Halifax — At a press conference held in front of the Halifax Harbour, the city’s esteemed mayor of five years and counting, Mike Savage, gleefully announced his latest endeavour.
“After I postmarked our bid to secure Amazon’s second North American headquarters, I felt freakin’ unstoppable!” Savage squealed. Pausing, he lit a cigarette using a Bluenose-shaped lighter, inhaled deeply and then smashed it onto his forearm.
“Goddamn, what a rush!” he hissed, as the still-smouldering butt fell next to one of the many no-smoking signs on the boardwalk. “The night after the Amazon bid I was having an ice-cold shower in an attempt to rein things in, and it just hit me like a tonne of Cape Breton coal. What better way to get our wonderful city…and, err…province I guess…the attention they deserve other than the freakin’ Olympic Games! So come 2026, all the world’s attention will be focussed on the Atlantic Canadian gem that is HAL-I- FAX!!!”
As he screamed the city’s name, putting extra emphasis on all three syllables, some firecrackers went off and a couple of kids ran out from behind a curtain waving dollar store sparklers.
“There was supposed to be triumphant-sounding music, too,” mumbled Savage, “but my phone ran out of data this morning and the free Wi-Fi downtown is the shits.”
After half an hour of Savage posing for photos in a bobsled, press conference attendees were finally given a chance to ask questions. A reporter from The Manatee inquired whether it would actually be possible for a city the size of Halifax to host the Olympics, especially the winter games, considering the area’s mild climate. “Mild?” asked Savage. “Have you ever heard of wet cold? Well look it up, dumbass — minus 5° in Halifax is the same as minus 50° anywhere else in Canada. Get your facts straight, man.”
Savage then shifted his gaze to the boardwalk and said, “Um…with respect to overall feasibility, we really didn’t let that bother us with the whole Amazon thing. They wanted a population of at least one million people, mass transit and the ability to attract top tech talent.
“We’ve definitely got the tech thing all wrapped up,” continued the straight-faced mayor of a city that chased Uber out of town faster than young Nova Scotians are moving west, “but the population and transit things seemed like trick questions, so we just ignored them.”
When asked if he had any other plans on the horizon, Mayor Savage answered, “Of course we do! My team and I have gotten just so darn good at spending tax dollars on thinking big. We figure we’ll just bypass all that talk about a CFL team and jump straight to the NFL. We’re thinking the Halifax Prime…get it!? We’ll really give the fans a city they can fall in love with.”