takes her glasses off. “You’re a curious woman, Bonnie,” she says. “Have you ever thought about continuing to learn about the world in your final days?”

Bonnie cuts her off, “Oh yes! I wrote that down as the next point,” she says with a laugh. The youthfulness of Bonnie’s voice speaks to her character. Bonnie’s honest.

She cares about the people around her. That’s another reason why she’s meeting with Cindie tonight: when she dies, she wants to make it easy for her daughters. She doesn’t want to leave them guessing about her wants.

“I’d love to have my children read to me when I approach my end-of-life,” she says. Bonnie explains that she read to her mother when she was in a brief coma years ago. When her mother regained consciousness, she said she remembered Bonnie reading to her.

Cindie turns the conversation back to Bonnie’s personal directive and asks about life support. In the first draft of the document, Bonnie wrote that she’d like to be taken off of life support if she wouldn’t survive without it.

“So, you understand that in a situation where life support is your only way of continuing life, being taken off of it might result in death?” Cindie asks. A somber tone takes over the room.

“Yeah, so ...” Bonnie trails off, sighs. “Yeah,” she says.

“Yeah.”

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After years of denying death in Western society, it’s hard to comprehend death as a reality.

Since the birth of modern medicine, we’ve begun to plea with death, to try and reach a negotiation with fate. Even medical experts overestimate survival rates. A study found that in 1999, 63 per cent of patients in Chicago hospice care programs were given unrealistic prognoses dates by physicians. It’s no wonder that loved ones shut down and turn away when facing death. There are words for life’s beginnings — like childbirth or the start of a new relationship — but there’s nothing but a growing silence towards the end.

u It was 1989, the same year that the Skydome opened in Toronto and the Berlin Wall fell in Germany.

It was a world of hope worth believing in because it was the dawning of a new era, full of possibility. And in the midst of it all, Cindie Smith gave birth to her second daughter, Maggie.

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At the time, her first born, Emily, was eight years old.

Their old navy blue house was brimming with the energy of Emily and her closest friends — Bart, Kelly, Sara, and Amy. It was the designated hangout spot.

Most Fridays, the group plowed through the front door in a wave of chatter after school, stopping long enough to greet Maggie with a kiss on the cheek. Emily’s friends became like family, a bond that’s grown stronger with time. Or perhaps the bond grew from circumstance. Bart, Kelly, Sara, and Amy were there, sharing the Smith family’s grief.

Approaching her sixth birthday, Maggie’s body was no bigger than a baby’s. She was eight pounds and practically floated in her crib. Her brain grew with the speed of her body, a result of her disorder. Maggie was born with cerebro-oculo-facio-skeletal syndrome, a rare genetic disorder causing pre- and postnatal delays in growth. At the time, she was one of five others in the world to be diagnosed.

When doctors gave Maggie a life expectancy of five years, her mother, Cindie, began to grieve.

“Grief is grief,” she says. “It happens to us all and of-

ten. Sometimes grief comes from the loss of a pregnancy, or perhaps a job, maybe it’s from longing for grandparents that passed away. “It’s grief, it’s a loss.”

On a Saturday morning in 1994, Maggie began to quickly approach her death. Her breath became laboured and she was in pain. It was the death that Cindie spent the last five years grieving. She wasn’t sure what to expect. Grappling with it all, Cindie turned to a nurse for direction and asked about the nurse’s experience.

“In many cases when a child is experiencing similar symptoms, when they’re struggling to breathe periodically, you’ll find that the child may almost slip into a coma where the breathing becomes very gentle,” she says. “It’s almost rhythmic. Then, they very gently and quietly die and their breathing stops.”

“I can do that,” Cindie says. The small bit of knowledge was the courage she needed to find strength and give Maggie a good death. “We’re going to go home.”

With the tiniest of masks and an oxygen tank, the Smiths went home. It happened the next day, just as the nurse predicted. Maggie was calm, gentle, and surrounded by love when she took a final sigh.

u It’s 10 p.m. in Truro.

Cindie hugs a milky cup of tea between her hands, as she’s ready to discuss Paul Kalanithi’s memoir When Breath Becomes Air with the End of Life Doula Association of Canada. Reading is part of the continuous work that’s needed of people in this line of work. That, and discussion. It’s how death doulas gain wisdom and learn from each other.

Because the profession lacks a regulatory body that’s required for professional birthing doulas, death doulas find each other in various ways. Death doulas outside of national end-of-life associations meet at death cafés, too.

In 2011, Jon Underwood created the concept of people getting together and drinking tea while talking about dying. Since then, there have been over 8,200 death cafés held in 65 countries.

Paul Kalanithi was a husband, father, and neurosurgeon practising in New York. In 2013, Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. The disease took his life two years later, at the age of 35.

The book is split into two parts, before his diagnosis and afterwards. Each half has a strong emphasis on time; Kalanithi wants to know how much time he has and what to do with it. Once it becomes undeniable that his world is quickly shrinking, he starts to look at time, and everything, differently.

Brandi Bailey is hosting the virtual chat from B.C., where most of the association members live. With over 300 members, Cindie is the only one on Canada’s East Coast. It means the monthly meetings run late for her, but she doesn’t mind. She’s used to working unconventional hours, as death knows nothing of time.

Bailey quotes from the memoir for discussion. “Why me? The answer: why not me,” Kalanithi writes.

“Does anyone have a ‘why not me’ moment?” Bailey

asks. “What would make us different from anyone else?”

Cindie doesn’t answer. Instead, she sips her tea and listens to the others. There’s a level of ease to her presence, like it’s something she’s never had to work for. It’s always there; in town as she greets old friends by name, and mid-conversation as she retells quotes by memory. It’s important, she explains, to bring presence to every table. “‘Why me’ gets you nowhere,” says a woman with short hair and confidence. “How can you find an answer to that? Start asking questions that can help you move ahead.”

Another woman chimes in, “(He’s) the right person to tell this What does burden story, with his struggle to give up being a mean to your family? surgeon and just be a patient.”

Is death talked about?

Cindie puts her tea down, ready to break Is it normalized? her silence. “I really think there’s a greater task to be served here,” she says, highlighting the contradictions of the surgeon’s knowledge yet inability to save himself. “Who else could have affected so many people by writing this book?”

Death doulas, like doctors and nurses and other medical professionals, get a rare view of life. They experience the healing and anguish of life and death.

Although, the healing that doulas provide comes from their acceptance of not being able to change fate. It’s how they help others to let go of power.

A doula asks “What kind of life is worth living?” when the video chat glitches. The sudden silence strikes with a chilling uncertainty. The question is left unanswered.

And like most things in life, their discussion continues with a ponderous solace.

u It’s a deadly summer when Cindie Smith launches Tidal End-of-Life Doula. She’d finished her training in the winter of 2019, just before the pandemic’s reckoning.

Now, the world hides behind the safety of a mask, and handwashing has a natural lifespan of 20 seconds. The news, in a sense, has begun to write itself. “Dozens of new cases announced today, more deaths, state of emergency extends for another two weeks.”

If there’s more to say, you wouldn’t know it.

But it’s also a time of the grim reaper trading his scythe for a cough. Cindie sees her work as an opportunity to help others change their perspectives on death. She looks backwards with clients and discusses their family culture: what does burden mean to your family? Is death talked about? Is it normalized? In the most abnormal of years, perhaps there’s comfort in the perspectives of a death doula. Maybe their grim reaper wears a mask.

“The world’s changing,” Cindie says. “It’s always going to change.” She walks off with a smile.

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The kids are alright

Diverse, vibrant, and unique — Halifax’s music scene has transformed, thanks to rising stars like Eriana Willis and Keonté Beals

Eriana Willis

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Jeremy Brake

BY ROBYN McNEIL

Keonté Beals

E

riana Willis was that little girl in church who sang the same song every Sunday.

She showed up for every talent show and relished every Christmas concert. In high school, Willis got involved with school-based musical theatre. Eventually, she connected with Broadway in the Hood (BITH), a non-profit theatre organization based in Las Vegas, making theatre accessible to all.

In 2016, Willis took part in a performance exchange between BITH and Halifax that had her on stages in Vegas and at home.

Then, in her late teens, Willis started posting covers online, which led to opportunities to perform. Sharing those stages with other artists gave her the inspiration to tackle songwriting on her own.

She’s been writing ever since.

Now 21, the Dartmouth native with North Preston roots is looking forward to what’s to come.

“I don’t have any music out, which is something that kills me on the inside,” says Willis, who’s also in her fourth year at Dalhousie.

Album or not, Willis graced the stage in Truro during Nova Scotia Music Week. The event, she says, was a “great experience.”

“I watched a lot of performances,” says Willis. “And everybody was giving 110 per cent.”

She also noted the festival had something of a different vibe this year. Historically, it’s not uncommon for artists of colour to be packaged together on an industry stage.

But this year, event stages presented an eclectic mix of artists and genres. The change is something she’d like to see more of.

Willis would also like to see Nova Scotian performers succeed outside the province’s borders. “We have so much talent,” she says. “I want to see us branch out. I want to see more collaboration within the community.”

Willis counts herself fortunate to have worked with Cyndi Cain, the province’s “Honey Bee of Soul.” Cain was her choir teacher back in the day. Recently, Willis has been working with producer Jamie Fitzpatrick, one of the folks behind BNV Media, a Halifax-based podcasting agency.

“I have a few solid songs that I want to turn into a mini-project,” she adds. “I’m working on a few things getting released.”

When it comes to collabs of her own, the wish list is growing. Halifax-based and Kuwait-raised Syrian Lebanese rapper Shanii22 nears the top of her list. And Willis names Uniacke Square’s Kye Clayton, alt-pop songstress Nicole Ariana, and R&B powerhouse Keonté Beals in short order.

Of Beals, a triple-winner at 2021 Nova Scotia Music Week, she adds, “he’s good people.”

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Declan O’Dowd

Advocates of Truth drummer Andrew Dahms

Kwality Content

Sarah Jamer

Erin Costelo

“They put a lot of effort into diversifying our lineup and making sure that there is a place for everyone,” says Meghan Scott, newly elected president of the MNS board. “I think we had at least at least a half dozen new Canadians.”

She’s referring to Music Nova Scotia executive director Allegra Swanson and other staff.

“It was extremely important to us ... to present a diverse lineup, and I’m really proud of that,” adds Scott.

Beals is encouraged by the change, at least for now.

“Diversity is in,” he says. “So, I just hope that it’s something that continues to move in that direction.”

Beals encourages younger artists to grab the chances suddenly coming within reach.

“So many opportunities for funding now are directly targeting African Nova Scotians,” he says. “That’s something to take advantage of. It’s not something to let pass by.”

And who’s next?

“We have a lot!” Beals says.

He namechecks locally-based, Nigerian-born hiphop artist and filmmaker Harmz. And he’s got a lot of love for another Nigerian-born act, aRENYE, local phenom Zamani, and Willis, too.

“She’s pretty great,” he adds about Willis.

Advocates of Truth, another locally-based Africanimport that mixes R&B, hip-hop, and African rhythms into an Afrofusion of sorts, also have his attention.

“Those are my boys,” he says. “They’re overachievers, too.”

Afrifest 2021

Keonté Beals has a lot on the go.

On top of the award wins, he has new music on the horizon. I tease him about being an overachiever when he tells me he actually recorded two albums while making his debut work KING. But audiences will reap the benefits of that commitment soon.

And he says to expect surprises from his company, KBeals Entertainment, in 2022.

Reflecting on the local industry, Beals says he’s noticed an increased openness and appetite for diversity over recent years, too. When he started out, he and Reeny Smith (singer, songwriter, producer, and Beal’s friend and collaborator) had to jockey for limited stage time.

These days there seems to be more space for a variety of artists and genres.

That’s something that the person behind the local Instagram account, HalifaxMusicArchive, has noticed too. Editor’s Note: Unravel Halifax has agreed not to use their name.

“A positive change is that the various lines between music scenes (hip-hop, punk, indie rock, pop, metal, etc.) seem to be becoming blurred,” the Instagrammer says via email. “It is not uncommon now to see various music genres/scenes represented in a single show.”

This kind of diversity offers more artists more exposure and builds a stronger music community.

The account, created in 2015, bills itself as an unbiased record of local music, past and present.

“I’m not here to decide what can or cannot be posted; I’ll share it all!” says HMA. “I want everyone to feel included ... It’s about the local music community as a collective.”

The change is part of a cultural shift that followed George Floyd’s murder.

“People aren’t taking any shit,” Beals says.

As a result of that terrible killing, it’s harder to get away with bad behaviour. That extends to festivals and events being held accountable for upholding inequality and benefitting from marginalizing some performers.

The noticeable shift to NSMW’s lineup seems to indicate that diversity was an issue in the past. But the tweaks to programming suggest event operator Music Nova Scotia (MNS) isn’t just paying lip service to the moment.

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Declan O’Dowd

Keonté Beals JAN / FEB 2022

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Kwality Content

The overachievers in question are brothers Moses “Rajab Ally” and Galina “Gallyna” Korongo.

Originally from Congo, they came to Canada nearly six years ago after moving around Africa after fleeing violence at home.

Although the pair has been playing individually for years, they now combine their talents as Advocates of Truth. The brothers vary musical styles with afroinspired beats.

“We mix everything,” says Rajab, who was primarily a hip-hop performer. “R&B, hip-hop, jazz, whatever.

Everything.” Gallyna brings his sweet R&B flavours, seasoned by years showing off in church, to the group.

Shadarack Kayombo Kadiata, who primarily plays the guitar for AoT, is also from Congo (though he connected with the brothers here). Shadarack, as he’s known, is a multi-instrumentalist who landed in Halifax in 2019 during December’s freeze not long before the pandemic hit. To say it’s been an adjustment is an understatement.

The man behind the beat is Andrew Dahms, a

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veteran of the local music scene. Dahms has been playing Afrobeats for close to 15 years, long before the sounds we’re popular outside of Africa.

“The second you hear an Afrobeat song,” says Dahms, you realize “its place should be in pop music.

That’s where it should sit. It has a lot of the subtleties.”

There’s some controversy around using “Afrobeats” as a catchall for what amounts to regional styles of African pop. Especially considering Afrobeat is a genre birthed by Nigerian musical icon Fela Kuti by mixing influences of Fúji and Highlife music with American jazz and funk. But, that nuance could be its own story.

According to Dahms, music described as Afrobeat has been popping up more and more in the clubs, moving from Africa into Europe. Now North American audiences are starting to pay attention.

“Anywhere in the world tonight, whoever is playing DJ music at a traditional club where they want to dance, there’s going to be Afrobeat songs now,” he says. “And that wasn’t always the case.”

Dahms believes that’s a beautiful opportunity for AoT as one of the few Afrobeats bands. “I’m excited that the path is being laid,” he adds. “It’s getting recognition all over the world.”

“There’s not a lot to chew on right now. So we’re all a little starving”

Africa Festival of Arts and Culture Society/Kevin Prinoski

— Andrew Dahms

Here in their adopted home, AoT is seeing musical opportunities grow.

“The diversity of the province is starting to open up,” says Rajab, noting that there are more chances available for artists that fall outside of the more mainstream, rock, folk, and fiddle music, even hip-hop, often associated with Nova Scotia.

“They reach out to us, now,“ he adds. “Which is really cool. When we were starting, it wasn’t that way.”

“Music doesn’t have any limits,” says Gallyna. “Now big artists playing the biggest records, they’re playing Afrobeats these days. Like Drake.”

For Dahms, it’s a full-circle moment. “It’s just beautiful, fun music. I’m excited for us to break the doors off this.”

Dahms sees the band as leaders who can help push the music locally and beyond. And while he’s feeling confident in the band’s abilities, he acknowledges they can’t do it all on their own. Especially as the world moves from pandemic to endemic life, accessing help will be necessary.

The band credits Beals for connecting them with the African Nova Scotia Music Association, which has offered strong local support. They’re also thankful for other artists and industry folks who have helped them out and the chance to perform on Music Nova Scotia’s stage again this year.

But is it enough?

“I’m going to be the jerk to say that we’re not getting enough support,” says Dahms. He’s not upset about it, though, because every artist seems to be experiencing the same thing. “I don’t think it’s any one association not supporting artists. I think it’s just a really fucked-up time.”

In the past, if Dahms saw a band had a good show booked, he’d wonder how to get in on it. He may even offer up a spot on an upcoming stage in trade. But these days, he just wants them to have a good show and make some money.

“There’s not a lot to chew on right now,” he says. “So we’re all a little starving.”

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Mat Dunlap

For Halifax-based singer, songwriter, and producer Erin Costelo, a lack of venue space is part of the problem.

Halifax, and Nova Scotia as a whole, have a stage-supply problem.

“A scene needs a place and venues for artists to repeatedly fail,” says Costelo, who often mentors emerging talents. “You got to suck until you’re good ...

The more venues there are, the less competition there is to get on stage, and the more people that do, the better the scene we’re going to grow. If there’s a way for the government funding bodies to support venues, that would be a really, really great thing and, in turn, funnel that money to artists as well.”

Scott agrees.

“There are some smaller stages where artists are able to get started,” she says. “But there needs to be room for growth because, at this point, there aren’t enough performance slots. Having that buffer of a bunch of different venues in the city would promote growth.”

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Mat Dunlap

Through her day job as sales and events manager at Lighthouse Arts Centre (in the former Convention Centre site), Scott is working to help provide that buffer.

But as essential as the new arts centre is, it’s not the entire solution.

Whatever happens, Halifax Music Archive believes youth like Willis, Beals, and AoT, alongside acts like General Khan, Sluice, and Shanii22, will make the change.

“As someone who fell in love with local music by attending all-ages shows, I’m eager to see where younger artists will take the local music scene,” says the

Instagrammer. “I’m here to enjoy the ride and eager to share new music.”

And while Costelo sees the importance of exporting Nova Scotian artists to the world, she hopes local artists can have rewarding careers at home, too.

“There’s no reason that people should have to move away from Nova Scotia to be able to have a career and make a living,” Costelo says with a nod to cities like Nashville. “To create Halifax as a music city and Nova Scotia as a province that supports its musicians would be such an amazing thing that will, in turn, draw people and tourism to our province.”

“The more venues there are, the less competition there is to get on stage, and the better the scene we’re going to grow” — Erin Costelo

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OTHER BUCKET LISTS ‘PAIL’ BY COMPARISON.

SEAWEED HAIR... DON’T CARE! IT’S WINTER ON THE SOUTH SHORE AND THE GREAT OUTDOORS IS CALLING. COME FOR FAT TIRE BIKING, AND SPECTACULAR HIKING. GET A TASTE OF WINTER SURFING AND A TASTE OF LOCAL CRAFT BEER. THE GREAT INDOORS IS ALSO CALLING! TUCK IN AT SEASIDE RESORTS AND COZY INNS. WANDER THROUGH UNIQUE SHOPS, AND DINE AT THE MANY DELIGHTFUL CAFES OPEN YEAR ROUND. AND WINTER WOULDN’T BE WINTER WITHOUT LOBSTER SEASON. FILL YOUR BUCKET WITH BUTTER AND MEMORIES OF LOBSTER-THEMED EVENTS HAPPENING ALL OVER THE SOUTH SHORE. SCAN AND MAKE A PLAN!

PLAN YOUR VISIT, TODAY! #southshoreNICE

visitsouthshore.ca

LUCY SAYS, ‘SHADOW OR NO SHADOW, IT’S GOING TO BE A FUN FEBRUARY!’ We couldn’t agree more, Lucy! Embrace February with both claws at the Nova Scotia Lobster Crawl.

Businesses and organizations all over the south shore are creating a dynamic schedule of events. Here’s a small taste of what to look forward to:

Established in 2018, this fun, month-long event has

• Move over groundhogs!

February 2nd is lucy the lobster day • Lobster Roll off competition • Sip & Savour Culinary Events • Tours & Experiences • Overnight Packages & Getaways • Arts, Culture & Live Performances • Outdoor & Sporting Events

February is for lovers of all things South Shore!

something for everyone, and has quickly become

one of Nova Scotia’s most-loved festivals. It seems Plans for 2022 are well underway, so follow us

for evolving news and events – like the popular

(and delicious) Lobster Roll Off on February 6th.

Come for the South Shore Makers Showcase,

a Nova Scotia Lobster Boil, and our Tail-end Wrap-Up Party the final weekend in February. But, just like a

lobster roll – there’s plenty of good stuff in between!

COME BE A PART OF A FUN, MONTH-LONG CELEBRATION OF WINTER ON NOVA SCOTIA’S SOUTH SHORE.

@LucyLobsterNS Nova Scotia Lobster Crawl @ Nova Scotia Lobster Crawl

LOBSTERCRAWL.CA

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BY JANET WHITMAN

Muir Hotel

‘Glass-half-empty guy’ Scott McCrea on his aspirations for Queen’s Marque, the city, and the province

A

fter months behind barricades blocking alleyway entrances, Queen’s Marque’s new public plaza on the edge of Halifax Harbour was officially unveiled on a grey, drizzly, late November day only fitting for a real-estate development that, like Newfoundland’s Fogo Island Inn, strives to be “born of this place.”

Scott McCrea, who’s sunk more than $200 million into the ambitious development (he prefers to call it a district), told the smattering of onlookers that public space often ends up “the leftover bits” in realestate projects.

“I’m so very proud that our team of architects, designers, professionals started with the idea of creating a place,” he says. “The public space was held as the epitome of what Queen’s Marque would be.”

What it isn’t is another “commoditized” Bayer’s Lake.

“You can go to Bayers Lake — it’s a lovely place — and where are you?” he says. “You could easily be in any other province outside of a large-scale, big-box location.”

McCrea’s aspiration is for Queen’s Marque to be a destination district, like his now-late father Ben McCrea’s 1970s-era Historic Properties development (once a cluster of dilapidated warehouses on the Halifax waterfront).

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“I hope people will see how the density has been pushed to the edges ... how extra height happened in order to give more space to people so they can engage and be part of this development,” he says. “When we are a stranger to place and we don’t see ourselves in it, we start to lose who we are. Queen’s Marque seeks to overcome that. Hopefully as we open all of the public space, people will be able to see themselves in it and engage in it in a way that’s meaningful to them as Nova Scotians.”

To get there, McCrea took what was a 215-car parking lot and submerged it two storeys below ground.

Rise Again Square, the central courtyard that hosted the opening celebration, sits above at ground level. It’s the centrepiece of nearly 9,300 square metres of public space, more than double the previous 3,827 square metres. Steps made of Nova Scotian granite descend into the harbour, a nod to Halifax’s nautical history and a place to sit and contemplate, dip toes, or launch a paddle board.

In an interview with Unravel Halifax, McCrea hesitates to call his ritzy, mixed-use development, more than 10 years in the making, a legacy project. “In some respects, it’s kind of code with bankers for not making money,” says the owner of Armour Group Ltd., the realestate development and construction firm started by his father. “For all of our projects, we build for the long term and don’t sell. In that respect, they’re all legacy.”

But he concedes Queen’s Marque is unique.

“It’s in the absolute centre of the city. What you’re able to spend on it is higher because you have less location risk,” he says. “There’s a different weight to what you’re doing. It is something that will always be in the middle of the city.”

What also sets the development apart “is the absolute, utter complexity of it,” he says. “I would argue it’s the most complex project undertaken in Atlantic Canada on a commercial basis and maybe one of the top two or three in Canada in the last five years.”

It’s not because of its size. At less than 46,000 square metres, the development is half the size Nova Centre up the hill.

Its hallmarks are intricacies in engineering and architecture and almost-obsessive attention to detail.

The development on waterfront property the size of nearly four football fields is home to luxury apartments, upscale offices, restaurants, retail, and Halifax’s first five-star hotel, in addition to three new public wharves and other common spaces featuring commissioned pieces of art.

“It’s literally built in the ocean,” says McCrea. “Once you get past Water Street, east of Water Street, you are in the seawater once you dig. We have two floors of underwater parking.”

The development sits on 400 piles and, as an added safety measure, 200 rock anchors. “Even with the weight of the district, the ocean would still lift it, or move it, so we have to hold the project down, which is obviously very rare,” says McCrea.

Queen’s Marque has its own district energy plant, a green option that uses seawater for heating and cooling.

“It’s very unique,” says McCrea. “The number of angled lines, the type of materials, the fact that there’s four

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different uses; it’s not just office, or hotel. I could go on and on.”

It all sounds expensive. But McCrea says it didn’t blow his $200-million budget. “We have had some budget incidents, but it’s broadly within the parameters that we set out,” he says.

Queen’s Marque is 2.5 years behind schedule. McCrea puts the blame on an Ontario window outfit, the only off-site, non-local contractor he enlisted for the structure. “COVID has not been the issue as much (as it) has been that,” he says. “Those costs we fully expect to reclaim in later proceedings.”

While the public space is now starting to open and new restaurant Drift is welcoming diners, he doesn’t expect Queen’s Marque to be finished until summer.

McCrea has had his hands on every aspect of the project, from choosing contractors to the design of “each and every light, piece of furniture and fabric” for the bespoke Muir Hotel, which opened in December.

“It’s custom-designed based on New England or Maritime reproductions,” he says. “That alone gives you some sense of the enormity of the task. You’re going to look at design of the chair and compare it to what you had in your grandmother’s house. It’s beyond uncommon in terms of the time that’s required.”

He told his wife that Queen’s Marque takes fiftyfold the time he spends on other projects around the city, such as the new office tower going up in his Westway Park in West Bedford. “It’s a pressure and intensity driven from a rare singular project that will abate, for sure,” he says.

The Halifax native is no stranger to hard work.

“My father had an immersive approach to raising his children,” he says with a chuckle, seeming to choose the adjective carefully. “I was kicked out of bed at 12 years old and told to sweep underground parking garages.

With Queen’s Marque, developer Scott McCrea aims to create a distinctively Nova Scotian space.

Raoul Schnell

The Armour Group Limited

Muir Hotel

“

Hopefully as we open all of the public space, people will be able to see themselves in it and engage in it in a way that’s meaningful to them as Nova Scotians — Scott McCrae

I was a labourer on Founders Square using muriatic acid to clean the old buildings. I was an accounts payable guy for a while.”

McCrea doesn’t think the training under his father (a visionary builder known around town, and in his own family, for being tough as nails) was necessarily to spark an interest in the development business. “It was more about tutoring hard work and knowledge,” he says. “I was fortunate to have a certain bent that probably serves me well to be in this type of business in terms of the skillset. But honestly, it wasn’t necessarily thrust upon me.”

Brian MacKay-Lyons, the design architect for Queen’s Marque, says he’s “always surprised and amazed” at McCrea’s ambition for Halifax and the region.

“It’s for this place. It’s not for himself,” says MacKay-

“

Lyons. “You’ve got to give him credit because, in the Maritimes, all you often hear is why you can’t do things.

‘This won’t work, that will never work.’ This kind of attitude that we’ve been brought up on. This project really challenges that.”

MacKay-Lyons says he ended up on the development after McCrea heard him on a CBC interview talking about how Maritimers “put their lack of self-esteem on their young.”

“He believes in Atlantic Canada, that we can rise again like in the song and in the building at Queen’s Marque that we have called Rise Again,” he says. “He thinks we can do it here in the Maritimes. He wanted to hire an architect who believed that too.”

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Pauline Yu

Pauline Yu

undertaking yet for his firm, McKay-Lyons Sweetapple, but his background is in urban design, so it was a natural fit.

One of the things that impresses him the most is that so much of the land is earmarked for public space, with the owner promising to keep it accessible. That’s “something developers don’t often do,” says the architect, who sold his firm’s North End offices on Gottingen Street to move into Queen’s Marque. “The thing that the public is always afraid of with private developments is that the public domain will become privatized. Scott isn’t a promoter, so he doesn’t defend himself against those comments that come up. He’s just confident what he’s doing is the opposite of that.”

After renderings for Queen’s Marque were unveiled in 2016, detractors pounced. Journalist Tim Bousquet called it a “giant piece of crap,” half the size of Nova Centre “but twice as ugly.”

Stephen Archibald, who has a popular Twitter account spotlighting Halifax’s history, architecture, and placemaking efforts, likes the addition to the waterfront. “I certainly don’t have any expertise. I’m a noticer,” says the Nova Scotia Museum retiree and avid photographer. “It’s interesting, my sense from my Twitter world, how prepared some people were to not like it from the very beginning.”

The site used to be a mishmash. “It was federal fisheries research, one or two-storey buildings with the wharf areas used for fishery patrol vessels,” he says. “I have a friend who in the 1960s or 1970s was doing lobster research in one of the buildings. There was a 1950s federal government building in there. Lots of things got added … It was nothing anybody ever missed.”

One thing that puzzles Archibald is the new name.

The property was long known as Queen’s Landing, but McCrea renamed it Queen’s Marque (pronounced

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“mark”) in homage to the early prosperity generated by the “letters of marque” the Crown issued to Nova Scotian privateers raiding enemy shipping.

“It evokes a privateering context that I don’t think is going to wear all that well,” says Archibald. “In Nova Scotia, for a long time we played up those rascal privateer days. I think there’s a better understanding now (what happens) when you have rogue militias in various countries.”

Armour and Develop Nova Scotia maintain that the area wasn’t considered a thoughtful location for Indigenous stories since it was the site of the British Military and Navy for hundreds of years.

Develop Nova Scotia owns the land, which sits between Prince, Lower Water, and George streets, and partnered with McCrea on the development. The Nova Scotia Crown corporation, formerly known as Waterfront Development Corp., leases the property to Armour in a 99-year contract, the terms of which aren’t being disclosed. Develop Nova Scotia is leading programming for the outside area and will operate the public space.

The outside area has already sparked concerns, including the potential for slip and falls on the granite steps and lack of tactile markers to help guide the visually impaired.

Armour and Develop Nova Scotia say the steps are cleaned regularly and that they’re addressing other safety and accessibility issues.

McCrea’s Toronto-based PR handlers asked that interview questions not veer into politics. McCrea has become a big donor to the provincial Progressive Conservatives and served as chair of the transition team for new Premier Tim Houston after his election win. With Halifax in a housing crisis, Houston has taken a prodevelopment stance, funding developers to create more affordable housing (or at least somewhat affordable, at

With the Muir Hotel, offering five-star opulence beyond the grasp of many locals, developer Scott McCrae wants to change how people see Nova Scotia.

20 per cent below the market rate), and launching a new taskforce that can override the municipality on development decisions.

It took Queen’s Marque years to wind its way through the approval process. McCrea’s father got a green light from the province for a conceptual plan for Queen’s Landing in 2010, a year before he became terminally ill, and the younger McCrea returned to take the helm of the family firm. The municipality approved his plan six years later.

Initially he wanted a four-star hotel, plus apartments and office space. But with Halifax’s fortunes rising, McCrea could up his game and spend more to create his own independent brand.

“If you use a hotel brand, they pretty much dictate how it’s going to look at feel and the finishes and any number of things,” he says. “You’d have somebody in Dallas telling you what Nova Scotia should look like.”

He says Zita Cobb’s Fogo Island Inn and its “power of place” were the inspiration. The Muir, which means “sea” in Gaelic, has an art gallery for guests, a private speakeasy with premium cocktails based on heirloom historic ingredients, and a yacht for jaunts around the harbour.

Armour has long operated other hotels and McCrea says the trend is moving away from a simple head-on-a-bed and warm-shower concept. “When you’re in Paris, you want to feel like you’re in Paris,” he says. “It’s about that simple.”

McCrea says he hopes Queen’s Marque, and the Muir Hotel in particular, “alters people’s perceived notion of what Nova Scotia and Halifax is, that it wipes away some of that hackneyed imagery or concept of who we are that is so 1970s, and really reaffirms what anyone who is living here feels: that there is a renewed sense of prosperity, interest, and life in Atlantic Canada, and most particularly Halifax.”

Muir Hotel

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McCrea says he’s surprised by how much the city and province’s profile has risen amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s not that I haven’t been a believer in the place, or else I wouldn’t be here investing in it for so many decades now,” he says. “The simplest way I would put it: I’m a glass-half-empty guy.”

He sees it as a positive, a risk-management trait he learned from his father to come up with all the things that can go wrong so he can guard against them.

“My actions are positive, but my thoughts are decidedly negative,” he says. “And I can’t come up with anything negative about Nova Scotia at this juncture. I really think that the future is extremely bright here.”

JUST KEEP PADDLING In 2018, Bret Himmelman (right), made the jump to Team Canada, competing at the World Cup in Germany.

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Competitive canoer Bret Himmelman opens up about mental health, gruelling training, financial challenges, and making waves in a tough sport

BY JANET WHITMAN

Canoe Photography Balint Vekassy

BRET HIMMELMAN’S

grandfather dropped him off one summer day in front of the Maskwa Aquatic Club as a scrawny teen, thinking a regimen of paddling would help his grandson build muscles for hockey and lacrosse.

At age 15, it was a late start for the now 23-year-old Paris 2024 Olympic aspirant from Hammonds Plains.

Most competitive canoers wade in before they turn 10 or 11, and many are even younger.

“I was the same age as a lot of my teammates, but I had very, very different goals,” recalls Himmelman of his early days at the club on Halifax’s Kearney Lake. “A goal in my first couple of weeks was: let’s get out to this dock without spinning around in circles.”

By the fall, he still hadn’t mastered steering. “Other people were trying to qualify for the nationals,” he says.

“I was just learning how to go straight and not hit things … I ended up hitting a tree that was fallen over in the lake.”

He spent hours spilling into in the chilly autumn waters as he struggled to balance the tippy, 30-cm wide racing canoe. “Luckily, I have pretty decent resistance to the cold,” he says. “I think about how cold I am paddling now in November and wonder how I’d fall in and get back in the boat and do it again and not absolutely freeze.”

His perseverance, along with his high fitness level from other sports, paid off. His coach recommended him for that winter’s training camp in Florida, spots usually reserved for Maskwa paddlers with at least two years of high-performance training under their belts.

“That’s the camp where I really fell in love with the sport,” says Himmelman. “I didn’t fall out of the boat on day one, but I think I fell out on day two when I was startled by a manatee or dolphin.”

With four to five hours of training a day at Florida winter camps and back home, he started making strides.

By 2017, four years in, he landed on Nova Scotia’s Canoe Kayak Canada Games team. In 2018, he made Canada’s national team.

At the last national team trials, he ranked third in Canada in the men’s single 1,000 metres (an Olympic

event known as C1 1000). Two Canadian canoers who made the Tokyo Olympic team (including friendly rival Connor Fitzpatrick, who races out of Senobe Aquatic Club in Dartmouth) weren’t competing in the race. But Himmelman is still in the top four or five in the country in Canoe Kayak Canada’s national ranking.

Himmelman didn’t make the cut for Tokyo during trials in Burnaby, B.C. “I was personally disappointed with my results because I thought I could perform better than what I was showing that weekend,” he says. “But at the nationals at the end of that summer I ended up finishing third in the same C1 event.”

The improvement “was a good reminder that I’m working toward a level that I want to be, which is an Olympic champion,” he says. “That’s why we all do this sport.”

Before the next Olympics, he’s striving to make the Canadian team at the International Canoe Federation’s sprint world championships on Lake Banook in 2022.

Former coach Jon Pike believes Himmelman has what it takes.

“We’re a sport where hard work does pay off,” he says. “Certainly, there’s a degree of talent but if you’re willing to put the work in and be patient with your timelines as far as success, because it never happens quick for anybody, then you’ll be able to achieve a pretty high level. Obviously, Bret’s got some talent too.”

Pike, who’s left coaching to train as a firefighter, says Himmelman is also a nice guy. “He doesn’t really need to coach at the club, but he always did. He wants to take what he’s learned and pass it on to other people,” he adds. “High-performance sport is a pretty selfish endeavour. To some degree, it has to be. Someone willing to give back while they’re still in the midst of it just speaks to the character of the guy.”

Besides encouragement and thousands of hours of technical advice, Himmelman credits Pike for helping him navigate the mental side of the sport.

“I’m an athlete who tends to be really hard on myself,” he says. “Jon knew when I needed a kick in the ass to push me forward or the right time to pull me aside and talk me through it.”

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sive disorder and anxiety at 13. “I was out of therapy and not medicated by the time I started paddling,” he says. “I still have to manage by anxiety and deal with my OCD on a constant basis.”

It’s easy to get obsessive in sports, he says: “I can look at the same video a hundred times over and over trying to dissect it.” He can spin that in a positive way or beat himself up by wondering how he “turned into a bad athlete overnight.”

He wants to help others, so he’s outspoken about his own struggles. He’s part of a project that Canoe Kayak Canada’s Atlantic division launched before the pandemic to support athletes dealing with the pressures of competition and other stresses, including long stretches away from family and friends during training.

“As an athlete, it can be really hard to be honest about how you’re feeling mentally because you’re always pushing yourself,” says Himmelman.

He started hockey at four years old and played in Nova Scotia’s junior league. He finished his studies at Saint Mary’s University in 2021 as team captain of the lacrosse team. He continues to play the two sports for the camaraderie and to wind down. “It gives me a chance to turn my brain off,” he says. “I don’t think about paddling at all.”

After the disappointment of failing to make a couple of teams at nationals, Himmelman had to shift gears quickly. He was heading to Romania in a month. Instead of the sprints he’s spent most of the past eight years focused on, the Oct. 1 race was a marathon, 22.6 kilometres. He’d competed in marathons before, but never with portages where he’d have to run with his canoe. And this one had five.

“This was a whole other mental state preparation,” he says. “I was proud of myself. Not just for the result — I finished in sixth place, which was the best Canadian men’s canoe result at that event — but also that I was able to mentally refocus after the rollercoaster experience at nationals.”

He trained with daily paddles of 15 to 18 km.

Unlike track, where you’d never see a 100-metre sprinter run a 5k race, sprint canoers typically do longdistance paddles for the bulk of their training.

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Pike and Canadian men’s sprint team head coach Andreas Dittmer, a German Olympic gold medallist now based in Halifax, are adamant about “the general aerobic training zone,” says Himmelman. “Around 70 per cent of your maximum heartrate is where 80 per cent of your training needs to be, whether you’re training for the 1,000 or 500. You need to have that level of fitness and aerobic capacity.”

The training zone is also where a paddler can adjust and learn the most about technique. “In our sport, it’s a lot easier to paddle technically better when you’re going faster. You’ve got the boat moving under you,” Himmelman explains. “It’s a lot harder to paddle technically when you’re going slower.”

The goal every morning is to work on being “more efficient at the same stroke rate and at the same heart rate,” he says.

Himmelman didn’t know competitive canoeing existed until he joined Maskwa, one of several paddling clubs that have helped Nova Scotia gain international recognition for excellence in the sport.

Forget your summer camp canoes. There’s no cane seat to perch on. With a single blade paddle in hand, competitors kneel on one knee with their other leg forward in a constant lunge, a style first used by Canadians.

“You really have to use your back. You extend out with your lats, you get your weight on the water with your top shoulder,” says Himmelman. “You’re trying to leverage your paddle over the water and get as much weight onto blade and onto the water as possible.”

His specialty is the C1 1000 and the 500-metre doubles sprint (C2 500).

“A lot of people think the C stands for canoe. It actually stands for Canadian-style canoe,” he says. “I’m very fortunate and lucky that I get to compete in a sport with such great Canadian and Indigenous roots.”

Himmelman says he’s “a notoriously slow starter,” but excels with his travel speed. “My goal is to hold my travel speed as high as I can get. Other people might try to go hard off the start and do a pickup at the 200 and 500 marks.”

For a 1,000-metre race, a sprinter with a rough start can make that up, making the race more tactical than

Sandy Yonley

FINISH

A late starter in the sport, Himmelman was a long shot to canoe competitively at all, let alone wear the maple leaf.

the shorter 500 metres. “The 1k race is about four minutes, depending on conditions, so you have a lot more time to think,” says Himmelman. “In the 500, the margin of error is very minimal.”

Mother nature can mess with a canoer’s head.

“Not every sport gets affected by weather conditions like we do,” Himmelman says. “Like if the wind is coming from the left side, it can affect one canoer more than another because we only paddle strokes on one side. Me, as a right, if the wind is coming from my paddle side, it gives me more of an advantage over the left paddlers.”

Pondering the weather forecast can occupy much of a canoer’s head space. “It’s a very hard part of our sport that we struggle sometimes to shut off our brain to say, ‘Oh, we can’t control it, don’t worry about it,’” he says. “At the end of the day, whatever the conditions are, it’s the same for everybody. You can’t control it. You just have to hammer down and race your best race despite what’s thrown at you.”

From the day his grandfather dropped him off at Maskwa, the 5’10” athlete has gone from a 125-pound “string bean” (or 130 pounds depending on how much he’d eaten on a given day) to 185 pounds, most of the gain in muscle. “I was always an undersized kid,” he says.

He trains between 10 and 12 hour-to-two-hour long sessions a week. On average, it’s three hours a day on the water, depending on the season, plus cross-training workouts, weight training, running, rowing, along with swimming and cross-country skiing in the off-season.

Himmelman also likes to throw in one or two yoga sessions a week. “That’s something that I do personally,” he says.

Maskwa kayaker Alexa Irvin remembers meeting Himmelman for the first time in the early days at an offseason training swim meet. “He was OK at swimming, not the best, not the worst, but he wanted to be in every single relay possible,” she says. “If people had to leave, he’d say, ‘Put me in, put me in.’”

The two are now training partners and Irvin, a Kentville native who’s doing her Master’s in epidemiology at Dalhousie University, says Himmelman is no less hardworking and enthusiastic.

“Over the years we’ve done a lot of 6 a.m. paddles,”

she says. “When we get there, no one’s energetic, but he’s probably the first one to wake up and get people excited to get on the water, even if it’s cold and dark.”

Like most amateur athletes, Himmelman juggles training and economic necessity.

“Even though canoeing takes up a lot of my time, I still have to work,” he says. “I have rent, power bills, and expenses just like anybody else.”

Over the summer, he had three or four jobs on top of his grueling training schedule. He aspires to be an entrepreneur and is putting his SMU finance degree to work by helping out his father, financial advisor Brian Himmelman, and doing marketing for luxury car tourism start-up DreamDrive Vacations.

In a sponsorship deal with RBC, he does community outreach and marketing as one of the bank’s financially supported Olympians.

He’s looking for more sponsors after losing his national team funding for the upcoming season, money he’s counted on for the past two years. “Despite having my best national team trial results and highest national rank ever in my career, I didn’t make the criteria to get funding again,” he says.

He’s unsure what criteria led to the lost federal financial support, but it’s not unusual for an athlete to see funding come and go.

“I’m going to be racing to try and get that funding back,” he says. “It a year-to-year kind of thing.”

A paddling career has a limited lifespan, often determined by the four-year Olympic cycles.

Himmelman’s C2 partner Tom Hall retired at 23.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is Mark de Jonge, the famed Maskwa club kayaker Himmelman counts as a role model. The World Cup champion and Olympic bronze medalist, who’s among Nova Scotia’s top athletes of all time, is stepping down now in his mid-30s.

Himmelman will be 26 when he’s vying for a spot in the Paris Olympics. “I will have to decide if I want to do another four years and paddle until I’m 30 to do the 2028 Olympics. It’s usually after an Olympic year that people decide.”

While he enjoyed the recent marathon, it’s not an Olympic sport. His focus is on sprint. “It where the Olympic medals are, where the funding money is, where the most opportunities are,” he says.

Himmelman says he’d never seen his grandfather so excited as when Maskwa won the nationals in Dartmouth in 2016. “He had a T-shirt on that said, “Proud Paddling Grampy.”

It ended up the last race Jim Himmelman got to watch. He died later that year of brain cancer.

Himmelman says his next races on Lake Banook were tough without his grandfather there cheering and meeting him after at the end of the dock.

After a come-from-behind victory in a doubles sprint event, a finish-line photo shows Himmelman pointing to the sky. “I know Grampy was the third person paddling in that C2 race,” says Himmelman. “I know he still watches every single one of my races from above. He was my main support pillar for so many years.”

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TOWERING

AMBITIONS

Imagine Spring Garden Road is a $10-million streetscaping project the likes of which Halifax has never seen. And the process is almost controversy-free. Have we figured out how to do these things?

BY ALEC BRUCE

T

he irony doesn’t escape Paul Vienneau, Halifax Regional Municipality’s accessibility advisor to the chief administrative officer.

He recalls a blustery day in November rushing for a meeting in his wheelchair before sidewalk enhancements on Spring Garden Road stopped him cold. “I hit a shitty dirt ramp,” he says. “To go around would have been a pain in the ass, so I went home.”

Still, he’s not unhappy with the $10-million public infrastructure and beautification project that has turned much of the stretch between South Park and Queen streets into more moonscape than streetscape over the past six months. “I talked to the foreman later and he

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apologized,” he says of the sidewalk incident. “I appreciated that.”

Vienneau insists that despite the disruption and inconvenience, the massive upgrade, which was scheduled to wrap up in December, will “make a real neighbourhood” where people don’t just shop or punch a clock.

And in a city whose residents have historically taken a dim view of their municipal government’s countless civic improvement schemes and ground-breaking fiascos, many appear to agree with him. This time, like him, they say it’s been worth it.

“People tweet me and email me all the time,” says Waye Mason, the HRM councillor for the area, who lives

Halifax Regional Municipality Glenn Euloth

near Dalhousie University and represents much of the urban core. “Most of the businesses (on Spring Garden Road) seem to be okay. We’re beginning to see the payoff now because we’re almost done.”

Others with specific interests in the happy outcome of the project, appropriately dubbed Imagine Spring Garden Road, are reporting similar findings.

“I think overall the public is extremely excited,” says Elora Wilkinson, an HRM planner and manager on the project. “Certainly, what we’ve heard from the business community is that this has been the year to do it. Now’s the time to get it done and be ready to open up to the world again.”

Sue Uteck, a former HRM councillor and current executive director of the Spring Garden Area Business Association, says, “When you talk to merchants on the street, this construction project, surprisingly, hasn’t killed their sales. I can’t tell you there’s one person who’s saying today, ‘This is crazy. You’re killing my business.’

All the merchants will attest that foot traffic is up on Spring Garden.”

Vienneau, who lives next door to the Lord Nelson Hotel, is not a businessperson. But he talks to a lot of them on Spring Garden, and he can attest to one other thing. “This area is like a hub. People from all over come here,” he says. “This is building a space for people to come and for people to stay.”

That sense of community purpose — the defining characteristic of this particular public works — clearly distinguishes it from days of yore. Nothing about it resembles the fight over Historic Properties in the 1960s, for example, or the never-ending toothaches that were the Harbour sight-line preservation debates from various physical and philosophical vantages around the city in the 1970s and ‘80s.

And don’t let anybody get started on equivalencies to the more recent Argyle and Grafton streets redevelopment completed in 2017, during which screaming matches, virtual fistfights, and bankruptcies were the cost of doing business in a four-year-long construction zone.

“That was a disaster,” Mason says. This, he and others involved in the project assert, is not.

There’s a reason for that.

“During the Argyle and Grafton streetscaping project, we learned a lot about working together as a community,” HRM’s extensive public information package, available to anyone with an internet connection, explains. “The project taught us about collaborating on a clear vision for the street, and working together to make the most of the construction phase.”

What’s more, it says, “Argyle and Grafton streets function differently from Spring Garden Road. Among other things, Spring Garden Road must continue to function as a transit corridor. What will be similar is the high quality of design and material finishes, and the emphasis on pedestrians.”

Wilkinson is even more direct about the approach, which started in earnest in 2018. “We went out to the public to talk about exactly what they want it to look like and what’s next,” she says. “That’s how the design evolved.”

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of pointed to what this project was going to do before it started.”

In this way, Imagine Spring Garden Road is a piece in a puzzle, part of an exercise that’s been underway for five years to transform Halifax into an admirably liveable metropolis. “We are working toward an ambitious long-term vision to grow Halifax’s population to 550,000 and its GDP to $30 billion by 2031,” says the economic development strategy. “The plan sets out to make Halifax a more vibrant, thriving, and welcoming city.”

The strategy establishes 15 performance metrics in three categories: business, labour, and lifestyle. The first two are doing fine, coming in at or above expectations.

But since 2016, the third seems to have fallen behind with housing affordability, arts and cultural events, and accessibility (“city is easy to get around”) worsening.

@SpringGardenArea

Workers install soil cells to improve the health of trees along Spring Garden Road.

Halifax Regional Municipality

Vienneau was there. “They had a whole bunch of public engagement sessions where they presented a lot of options and gave people a vote on what they liked,” he recalls. “I went to three of these things. And they were all at least two or three hours long. I think they gave the public a pretty fair opportunity to check it out, and give their opinions on it.”

For better or worse, but not for lack of consultation, there will be new planting beds protected by raised curbs (do not tiptoe through the tulips). There’ll be 27 new trees and close to 1,000 new perennial flowers. There’ll be “Main streets are your more open spaces for pedestrians to hang out central cores to your and a variety of brightly coloured benches and businesses and your chairs (with backs and armrests, no less). The community. People sidewalks will be 47 per want to live, work, and cent wider. There’ll be public art displays and play in the same area” rotating exhibits. There might even be some — Sue Uteck public washrooms.

As pedestrian traffic, including wheelchairs, is a priority, dedicated bike lanes are out, though nothing about the design discourages cycling. The plan even calls for 30 bike racks.

Beneath it all, literally, will be the spiffy, new reinforcements and structures to keep all the pretty “pocket parks” and “paver promenades” from sinking.

In November, Halifax planners proposed a yearlong pilot project to keep the street free of all vehicles except public buses. The idea is to improve the efficiency and reliability of public transit along the busy corridor. Plus, Wilkinson told the transportation standing committee, “Transit-only … would further enhance Spring Garden Road as a destination.

Uteck says the project will transform urban planning in the city: “It’s going to highlight that main streets are your central cores to your businesses and your community. People want to live, work, and play in the same area. And if you don’t have these downtown main streets revitalized, you’re just putting a donut into your centre and there goes to your tax base, and here comes urban sprawl. So, it’s important to have all the amenities downtown.”

More than that, she says, it will be a template for others: “This shows communities across Canada how you do something like this.”

Whether or not it does, the comment itself points to the other way this project departs from previous highprofile public works in the city: It has the whole bigvision thing pushing it towards posterity.

“Our direction really came from council back in 2016 with our economic development strategy,” Wilkinson says. From this came HRM’s integrated mobility plan and rapid bus transit studies for the entire area, highlighting “Spring Garden as a key pedestrian corridor. All of these larger master plans and came together and kind

@SpringGardenArea

On these, COVID-19 had a predictably deleterious effect, but even before the pandemic drastically changed the way people lived and connected with one another the decline in social security, mobility and opportunity was underway.

Halifax isn’t unique in this respect.

Cities across Canada are experiencing the same problems as the gap between the gainfully employed and underemployed, the lodged and dislodged, the rich and the poor, continues to grow. But if Imagine Spring Garden Road is designed, at least in part, to improve the city’s lifestyle, how it will do that for the growing number of people who can’t afford to live, let alone, shop in the downtown is not yet clear.

Eric Jonsson is the city’s Street Navigator (a positioned developed and supported by the Downtown Halifax Business Commission and the Spring Garden Area Business Association in 2007). His job is to help find shelter and support for homeless people, people who don’t need to reimagine a street that already stares them down day after precarious day.

Sue Uteck and Mayor Mike Savage tour the site early in the streetscaping process.

The ambitious revitalization aims to make Spring Garden Road a complete neighbourhood, not just a shopping destination.

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@SpringGardenArea

Despite its large scale, the Spring Garden Road revamp has escaped the controversy of other streetscaping projects.

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“There’s a lot of volatile people around Spring Garden, and they don’t seem to care much about (the project),” Jonsson says. “I’m trying to get people connected and get assistance, trying to get them housing if I can, but that’s still really tough to find.”

Predictably, perhaps, among the majority of citizens who are not down on their luck or worse — utterly disenfranchised — there is a “rising tide” mentality about all this. Doing nothing about Spring Garden would be worse for everyone, they argue. What’s more, the project sets

Councillor Waye Mason says with Imagine Spring Garden Road, Halifax now has a template for successful streetscaping projects.

a new tone for community involvement elsewhere on Halifax’s streetscaping horizon. That, too, is better than nothing.

“We’re not done,” says Wilkinson, who hastens to add that the city is not yet ready to fully outline the future shape of its towering ambitions. “The streetscaping team, of which I am one member, has recently created a streetscaping administrative order that gives direction on how streetscaping will integrate with a lot of projects to improve the aesthetic of regular road work.”

She adds: “A good example of a project like that would be the new South Park cycling (lanes). We worked to add a few more pavers and fancier streetlights along the Public Gardens. It’s just little things like that which take a project to the next level.”

People’s faith and forbearance, notwithstanding, Spring Garden Road’s streetscaping has not been flawless.

Uteck says a lack of financial relief for the businesses that the work affected is the one “missing piece” in the whole exercise. “There should be a construction mitigation fund that businesses can apply (to cover their losses),” she says.

Overall, though, it’s been a remarkable showing for a city that hasn’t always demonstrated much civic sense in major public works, says Mason.

“We’ve got streetscaping that needs maintenance, like Bedford Row and Portland Street,” he notes. “Now, we have a maintenance plan, built into the budgets. You know, they (the municipality) didn’t do that 20 years ago.

I feel like we’ve really figured out how to do this stuff and thank God for that …”

He pauses significantly.

“Because the Cogswell Interchange is the next one.”

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THE NOTE FLAVOUR

Valentine’s satisfaction Our annual celebration of love often falls short of the hype, but you can make sure your stomach is happy

Field Guide

BY BROOKLYN CONNOLLY

I

don’t know much about St. Valentine, but I bet he was hungry.

He was born in the Roman Empire around 226 AD, a time when food supplies could be precarious, but it was not a hunger for food that lead to his death; it was hunger for love.

That yearning ultimately left him decapitated — martyred for the crime of facilitating Christian marriages at a time when practising the religion was punishable by death.

Perhaps it is fitting, then, that today so many of us find ourselves searching for love in the pages of a menu on a dinner date, yet often leave unsated.

Maybe I’m nothing but a realist. A hungry, lovesick, realist. This year, I’m going to make better choices, and they start on the plate. Here’s my take on the restaurants screaming “Pick me” this Feb. 14.

The Garden

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LAFRASCA CIBI + VINI 5650 Spring Garden Rd. $$ lafrasca.ca Whether your love is new or old, LaFrasca Cibi + Vini is there to feed it as it grows. Authentically Italian, there’s no doubt the food is made with care. Share a bottle of red and lose yourself in the fresh quality carbs (on Valentine’s Day, there’s lots of ways to burn them off, anyway).

The Northeast Italian menu emphasizes authentic, rustic flavours. Must try: Brome Lake duck two ways with cherry jus, polenta, and brussels sprouts.

2733 Agricola St. $$$ barkismet.com If you get your reservation for Bar Kismet early enough, you won’t need to give Valentine’s Day another thought until it’s time to arrive.

The family-owned and operated restaurant will do that for you. Serving carefully curated dishes that are updated weekly, love is not only on the menu, but in the meal. Make sure to call in advance, though. With that much class, it’s no wonder that Bar Kismet operates as a reservation-only.

Amy Leigh Mugford @photographyamyleigh

BAR KISMET

OXALIS RESTAURANT 22 Wentworth St., Dartmouth $$$ oxalisrestaurant.com

THE GARDEN 1446 Queen St. $$ gardenhalifax.com

If intimacy is what you’re after, consider Oxalis restaurant for your bite-to-be. The seasonal menus offer a European twist on Nova Scotian farm flavours. The options may be slim, but they’re authentically German and Austrian, reflecting the owners’ origins. A great way to take you and your partner away to Mitteleuropa this Valentine’s Day, even if it’s just your taste buds making the trip.

Considering Law as a Career?

FIELD GUIDE

INDIGENOUS BLACKS AND MI’KMAQ INITIATIVE

2076 Gottingen St. $$$ fieldguidehfx.com Straddling the fine line between casual and classy, this small North End restaurant is another option you’ll want to book early. Its emphasis on being “a place to gather” welcomes every date to the table — first-dates, third-wheels, or singles alike. Its open concept kitchen gives room to breathe, chat, and relieves some pressure from the one date that none of us can escape: Feb. 14. Must try: cauliflower tacos on house-made flour tortillas.

The Indigenous Blacks and Mi’kmaq Initiative is designed to ensure that African Nova Scotians and Mi’kmaw students have access to the Schulich School of Law. Students who enter through the IB&M Initiative join the regular first year law class, write the same exams, complete the same work and earn the same J.D. degree as do all other students at the Schulich School of Law. The IB&M Initiative takes a holistic approach. We incorporate community outreach, student support and career placement assistance.

Our work helps develop Aboriginal law and African Canadian legal perspectives in the Canadian justice system.

Students interested in entering the Schulich School of Law through the IB&M Initiative are invited to contact the IB&M office for additional information.

Katie Power

Katie Power

Romantic and playful, the Garden is the perfect place for love to blossom. It offers a unique drink and dining experience that embraces presentation and wow factor — as Instagramworthy as it is enjoyable. Take your date higher on their unique swing-sets or dine it down and get intimate over their locally built hardwood tables and chairs. Either or, the menu is sure to leave you satisfied. Must try: pork belly with coconut parsnip purée, apple raisin chutney, and heirloom carrots.

Indigenous Blacks and Mi’kmaq Initiative Schulich School of Law Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS Tel: 902.494.1639 • E-Mail: ibandm@dal.ca • ibandm.law.dal.ca JAN / FEB 2022

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THE FLAVOUR

Serving up joy EungSub Lee came to Halifax to escape the career rat race — now he’s building a thriving business and sharing Korean flavours with his loyal diners STORY AND ILLUSTRATIONS

BY KAT FRICK MILLER

T

he gentle scent of simmering pork with hints of garlic and kimchi fills the kitchen of the Brewery Farmers’ Market every Friday evening, as EungSub Lee prepares for the next morning’s market.

Lee describes his menu at Gama by Lee as Seoul-style Korean food: rooted in Korean flavours and techniques, but as with the cuisine of the megalopolis, he includes the influences from China, Japan, and Taiwan, gathered during his travels.

On the menu every week is his braised pork belly, a Korean dish, but Lee includes star anise in his sauce

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“because it is more delicious, but it is definitely not Korean style.” Mandu (Korean-style dumplings) are among his staples. On occasion, you’ll also find Japanese ubu, an inari sushi dish, filled with kimchi and scrambled eggs or beef bulgogi.

Five years ago, when Lee immigrated to Nova Scotia, he wasn’t planning on going into the food business.

He decided to leave Korea because he wanted to change careers and a mid-life career switch in South Korea is considered, as he puts it, “some kind of crazy thing.”

For 10 years in South Korea, Lee worked in the gamedesign industry, often with long periods of “crunch-

time,” working 16-hour days. He wanted to find a job where he could work for himself, not spend hours writing reports for managers.

First, Lee thought he might take up carpentry because he had the desire to create something. However, after seeing the tough workload and long summer hours of carpenter friends, he decided it was too similar to the career he was trying to escape.

After stumbling upon the Cabbage Patch Kimchi stall at the Seaport Market, Lee convinced owner, Jessie Palmer, to hire him part-time to tend the stall during the quieter Sunday markets.

In time, he started helping in the kitchen, preparing kimchi, washing jars, and bottling. This experience gave him an opportunity to learn about the farmers market community, the English names for ingredients, and the structure of a Canadian commercial kitchen. A few days a week, he also worked as a delivery driver for Skip the Dishes, using the small interactions with customers to practise his English.

“That kind of little chance to make conversation with people at the doorstep and at the counter helped me a lot,” he recalls. “Because I cannot make long conversation with other people because I am afraid to make JAN / FEB 2022

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THE FLAVOUR

mistakes. Small conversations, I can memorize some kind of sentence, I do that like the actor. I gain confidence and I gain experience.”

Lee applied for a space at the Brewery Farmers’ Market in the winter of 2020 and opened shop offering mandu delivery and meals through the market Side Door Supper Club until the market opened again.

Despite a tricky first year, he has cultivated a dedicated following at the Saturday morning markets and for his mandu, available in shops across the city. While in his previous career he would work for four years on one project, now he loves that he can make a meal

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in four hours and immediately see the response from customers.

“That is why I love the Brewery Market,” he says. “I can see the smile from the customers and hear the happiness from their face and from their voices. That’s one of the reasons I decided to become a business owner.”

Lee is now embarking on his next project, opening a small eatery in Halifax to allow people to enjoy his food throughout the week. After searching for over a year, he found a home for his new venture, Café Suda, opening in February at 5520 Almon St. (formerly Hold Fast Café).

He continues to prepare his foods from his kitchen in the Brewery Market but looks forward to expanding his menu in the new location, offering coffee, while introducing Asian baked treats alongside his signature Seoul style food, dumplings.

A dream in the offing is to open a food truck to service areas of the city that are considered food deserts, a concept he only learned of after moving to Canada.

“In South Korea you can walk everywhere,” he says. “In Canada if you don’t have a car, it is really hard to get proper food.”

Halifax reminds Lee of his hometown, Busan, which is also home to a large port, a ship-building industry, and tourists visiting the coastal community.

But Halifax’s smaller scale has lasting appeal: “I won’t leave, I will stay here.”

THE INDEX ABM Integrated Solutions (p. 4) abmis.ca

Saltscapes Expo (p. 8) saltscapesexpo.com

Bluenose Lodge (p. 65) bluenoselodge.ca

South Shore Tourism (p. 42) visitsouthshore.ca

Cox & Palmer (p. 11) coxandpalmerlaw.com

Subaru (p. 68) subaru.ca

Heart and Stroke (p. 26) heartandstroke.ca/FAST

Taste of Nova Scotia (p. 2) tasteofnovascotia.com

Indigenous Blacks & Mi’kmaq Initiative (p. 61) ibandm.law.dal.ca

Thistle Hospitality Group (p. 24) thistlehospitality.com Tin Drum Music Therapy (p. 18) tindrumtherapy.ca

Nimbus Publishing (p. 6) nimbus.ca Our Children Magazine (p. 65) ourchildrenmagazine.ca Red Door Realty (p. 18) reddoorrealty.ca

Unravel Halifax Magazine (p. 22) Unravelhalifax.ca Winterscapes (p. 67) unravelhalifax.ca/newsletter

Saltbox Brewing Company (p. 6) saltboxbrewingcompany.ca

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UNRAVEL

65

THE STANCE

Road romance vs. planetary survival Sometimes, love means letting go

BY PAULINE DAKIN

I

have a strange and mostly useless skill.

I can recognize and remember the make and model names of most cars made before 2000, and some since. I don’t recall learning this in any systematic way. It’s just information cluttering my brain when I can hardly remember what I had for breakfast.

It’s likely because I have, for as long as I can remember, loved cars. The first one I recall noting was a late’60s Corvair. I was eight at the time, standing at a bus stop watching it glide by. Something about its flowing lines and double round headlights spoke to me.

By the time I was a teenager I had magazine photos of Porsches, Maseratis, and Jaguars on my bedroom walls, not heart-throb actors or musicians like my friends. And when I visited dad in Vancouver in the late 1970s, I was besotted with the Mercedes 450SLs, the graceful convertible roadsters.

“You should buy me one,” I teased. And he kind of did. The last time I saw him he said I should “get one of those little cars you used to love” with some money he would leave me. Backstory: I wasn’t close to my dad.

Years went by when I didn’t see him as a child. So, I was touched that he remembered my roadster infatuation, and I took his advice. I found an old 1979 450SL online at a car lot in St. Louis, Mo. I smile and thank dad whenever I drive it.

I get that this is all hopelessly out-of-step with a warming climate, and that we live in a world that desperately needs to get over the oil and gas addiction.

And yet, cars and driving have always represented freedom and independence. For 100 years, that’s been a big part of North American culture. Car manufacturers marketed their products with images of happy people driving along idyllic coastal highways. Car culture — in movies, music, literature — is deeply entrenched. Think drive-ins, drive-throughs, lovers’ lanes, hot-rodding, road tripping.

Insert screeching tire sound effects here.

Those days have to be over. For the health of our planet and all of us who live here cars can no longer come first. If this seems obvious, check out rush hour almost anywhere on the Halifax peninsula.

But if you’re like me, and you love your ride, the keys may have to be ripped from your grasping hands.

Don’t worry. Halifax Regional Municipality is going to help.

The region’s new Integrated Mobility Program is

66

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JAN / FEB 2022

pushing automobiles aside, sometimes literally, to make more space for buses, bikes, and pedestrians. And those who insist on driving face new restrictions. For example, traffic calming projects such as the speed bumps on Allen Street, or curb bump-outs on Romans Avenue, will slow you down.

Bright green bollards, like those at the corner of Bell Road and Sackville Street, protect cyclists, while green paint on the pavement at a growing number of intersections is meant to indicate spots where cyclists and cars are at greater risk of collision.

Drivers: we’re on notice.

Cyclists are finally getting recognition for the role they play in reducing traffic and emissions, and they’re being rewarded with attention and space.

The city is prioritizing pedestrians too, with crossing lights at some intersections that give them a head-start to cross the street before traffic starts moving, and more visually arresting crosswalks.

There’s lots more “active transportation” infrastructure promised. By 2024, HRM staff say there will be almost 57 kilometres of bike lanes and paths in the regional centre.

If we haven’t soon been convinced to abandon cars (after all, there’s nowhere left to park!) then we better hurry and get our carbon neutral on.

According to the energy industry publication Power Technology, global sales of electric vehicles are up 160 per cent in the first half of this year. Personally, I’m rooting for hydrogen cars. But either way the world is going to be a lot quieter without internal combustion engines.

And there’s hope for my old 450SL in a post-gasoline world. A couple of years ago a research engineer and his student at Dalhousie University converted a classic 1971 Triumph Spitfire to an electric car.

The call of the road is still strong, but even more urgent is accepting what we have to leave behind in order to get to where we need to be: net zero. Forget “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” Unless we get past the romance of car culture, we’re on the “Highway to Hell.”

Or, in the more mournful lyrics of yet one more driving tune: You got a fast car Is it fast enough so we can fly away?

We gotta make a decision Leave tonight or live and die this way — Tracy Chapman, “Fast Car”

Planning a Winter Staycation this year?

Find great getaway packages in the digital edition of

Winterscapes 2022 …In Unravel Halifax’s February e-newsletter!

unravelhalifax.ca

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