page isn’t working – currently unable to handle this request

what happened before the issue cropped up?
i see no problems at the site…

afhs.ab.ca/blog/
I just started as web support for these guys so I don’t have any information as to what was going on at that time. It looks like the last activity (post) was on October 28, 2015. The site appears OK to the end users.
The problem is when I log in as Administrator, in the dashboard when I click on Updates or Themes or Plugins or I try to ‘edit’ a page, post or user. I get this message:
The afhs.ab.ca page isn’t working
afhs.ab.ca is currently unable to handle this request.

I have heard of other people having experienced this message and most of those were caused my a plugin or update.
I am however unable to get into Plugins to systematically disable them to troubleshoot. Is there another way to “temporarily” disable them in any of the files directly? Or is there a way to tell plugins and WordPress to update outside of the dashboard?

Any suggestions are appreciated.

There are two ways I know of to disable a plugin outside of the WordPress backend:
1) using FTP, move the plugin’s folder out of the wp-content/plugins folder
OR
2) using filemanager, go into the plugin folder and find the main php module – this is normally the same name as the plugin folder – and rename teh extension from ‘php’ to ‘txt’

and that will disable the plugin.

Ah yes, that worked, had 3 plugins that I removed.
Thank you @juggledad