The Xaverian Weekly’s Local Gift Guide 2020

COVID-19 has taken a toll on small businesses. This holiday season, shopping local will help your favourite neighbourhood shops keep their doors open! In Antigonish, there is no shortage of local businesses to choose from. Below, we have included some gift ideas from some of our personal favorites as inspiration. Happy shopping, and Happy Holidays!

1. Give the Gift of a New Tattoo

New ink can be expensive, so help out a loved one this year with a gift certificate to one of our local tattoo shops! Dane Hiltz at Freedom Electric Tattoo offers a range of tattoo styles, and also sells prints of some of his designs for a moderate price, which lend character to any room. A great gift for any tattoo enthusiast! 

At Folklore Tattoo, Emily Kane and Colleen Murray offer specialized, strictly Blackwork tattoos. While they aren’t offering gift certificates this year, Emily also sells screen-printed totes and apparel with unique designs on her Instagram page!

2. ...or of a Great Hair Day 

Vivid Hair and Body is well known for their magnificent hair coloring and modern cuts. Not only do they have gift certificates available for purchase, but they also stock scrunchies and various other hair products. There’s also Vivid Sidekick, a permanent popup featured by the salon, which sells homeware, clothing, and other accessories. 

3. Deck the Halls with a Locally Grown Christmas Tree (and the table with a chicken!)

Loch Abar Chicken Farm is the perfect place to support local. If you’re in the market for a tree, look no further! These farmers are also well known for their chickens, so if you’re not in the mood for a traditional Christmas turkey, a local chicken is the perfect way to celebrate!

4. Anyone for Five Golden Rings?

Cameron’s Jewelry is a great local option for all your jewelry needs. The kind and knowledgeable staff would be happy to help you find anything you may be in the market for – golden rings, necklaces, watches, and all sorts of other giftware. 

5. Treat Your Favourite Foodie

A favourite among the Antigonish community, Peace by Chocolate recently released new items in time for the holidays. Whether your loved ones are fans of milk, dark, caramel, nuts, or fruit—they’re sure to have something delicious in stock! Pair the chocolate with a t-shirt or the Hadhad’s new book, and you can check any chocolate-lover off your list. 

For the chef in your life, you might consider gifting some fun new seasonings. Big Cove Foods offers a variety of unique and delicious spice blends that make dinners shockingly easy! You can find all their products (including some fun jellies) online, or a smaller selection at Happenstance in downtown Antigonish. 

Just across the street at the Five to a Dollar, you might also pick up some fun flavours of Tidal Salt, harvested straight from the Nova Scotian sea! The company’s goal is to relocalize sea salt, and they sell their product in individual jars or sample-sets.

Not sure the actual food gifts would make it to Christmas? Why not pick up a giftcard to your loved one’s favourite restaurant! The Tall & Small Cafe, The Waffle Bus, Gabrieau’s Bistro, Justamere Cafe & Bistro, Little Christo’s, Townhouse, Snow Queen, Love Eat Asian, Myer’s Tea Room, and the Brownstone all offer gift certificates in any amount. At The Waffle bus, you can also pick up packaged coffee and their logo tee-shirts—perfect for the waffle lover in your life!

6. …or Your Favourite Fashionista 

Trendy’s Clothing and Shoe Shop is your stop for a slightly higher price range gift. Trendy’s offers a great selection of footwear, and some very nice clothing. If you’re searching for Burks or Blundstones this season, this is the perfect place to go. Sheepskin wool insoles from Lismore Farm, another local business, are a great compliment to a new pair of shoes! 

Wallace Leathers is your one stop shop for all things leather, they carry a variety of items including beautiful leather gloves which are perfect to keep you warm all winter, shoes, and handcrafted leather journals. Check out their facebook page!

Photo by Sarah Laffin

7. Give the Gift of Relaxation

Antigonish Nail Boutique is skilled at full sets of nails. They also do manicures and fills, making a gift certificate to the shop a great gift for any nail lover. Along with nailcare, they also sell Hempz Lotion, which is perfect for a stocking stuffer, or a homemade spa kit! 

If you aren’t a fan of the at-home spa experience, a day at Baile Mor Salonspa might be more up your ally. The spa offers a number of different relaxing experiences, including massages and facials!

For a Gold Dust Tanning is a great place to get a tan, and pretend you got to go somewhere warm over the holidays instead of being stuck in the cold. Pick up a gift card here and help your loved one pretend they aren’t stuck in the snow. 

8. For The People Who Have Everything

The Plum Tree Gift Shoppe is a great place to find the perfect Christmas ornament for your loved one, or pick up a new Christmas-themed print for your wall. They also carry candles, journals, socks, and sweet treats—great for stuffing those stockings!

The Posh Peppermint is another great place to buy something fun or unique for someone who has everything. They carry a huge variety of gifts, including home decor, candles, ornaments, art, and the quintessentially Nova Scotian gurgle jug. 

Briefly mentioned earlier, Happenstance also stocks a wide range of gifts, and specializes in things unique to Nova Scotia. Pewter, tartan, pottery, and a range of books by Nova Scotian authors are just a few of the treasures you might find here. A great place to shop for someone who might not make it home for the holidays this year!

The Antigonish Farmers Market is also home to a lot of great gift options. Now in their new building, the Market offers many vendors and is the often the perfect place to find options within your price range while supporting local. The market is open every Saturday from 8:30am to 1:00pm, and will host a series of special Christmas markets Wednesday evenings in December.

And finally, Red Sky Gallery is the best place to get all of the cards you need this holiday season. Each card is made by a local or provincial artist, and would be a treat to find in the mailbox. 

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We’ve tried to include as many local businesses as possible in this guide, but ultimately only had room for so many. If we’ve missed your favourite, or if you run a local business you think we should know about, please tell us (and our readers) about it in the comments below!

Local Love

Support local businesses

Have you ever had a cherished store in your own home- town shut down? If so, you know the feeling of having to hear the heartbreaking news of your absolute favourite local store close its doors forever.

This is becoming more and more common in our society; locally owned businesses that used to flourish with customers are now at a point where they do not have enough customers to generate the type of revenue they would need to keep their lights on. I’m encouraging you to start or continue supporting the local businesses within your own town. 

When you choose to spend your money at a local business whether a restaurant, art gallery, coffee shop, or grocery store, you’re supporting the business and the individuals that help run it. 

Take places in Antigonish such as the Townhouse, The Waffle Bus and the Tall and Small Café, all three of these businesses sell delicious food. The ingredients for these dishes are coming from farms in the surrounding area, fresh vegetables from Bethany Gardens, farmed chicken from Loch Abar Farmers or fish from fisherman living in the area.

The point is, these farmers and fisherman also making a living off be able to a sell their products to these businesses, but they’re only able to keep doing that just as long as the doors of the business keep ringing.

You might think yes that’s all wonderful, but I don’t have the money for locally priced foods and that’s a fair point. When you eat local it tends to be a bit pricier than say something like McDonald’s (which might I add is corporately owned, and has mass produced food which is not only bad for the environment but also bad for you, I digress) but trust me it’s really worth it. It might seem like a pain paying that little extra, but in the long run you’re helping out more people than you can imagine.

Investing your money into these businesses means keeping a community alive, a community that you might very well depend on for your own job, family, or school. When local business die, there are jobs lost, and people will have to migrate out of the town to find other jobs, soon it’ll become a ghost town.

When you purchase local, you’re also able to get to know the people who own the business, who by the way really appreciate you and they want to get to know you. You end up building connections and relationships that you otherwise might not have had. It’s pretty hard to build a connection with a huge company that only cares about getting your money and not getting to know you.

I hope my words to you have made you change your mind a little bit. Next time  you’re feeling hungry or wanting to pick up some new groovy home décor, consider supporting a business ran by your neighbor.

In my closing words, I’d like to give my farewell to Fixed Coffee & Baking. As a Newfoundlander I was stunned to hear the news like the rest of St. John’s last Wednesday that Fixed will be closing their doors permanently on March 10. I’ll miss your delicious coffee, food, laughs and warmth, and your sparkling drinks in the sweet muggy summers. Yet another business falling victim to the lack of local support.

Calling All Beer Connoisseurs

10.3% brew is local company’s first bottled beer

Half Cocked Brewing Company released its first bottled beer Tapped and Feathered on December 22, 2018 and it’s flavourful. With an alcohol by volume of 10.3%, the new maple batch is a warm buzz in a bottle with a hint of vanilla and chocolate flavour.

The beer is a maple sap imperial stout with quality ingredients sourced from North Grant in Antigonish County. After aging in a Glenora whiskey barrel for 6 months, the beer is bottled. Sap from Haveracre maple farm in Antigonish is slightly noticeable. The beer’s vanilla flavor comes from the oak wood of the barrel used for aging. 

On a shelf in the staff room sits a small jar of the whiskey that was absorbed in the wood of the barrel when the beer was aged. It smells powerful and smooth. Co-owner Greg Oicle commented on the beer’s high alcohol by volume, “The high gravity makes it safer to age. For barrel-aging beer, you want the gravity higher because you have less likelihood of bacteria and yeast or other contaminants over time. It went into the barrel at 8.5% and it came back from Glenora at 10.3%.”

The warm feeling one gets from drinking whiskey is a unique feature of Tapped and Feathered. 

A bottle of 650ml sells for $17. Of the 286 bottles made, half of them are already sold.

Photo: Facebook @Half Cocked Brewing Company

In addition to sourcing local ingredients, Half Cocked Brewing Company supports local business. Luc Boudreau is the artist from the Maritimes, creator of Maritime Grime, responsible for the top-notch label design on the Tapped and Feathered bottle. 

Boudreau is also the designer of the company’s logo symbolic of the family’s chicken farm that was built by Oicle’s grandfather and partners in the 1960s.

Oicle’s parents bought the farm in the 1980s. As the oldest boy growing up on a farm raising 24 000 chickens, Oicle is familiar with a strong work ethic. In the summer of 1999 before he started his Geology degree at StFX, Oicle worked on building an additional barn where Half Cocked Brewing Company is now located.

The bottling gear for Tapped and Feathered is provided by Big Spruce Brewing, a company from Nyanza, Nova Scotia. Big Spruce Brewing has been supporting Oicle since the early days when they delivered growlers to The Townhouse Brewpub & Eatery for sale. The business model quickly evolved and Oicle now does growler fillings and pints weekly on Thursday evenings at their location.

Oicle is the head brewer and majority shareholder of Half Cocked Brewing Company. His passion for home brewing started in 2014 when Oicle and his brother experimented with recipes. 

The inspiration came from walking into the NSLC and   noticing only a handful of beers were made in Nova Scotia. He remembered, “A year before we opened, we were refining our recipes by brewing for friends and family.”

Founded in August of 2017, Oicle is already looking at brewing equipment to expand the business, “In the course of a month I make 800 to 1000 litres of beer. With a new system, I can be making that much in a day.”

StFX students confirm that the Half Cocked Brewing Company honors its mission to brew delectable, yet down to earth beer. After tasting Tapped and Feathered, Joseph Goodwin wrote, “The variety of flavours create an experience unlike any other beer and despite its robustness and high alcohol content, it is unbelievably smooth.” 

Julia McKaig described Tapped and Feathered, “The first dark beer to ever perk my ears up. Perfect for an uplifting night. Heed warning, it may keep things lively until morning.”

Stop by the brewery on Thursdays from four to seven for excellent service and       quality products at 1290 off the old Highway 245 in Antigonish.