Halifax Magazine October 2017

PLUS: WHEN LEON TROTSKY CAME TO HALIFAX (AND WENT TO JAIL) P. 10 HALIFAX HAS TONS OF MUSICAL TALENT, BUT FEWER PERFORMANCE VENUES THAN EVER P. 16 A NEW HALIFAX BUSINESS MAKES HEALTHY HOME COOKING EASIER P. 28

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The truth is out there Filmmaker Paul Kimball investigates Halifax’s paranormal side

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On our cover Describing himself as a paranormal “agnostic,” Paul Kimball investigates Halifax’s spooky side.

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CONTENTS

Vol. 17 No. 8 | October 2017 FEATURES

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16 | CURTAIN CALL Halifax’s famed live-music scene is under siege. Richard Woodbury explores

PHOTO: JENNIFER TAPLIN

18 | LEARNING TO TALK A new project helps adults talk with young people about sexual health and relationships. Jennifer Taplin reports

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26 | RAT RACE You can’t escape rats in Halifax, but Chris Muise has advice on how you can co-exist peacefully

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7 | EDITOR’S MESSAGE You can’t get there from here—it’s impossible to get around most of Nova Scotia without a car, but it doesn’t have to be like this

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10 | CITYSCAPE Leon Trotsky’s time in Halifax, stories of small-town Nova Scotia, how you can help Laing House, and more 14 | ENTERTAINMENT Contemporary dance, the Halifax Pop Explosion, art after dark, and the Diwali festival of lights—our favourite things to see and do in the city this month 28 | DINING: EATING IN A new Halifax business thrives by making healthy home-cooked meals easier 32 | DRINK: RIGHT BEER, RIGHT GLASS When enjoying beer, correct glassware makes all the difference. Expert advice from Kim Hart Macneill 34 | OPINION: THE FIRST COME-FROM-AWAY Dismissing good ideas because other places had them first: a part of our heritage

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22 | THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE Filmmaker Paul Kimball hunts for the truth about Halifax’s paranormal side. Sarah Sawler shares his story

8 | CONTRIBUTORS Meet the writers and photographers who work on Halifax Magazine

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EDITOR’S MESSAGE

You can’t get there from here You might think Nova Scotia is a peninsula.

But if you don’t own a car, it’s really a collection of islands. Halifax is one big island and you can get around it pretty well by bus and taxi; rural Nova Scotia is a collection of small, unconnected islets, each of which might as well be far out at sea. If you live in Liverpool, or Sheet Harbour, or Nictaux without a car, there might as well be a vast ocean between you and the rest of the province. If you live in Halifax and want, or need, to go to another part of the province, the same holds true.

Haligonians (mostly the ones who don’t use transit) think our transit situation is fine because, well, there seem to be a lot of buses around. But outside the city, the situation is different. Maritime Bus Service only serves a small slice of the province. Shuttle vans serve some of the remainder (but anyone who has spent four hours crammed in a minivan with seven strangers can tell you it’s not an ideal mode). Service is infrequent. These aren’t the kind of transit services you can rely on to run a couple of errands or get you home late at night.

Most Nova Scotians don’t realize how badly off we are for transit, because they have cars.

They need those cars, they rely on them. They can’t live outside the urban core without one.

Most of Nova Scotia isn’t built for other modes of transportation. Don’t believe me? Spend a week in Cheticamp or Digby or Canso without one. Try to live and work and run errands and go to appointments. Let me know how you make out.

Nova Scotians need their cars, so they have them, which means they never give their nonexistent transit service a thought. Cars are a necessity, and people live accordingly. Car payments, insurance, gas, and repairs are bills you have to pay, just like everyone else. So that means a lot of people are stuck working to support their cars. If they lose their cars, they lose their ability to work, to live their lives.

It doesn’t have to be this way. I visited Austria on a press trip in July (see “Lessons from rural Europe” in the September issue) and vacationed in Ireland in August. On both visits, I had lots of opportunity to see the appeal of a less car-dependent life.

Some North American cities enjoy that life.

You can get by comfortably in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, and other cities without a car. But good transit service doesn’t have to just be a perk of big-city life.

For two weeks we roamed Ireland, from the country’s largest cities to small fishing villages,

circumnavigating the island. We relied almost exclusively on bus service. There wasn’t a destination on our wish list we couldn’t reach.

Service was so frequent we rarely bothered consulting a time table until we were ready to head out. Buses were big and comfortable, with free Wi-Fi. Every bus had a mix of tourists like us and locals going about their daily business.

Some people were obviously commuting.

Others were picking up groceries, going to medical appointments, visiting friends.

If you rely on buses here, you know the stigma; the people asking “Why don’t you have a car? Are you poor?” There seemed to be no stigma around bus ridership in Ireland. It’s a useful, practical, efficient service, so people use it and their lives are better for it.

If you enjoy your car, bless you. Follow your heart. But a car should be a choice, not a requirement. Nova Scotians deserve better bus service. In November’s Halifax Magazine, I’ll discuss how we can get it. (Spoiler: the pay-offs are worth the cost.)

PHOTO: TAMMY FANCY

BY TREVOR J. ADAMS, EDITOR

tadams@metroguide.ca Halifax Magazine @HalifaxEditor @HalifaxMagazine

CORRECTION: The story “Halifaxes around the world” in the September issue misidentified Lord Halifax as the former husband of the Duchess of Cornwall. See the corrected story at halifaxmag.com. Halifax Magazine regrets the mistake.

S H E L B U R N E , N O VA S C O T I A

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OCTOBER 2017 halifaxmag.com | 7

CONTRIBUTORS

8 | halifaxmag.com OCTOBER 2017

SARAH SAWLER “The truth is out there” Sarah is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in such publications as Halifax Magazine, Quill & Quire, Atlantic Business Magazine, and ParentsCanada.

Nimbus Publishing released her first non-fiction book, 100 Things You Don’t Know About Nova Scotia, in April 2016.

BOB GORDON Cityscape Bob is a journalist and popular historian specializing in Canadian military and social history.

His work has been published in The Beaver, Air Power Review, Parents Magazine, and various Canadian titles.

He contributes regularly to Espirit de Corps.

CHRIS MUISE “Rat race” Chris is a freelance reporter working out of Halifax, with a particular affinity for community journalism.

Ask him about his toyrobot collection if you have about eight hours to kill.

DOROTHY GRANT Cityscape Dorothy was a registered nurse who became a consumer affairs reporter for the CBC in Halifax. She was also on the communications staff of the Medical Society of Nova Scotia. Recently she published her latest book Turn the Other Cheek, with all money raised going to support the IWK.

KATIE INGRAM Cityscape A freelance journalist based in Halifax, Katie contributes to several magazines, including South Shore Breaker, Atlantic Books Today, Business Voice, J-Source, and The Coast. katieyingram.wordpress.com

RICHARD WOODBURY “Curtain call” Richard writes for both local and national publications and his work has been published by Reuters, Metro, and Enterprise Magazine. richardwoodbury.ca

PRIYA SAM “Eating in” Priya is the news anchor for CTV Morning Live and CTV’s News at Noon. She graduated from the University of King’s College Master of Journalism program in 2014. She spends her spare time cooking, reading, and working out.

SUZANNE RENT Cityscape Suzanne is an editor and writer whose work has appeared in The Coast, Lawyers Weekly, Canadian Business, Globe and Mail, Bakers Journal, Our Children, and more. She hosts the radio show Cobequid Magazine on 97.5 Community Radio.

JENNIFER TAPLIN “Learning to talk” Jennifer covered city hall for Metro. She is now a freelance writer in Halifax and has written for newspapers across the country.

TAMMY FANCY Photo for “Curtain call” Tammy has shot for East Coast Living, Bedford Magazine, Profiles for Success, and Our Children magazines, plus two cookbooks from Formac Publishing. fancyfreefoto.com

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CITYSCAPE HISTORY

Delayed on the way to destiny: Trotsky in Halifax

BY BOB GORDON

Halifax ignored a truly bizarre anniversary earlier this year and it has nothing to do with Canada’s sesquicentennial.

One hundred years ago as the First World War raged, Lev Davidovich Bronstein, his wife Natalya and their young children Leyova and Sergei, spent a month detained in Nova Scotia.

Bronstein would become better known as Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky, People’s Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs of the Soviet Union.

When Czar Nicolas II abdicated and the Russians established a provisional government under Prime Minister Prince Lvov in March 1917, Trotsky was living in exile in New York, having worn out his welcome in numerous European capitals.

Deported from Spain on Christmas Day 1916, he arrived in the Bronx in January 1917. With the change in government, Trotsky made plans to return to Russia immediately. He got the necessary passports and visas at the Russian Consul General in New York City.

The family departed aboard the Norwegian steamship Kristianfjord on March 27. Three days later they laid up in Bedford Basin to await the rest of their transatlantic convoy.

British intelligence was aware of Trotsky’s arrival. An intelligence source in New York City informed his handler that Trotsky had departed for St. Petersburg with $10,000 from American supporters. The Naval Intelligence Division ordered the Naval Control Officer in Halifax, Royal Navy Captain O.M. Makins, to detain Trotsky, his family and five other Russian socialists traveling with them.

The military authorities weren’t anxious for a leading communist revolutionary and committed opponent of the war to be active and organizing in the heart of their ally. They feared, correctly, that a future Bolshevik government might sign a separate peace with the Germans.

Claude Dansey, the British civilian intelligence officer in Halifax disagreed with the proposed intervention. He distrusted the informant and suspected he was an agent provocateur. He also questioned the legality of detaining Trotsky. However, his boss William Wiseman, New York station chief, insisted the informant was trustworthy and concurred with NID’s decision to take the Russians into custody. On Tuesday, April 3 authorities took Trotsky and the rest of his group from the SS Kristianfjord.

Authorities didn’t arrest them; they interned them. The distinction is important. They were never charged with an offence because they hadn’t committed one. They were citizens of Russia, an allied power, travelling on legitimate Russian passports with all their travel documents in order. The detention was illegal.

Trotsky was furious.

“The whole business was so offensive, so clearly a discrimination against the Russian revolutionaries, in contrast to the treatment accorded to other passengers not so unfortunate as to belong to a nation allied to England,” he recalled in his autobiography.

Trotsky’s family was billeted with the Navy’s Russian translator, David Horowetz, and later in a Halifax Hotel. Trotsky and the other 10 | halifaxmag.com OCTOBER 2017

Russians went to the Amherst Internment Camp. His greeting there fuelled his anger. He compared it unfavourably to treatment in the Czar’s prisons.

“We were put through an examination the like of which I had never before experienced, even in the Peter and Paul fortress,” he recalled. “For in the Czar’s fortress the police stripped me and searched me in privacy, whereas here our democratic allies subjected us to this shameful humiliation before a dozen men.”

Trotsky would later describe the dilapidated camp in his autobiography. “The Amherst concentration camp was located in an old and very dilapidated iron foundry that had been confiscated from its German owner. The sleeping bunks were arranged in three tiers, two deep, on each side of the hall. About 800 of us lived in these conditions. The air in this improvised dormitory at night can be imagined.”

Of the camp’s prisoners, “500 were sailors from German boats sunk by the British; about 200 were workers caught by the war in Canada, and a hundred more were officers and civilian prisoners of the bourgeois class,” in Trotsky’s estimation.

An experienced revolutionary, familiar with prison, Trotsky immediately began organizing and “the whole month I was there was like one continuous mass meeting.” Trotsky arranged seminars, workshops, and discussion groups. He took to reading the only permitted material, a Halifax newspaper, aloud, simultaneously translating the stories into German or Russian for his fellow prisoners.

In a backhanded compliment, Amherst’s second in command, Captain F.C. Whitmore said, “he gave us a lot of trouble at the camp, and if he had stayed much longer...would have made communists of all the German prisoners.”

Colonel Arthur Henry Morris, the camp’s CO, eventually issued an order barring Trotsky from public speaking, and when it failed, put Trotsky in solitary confinement. Colonel Morris was relieved of his burden when the Russian government finally demanded his release.

Trotsky, his family, and his comrades resumed their journey to St. Petersburg and history. He would be a central figure in the Russian Civil War and the new U.S.S.R. government. In the late 1920s, he had a falling-out with Stalin and party leadership, returning to international exile. In 1940, Soviet assassins murdered him in Mexico City.

TWITTER

Stories of small-town Nova Scotia

BY SUZANNE RENT

Sara Spike started the Small History NS Twitter account (@smallhistory) as a distraction. The historian from the Eastern Shore was working on her dissertation about cultural history in rural Nova Scotia in the 19th century, using community newspapers from around the province as sources.

She’d find funny tidbits of information she’d send to friends and other historians.

In 2014, she started sharing the tidbits online. “For academic historians, we often see very big picture, but this is a way to engage publically on a small scale and get people interested in the small details of life in these communities,” says Spike. She taught at Carleton and is now the lead on the Eastern Shore Islands Heritage Research Project.

Spike scans newspapers on microfilm at the Nova Scotia Archives and collects the information from the papers’ community notes columns. These columns are where residents of small communities shared the news of visits from relatives, crops, events, and daily life. “Very occasionally I’m summarizing stories into 140 characters, but mostly it’s these little bits that were written actually as they were,” she says.

“The tweets are right on the page.”

Spike says she enjoys the seasonality of the news in rural communities. People planted crops in the spring, worked in the

summer, and harvested in the fall. Ships from communities around the province left for fishing banks for regular catches.

Workers cleared the roads of ice and roads of snow in the winter. Life ran in cycles.

“To see people engaged in these same activities across the province is really compelling and interesting to think about the way in which life used to be organized more seasonally than it is now,” Spike says. “There is a kind of connection to the environment that is relevant and integral to everyone’s experience of living in rural Nova Scotia.”

She also documents the social lives of rural residents: picnics, fundraising events, concerts, festivals, and strawberry socials.

And there lots of events featuring pie. “The sense of the social life in these communities is really apparent and something people respond to,” Spike says. “You don’t think of [rural communities] as having really active social worlds.”

The tweets also reflect social movements.

Temperance halls were opening and communities were seeing religious revivals.

Spike’s Tweets include details on Sunday school and Bible meetings. She also tosses in “amazing amateur poetry” once in a while.

The account offers an unvarnished look at rural Nova Scotia’s social history. “It’s not fancy,” she says. “It doesn’t aspire to be

anything than what it already is. I think I just want to keep it going. We don’t know what twitter is going to become. There’s something I like about the idea of it just staying as it is and being this archive of rural life.”

OCTOBER 2017 halifaxmag.com | 11

CITYSCAPE THE PITCH

Laing House Masquerade Ball

Every year since 2007, the Laing House Masquerade Ball transports guests to exotic locales around the world. At this black-tie event, guests wear masquerade masks to encourage the fun and mystery throughout the night. The event, returning on October 21, includes a three-course dinner, auctions, live music, and dancing.

The masquerade ball is the signature fundraising event for Laing House, a leading community organization in Nova Scotia for youth living with mental illness. Laing House members are aged 16 to 29. We call our youth members because they become members of the Laing House community. Laing House offers one-on-one support with our community support workers, plus unique programs such as music therapy, meal programs (such as Lunch@Laing and Soup Group), healthy living, and education and employment. And through peer-support programs, members help each other. This is a crucial part of their journey to recovery.

At each masquerade ball, members of Laing House share their stories of living with mental illness through poetry, songs, or speeches. Guests can buy a ticket for a member to attend the ball.

Laing House is always looking for volunteers to serve on its board, host workshops, or help around the house on Barrington Street. Laing House also has satellite groups in Lower Sackville and Yarmouth, and plans to expand its reach around the province by 2020.

For more on the Masquerade Ball, visit ball.lainghouse.org.

To learn more about Laing House, visit lainghouse.org.

PHOTO: JAMES INGRAM

In this space, Halifax Magazine invites local non-profit organizations to share what they do, and how readers can help.

If you know an organization that would like to share its story, email tadams@metroguide.ca.

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TITANIC

halifaxmag.com

The animal victims

BY DOROTHY GRANT

John Jacob Astor and his dog Kitty.

Halifax’s ties to the Titanic tragedy are well documented, but few know the story of the ship’s dogs. The Titanic had posh kennel facilities on board. A dog show was even scheduled for the day after the ship sank.

Historians estimate there were nine to 12 dogs on board. (Like today, those wealthy first-class types love their dogs, and would happily pay to bring them along.)

Of those dogs, only two or three survived the sinking: lap dogs whose owners found space for them in lifeboats. One of the most famous passengers on the Titanic was American millionaire John Jacob Astor. He and wife Madeline, returning from a prolonged honeymoon after she became pregnant, had a terrier named Kitty on board with them.

When it became clear the Titanic was sinking, someone went down to the kennels and freed the dogs. Many people say it was Astor, but that’s unconfirmed. Madeline would later recall that as the ship started to go under, she could see Kitty running around the boat deck.

Astor’s widow never filed an insurance claim for Kitty, but another passenger sought $207 for her lost chickens and another one $750 for his pedigree bulldog.

The cable ship Mackay-Bennett recovered Astor’s body, which was transferred to the Mayflower Curling Club. He was identified by his platinum ring and the $4,000 cash he carried. His body was sent to New York, buried in Trinity Cemetery.

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Every reac

ENTERTAINMENT Our picks for the hottest things to see and do in Halifax this month

OCTOBER 21

Dartmouth Community Concert Association Back for another season, this beloved community concert series hosts the Juno- and Grammy-nominated all-professional Elora Singers choir, showcasing their mastery of diverse styles in an intimate concert at Woodlawn United Church. dartmouthcommunityconcert.ca

OCTOBER 5 TO 7

Live Art Dance Productions Hasta Dónde, All Ways features Compañía Sharon Fridman, a contact-based company from Madrid showcasing seven dancers and a live musician. Award-winning Israeli choreographer Sharon Fridman leads the ensemble. See them at the Dalhousie Arts Centre. liveartproductions.ca

OCTOBER 18 TO 21

Halifax Pop Explosion

PHOTO: MICHELLE DOUCETTE

Showcasing new and innovative music from around the world, this indie festival some 150 artists, comedians, and speakers at 15 venues around the city. The lineup includes Yukon Blonde, Japandroids, Clairmont the Second, Charlotte Day Wilson (below), Ria Mae (with Symphony Nova Scotia), and many others. halifaxpopexplosion.com

OCTOBER 12, 14

Nocturne

OCTOBER 21

Diwali—Festival of Lights Celebrate the rollicking Hindu festival of lights with live music, traditional Indian cuisine, fireworks, and family-friendly fun aplenty. Halifax Exhibition Centre hosts. hfxec.com

A feast for the senses, this annual celebration of art after dark brings exhibitions, performances, and special projects to galleries and public spaces around the city from 6pm to midnight.

Free bike-valet and shuttle-bus service. nocturnehalifax.ca

OCTOBER 14 AND 15

Nova Scotia Forest Festival Discover everything the forest means to Nova Scotians: livelihood, housing, recreation, food, heritage, and spirituality. Memory Lane Heritage Village in Lake Charlotte hosts the festival, which includes lumberjack events, canoeing, educational sessions on wilderness survival and forest ecology, maple syrup tasting, campfires, stories, and songs. heritagevillage.ca 14 | halifaxmag.com OCTOBER 2017

OCTOBER 22

Symphony Nova Scotia Their joyous dancing on the rocks at Peggy’s Cove made them YouTube sensations, now the Maritime Bhangra Group teams up with Symphony Nova Scotia for a unique and sure-to-bememorable concert at the Dalhousie Arts Centre. symphonynovascotia.ca

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HALIFAX’S FAMED LIVE-MUSIC SCENE IS UNDER SIEGE

BY RICHARD WOODBURY

When Mike Campbell moved to Halifax in 1993, the music scene blew him away.

“You could go to a number of places and see live, original music and there were lots of people there,” he says. “The other thing I really liked about it is the bands all came out to each other’s shows, so when you walked into a show by one band, you’d see pretty much every other band in town … The scene was very cohesive and supportive.”

Even some of the local universities had live music shows. Dalhousie University’s McInnes Room typically hosted more than a half-dozen concerts each year, while the university’s Grawood bar hosted shows each Friday. Vinnie’s Pub at Mount Saint Vincent University was also booking acts.

A combination of changing consumer preferences and technological disruptions have made live-music venues scarcer, which are factors not unique to Halifax. Halifax’s economy hasn’t exactly boomed either.

In the days before Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Spotify, people didn’t have as many entertainment options. Back when MuchMusic actually played music videos, the only other way to hear a band’s music, besides owning a recording or hearing them on the radio, was to see them live.

Now, without leaving the comfort of your home, you can watch full concerts on YouTube.

To be fair, these full concerts are not going to be of up and coming Halifax acts, but the sheer volume of music available through platforms

CALL In the early 1990s, Halifax was often called “Seattle of the North” because of its music scene that was exemplified by bands like Sloan and Thrush Hermit, while grunge in Seattle exploded because of bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Campbell worked for MuchMusic for 18 years until 2002 and over the years he hosted a number of shows looking at the Canadian music scene.

Halifax was a fertile ground for content.

In the early 2000s, Halifax’s music scene kept humming along and there were lots of venues for artists to play.

In 2008, Campbell opened the Carleton Music Bar & Grill. In December 2016, he announced the bar’s sale. The news came months after the bar went under creditor protection. It was a blow to Halifax’s struggling music scene.

“There’s not really a hell of a lot of places [offering original, live music],” says Campbell.

like YouTube and Spotify means people have never had so much access to music. Halifax’s music scene faces more global competition than ever.

Before he was a Halifax city councillor, Waye Mason was immersed in the city’s music scene as a record label owner, executive director of the Halifax Pop Explosion, and a professor in NSCC’s music management program. He says while rock and pop once dominated, there are countless genres people are interested in these days. “There seems to be less of a focus on guitar music,” he says. Traditionally, live music in Halifax was built around the guitar.

Victor Syperek has been at the centre of Halifax’s music scene for about 20 years.

Besides being the owner of the Economy Shoe Shop, he owns three live music venues (the Marquee, the Seahorse Tavern, and the Local) all housed in one building on Gottingen Street.

“We’ll have a bigger crowd for a ‘90s dance party than we will for four very good bands,” says Syperek. Not only will it draw a bigger crowd, but it’s cheaper to pay one DJ than 14 musicians.

Syperek says today’s younger generation isn’t discovering music at live shows like it was when he opened the Marquee 20 years ago. “In the beginning, we’d have music seven nights a week, bands playing and people would come out supporting the music,” he says. “Nowadays, unless they know the band, we’ll get eight [of their] friends out.”

Social media has meant people can socialize without even going out. Apps like Tinder mean people can meet new people without going to a bar.

These things aren’t unique to Halifax.

They’re just part of a changing world, but there’s no doubt Halifax loses something when music venues close. “If this part of the country is known for anything besides the requisite frickin’ lighthouses and fishing boats and shit like that, it’s music,” Campbell says. “Our ambassadors to the rest of the world are our musicians for the most part.”

Today, musicians like Joel Plaskett and Matt Mays dot their songs with local references that help paint an image of where they’re from.

Songs and the musicians writing them help give places an identity. Without them, Campbell argues places lose their individuality and become more alike. “If citizens are basically listening to the same mindless crap people are listening to everywhere else, what differentiates your burg from another one?” he says.

On top of all these things, many downtown businesses struggle as endless construction projects scare people away. There’s hope that the downtown construction boom will result in people moving back there and the Nova Centre will fill with out-of-town guests eager to explore the downtown.

Worry for Halifax’s live music scene is nothing new. Every few years, there’s talk about its supposed death. Syperek is optimistic though. “In my experience, most things are cyclical and they come and go,” he says.

OCTOBER 2017 halifaxmag.com | 17

| FEATURE |

A NEW PROJECT AIMS TO HELP ADULTS TALK WITH YOUNG PEOPLE ABOUT SEXUAL HEALTH AND RELATIONSHIPS Calen Sack (left) faced sexual assault as a child and challenges figuring out sexual identity in a small First Nations community. Oliver Oldfield (second from right) is a 17-year-old trans high-school student who overcame mental-health issues as a kid. Cecilia Tataa (right) was raped as a child and dealt with the fallout in a tight-lipped immigrant community. They shared their stories in a project created by Rena Kulczycki (second from left).

18 | halifaxmag.com OCTOBER 2017

| FEATURE |

Learning to STORY AND PHOTOS

BY JEN TAPLIN

talk

Sunk into a well-worn couch 20-year-old Calen Sack eases into a story of childhood sexual assault with the familiarity of one who has explored it, made a reckoning, and now shares it in the hopes of connecting with others.

Alongside, 17-year-old Oliver Oldfield clickclacks on knitting needles waiting patiently to tell his story of hopelessness, transition, bullying, and perseverance.

Across from them, on an equally broken-in couch with her long legs tucked under her Cecilia Tataa listens and prepares to tell her tale.

Next to her is Rena Kulczycki, who brought them here: an open room filled with couches, bookshelves at the HeartWood Centre for Community Youth Development on Spring Garden Road.

These young people signed up for LUST (Loosen Up and Start Talking). It’s a pilot project encouraging a dozen youth aged 14 to 24 to share their experiences to help adults to be “more awesome and less awkward in conversations with youth about sexual health and relationships.”

The material from three day-long sessions held in July and August is becoming part of workshops delivered this fall to adults: educators, counsellors, parents, coaches, and others.

These young people are sitting down with Halifax Magazine to share their thoughts, opinions and experiences in the hopes it will somehow, some day make it easier for other Nova Scotian kids with the world on their shoulders.

CALEN SACK As a young kid, Sack knew little about what was appropriate and what wasn’t. They grew up on a reserve where people didn’t talk much about sexual violence.

“There wasn’t a lot of talk about what sex was; the acts that took place were what I thought were completely normal between someone younger and someone much older,” Sack recalls.

“I went along with it and I did enjoy it because at that age that’s a feeling that’s never really explored, my body was still growing but it was never divulged to me that was not OK.” Sack was only five or six at the time. But it wasn’t until years later when a doctor came in to talk to youth about sex when Sack realized it wasn’t OK. The police got involved but that didn’t help.

“It was very traumatizing... they announced it to the, basically, school public and they shared it with the individual who had sexually assaulted me as a child.” Because the alleged offender was also a youth nothing much was done, says Sack. “So, living within a small community with the aggressor living a few houses down was kind of traumatizing.”

Discovering Sack was a “two-spirit nonbinary person” in this environment wasn’t easy either. Sack says it got better after moving to Halifax last year at the age of 19.

“I really want to be active in this community to support people who maybe shared my experience of living in an isolated space, being

OCTOBER 2017 halifaxmag.com | 19

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a person of colour and living under colonization and white supremacy. I really wanted to find a community to have that support system and be a support to other people.”

Sack says they’re a sexually positive person who wants to encourage people to have these conversations so it’s not hidden anymore. “I think body autonomy is something youth should have access to at a very young age,” they say. “And one thing that always aggravated me is adults have this tendency to act like they know everything. I think it’s perfectly OK to not know everything because if the youth in your life brings up a question you don’t know the answer to, I think it should be our responsibility to read up and learn what the answer is.”

OLIVER OLDFIELD Early into his teen years, Oliver Oldfield struggled under the weight of mental-health problems and had no idea why. “It was a really rough patch in my life,” he says. “I wasn’t having conversations so I didn’t know what was going on with myself.”

Oldfield says when he was growing up in a rural Nova Scotian town, nobody was having conversations about LGBTQ+ or mental health. “I had all these layers of myself to sort through, none of which were being talked about,” he says. “I had to figure it out on my own and that’s really, really difficult. When I look back on my childhood, I think I went through some tough things that kids shouldn’t have to go through.”

A family member came out as queer and to show support Oliver went to group meetings to learn more about the LGBTQ+ community. “I got there and realized oh wait, I’m gay too,” he says. “Then things started falling into place and I’ve been out sexualitywise for five or six years and I’ve been out as transgender for three or four years.”

Switching schools and moving to Halifax also made a big difference. He’s now actively involved with the Youth Project and the school’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance.

“My quality of life is better,” he says. “I’m happy now, well relatively. And I’m getting

there. I don’t feel like I have to hide any parts of myself, especially at school.”

It’s still not perfect. Oldfield said there is still so much shame around sex and sexual identity. His best advice for parents is to be open to listening to what youth have to say. Don’t shut them down, he says, or project your own beliefs on them.

CECILIA TATAA A secret Tataa kept close inside for years burst like a bomb when she was in high school.

An immigrant from South Sudan, 23-year-old Tataa moved to Canada with her family when she was six or seven. She was raped soon after. “Since then it literally shaped my sexuality,” she said. “In my community, we don’t talk about sex—zero— unless it’s to shame.”

Growing up she carried the guilt and the trauma, never telling anyone. Without anyone to guide her, Tataa learnt about sex, sexuality, and gender all on her own.

“I withdrew into myself and that’s where I had very bad depression,” she says. “At the time I didn’t have words for it but now I know I went through a really hard disassociation... and my body helped me by forgetting what happened.”

Then when she was in Grade 11 it all came out. A nurse talked to the class about sexual assault, Tataa realized that she had been a victim and came forward. “It was a disaster,” she remembers.

Her family and community heard of it and it just blew up, Tataa said.

“My parents didn’t know how to deal with it and re-traumatized me and it was a big mess,” she says. “It was like I was holding onto the bomb for so long and I was forced to give it up and it blew up in my face.”

She wishes someone had told her it’s going to suck at first but it would get better.

And she said she wished someone had sat down with her as a child in her new country and explained things: “I wished someone had introduced me to the world.”

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| COVER STORY |

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE

BY SARAH SAWLER

A PARANORMAL “AGNOSTIC,” FILMMAKER PAUL KIMBALL CONTINUES THE HUNT FOR PROOF

Halifax documentary filmmaker Paul Kimball doesn’t know what to believe about the paranormal.

He’s all about keeping an open mind: a philosophy manifested in an ever-evolving career path that includes two degrees (one in history and politics, another in law), a couple of bands (back when Halifax was the next Seattle), a wide range of jobs in the film industry (government and private sector), and a brief stint in politics (as the PC candidate for Clayton Park West in the recent provincial election). This month, he’s launching and starring in a brand-new project called Haunted, an Eastlink TV series also featuring co-host Holly Stevens.

This new series, which Kimball also writes and directs, is a perfect fit for the Halifax filmmaker, who has a long history of exploring, writing, and making films about paranormal phenomena, including an earlier TV series called Ghost Cases.

He’s also the nephew of Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist who’s studied UFOs since 1958 and is widely recognized as the first civilian to investigate the Roswell Incident. But despite his family background, Kimball considers himself a “hopeful agnostic” when it comes to believing in paranormal beings like ghosts and extraterrestrials.

22 | halifaxmag.com OCTOBER 2017

“For me it’s not about belief with any of these things,” he says.

“It’s about what can you prove to me. And with the UFO stuff, I can look at documents.”

Kimball reflects on the 1960s, the decade of Nova Scotia’s Shag Harbour and Manitoba’s Falcon Lake incidents. “I’ve talked to some of the survivors of that era and there’s a kernel that makes me think some of these people might have had genuine experiences,” he says.

“Do I know if they involved space aliens? I don’t. But I can read; that’s how I earned my graduate degree in history.”

And there’s no shortage of reading to do. Paranormal references are everywhere: mythology and religion, urban legends, and first-person accounts. One such reference is in a diary written by Henry Alline, a preacher from the late 1700s who spent much of his life working to establish the Baptist church in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

“If you read his diary, he describes his conversion experience in great detail,” says Kimball. “And I’m paraphrasing here, but he talks about going out into a pasture and being wrapped up in God, ravished by the spirit. He describes it as a very intense physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental experience.”

In addition to his extensive reading, Kimball’s tells some interesting stories of his own. At least one of them occurred while he

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII THE INCIDENTS IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

• ROSWELL, 1947: A rancher found mysterious debris in his pasture, which was located just outside of Roswell, New Mexico. At first, officials from the nearby air-force base suggested it was actually a weather balloon, and about 50 years later, the military claimed it had to do with a top secret “atomic espionage” project. But despite these offered explanations, many people considered (and still do consider) Roswell a UFO incident. From history.com.

• SHAG HARBOUR, 1967: On October 4, a number of witnesses noticed four orange lights hovering over Shag Harbour, on Nova Scotia’s southwestern tip.

The lights veered towards the water. An RCMP officer spotted a yellow light on the water, but it submerged, leaving some yellow foam behind. The foam was noticed by the Coast Guard. Searches were conducted, but nothing was ever found. From the Barrington Municipality website.

• FALCON LAKE, 1967: Considered “Canada’s most famous UFO encounter,” the Falcon Lake Incident occurred on May 20, when Stefan Michalak was out prospecting. He was near the lake when he noticed two separate lights. One rose into the air and landed nearby, and when Michalak approached, he saw it was a “brilliantly lit” “silver craft” about 12 metres around. It suddenly took off, knocking Michalak down, and he later experienced symptoms consistent with radiation poisoning. No doctor was ever able to explain Michalak’s symptoms, or the burns on his chest that appeared months later. From CBC.

A scene from the upcoming season of Paul Kimball’s show Haunted.

was filming Haunted at the Queen’s County Museum in Liverpool.

It happened when Holly Stevens, Kimball’s co-host, walked into the research centre. Stevens was talking to the sound technician when an abrupt howl interrupted her. She bolted from the room, with the technician hot on her heels.

“I’ve never seen her do this, and we’ve been doing this off and on for nine years, including another TV show we did years ago,” says Kimball, referring to Ghost Cases.

Kimball recalls Stevens sharing that it sounded like “somebody was standing right in front of her and went ‘Ahhh,’ right into her face.” The crew had their personal audio recorders running and the camera was on, so they spent the next half-hour working out what had happened.

“We’ve gotten freaky stuff on camera before and on audio,” says Kimball. “I’ve never seen anything like that. For me, interesting evidence is when I can multiply things. There’s Holly’s experiencing it herself, there’s our audio recorder picking it up, and there’s Holly’s reaction. And we can account for where everybody else was in that building. It couldn’t have been us.

That, to me, makes a very interesting story and I just go, ‘I have no idea.’”

Linda Rafuse, director of the Queen’s County Museum and a founder of Liverpool’s East Coast ParaCon conference, was in the kitchen watching the video monitor when it happened. She noticed that the crew had gathered in the archives, so she went out to see what was happening.

“That’s when Holly was telling her story,” says Rafuse. “She said it was a female, and that she felt like the female came right up close to her face and went ‘woo’ and it scared her.”

For Rafuse, this is nothing new. She says the museum has a number of ghosts hanging around. They don’t usually see anything, but the staff say they hear and feel things.

“We have people who tell us there’s an elderly lady who likes to hang down around the bookcases in the research centre,” says Rafuse. “And we’ve learned over the years that there’s a young girl who sticks around the gift shop in the museum. Then, in our main gallery, our big central room, there’s a gentleman who’s there all the time. Everybody knows him. Our lunchroom is right off of that gallery and most times he just stands there while we’re eating our lunch. You can’t see him, but you can definitely feel him.”

According to Rafuse, they also make a lot of noise. “We have our privateer’s ship in the main gallery, and sometimes they’ll be over

OCTOBER 2017 halifaxmag.com | 23

“FOR M E ABOUT IT’S NOT B WITH A ELIEF N THESE Y OF THINGS . IT ABOUT WHAT C ’S YOU PR AN OVE.” —PAUL KIMBAL L

there banging on something, or it will sound like a couple of footsteps across the deck. Or we’ll be out in the main gallery and we’ll hear people talking in the archives but there will be nobody in there. We’ve all heard the voices. Sometimes you can hear papers shuffling in the archives, too.”

Rafuse says that when you work in a museum, ghosts just come with the territory.

“I would bet safe money that there is not a museum in this world that you could travel to that would tell you that they don’t have a story to share,” she says. “Because of all the artifacts. We’re believers in artifacts coming to a building maybe with a spirit attached to it. It could have been a very important piece to that person. Who knows. We always say we’ll never know for sure until we get over to the other side.”

Christopher Helland is an associate professor in the sociology and social anthropology department at Dalhousie University.

He says the uncertainty keeps people talking about ghosts and the paranormal.

“Life is uncertain and it’s fragile,” says Helland. “Even though humans are resilient, the only thing guaranteed in your life is that you’re going to die. As morbid as that sounds, that’s a certainty.

24 | halifaxmag.com OCTOBER 2017

And it’s sad to think that that’s it. That your loved ones are done with, that that’s the end. So it is certainly comforting to believe that there’s something more.”

A basic belief in the paranormal is something all peoples have in common.

“It doesn’t matter how modern we become,” says Helland. “We have shamans, and people who claim to be able to speak with the dead, and I think a lot of people have very genuine experiences.

Whatever they are, that’s a different question. But people feel there are ghosts and there’s an afterlife, and I don’t think there’s any culture that doesn’t have that.”

Whether experiences are paranormal or not, the resulting stories carry cultural relevance. Mainly, Helland says, they teach.

They pass on the values of a community or a group.

“A lot of that stuff about ghosts or vampires or zombies comes down to ‘if you follow the group’s teachings and you do what you’re supposed to do then you’re going to go to a good place when you die,” he explains. “And if you don’t, then bad things will happen.’

Stories remind people what is good and bad or right and wrong.

It’s interesting too, because they aren’t even all religious stories, although they are certainly dealing with the supernatural.”

| COVER STORY |

It’s all cause and effect; in most ghost stories, there’s a reason the ghost is loitering around.

“Maybe it’s because it was a bad death,” says Helland. “Maybe it’s because there wasn’t a proper burial, or it’s because they didn’t follow the rules of the community. Maybe they have a message to communicate, or they’re somehow being punished, or there’s unfinished business.”

Kimball considers his work on Haunted to be “almost like being a folklorist,” because the stories he shares and the buildings he explores on are historically relevant. And he says that as we move forward as a society, we need to make sure we don’t forget our stories.

“Because that’s what people love about us,” he says. “We’re cool storytellers with lots of maps and legends and myths. They should teach Helen Creighton in school, for the truth of the stories she told.

I think that’s important for people. Otherwise, you create a solely scientific society that’s divorced from myth and I think that’s a bad thing. It’s divorced from humanities and storytelling, and so then what you get are monsters, the sort of people with no idea about good and bad, and stories that help us understand what good and bad is.”

Haunted co-hosts Paul Kimball and Holly Stevens.

OCTOBER 2017 halifaxmag.com | 25

| FEATURE |

PHOTOS SUBMITTED BY AMANDA SMITH

You can go your whole life without ever seeing them, but if your path takes you near a dumpster in the wee hours of the morning, you’ll probably see one of Halifax’s many, many rats scurrying around.

And whether you see them or not, rats are usually around. They could be right under your feet, just above your head, or spelunking in the walls that separate the rooms in your home. The worst part is you would probably never know. Let’s look at what a day in the life of an average Halifax rat looks like.

Surprisingly, it’s not all that dissimilar to a day in the life of an average Haligonian human.

“The problem with rats, as far as we’re concerned, is they’re too much like us,” says Andrew Hebda, the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History’s long-time resident zoologist. “They eat the same kind of stuff, they live in the same kind of dwellings, they like the same kind of climate, they prefer inside versus outside. It’s one of those situations where we’ve got a species that really likes to share our space, and we don’t like sharing.”

Rats need just a few things to be happy: water, food, and shelter. In nature, those things take a lot of work. But given our tendency to build ourselves shelter and keep stores of food and water, we save rats a lot of trouble.

“We’re great at throwing food out,” says Hebda, who says the average garbage can gives the omnivores a lot of options. “What do you do when you go to the grocery store? Walk up and down the aisles and say, ‘OK, this looks good.’ That’s exactly what they’re doing.”

There are plenty of us who would be content to lounge about the house on a day off, if our fridges were stocked and we had everything we needed.

The same is true of rats. They can travel far and wide, but if they’ve got everything in the den they’ve set up in your basement, why would they?

“They won’t travel far unless they have to,” says Hebda. “They tend to be centred around a particular area, and they probably won’t shift from there for most of their life. The rats in your house are probably your rats.”

A day in the life of most rats isn’t all that exciting, then: they’re homebodies, until something makes them get up and go. That’s pretty relatable.

But aren’t rats wicked, disease-ridden pests that spread the Black Death and can get as big as dogs?

rat race YOU CAN’T ESCAPE RATS IN HALIFAX, BUT YOU CAN COEXIST PEACEFULLY

BY CHRIS MUISE

26 | halifaxmag.com halifaxmag.com OCTOBER 2017

“There’s a lot of myths and a lot of half-truths about rats,” says Stephen Taylor, general manager for Target Pest Control. “Your wharf rat, your sewer rat, your house rat, guess what: they’re all the same...a typical Norway rat.”

Taylor says the fear we’ve come to associate with rats is a learned one that dates back to when Norway’s cousin, the black rat, was saddled with the blame for spreading the Bubonic Plague. But a lot of those fears are unfounded.

“They don’t outwardly attack humans,” says Taylor, adding they only bite if cornered. “The average city rat is not carrying major, serious pathogens. However, from time to time, they do transmit disease to humans.”

Property damage is your more realistic concern. They don’t have to chew through wires and cables (another myth), but they certainly can, which can lead to electrical fires. And rat urine and feces present a host of health and hygiene worries.

People are worried about a population boom of late, according to Taylor. Lots of people say they’re seeing more rats around. He suspects there aren’t actually more rats; the city’s building boom is to blame for their higher visibility.

“As soon as you start doing construction work, you’re starting to disturb things,” says Hebda, who estimates that the Halifax rat population is pretty stable at 50 to 75 rats per city block. Rats are prolific breeders anyway, with one momma rat able to have upwards of 50 pups in a year. But they also don’t live very long—1.5 years is about the maximum life expectancy.

Which makes Oliver something of a Methuselah rat, at 2.5 years. Oliver could never reach that age on the mean streets of Halifax. He belongs to local rat enthusiast Amanda Smith, an accountant who runs a small side business babysitting rats and other small pets.

Oliver, along with Smith’s four other pet rats, live a safer and

more luxurious life than their vagabond brethren. Not much else separates them.

“All of the domestic rats that people buy, keep, and breed are basically Rattus norvegicus, except they’ve been bred specially to have certain physical traits that are more desirable,” says Smith. “If you gave me a wild rat pup, it would be fairly tame if it was socialized to be among people from birth.”

Smith says that, like us, rats have distinct personalities. “Even if they were all identical, any rat owner would be able to tell them apart,” she says. “Some are very smart, some are kind of dumb. Just like people.”

Unfortunately, domestic rats tend to share the same stigma as their wild counterparts, so abandonment is an issue. Smith has occasionally helped re-home abandoned rats; she says there are some rat rescue efforts in the city, but they’re usually fly-by-night enterprises.

“They’ll operate for a few years, and then they’ll sort of collapse and fizzle out,” she says. “It really comes down to rescuer burn-out and lack of funds,” says Smith. “More people…don’t really see them as an animal in need of help; they just see them as a pest.”

Despite her love for rats, she knows an infestation is a hazard. “I don’t begrudge anyone who’s eliminating rats,” says Smith. “Rats as a pest is just an unfortunate byproduct of urbanization...I think that it’s going to be a constant battle.”

Where there are people, you’ll always find rats.

But you can keep them at a distance.

“There’s tons of things a homeowner can do to keep rats out,” says Taylor. “Clean alleyways, clean backyards, don’t leave places for them to nest and burrow, make sure the outside foundation is sealed up solid, entry points are sealed up solid...It’s due diligence.”

“EVEN IF THEY WERE ALL IDENTICAL, ANY RAT OWNER WOULD BE ABLE TO TELL THEM APART. SOME ARE VERY SMART, SOME ARE KIND OF DUMB. JUST LIKE PEOPLE.” —AMANDA SMITH

OCTOBER 2017 halifaxmag.com | 27

DINING

eatINg

Sauté co-founders Andy Hay and Will Nelson.

28 | halifaxmag.com OCTOBER 2017

IN A NEW HALIFAX BUSINESS THRIVES BY MAKING HEALTHY HOME-COOKED MEALS EASIER

BY PRIYA SAM

When you’re swamped and stressed at work, you don’t tend to come home at night and whip up nutritious, delicious, tasty meals.

You eat quick, convenient, comforting-but-unhealthy food. That’s how Will Nelson was living two years ago.

“I was working a corporate job in downtown Halifax, was super busy and never made time to cook healthy meals at lunchtime or when I got home from work,” he says.

The frustration of that lifestyle and the realization that many others live the same way inspired Nelson and business partner Andy Hay to start a company called Sauté.

“Andy and I found services that were offering healthy meal delivery in Toronto, New York, and San Francisco,” Nelson recalls.

“And when we came across those, we said ‘hey, these companies seem to be doing well, there’s nothing like it in Halifax, maybe we could bring it here.’”

There were hours of planning and research. “We launched a landing page to get people to enter their email and then surveyed those people for three months, asking them what their pain points are when it comes to eating healthy, what solution would make their lives easier, that kind of thing,” says Nelson.

Those surveys were useful as plans progressed. “People said they don’t have time to cook at home, and would just go out for a random meal that ran them between $16 to $18,” says Nelson. “So, being able to deliver a lean option to their home made a lot of sense to them.”

Using the survey results, the duo created a website and looked for culinary partners. “Our vision from day one has been to grow a big company that helps as many people as possible eat and live healthy,” says Nelson.

They started in 2015, offering prepared meals for delivery to homes and businesses in the South End. They rented kitchen space at a local restaurant where workers prepared and packaged the meals. As the idea caught on, they expanded delivery around the city, eventually adding Dartmouth and Bedford. Next the company moved into a bigger space in the North End. The loft has a big kitchen where food is prepared and stored, plus office space.

In the beginning, Nelson and Hay thought they would be catering mostly to gym goers and athletes but the client base has changed. “It expanded to corporate and we started doing catering, and it turns out now we mainly cater to families and busy professionals,” says Nelson.

Mike Leger is one of those busy professionals; he’s been a Sauté subscriber for about a year. “It’s a zero-effort way of eating healthy,” he says. “You stick to your diet, and you eat very healthy and it’s just a lot easier than running out and getting something.”

Leger has three fresh lunches delivered to his office every week. They come on Monday morning and he keeps them in the fridge and eats them on busy days. There are also other meal plans that offer delivery twice a week for meals for all five days, as well as plans that include frozen dinners and smoothies. The meal plans are customized for people with allergies, intolerances, or specific preferences.

Those are all factors that head chef Allison Fenton takes into consideration when she’s designing the meals. “I’m trying to work out some balance,” she explains. “You want a little bit of carbs, a lot of veg, a lot of protein.”

Fenton often comes up with new recipes and has even published a cookbook with some of her favourites. “They always come up with unique recipes with a lot of healthy alternatives,” says Leger. “A lot of the meals are things I might not take the time to make for myself at home.”

And they also rely on their customers to let them know what they do and don’t like.

“We get a lot of feedback from our customers,” says Fenton. “So, we go with that and the menu changes every week so we can change it based on what people like.”

Along with fresh and frozen meals, Sauté also offers smoothies and soups and they are also now offering a “teatox” program in partnership with a local naturopath. That’s one part of their plan to move beyond food.

“We’ve also been trying to add a fitness component and it will involve a recipe book, with a shopping guide and a fitness plan,” says Nelson.

Now they’re serving major centres in the Maritimes, but they hope to expand. “One of our main initiatives right now is to reach a wider geographic area, so, expanding to the rest of the Maritimes,” says Nelson. “We’re now shipping to Moncton, Fredericton, Saint John, Charlottetown...Allison has spent a lot of time recently reaching out to local farmers to see what we can afford to buy from them.”

OCTOBER 2017 halifaxmag.com | 29

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Propeller Brewing Co. Propeller Brewing Company is Halifax’s original North End craft brewery. Full cold-beer store at the Windmill road facility in Dartmouth. Packaged beer, growler fills, samples and pints available at the historic Gottingen Brewery location in Halifax.

Keep an eye out for specialty cask releases on Friday nights!

2015 GOTTINGEN STREET, HALIFAX NS drinkpropeller.ca @PropellerBeer

Sober Island Brewing Company Situated on Nova Scotia’s rugged Eastern Shore, we’re the stop after your outdoor adventure. Attached to The Henley House Pub and Restaurant, we feature a brewpub-style atmosphere where you can enjoy local dishes and all of our brews. So get outside and connect with nature as you explore this pristine part of the province. Why not take your experience with you?

We sell cans to go from the brewery!

22478 Hwy 7, Sheet Harbour NS 902-719-9463 soberislandbrewing.ca

Uncle Leo’s Brewery Uncle Leo’s Oktoberfest Sampler 4-pack Available October 2 - November 19 at select NSLC stores & at the Brewery Featuring: 2017 Canadian Brewing Award Gold Medal, 2014 Atlantic Canada Brewing Award Gold Medal & 2016 ACBA Silver Medal Winner Uncle Leo’s Vohs Weizenbier.

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Tatamagouche Brewing Company Tatamagouche Brewing Company is a family owned and operated organic microbrewery located in the heart of Tatamagouche. In 2014, they converted an old butcher shop into a community brewery, making small batches of tasty handcrafted beer. Tata Brew - as the locals lovingly call it, is open year round and has been a recipient of 4 Canadian Brewing Awards since opening.

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Breton Brewing Breton Brewing opened its doors in 2015 in Sydney, Cape Breton. Available across Nova Scotia, Breton’s flagship ales include Black Angus IPA, Red Coat Irish Red, Sons of Hector Brown Ale and Stirling Hefeweizen. Breton will soon launch three seasonal cans: Seven Years Pale Ale, Island Time Lager, and Storm Chaser Vanilla Stout!

BULWARK CRAFT CIDER Nova Scotia’s No. 1 selling handcrafted cider is made one batch at a time for the perfect tasting cider. Our signature five-apple blend cider is made with apple varieties from the Annapolis Valley which are freshly pressed on-site then fermented and bottled, all under one roof. It doesn’t get much better than this.

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DRINK

RIGHT BEER, RIGHT GLASS PUT DOWN THAT MASON JAR AND ENHANCE THE TASTE, AROMA, AND EXPERIENCE OF YOUR FAVOURITE BREW

BY KIM HART MACNEILL

Spiegelau, goblet, and nonic glasses are designed to enhance the beer-drinking experience.

It’s Friday evening, you worked hard all week, and there’s a beer in the fridge. Before you drink, you have to pour. And before you pour, you have an important decision: what glass do you use?

“Beer is a very casual thing that you can just drink without thinking about it much,” says Chris Reynolds, co-owner of Stillwell beer bar on Barrington Street. “But if you’re a fan and you realize how much work has gone into it, the right glassware is the only way to really appreciate it.”

With the rise of craft beer came the rise in craft-beer glassware. You’ll find them at department stores, dollar stores and your favourite brewery, but choosing the right glass is more than esthetic.

For most beer drinkers, the most recognizable glasses are the shaker and nonic (AKA the classic English pint) glasses.

The shaker is a workhorse of a bar glass, used to shake cocktails, serve water or soda, and almost as an afterthought, hold beer. The nonic, the shaker’s curvy 20-ounce elder sibling, is probably the most iconic beer glass

32 | halifaxmag.com OCTOBER 2017

in the world. But when it comes to craft beer, these glasses aren’t ideal.

Reynolds says the nonic is perfect for a traditional English ale. Stillwell uses them as a nod to tradition for cask beers, never for aromatic or high-alcohol beers.

Wide-mouthed glasses encourage the aroma to escape from the top of the glass.

Science tells us that 90% of what we taste is derived from a food or beverage’s aroma. Using a wide mouthed glass lets the aroma evaporate.

Instead, try a tulip or a Belgian glass.

Tom Adams is owner and president of Jym Line Glassware Ltd. in Elmsdale, N.S. If you have a local brewery’s branded glass or growler in your cupboard it’s probably one of his. “A good Belgian style is a bubble shape,” he says.

“It comes in and then flares out a little bit. That is a great glass for any beer, not just Belgians.

It’ll channel the smell and the flavor to the palate, all focused at this one point.”

Adams is an IPA man; his go-to glass is the Spiegelau IPA glass developed especially for the style with Dog Fish Head and Sierra Nevada breweries. It features a very narrow cylindrical

base that widens into a white wine glass-style shape. This design channels the aroma of hoppy beers while preserving the head.

“It’s absolutely a stellar glass in terms of lip feel,” says Adams. “It’s thin, almost like crystal and the bonus is ... [it] can hold a 473-ml can quiet nicely.”

Reynold’s current go-to, which he notes changes as he tries new glasses and beers, is the Becher, also known as the Willi Becher.

(You’ll sometimes see it simply called the “craft-beer glass” too.)

It’s tall and slim, with a flare in the top quarter of the glass that narrows in before the lip. Like the Spiegelau, it accommodates a tall can.

Cleanliness is as important as the type of glass.

Adams washes his beer glasses at home in hot water only, with a cool rinse and drip-dry.

Reynolds swears by his dishwasher for his home glasses. (Glass cleaning at Stillwell is a far more elaborate affair due to health regulations).

Before you use a glass out of the cupboard, regardless of how you washed it, both experts suggest a cool rinse.

“It chills the glass slightly, if the glass is warm it’ll immediately start to warm the beer,” he says. “The main reason is to make sure the glass is completely rinsed of dust.

Beer also flows really nicely into a wet glass without foaming up.”

All this being said, there’s no reason to run out and buy a dozen different beer glasses.

If you want to, our local breweries have plenty in most of the popular styles.

If you’re looking for one glass to pour

them all, Reynolds offers a surprising suggestion, and you probably already have it in your cupboard.

“If I’m sharing a bottle with my partner or we have some people over, I’m always reaching for the white wine glasses,” he says.

“It holds a portion of a bottle really well. It’s got the stem so if it’s the right temperature you don’t have to touch it, or if you want to warm it up a little you can cup your hand around it and warm it up in no time.”

KIM HART MACNEILL Kim is a freelance journalist and editor with East Coast Living.

Read her weekly beer column on HalifaxMag.com and follow her on Twitter. @kimhartmacneill

Must-try beers: strong beer edition XXX IPA (Extra strong beer)

Belgian Quad

Garrison Brewing, Halifax

Tatamagouche Brewing Co., Tatamagouche, N.S.

Released to celebrate the brewery’s 20th anniversary, this 9% ABV beer is very sweet, but within the sweetness lies it’s beauty: 100 IBUs worth of hops, including boil-added hops for a bold, bitter taste and dry hops to amplify the aromas. Drink it out of a Spiegelau to appreciate the range of aromas.

The latest in Tata’s Giant Beer Series (read: high alcohol) stars a blend of malts that lend it a thick, sweet flavor with dried fruit and chocolate flavours and a slightly spicy finish. This abbey-style ale is remarkably smooth considering it’s 10.3% ABV, so sip with care. Better yet, share with good friends.

OPINION

THE FIRST COME-FROM-AWAY DISMISSING GOOD IDEAS BECAUSE OTHER PLACES HAD THEM FIRST: A PART OF OUR HERITAGE

BY RYAN VAN HORNE Note: Not historically accurate. The Mi’kmaq were the first settlers of Nova Scotia. The Trogs are a fictional people. Sort of.

Somewhere in ancient Nova Scotia. A person comes riding over a hill on a bicycle and approaches a Trog struggling to get a wagon out of a quagmire on a dirt road.

CIEFE: Ola, mi amigo!

CRANK: Wha? CIEFE: Oh, you speak English? I said “hello.”

My name is Ciefe what is your name?

CRANK: Uh, my name Crank. What your name again?

CIEFE: Ciefe, it’s like if you pronounce the letters C, F, and A, but with an emphasis on the F. CRANK: C-F-A? CIEFE: Sort of. You just need to emphasize the F, see-EFF-ay, like that.

CRANK: CFA? CIEFE: Close enough. So, you seem to be having some difficulty. Can I help you?

CRANK: Yeah, my wagon stuck.

CIEFE: I see that. It’s very muddy here and the road is in terrible shape.

CRANK: Yeah, square wheels. [Points at the wheels, and then at the road which is full of pockmarks]. They hurt road.

CIEFE: Square wheels! You mean you haven’t switched to round wheels yet?

CRANK: No, we like square ones. It hilly here and things don’t roll away when you have square wheels.

Along comes another Trog, who makes a friendly grunt toward Crank but casts a suspicious eye at Ciefe.

GRONK: Crank, who this?

CRANK: He CFA. He come from over mountain.

Talk funny, not like us.

GRONK: Look at wheels. Funny round wheels and only two.

34 | halifaxmag.com OCTOBER 2017

The two Trogs share a hearty laugh as if Gronk has delivered the ultimate zinger.

CIEFE: What? Have you two have never seen a bicycle?

GRONK: Wha? CIEFE: A bicycle. Some people just call them bikes, you might find the shorter version easier to remember.

GRONK: That not a wagon!? You can’t ride that on road. Road for wagons, not bikes. You want ride bike, build bike road.

CIEFE: We do have bike roads where I live, do you have any here?

CRANK: No, no bike roads, that cost money.

We poor.

CIEFE: I see. How much do you spend repairing all the damage caused by square wheels?

GRONK: Lots, but that paid for by wagon tax.

CIEFE: Wagon tax? What’s that.

CRANK: Tax we pay to use wagons on road.

CIEFE: Oh, so you do pay for the repairs to the road?

GRONK: No, I said wagon tax pay for it.

CIEFE: But you pay the wagon tax?

CRANK: Yes. CIEFE: And the wagon tax pays for repairs to the road caused by the square wheels?

GRONK: Yes. CIEFE: So, you do pay for the repairs, you just do it indirectly.

CRANK: I told you, we not pay for repairs.

CIEFE: OK, calm down. Look, don’t you think it would be smarter to switch to round wheels though?

GRONK: Why? CIEFE: Well, they would cause less damage to your roads.

CRANK: But then wagon would roll away. It too hilly here. I told you that.

CIEFE: Yes, you mentioned that, but you could put a brake on them. I can show you how.

GRONK: Hey! Why you want to break our wagons?

CIEFE: No, I don’t want to break them, I want to put a brake on them.

CRANK: What difference?

CIEFE: If I break them, they won’t work. If I put a brake on them, it will stop them from rolling away.

GRONK: Ha-ha-ha-ha! How you do that?

Flatten hills? You not strong enough for that.

Crank joins in again as the two delight in peals of laughter.

CRANK: Gronk, you funny guy. Hey, CFA, why you not laugh? Gronk made good joke.

CIEFE: It wasn’t that funny.

GRONK: Hey, CFA! If you don’t like my jokes, go back where you come from.

CIEFE: Oh, but I’m going to university here, and I’ve fallen in love with this place. I’m planning to stay after I graduate and apply some of the new ideas I’ve learned in my program.

CRANK: We not need new ideas. We just need less rain so square wheels don’t get stuck in mud so easy.

CIEFE: You’ll be waiting a long time for that, amigo. I suggest you try some new ideas, just explore the world a bit, and see what’s working elsewhere.

GRONK: That not mean they work here.

CIEFE: Why wouldn’t they?

CRANK: It very rainy. Salty fog. Leaders say new ideas get rusty.

CIEFE: That’s loco. If they get rusty, it’s only because they don’t get used. Hasta luego, gringos.

RYAN Van HORNE Ryan is a Halifax journalist, playwright and documentary film director. His work appears in magazines and newspapers from coast to coast and at ryanvanhorne.com.