Afternoon Pint

40 years of Halifax Jazz Festival and nearly three decades of Garrison Brewing as a partner isn’t just a fun local success story, it’s a blueprint for how a city builds culture people actually want to stick around for. We’re at the Oxford Taproom with Tenille Goodspeed (Executive Director, Halifax Jazz Festival) and Meg Brennan (VP Sales, Marketing and Retail Operations, Garrison Brewing) to talk about how a water...

Traffic, housing, and taxes are not separate problems. They are one big system, and once you see the wiring, you cannot unsee it. Over beers, we sit down at Quinns Arm Pubwith journalist Matt Stickland, a former Navy tech who has spent years watching Halifax city hall up close, to unpack why municipal politics quietly shapes your daily life more than any other level of government. 

We talk about how council decisions st...

Something is off when a government can win a “supermajority” while millions of Canadians stay home. We’re joined by Joanne Roberts, author of *Storm The Ballot Box: An Insider’s Guide to a Voting Revolution*, to dig into what low voter turnout really means for Canadian democracy and why people stop believing their vote counts. We talk candidly about what she learned on the inside as a candidate, how parties ...

Fresh salmon can have around 14 days of shelf life if the cold chain stays perfect. The problem is real life is never perfect, and one small temperature slip can turn premium seafood into waste. We’re joined by Mina Mekhail from Dartmouth-based Fresher Technologies, an EY Entrepreneur of the Year, to dig into what “freshness” actually means, why bacteria accelerates with heat, and how packaging can quietly make or...

Halifax is growing fast — and Mayor Andy Fillmore says the real danger is not growth itself, but being unprepared for it.

In this episode of Afternoon Pint, we sit down with Mayor Fillmore at City Hall following his State of the Municipality address to talk about what comes next for Halifax and the wider HRM. We dig into the pressure points residents are already feeling: housing costs, congestion, infrastructure delays, Halifa...

Cancer research can feel like a distant world of microscopes and jargon, but the stakes are painfully everyday: can we help people live longer, feel better, and suffer less while they’re in treatment? We’re joined by Halifax-based immunology PhD Jeanette Boudreau from Dalhousie University to unpack what’s changing right now in cancer immunotherapy, especially in blood cancers, and why “hope” is startin...

Former NDP Nova Scotia premier Darrell Dexter walks us through what it’s like to govern when the economy melts down, revenues disappear, and voters still expect big change on a small budget. He’s candid about how fast a government can go from popular to punished, and why that doesn’t automatically mean the work failed. 

We get into the real mechanics of “transformational” government versus ...

You can learn a lot about high performance by listening to someone who lives in the details, and Christina Black lives there. Over pints at Jungle Jim’s, we talk with the Nova Scotia skip about how an eight-year-old in Sydney goes from watching the Scotties on TV to hearing an arena roar at the Olympic Trials in Halifax, and what that kind of pressure feels like when it’s finally real.

We get into the parts of cu...

A must listen episode to gain perspective on Canada's Immigration Crisis. Two young men from India sit down with us and tell a story we can’t shake. They came to Nova Scotia with a plan, followed the rules, studied hard, built careers, paid taxes, and still may be forced to leave Canada because the rules changed while they were already here. We keep their identities private for their protection, but we don’t soften what...

A lot of people think “spy” means gadgets, fights, and glamour. We’ve got a different story for you, straight from a Canadian military intelligence operator who actually worked the Cold War and later returned to serve in Afghanistan. Mike Fournier, known as Intelligence Operator 230, joins us for a candid conversation about what intelligence work really is: supporting the commander, learning an insane amount of de...

A pub table in Halifax is a strange place to map out a film and TV career, but that’s exactly where we end up with Taylor Olson, Bob Mann, and Adam DeViller. Between bites of a spice bag and a lot of laughter, we get into the real mechanics of building independent work in Nova Scotia: writing roles when the acting jobs don’t come, directing to control the full vision, and editing comedy with the kind of timing that make...

You can feel the difference between a “housing” conversation and a “homeownership” conversation the minute Donna Williamson walks us through how Habitat for Humanity Nova Scotia actually works. We’re recording from the Burnside ReStore (with local beers from Burnside Brewing), and we start by clearing up the biggest misconception: Habitat doesn’t give houses away. Families buy at fair market valu...

A kid from Williamswood leaves Nova Scotia at 17, lands in New York with no connections, survives the visa pressure cooker, and ends up directing heavyweight actors in Hollywood. That’s the real arc behind our conversation with Sonja O’Hara, an Emmy-nominated writer, director, and actress who’s built her career by treating filmmaking like both art and entrepreneurship. We talk about what the highlight reels never ...

Nova Scotia has big resource potential, but the real question is whether we can turn opportunity into outcomes without repeating the mistakes that still haunt the province. We talk with Dustin O’Leary, a Nova Scotian working in gold mining business development, about what “responsible mining” has to mean if communities are ever going to trust it again.

We get specific about the parts people argue over most:...

This week we are having a drink at Jellies on Quinpool Road in Halifax with screen writer and director Tyler Burns, and the conversation goes from bar stories and many random interjections to the real deal on making Canadian comedy. 

Tyler walks us through what it took to build a six-episode series and then finding a place to put it where audiences would see it. Trailerparkboysplus.com happened to be the perfect spot for this r...

St. Patrick’s Day turned into a surprise live show when we crack a couple drinks at home and decide to hit YouTube with zero guest and no safety net. The result is a classic Afternoon Pint mix: real conversation, dumb games, and a chat that keeps pulling the night in new directions. If you like podcasts that feel like you’re sitting at the table with friends, this one is for you.

The serious heart of the night is...

Gabriella is an art therapist who once refused to read out loud in ninth grade, met a teacher who really saw her, and discovered dyslexia and ADHD were the reasons school never fit. That shift—from “lazy” to “misunderstood”—set her on a path through art school and the classroom to a therapy practice that uses colour, texture, and play to help people find themselves again.

We talk frankly a...

Founder Basam Murtaza Tahoor shares how he rebuilt his marketing career from scratch in Halifax—ditching gimmicks, mastering Canadian business basics, and proving that trust is the only real currency. From landing his first client to crafting a blue-ocean pivot into original illustration and brand IP, Basam breaks down buyer personas, pricing strategy, networking that actually works, and how to use AI without losing your huma...

We sit down with Nova Scotia NDP leader Claudia Chender for a candid, ground-level conversation about what’s really driving the affordability crisis—and what can actually fix it.

Claudia shares her journey from law to politics, shaped by her work in education and advocacy, and a front-row view of how government decisions impact families. We break down the housing crisis—from rent caps and fixed-term leases to the d...