By Andrew Macdonald At The Notebook, I have worked in a home office for the last six years, just like many realtors and other self-employed often do. Now that the pandemic has given new impetus to the use of a home office, I reached out to Tom Rose, founder and...
By Alison Strachan My twitter profile is A New Yorker in Nova Scotia obviously in the middle of an existential crisis. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. I'm a Permanent Resident ("PR"), in Canada since 1981. Every year I give at least one or two moments of...
By Andrew Macdonald One of the charming things about the history of the City of Halifax, but little understood, is the impact beginning 35 years ago of a wave of Buddhists arriving from Colorado. Back when condo and apartment developments in the 1980s and '90s were...
By Andrew Macdonald This week, I had a chat with Dawn Dauphinee of Domus Realty to explore the real estate scene across Halifax Regional Municipality in these pandemic times. Dauphinee suggests the pandemic will add to the strong buying interest of out-of-province...
By Andrew Macdonald Days before the pandemic arrived in Nova Scotia on March 13th, 2020, I carried a news scoop noting a sale of a HFX Hydrostone abode had made history. The headline of my March 12 story was, 'Hydrostone Selling Price History Made: Merkel Street Abode...
By Andrew Macdonald With the 2020 cruise ship season being wiped out by a global pandemic, Halifax, as well as the province and Atlantic Canada, is going to take a significant economic hit. A new study from the Halifax Port Authority reports the value of the cruise...
By Andrew Macdonald Several weeks ago, The Notebook reported that a bunch of heavy hitters within the executive construction team of Toronto- based Bird Construction left the firm to form a competing Halifax company. It was a blockbuster move because among the...
By Andrew Macdonald Commercial Broker Tom Gerard On The Job: Finds Buyer For Windmill Road Apartment Complex - Double Ends The $24M deal. The prize on a listing well known and highly regarded commercial broker Tom Gerard had on Windmill Road is a vacant lot, ripe for...
By Andrew Macdonald How Hot Is The Halifax Real Estate Market? Well, A Tiny Split Entry Home In Cole Harbour Collects 23 Offers Bidding War Pushes Price Up Above The Asking figure As The Notebook continues to look at the health of the residential real estate market in...
By Andrew Macdonald This summer's 20th annual must-attend Frank McKenna business and political networking shindig at Fox Harb’r will be one for the history books, The Notebook understands. While the invite-only event is going to go ahead in these pandemic times, it...
By Andrew Macdonald Three months ago, I carried a news article with this headline: The Notebook’s Mission In Life: Navigate The Crisis. As I wrote at the beginning of the pandemic, I touched on a former life of heavy drinking - copious beer bottle intake. “If there...
By Andrew Macdonald Meet Tim Moore: The HFX Apartment Developer Is it even possible that Chester-Halifax’s Tim Moore now has a new business line, developing leading-edge apartment buildings in Halifax? No stranger to Notebook news coverage, Moore is a real-life serial...
By Andrew Macdonald Jim Mills’ Office Interiors Undertakes Significant $7.5M On New Burnside HQ - Not Fazed By The Pandemic By Andrew Macdonald Office Interiors & CABCO Communications Break Ground on New Dartmouth Headquarters Jim Mills, at age 60, has no plans to...
By Andrew Macdonald Kevin Pelley’s Kohltech Window’s Debert Plant Innovates During COVID-19 With retailers beginning to re-open in what will be the ‘new normal’, a window manufacturing plant in the Debert Industrial Park, near Truro, is offering merchants a COVID-19...
Don't Let News Break To The Point Of Breaking You By Alison Strachan During the pandemic, and generally spending more time on the homefront, the term used by news outlets that struck me most on Twitter and on news channel chyrons was Breaking News. I've come to the...
By Andrew Macdonald Coronavirus: Don Mills & Jim Mills Celebrity Roast Rescheduled for 2021 It was supposed to have been the charity seasonal event of the year. Halifax pollster Don Mills and his brother, Jim Mills, who is featured elsewhere in this edition...
By Andrew Macdonald Development: Meet Another Pavilion Condo Dweller — Jim Mills of Office Interiors Moves Into Jim Spatz's Swish Project Over the last little while, The Notebook has carried a few news scoops on some top movers and shakers taking command of condo...
By Andrew Macdonald Recently the largest newspaper in Canada, the legendary Toronto Star was sold to two business people. It sold for $52 million. That is the new reality of old legacy print newspapers - media titles going for bargain-basement prices. To put that...
As we head into the new norm of life, if you have not already read a must-read biography of the Life & Times Of Harry Steele, I recommend it for cottage reading this summer. Here is a book excerpt on the sale of the Halifax Daily News, in 1997 when then global...
By Andrew Macdonald Cottage Life: Attention My Millennial Readers: Chester’s Little Mansion Goes On The Market Chester Real Estate Cottage On An Affordable Price Tag: With millennials making up the second-largest paid readership of The Notebook - code word for 25 to...
By Andrew Macdonald With the pandemic, it looks like Nova Scotians will have to contend with spending their vacations in our fair province - and what is wrong with that? Nova Scotia is made for the summertime, when the music soundtrack goes onto George Gershwin's...
By Andrew Macdonald More on NS, NB and PEI tourism hot spots With folk in NS, NB, and PEI confined to spending their summers in their respective provinces, here is a news article detailing local tourism hot spots. Summertime in the Maritimes is made for heading to the...
By Andrew Macdonald Breaking News: MacPolitics: John Hamm Overcomes Tory Leadership Dilemma - Now Backs Peter MacKay John Hamm, the former PC premier of Nova Scotia, who historians now contend led a pretty good even-keeled government from 1999-2005, faced a big...
MacPolitics: For The Record, John Hamm’s Endorsement of Peter MacKay Here is the letter former NS PC premier John Hamm sent out the other day to card-carrying members of the Conservative Party of Canada. John Hamm: Dear (Conservative party member) It has been a very...
By Andrew Macdonald MacPolitics: Former PC South Shore MP Peter McCreath: No Need To Twin 103 HWY It might just be the crowning achievement in the political career of Bernadette Jordan. Back in 2017, the now Trudeau minister, along with then politico Scott Brison,...
By Andrew Macdonald How Tom Rose Conceived Newly Formed Atlantic Compassion Fund - During A Pandemic Halifax office furnishings mogul Tom Rose, who founded Atlantic Business Interiors, back in 1986, has significantly given back to his community. His inspired Atlantic...
By Andrew Macdonald That 12M Southend Container Terminal Cargo Crane’s Arrival Pushed Back For reasons unknown, but speculation in the port community the vessel has broken down, the arrival of a specialized boat carrying the new $12 million cargo crane to the Halifax...
By Andrew Macdonald Premier Stephen McNeil Ushers In Golden Era For NS Road Building - A Title Once Given John Buchanan In the 1980s, ultra-popular John Buchanan, who never lost an election as premier from 1978 to 1988, was considered the architect of the Golden Era...
By Andrew Macdonald 103 HWY: Highways minister Lloyd Hines Offers Reasons Twinning Paving Tender Resulted In Bids $5M Below Department’s Own Estimates As The Notebook reported in a News Scoop the other day, when bids were opened last Tuesday for an 11-kilometre paving...
By Andrew Macdonald Halifax-Chester Titan Don Mills: Tenders On 103 HWY Twinning Ought To Have Been Issued Last Winter Founder and leading entrepreneur Don Mills, who resides in the Trillium condos & has a year-round cottage in Chester Basin suggests the NS...
By Andrew Macdonald Extra $230 M For Road Building Won’t Include Twinning to Bridgewater & Canso Causeway - We Asked The Question of Highways minister Lloyd Hines As I detail in the above story, this week’s announcement from Premier Stephen McNeil that his...
By Andrew Macdonald Further to the last Golden Age of NS Road Building, before he died, The Notebook had a 2018 conversation with ultra-popular four-term Tory premier John Buchanan. As I referenced Buchanan's largesse to NS road buildings in the above story, here is...
By Andrew Macdonald The Victoria Day Weekend marks the official start of cottage season now across the Maritimes. It's a time when folk ask their seasonal neighbours: "Are you in residency?" That's code for cottage occupancy. Cottage dwellers typically open up the...
By Andrew Macdonald At The Notebook, I have worked in a home office for the last six years, just like many realtors and other self-employed often do. Now that the pandemic has given new impetus to the use of a home office, I reached out to Tom Rose, founder and...
By Alison Strachan My twitter profile is A New Yorker in Nova Scotia obviously in the middle of an existential crisis. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. I'm a Permanent Resident ("PR"), in Canada since 1981. Every year I give at least one or two moments of...
By Andrew Macdonald One of the charming things about the history of the City of Halifax, but little understood, is the impact beginning 35 years ago of a wave of Buddhists arriving from Colorado. Back when condo and apartment developments in the 1980s and '90s were...
By Andrew Macdonald This week, I had a chat with Dawn Dauphinee of Domus Realty to explore the real estate scene across Halifax Regional Municipality in these pandemic times. Dauphinee suggests the pandemic will add to the strong buying interest of out-of-province...
By Andrew Macdonald Days before the pandemic arrived in Nova Scotia on March 13th, 2020, I carried a news scoop noting a sale of a HFX Hydrostone abode had made history. The headline of my March 12 story was, 'Hydrostone Selling Price History Made: Merkel Street Abode...
By Andrew Macdonald With the 2020 cruise ship season being wiped out by a global pandemic, Halifax, as well as the province and Atlantic Canada, is going to take a significant economic hit. A new study from the Halifax Port Authority reports the value of the cruise...
By Andrew Macdonald Several weeks ago, The Notebook reported that a bunch of heavy hitters within the executive construction team of Toronto- based Bird Construction left the firm to form a competing Halifax company. It was a blockbuster move because among the...
By Andrew Macdonald Commercial Broker Tom Gerard On The Job: Finds Buyer For Windmill Road Apartment Complex - Double Ends The $24M deal. The prize on a listing well known and highly regarded commercial broker Tom Gerard had on Windmill Road is a vacant lot, ripe for...
By Andrew Macdonald How Hot Is The Halifax Real Estate Market? Well, A Tiny Split Entry Home In Cole Harbour Collects 23 Offers Bidding War Pushes Price Up Above The Asking figure As The Notebook continues to look at the health of the residential real estate market in...
By Andrew Macdonald This summer's 20th annual must-attend Frank McKenna business and political networking shindig at Fox Harb’r will be one for the history books, The Notebook understands. While the invite-only event is going to go ahead in these pandemic times, it...
By Andrew Macdonald Three months ago, I carried a news article with this headline: The Notebook’s Mission In Life: Navigate The Crisis. As I wrote at the beginning of the pandemic, I touched on a former life of heavy drinking - copious beer bottle intake. “If there...
By Andrew Macdonald Meet Tim Moore: The HFX Apartment Developer Is it even possible that Chester-Halifax’s Tim Moore now has a new business line, developing leading-edge apartment buildings in Halifax? No stranger to Notebook news coverage, Moore is a real-life serial...
By Andrew Macdonald Jim Mills’ Office Interiors Undertakes Significant $7.5M On New Burnside HQ - Not Fazed By The Pandemic By Andrew Macdonald Office Interiors & CABCO Communications Break Ground on New Dartmouth Headquarters Jim Mills, at age 60, has no plans to...
