On Wednesday afternoon, the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board decided to renew the liquor license at the now-infamous Dartmouth strip club Sensations Cabaret—with some conditions. Big conditions. Fully-clothed conditions. Spread over a whopping 108 pages, the ruling’s biggest decision can be boiled down to a single declaration, found on page 107: “Effective 12:01 a.m. on May 19, 2006, the Licensee is not entitled to offer adult entertainment in the licensed premises.” That’s right, folks: no more strippin’. The Board outlined the rationale behind its decision, stating that Sensations “does interfere with the quiet enjoyment of neighbouring properties and interferes with, and causes inconvenience to, churches and similar institutions, such as the daycare in the area.” If for whatever reason you still feel the need to look at naked people, there’s always the internet.
Not so public education
A national survey from the Canadian Teachers’ Federation shows that the level of commercial activity in Nova Scotia schools is significantly higher than the national average. The report, released on Monday, “documents the nature and extent of commercial activities in elementary and secondary schools and the degree to which public funding is being replaced or supplemented by private funding sources.” Some of the more unsettling statistics: About a third of Nova Scotia schools report advertising in or on the school, and 44 percent of Nova Scotia schools have an exclusive marketing arrangement with Coke or Pepsi, compared to the 27 percent national average. So that’s why all my field trips were to the bottling plant…
Cart corral
In an effort to limit the number of abandoned shopping carts in our city, regional council may start cracking down. A proposed by-law change would penalize retailers for deserted carts that are found off store property, with fines running anywhere from $100 to $1,000 per cart. Council plans to debate the amendment in June. Sobeys and Atlantic Superstore are both making tentative preparations—Sobeys is considering a new cart retrieval service, while Atlantic Superstore is experimenting with an electronic cart-retention system.
Claim to fame
It’s always interesting to get an insight into how the rest of the world perceives our little city. It’s not everyday that we show up in international press coverage, but this past week, a story in the online edition of the International Herald Tribune happened to mention, of all places, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Reporting from Mumbai, India, reporter Anand Giridharadas’s story, “A nation’s interests? Google tells all,” outlines how Google search results, when analyzed by geographic location, can reveal the thoughts, feelings and trends within a city or nation. Some results, writes Giridharadas, are predictable—Dubliners lead the searches for “Guinness,” Pakistan and India are global leaders for the term “dowry,” etc. And that’s where we come in. According to Giridharadas, “Not everything on the site is a surprise. People in Boston and Minneapolis and in Halifax, Nova Scotia, lead the search for ‘mittens.’” Mittens? We’re internationally known for our interest in mittens? Apparently, from a global perspective, mittens are to Halifax as Guinness is to Dublin. Who knew?
Make mine mittens. Email: [email protected]
