Halifax Retro Cause, and Supporting Evidence (isawearthlings.com)

Last night something crying out for help stormed through my back door, ripped me off of my couch by my shirt collar and shook me in a way that I will never forget their desperation, so long as I live. It forced me to look in its eyes in an effort to unveil what was happening to it. I started to cry. Not a frightened cry, but a devastating rumble in my chest. I was sad. I felt guilty, because I was.

Forgive me for the somber, poetic confession. The thing that left me so torn last night was not a person, but a brutal realization that was so powerful, it felt this physical. As I mentioned in my last post, and with the aid of Halifax Retro, our team of two is going through a major journey of discovery, in every single sense of the word. I wanted to explain more about this before I go any further with my late night experience of yesterday.

Halifax Retro has been a source of motivation and inspiration to us in that it literally and literarily forces us to find out what is really going on with our earth; our earth being the catalyst of this research, discovery, and literary activism. While discovering the political, social, and environmental factors that are plaguing, aiding, hibernating, idling, and influencing our environment, both near and far. Combined with being counterculture and indie-writers, we have inevitably become intertwined in this foray of knowledge and feel compelled to communicate and stimulate awareness around various causes for concern. "Living for the Earth, Not Just On It" has become a common phrase used throughout Halifax Retro’s publication, communication, and online development. It’s hard to ignore what is going on once it has truly hit you. Once you’re a pickle you can never be a cucumber again.

So, with that said, we have embarked on a life journey to not only learn how to help, how to become involved, and how to make changes within our own lifestyles, the one thing that all writers and contributors of Halifax Retro share is the need to spread the word, and to give those who feel insignificant in this fight to understand why they aren’t, and to give them tools to become an activist in their everyday life. It requires passion, and passion such as this requires knowledge. We don’t only encourage reading our own content (as many publications and media outlets would wish to have it), we want to stimulate interest for a lifetime of self-learning. Hence why our website will eventually have a "FreeSkool" where members can run online lessons on anything they wish to educate about. We feel that Atlantic Canada has that powerful youth mentality of making changes, speaking out, and influencing policy. Just as they did in the 60’s – the counterculture of those days was comprised mostly of University students. Halifax has the most condensed post-secondary environment in Canada. We can be the change we want to see. We are the role-models.

Along with the website, Halifax Retro will be rolling out other projects. Right now, we are only two people in a small apartment building, but our writers and readers are helping this happen.

One of the things we do to expand our minds in unfamiliar areas is watching documentaries of all kinds. Last night, I was hard hit and completely devastated in my perception of the world, and some forms of humankind. The thing that stormed in my living room last night was life-altering. I just had to keep reminding myself that Halifax Retro is a learning process, and we aren’t perfect. This is what it’s all about – is being shaken to the core and compelled to make changes. If anything is able to make you change the way you think of the natural world and the natural order of things, it is Earthlings.





Earthlings is a brutal documentary that goes into great depth about our power-trip as human beings, and our utter ignorance about relating and caring for all living creatures – - we are all earthlings, after all. This brilliant and well acclaimed (yet suspiciously invisible) film is a discourse on how we have come to treat the defenseless and completely innocent creatures of the world to fulfill our own toxic egos. This isn’t just a soft-core Discovery Channel portrayal, this is a typically banned and hard-core look at what our consumerist world has come to, and leaves you staring at the TV 10 minutes after the credits begin rolling, and asking, “for what?”.

I think the image that will haunt me forever will be the skinning of a young calf for its hide, while it was still alive. This isn’t just a “shed” of skin - we are talking about skinning their fat and skin off until there is only muscle to be seen, with a blinking eyeball looking fearfully into the camera.

I’m not going to lie. I used to wonder what the big deal was, even thinking to myself sometimes, “if someone threw red paint on my leather jacket, they’d be sorry”. This video speaks to precisely, "… we want to believe that they aren’t talking about our hotdogs, our jackets. That ours came from a place where it wasn’t that bad…”. It simply isn’t true. At all.

I am greatful for having watched this film. I am doing my best to live as vegetarian/ vegan as possible now. It will be a learning process, and a challenging one at that, but armed with a bite of reality, the conscious is at play now.

Please watch this film.


… and Stay Bizzy.