How this magazine store beat the odds to be the last standing in Halifax
When Pat Doherty first opened Atlantic News in Halifax in 1973, print was still king.
On busy downtown street corners, pedestrians could easily grab a copy of the latest edition of The Chronicle Herald or The Globe and Mail from one of the city’s news vending machines. At convenience stores, magazines lined the shelves alongside other necessities like shaving cream, condoms and toothbrushes.
But inside Doherty’s newsstand, there was something for everyone — magazines from all over the world like Time and Saturday Night, scandalous rags like Playboy and others dedicated to almost every conceivable interest, no matter how niche.
Back then, Halifax was still a city modest in its ambitions. A place where, as Doherty suggested in an interview for Don Connelly’s Halifax — a 1985 CBC Nova Scotia special — life seemed to glide along.
“Simply put, there’s not too much of anything here,” Doherty quipped.
“Because of that you don’t get tired of it. There are no excesses. If you were living in the middle of the prairies, there’d be too much land. If you’re living in Sable Island, there’d be too much sea. Our economy is mixed. Everything is very mixed.”