This is a good news story about something that feels important. I hope you agree. When walking in downtown Halifax it's likely you regularly pass, without paying too much attention, the cast iron fence that surrounds Saint Paul's church on the Grand Parade. Well, next time take notice, because last spring restoration started on the… Read More

In 1980 the Halifax waterfront we flock to today was still a big, vacant mess. To the south was the real working seaport, and even it felt a little run down around the edges. One afternoon in the fall of 1981 (probably), I visited the Seaport/Ocean Terminal and snapped some photos of what was going… Read More

Early in September we spent a couple of days in Lunenburg County, our first real expedition this summer (a test drive for Sheila's new hip). Here are a few things noticed in the field. It was a treat to stay in Lunenburg town, to get up early, and to walk some streets, observing the community… Read More

Early Saturday morning, while on the way to the farmers' markets, I realized it was a perfect moment to pause and walk around the outside of the brand new LeMarchant-St. Thomas Elementary school. This joyfully contemporary collection of colourful shapes sits comfortably at the bottom of LeMarchant Street. The new building is on the site… Read More

The Granville Street Mall in downtown Halifax is lined with many outstanding buildings. Virtually all date from 1860 when they were quickly built after a devastating fire cleared this area of Barrington, Granville, and Hollis streets. This was the premier shopping district, and the merchants commissioned new stores designed in the highest styles of the… Read More

Sobeys announced they will stop providing plastic grocery bags by the end of this year. That didn't bother us because reusable bags, forever. More interesting was the suggestion, seen on Twitter, that people should save a plastic Sobeys bag as a collector's item. In the 1970s and 80s, several of my ephemera friends were active… Read More

A few days ago Chris Miller tweeted this very urban image of Halifax. The red building brightening up all that grayness made me remember a William Carlos Williams poem about a red wheelbarrow.So I quickly looked up the poem and tweeted the beginning as a reply, replacing "wheelbarrow" with "building." so much depends upon a… Read More

In April I was coming out of Atlantic News and noticed that the building across the street was being stripped of its many layers of siding. I posted a picture on Twitter and wished good things for a building that had lost its dignity a long time ago. The Twitter post gathered 10,000 impressions so… Read More

So the car was in for servicing (remember the diesel that VW lied about), so there was time to take a long ramble. I didn't have a destination in mind and just started walking quickly down Robie Street, then turned up May Street for a slower-paced stroll in a zone with more visual charms. Immediately… Read More

While looking through photos taken last month, I noticed a little theme: new public landscape elements, with thoughtful design, located in communities several counties distant from Halifax. Here are three examples. Mersey Skatepark In early June the Rhododendron Society did its annual garden tour, this year in the Liverpool area. One of the stops was… Read More