CBC as Peggy Cameron's Press Agent
 

She's done it again:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/culvert-halifax-removed-1.5990257

Save the culverts!!!

It is worth a chuckle, though. I mean, this time Peggy and the Friends are literally circling the drain...

:derpina:

https://i.imgur.com/HlkOdCY.png

https://i.imgur.com/FZEv3W3.png

https://i.imgur.com/5CRcHeJ.png

Source
(Just for fun)

Good Baklava: Nicely done!

For your next round perhaps you could lampoon a CBC reporter or two.

As requested:

https://i.imgur.com/zeyNW65.png

Source

Ouch!

The bio is mostly correct, however the line about "correcting her stories" is in error and should read "recalculating her monthly CBC pension upon retirement".

Well those are quite funny. "CBC news, Halifaaaaax" :)

:haha:

Hah!

Funny you mention that, JET. I've tried to imitate that incongruous sign-off a hundred times and I just can't get the intonation right.

Reminds me of the former ATV/CTV reporter Dan MacIntosh. He had a unique way of drawing out "Daaaaaan" when he signed off. It was almost as if he was stalling for time while trying to remember his last name, except then he'd do it all over again with "MaaaacIntosh".

or reporting for CBC

"Sabina Casso Franco, RRROOMMMME."

"Mary Ann MaGuire, Belfaaassst."

Praise the Lord, CBC's Pam Berman has announced she is retiring! The bad news is that she's not leaving until April.

https://twitter.com/larochecbc/status/1480554335918563333

No more- "...Halifaaaaaax."

Good news! (:

Can a mod update this thread to include CTV?

https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/big-buildings-continue-to-alter-halifax-skyline-1.6030026?

I watched this thinking it was all about good news for Halifax's skyline. It's just clickbait for anti-height propaganda. At least they got a comment from Paul Mackinnon to balance the story out.

Really you liked this better? :koko:

1980

https://halifaxbloggers.ca/noticedinnovascotia/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2015/10/Pictures173.jpg

https://halifaxbloggers.ca/noticedinnovascotia/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2015/10/Pictures172.jpg

https://halifaxbloggers.ca/noticedinnovascotia/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2015/10/Pictures170.jpg

Source for above:
https://halifaxbloggers.ca/noticedinnovascotia/2015/10/on-the-waterfront/

VS

2022

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52241670614_51f4cb0c5c_h.jpgHalifax waterfront by Bailey Parsons, on Flickr

Amazing post. Thank you for bringing light to how absurd these articles are.

I lived in Halifax from 1979-89. I don't recall it being that bad at the time, but the pictures you posted suggest otherwise. Selective memory I guess.

https://d3d0lqu00lnqvz.cloudfront.net/media/media/320b2307-26aa-4235-a677-1411c4dc4152.jpg

Things got better on the waterfront in the mid 80s if you like parking lots instead of old dilapidated industrial sites. Of course Purdys wharf tower l in 1985 was a game changer for the skyline.

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Here you go a more level playing field:

https://i.postimg.cc/HsJgk3z2/Pictures173-1.png

https://i.postimg.cc/rpBx0h2L/busk2.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/7ZdMyP69/Pictures170.png

https://i.postimg.cc/Bn8dJ6qw/power2.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/W4spzgh1/Pictures172.png

https://i.postimg.cc/J4zxW21T/bishop2.jpg

No matter how you look at it, the late 70's/early 80's skyline/waterfront still looks worse than 2022. :shrug:

https://i.postimg.cc/qM5pcqjp/skyline-bw.jpg

https://halifaxbloggers.ca/noticedinnovascotia/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2015/10/Pictures173.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/BvbGy0bJ/lwaterbw.jpg

https://halifaxbloggers.ca/noticedinnovascotia/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2015/10/Collages52.jpg

Amidst the controversy this week of CTV firing Lisa LaFlamme for reasons more murky than the depths of Halifax Harbour, one of the even bigger mysteries is how and why Sportsguy a.k.a. Paul Hollingsworth has retained a position at CTV for decades, first doing local sports, then graduating to TSN, then reverting back to CTV Atlantic as a news reporter and fill-in anchor despite showing no particular skill in reporting on anything other than hockey and baseball. His news reporting is almost always atrocious as this shows yet again. Connections must run deep.

Regarding Mark's collection of old photos they well illustrate the Halifax waterfront I remember downtown as I was growing up being a dirty, dingy, run-down collection of wooden buildings close to falling down mixed in with unremarkable and neglected short brick structures badly ignored for decades, few if any of which offered public access to the harbor or any particular public use. This was typical of many working waterfronts at the time until traditional cargo and ocean based industries moved away from downtowns thanks to containerization and better uses for such lands. You saw it in places like Boston and New York too. There seems to always be a fringe that wants things of the past preserved in amber forever, but amber is not what makes a place vibrant and growing. There is a discussion to be had as to how best to respect past history while that growth occurs - why the Irving arch could not have been paid tribute to when what is now known as Summit Place was designed as just one example - but to suggest we just keep things as they were 50 years ago is seriously flawed thinking when most of those things were already well past their best-before dates, not just in terms of condition and state of repair, but also in terms of their utility. Cities are living organisms and cannot just be frozen in time.

Halifax is incredibly lucky to have a massive Harbour and basin that allow for many working areas completely away from the Downtown's world class waterfront. I'm sure more could have been done to preserve pieces of the old downtown working waterfront but it is what it is. Just look at St. John's with it's tiny harbour that has limited their ability to copy Halifax's waterfront.

But then CTV had to interview the woman who moved to the city in 1977 and suggested it was better or that she would like us to go back to the "Lunenburg Style" that she saw in the old drawings and pictures. And then to top it all off they get Peggy Cameron to throw her "opinion" that we should only build four to six stories.

If one had to pick a permanent one-way time travel either Halifax of 1960 or 2060 which would it be?

In 1960, much of the pre-war urbanity we've since lost would still be intact, but it would have been A: shabby, and B: imminently doomed. The city also would have been a much smaller, more parochial kind of place. OTOH, 2060 is a mystery.

I guess I'd go with the future, since the city--in spite of some missteps and false starts--is generally moving in an ever-improving direction.

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I don't get the nostalgia. My "nostalgia period" should be around 2005 or so and I have no problem admitting the city's just better now as far as urbanism goes (maybe you could debate housing prices etc. or other problems).

I think the higher resolution discussions of the past are more valuable than blanket statements that tall buildings are bad or old buildings are outdated. When I look at the old pictures I see a mix of good and bad. For example I don't see the demolition of the Irving oil tanks as a loss but I do think that the old Cunard Building or RBC blocks were big losses. It's a bit frustrating to look at how many nice fine-grained buildings there were around Hollis Street in the 1950's and see how much it went downhill by the 80's or so. Similarly I question the planning value of imposing height restrictions on good tower sites and permitting squat boxes like Waterside Centre over heritage buildings. Then again there are apparent bright spots like Queen's Marque.

Since the "experts" proclaim that it will all be underwater by 2060, I'll take 1960.

It actually isn't too hard to imagine, since except for the newer buildings and much, much heavier traffic, the streets and roads are still the same for the most part, the only bicycles we had to deal with were those of kids on the sidewalk, and city government was just as inept but much smaller.

The only thing worth salvaging from 1960 Halifax is Africville, otherwise it's an easy 2060.

Racism in Halifax 1962 a CBC report:

The only thing worth going back to the 60's in Halifax for is to listen to the best decade of music in history being played on CJCH and CHNS.

CJCH HALIFAX 1969:
https://lettheuniverseanswer.com/2019/08/08/cjcs-edmonton-1969-wbz-am-boston-1965/

https://soundcloud.com/105-9seaside-fm/d..._medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

:rolleyes:

Is permanently sending Peggy Cameron to 2060 an option?

Also a good point. Not that we're a post-racist society or anything today, but the nostalgia for earlier eras certainly overlooks the fact that the city (province, country) is certainly a much friendlier place now than in the past for a great many people. That has nothing to do with the quality of the built environment, exactly (the city can be both uglier and more socially equitable) but it's an aspect of this backward-looking instinct that gets overlooked.

While it's undeniable that people are more enlightened and less discriminatory today, and that is a good thing, I find that the past is often presented as a caricature. This is definitely true of a lot of historical Halifax stuff where at the time there was a variety of people of differing levels of enlightenment who were coping with trade-offs that provided important context that tends to be lost.

It interacts with NS negativity and Canadian attitudes toward the Atlantic region as well with a lot of people arguing that NS was particularly bad, while Canadians often don't really understand their history. A lot of places in Canada used to chase out or turn away black people, like the freed slaves in the 1700's. It's not true at all that there were a bunch of pluralistic societies around the world prior to 1960 and NS was a special place where people didn't get along. Everywhere was racist, and most places had no mix at all or had some extreme institutionally enforced caste system.

I want to clear something up. I posted about skylines of the past vs today, and since the vast wasteland of surface parking that happened in the 1970s and 1980s was being compared to today's built form, with the obvious conclusion that having it built up today is better than having it reserved for surface parking, I posted about that.

For some reason, people misinterpreted that the purpose of my posts were being nostalgic, and it was nothing about that. Then for some unknown reason, we had to start talking about systemic racism (Africville).

I was saying, as somebody old enough to have actually lived when there was something other than surface parking on the waterfront, that there was a certain charm to the working marine businesses there. And introduced the idea of a working waterfront not being a completely bad thing (i.e. nobody complains about people working in office buildings downtown). Regardless, I already knew the conclusion, as of course a finished downtown is nicer than a gritty, working one, and I didn't expect any appreciation for the idea that I was presenting.

My point was simply that I view the surface-lot era as a transition point between the old working waterfront, and today's developed waterfront. To my way of thinking, that's like comparing an empty lot where a building was demolished and let sit for four decades to a finished building. That's it. Full stop.

I deleted my above comments because I was tired of people misinterpreting them, but now when people are starting to talk about racism, I want to set the story straight that I did not speak of racism in any way at all. I was talking about built forms in terms of structures, planning, and how a city functions. I don't know why we are talking about Africville here, though there is a lot online to research. You could even start a thread about it if you want.

It definitely was a transition period, much like those shots of the Cogswell area during the 50's and 60's. The waterfront plan was to clear out the old industrial buildings and replace them with buildings like the Law Courts, Maritime museum, Purdy's, and so on. For a long time there was very little demand for residential along the waterfront.

Yes, when people started talking about nostalgia, I wasn’t thinking about the original intent of the question—more the nostalgia that a Peggy Cameron-esque person might have for the city or era of decades past. No negative comment on anyone on this forum intended.

Obviously when the conversation moved into racism/social stuff it moved away from the original focus simply on the quality of the built environment.

Well said. Thanks for writing this.

I also want to say that the characterisation of "everybody" being racist in those days is also creating an inaccurate caricature of the past. I'm not going to get into it, as it would be pointless to even try, but narratives, especially viewed in hindsight, can often leave out positive aspects of a time while focusing on the worst, leaving people with a skewed viewpoint.

That 1962 video actually did show a much nicer Barrington than what exists today. More businesses, more people, more intact heritage buildings.

I should have written "by today's standards". I don't think it is a useful perspective for learning from the past.

The #1 thing people tend to leave out is that progress builds on the past. We seem to get this for technology but not for social issues. There was a time when what's considered conservative Christian belief today was the progressive stuff that was meant to replace clannish warfare and cousin marriage or polygamy etc. as one example. And societies need to move in coherent steps.

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I also want to point out that any desire to have kept buildings that were around from the 1960's doesn't mean anyone here wanted society to return to the norms of that period of time. I just thought when Africville was mentioned and time travel, the 1962 video would bring to light how different society was back then. It's interesting to see how people talked and their mannerisms. Of course not everyone was racist in 1962 in Halifax, just listen to the young guy at then end talking about wanting to play on a mixed race ball team and not be harrased about it.

If only you could teleport some of these older buildings we should have kept into 2022 that were destroyed.

Back to the original discussion, I like the skyscrapers we are seeing built in this city in last 10 years and I'd like it to continue. I'd also like to see CBC and CTV stop giving the Peggy Cameron a mic every time she whines.

I appreciate your thoughts, and yes the video was an interesting window into the past, a time capsule of sorts when taken in context of the year (which was before my time).

I agree with your other points as well.

It is a term that the younger generations throw around rather freely without recognition that it has been part of the human condition for centuries and exists to some greater or lesser extent in every society.

Oh my God, yes. It's hard for me to fathom now that when I was a kid (late 1970's) and Dad would take me over on the ferry for a Voyagers game or to see Bluenose, that the public usable portion of the waterfront was basically from the Ferry Terminal north to The Lower Deck. That was it. The rest was giant gravel parking lots and industrial wharves.