The Best of Halifax 2026: Music

Good morning, Halifax!

Some snow, eh?

I hope that if you had to shovel your driveway, you didn’t break your back in the process. If you had to walk to work, I hope the sidewalks were plenty salted and not too slushy.

The heavy snow took out power for about 130,000 customers across the province, with Nova Scotia Power opening its emergency outage centre at around 6am Monday morning. As of writing this (Monday afternoon), 84,017 customers are still without power.

As much as we like to rag on Nova Scotia Power around here, be kind to the workers out there today. There’s a lot of work yet to be done, and the vitriol is better saved for the executives trying to rip you off.

– B

📷 @creamy_yet_smooth

🌡️ Traffic & Weather

Today: 🌨️ 0°

Tomorrow: ☀️ -7°

Next Day: 🌨️ 3°

7-day forecast

🚗 Driving, biking or busing today? Check out the current traffic conditions and ongoing road closures.

BEST OF HALIFAX 2026

The Best of Halifax 2026: Music results

Halifax has one of the most interesting music scenes in the country. The wide breadth of talent, genre, and collaboration makes the city a great environment to write, produce and perform. Listeners can find any number of artists and acts that fit their fancy, and can even attend regular concerts to show their support.

During our Best of Halifax Readers' Choice Awards, we asked you about your favourite musicians, and you answered. The results for our Music category are now live on our Best of Halifax page.

Stay tuned for the results from our Shopping + Services and Food + Drink categories. Insiders currently have access to all of our award winners, so if you want an early peek, consider becoming a Coast Insider.

🤔 Need To Know

⛏️ The new deputy minister of justice, Alex Ikejiani, specializes in environmental law, rounding out Premier Tim Houston’s plan to further natural resource development in the province—Houston says he was connected with Ikejiani through mutual friends and that he was “a very, very talented person.”

📈 A report from Statistics Canada shows Indigenous and Black adults are more likely to be incarcerated in Nova Scotia than non-Indigenous and white adults—incarceration rates for Indigenous adults are 10 times higher, while rates for Black adults are three times higher.

🚨 A police officer shot a 37-year-old robbery suspect allegedly wielding a knife on Quinpool Road on Saturday evening after being called to a robbery at the Grafton Street NSLC—the man is currently in hospital with life-threatening injuries, and the provincial police watchdog is investigating the incident.

🎸 “Hey thanks Halifax! I love you all right back. Keep getting out there to enjoy our city’s small businesses and artists. Peace & Love” – Adam Baldwin.*

*Sponsored Post

🗞️ In Other News

🦀 The Nova Scotia Seafood Alliance sees Canada’s trade deal with China as a positive for their industry—the agreement, announced last Friday, will allow Canadian lobster and crab to be sold to China without a 25 percent tariff starting March 1, 2026 until the end of the year.

🚌 A Halifax school bus driver was ticketed after hitting a pedestrian in the area of Quinpool Road and Kline Street on Friday morning—police say the pedestrian had non-life-threatening injuries and no children were on the bus at the time.

🦎 An assortment of large Lego animals are currently on display at the Discovery Centre—the creatures were created by award-winning Lego artist Sean Kenney.

🗓️ Things To Do

Looking for something to do this week? Check out these Coast picks:

🗓 Knots and Knits: Bring a knitting or needlework project you’re working on and hang out with like-minded crafters in a quiet space with hot drinks. Happening at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. | Jan. 20 | 1PM |

🗓 The People United Will Never Be Defeated! - Music Room Chamber Players Series: Canadian pianist Corey Hamm performs composer Frederic Rzewski’s variations of the Chilean protest song “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido". | Jan. 21 | 7:30PM | $20+|

Have an event to share? Let us know at [email protected].

⚓️ What’s In The Harbour

🚢➡️ The Emden vehicle carrier arrives in Halifax from Emden at 5:55am and departs for Tuxpan at 4pm.

➡️ The Ocean Giant general cargo vessel arrives in Halifax from Quebec at 10:20am.

➡️ The Algoscotia tanker arrives in Halifax from Sept-Iles at 6:15pm.

🚢 The CSL Tacoma bulk carrier departs Halifax for Baltimore at 11pm.

🍴 Where To Eat & Drink

🍜 Manilla Thai Grill has a whole host of new daily lunch specials, including their Imperial Combo, Pancit Combo, Chicken Teriyaki Rice Bowl and more.

🍕 Salt + Ash has a beach house pizza that you’ll love. Balanced ingredients and crusty dough with just the right amount of char.

👀 In Case You Missed It

💙 We all know what happened in Nova Scotia on April 19 and 20, 2020. The events of those fateful days are etched into our collective consciousness; a stain on our very fabric. A 51 year-old man—in a car he designed himself to look like an RCMP vehicle—went on a murder rampage, killing 22 people and injuring three others before he was shot and killed in Enfield, fully 13 hours after the attacks started. As a province, we were shocked. How could this happen here? In our home that we love? We banded together, changed our Facebook profiles to “Nova Scotia Strong” and we grieved and we mourned and then we moved on. To make sense of it, we convinced ourselves that this was a one-off; a case of one bad apple. Because what was the alternative? In this evergreen article from The Coast’s Julie Lawrence, she goes into all the mechanisms that failed to stop what was the worst mass shooting in Canadian history.

🌿 Despite the Nova Scotia government’s claim that there are 118 illegal cannabis stores across the province, it will not release information on how it determined the number of dispensaries—its response is it isn’t about statistics, but preventing harm.

🛥️ The Vincent Coleman ferry that crosses between Halifax in Dartmouth is expected to be back in service on Jan. 31, pending part shipments—however, another ferry in its fleet, the Craig Blake, is set to undergo maintenance, making it unavailable until later this year.

That’s it!

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