It was sad to hear that the Oxford is closing, the last of the stand-alone movie theatres in Halifax. It opened in 1937, and I've been enjoying films there since the 1950s. A couple of years ago, I snapped photos of a few details while standing in line for tickets and waiting for the film…Read More

A monster IKEA is opening in Dartmouth Crossing next month. Here are a few things you need to know: They broke our hearts IKEA opened their first store in North America in Burnside in 1975. They became a big part of our material and aesthetic lives, and then about 12 years later pulled a "it's…Read More

Richmond, Virginia Looking at photos from our trip to Virginia in 2009, I realized we saw a number of statues that have become more interesting in these iconoclastic times. Just a year old, when we visited Richmond, was the Civil Rights Monument, an example of accessible, contemporary sculpture. It is located in a prominent location…Read More

Charlottesville fills the news, another sorry tale involving the statue of a dead white man. The community has special meaning for me, because it is almost the only place I have lived except Halifax. Here are my few memories of this small city, set in a beautiful Virginia landscape. My father did his PhD in…Read More

There are a number of mid-Annapolis Valley villages and towns that we tend to drive by, and if we happen to drive through, they just get a passing glance. Lawrencetown is a good example. Even when we had a summer cottage nearby, Lawrencetown was a destination only for the County Exhibition held every August. So…Read More

We did a road trip earlier in the summer to visit Sheila's family in rural southwest Quebec. Coming and going was not a straight line (it took two days to get out of Nova Scotia, for example). You'll not be surprised to hear that what I notice while away is identical to what I notice around Nova…Read More