Changing of the (Tourism) Guard A spectator alerted me to this job posting on Career Beacon: It appears longtime Destination Cape Breton Association (DCBA) CEO Mary Tulle will be leaving as of 1 February 2019. Destination Cape Breton is the “official Destination Marketing Organization (DMO) for Cape Breton Island,” accordingRead More
I have undertaken to erect in the Town of Sydney a building intended for a Convent Boarding School for the county of Cape Breton. The need of such an institution is an acknowledged one. On several occasions during the last fifteen years I have been urged by persons from variousRead More
Sister City A sharp-eyed Spectator drew my attention to an odd little fact in that terrible story of the Canadian sentenced to death in China. Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, a 36-year-old from Abbotsford, BC, was arrested in 2014 and found guilty in 2016 of participating in a drug ring that soughtRead...
“No leasing land to China even for one day” I heard this story on Democracy Now as I was drifting off to sleep the other night and woke up the next morning thinking I’d dreamt it, but I looked it up and it was real. Here’s the Voice of AmericaRead More
The signs of Christmas are everywhere and I’m not referring to the lights, the decorations or the concerts. No, actually, I’m thinking more along the lines of the Salvation Army Christmas Kettle Campaign, the CBC’s Light Up A Life Campaign for Feed Nova Scotia, the Christmas Daddies Telethon — thoseRead More
![Gated community, SaskatooParihav at the English language Wikipedia [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)]v](https://capebretonspectator.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/gated_community_sk_feature-135x135.png)
The Spectator’s Ethicist, Rachel Haliburton, provides convincing — and sometimes counter-intuitive — arguments as to why making the rich pay their fair share of taxes benefits us all.(Read Reason #1 and Reason #2) As faithful readers of the Ethicist column in the Cape Breton Spectator will know, for theRead More
We’re baaaa…aaaaaaack How was your summer? Mine was fantastic. It was full of swimming and reading and barbecue and blackberries and crossword puzzles and G&Ts and cribbage and reunions with long-lost friends and rock-skipping sessions with visiting nephews and one glorious, heartfelt, bonfire sing-a-long to Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded MeRead More
Sister City A sharp-eyed Spectator drew my attention to an odd little fact in that terrible story of the Canadian sentenced to death in China. Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, a 36-year-old from Abbotsford, BC, was arrested in 2014 and found guilty in 2016 of participating in a drug ring that soughtRead...
The signs of Christmas are everywhere and I’m not referring to the lights, the decorations or the concerts. No, actually, I’m thinking more along the lines of the Salvation Army Christmas Kettle Campaign, the CBC’s Light Up A Life Campaign for Feed Nova Scotia, the Christmas Daddies Telethon — thoseRead More
This week, I decided to focus my attention on two (luckily related) stories I’m interested in. Stories I’ve been following for years (eight years for one, one year for the other) but following in a kind of hit-and-miss way. Like I was watching Game of Thrones, but only when IRead...
Jeff Sklarz is the New Haven, Connecticut-based attorney representing the unsecured creditors’ committee in the JNET Communications (parent company of ServiCom) bankruptcy case. I talked to him on Monday about the JNET bankruptcy and I’m combining what he told me with some information I dug up myself to help youRead More
ServiCom, as most readers surely know by now, did not just operate the call center in Sydney. The company also had a call center in Rockford, Illinois (175 Executive Parkway) and two in the nearby town of Machesney Park, Illinois (10100 Forest Hills Road and 9942 N. Alpine Road). OnRead More
The Reverend Dr. David Jefferson Sr., Esquire is the founder, chairman, chief executive officer and president of JNET Communications LLC, which he established in 2003 and which “includes among its family of companies” Vitel Communications, ServiCom and ServiCom Canada — all of which are now listed as “debtors” in courtRead More
![Gated community, SaskatooParihav at the English language Wikipedia [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)]v](https://capebretonspectator.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/gated_community_sk_feature-200x150.png)
The Spectator’s Ethicist, Rachel Haliburton, provides convincing — and sometimes counter-intuitive — arguments as to why making the rich pay their fair share of taxes benefits us all.(Read Reason #1 and Reason #2) As faithful readers of the Ethicist column in the Cape Breton Spectator will know, for theRead More
ServiCom There is absolutely no humor to be found in the announcement that 600 Cape Bretoners have lost their jobs three weeks before Christmas with the closure of the ServiCom call center. Even Mayor Cecil Clarke’s mixing of metaphors (he’s hoping the potential sale of the local ServiCom branch willRead More
CBRM Council met this morning to decide what it’s going to discuss at future meetings. If I understand Mayor Cecil Clarke correctly, he has been compiling this list (which is not exhaustive) based on what he has been hearing from citizens. The topics are “in no order whatsoever” and thisRead More
Our port “developers” — Sydney Harbor Investment Partners (SHIP) formerly Harbour Port Development Partners (HPDP) — have been engaged in promoting the Port of Sydney as a “deep water, transshipment and intermodal mega hub” capable of handling Ultra-Large Container Vessels (ULCV) since 2014 (although we only made it official inRead More
On November 22, US President Donald Trump, asked who should be held accountable for the gruesome murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, pinned the blame on an unlikely suspect: “Maybe the world should be held accountable. Because the world is a vicious place. The world is a very viciousRead More
Editor’s Note: Mayor Cecil Clarke’s contention that discussing council remuneration in camera (and treating elected officials as “personnel”) is a longstanding CBRM practice sent me scuttling to the “CBRM Mayor and Council” clippings file at the McConnell library, to research some of the remuneration (and related) issues council has dealt withRead More
