My summer 2019 reading followed a truly strange and definitely unexpected path, one with an interesting and educational, if horrifying, twist that saw me become absorbed in the devastation and death of war. It began with a paperback, torn into two pieces and lacking a back cover, hidden away amongRead More
Picnic for the Planet News that 250+ media organizations have pledged to do a week of climate change coverage in the lead-into the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York on September 23 has made me vow to pull up my socks and make a point of including anRead More
Free the information CBRM Municipal Clerk Deborah Campbell Ryan got back to me Tuesday night about another FOIPOP I submitted back in April looking for information about a matter before council. Her original estimate of the fee I would be required to pay for this (public) information was $215 andRead More
Editor’s Note: This is the fifth in a series of articles about the conclusions of Canada’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) inquiry. You can read the first one here, the second here, the third here and the fourth here. How might reclaiming the rightful “power andRead More
My summer 2019 reading followed a truly strange and definitely unexpected path, one with an interesting and educational, if horrifying, twist that saw me become absorbed in the devastation and death of war. It began with a paperback, torn into two pieces and lacking a back cover, hidden away amongRead More
Earlier this week, as of this writing, I lost a very dear friend and her death has made me reflect on the ethical dimensions of friendship. Most contemporary moral philosophers agree that there are three major ethical approaches in the Western philosophical tradition, utilitarianism, Kantianism and virtue ethics. Surprisingly, itRead...
When I saw the headline “Life in lockup“on the front page of Tuesday’s Cape Breton Post I was impressed — a full, front page story (and two additional pages inside) exploring life in the Cape Breton Correctional Facility? SaltWire actually doing a valuable “deep dive?” Excellent. And then I readRead More
Picnic for the Planet News that 250+ media organizations have pledged to do a week of climate change coverage in the lead-into the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York on September 23 has made me vow to pull up my socks and make a point of including anRead More
You may have noticed that some American billionaires are actually anxious to give away some of those billions to help those who fall, well, billions short of having a half-decent chance at something even close to the good life. Are the guys with the big bucks “bucking for the finals”Read More
My summer 2019 reading followed a truly strange and definitely unexpected path, one with an interesting and educational, if horrifying, twist that saw me become absorbed in the devastation and death of war. It began with a paperback, torn into two pieces and lacking a back cover, hidden away amongRead More
What to do this week The Spectator‘s gardening columnist will be back to her regular schedule next week. (Full disclosure: the Spectator forgot to tell her we were resuming the weekly publication schedule as of September 11. Sorry Michelle!) Luckily, she has written oodles of advice for September gardeners, andRead More
After a wonderful summer on a bi-weekly publication schedule, I had fully expected to be back to business as usual this week, but the universe had different ideas. On Sunday I lost one of my oldest and dearest friends — an actual “friend of my youth” — and I foundRead...
I am sitting in a board game café as I write this month’s column. I have my phone on the table in front of me, and I am surrounded by young people, most of whom are using computers and/or are holding phones in their hands. Our phones and our computersRead...
To set the tone for their recent article on Twenty-First Century Nuclear Deterrence , four senior American nuclear war-planners approvingly quote from Arms and Influence, Thomas Schelling’s classic 1966 defense of ‘coercive diplomacy’ in the atomic age: The power to hurt – the sheer unacquisitive, unproductive power to destroy thingsRead...
What to do this week The first frost is still (I hope) a while away but parts of the garden are starting to look tired and tapped out. As the harvest moves through the garden, it’s important to clean up as you go. It’s time to pull up or tillRead...
I did not weep, I turned to stone inside…Dante, Inferno I rarely cry, but on the evening of 8 December 1987, glued to radio coverage of the signing of a nuclear arms control treaty between the United States and Soviet Union, I wept with a relief I had neverRead More
“Excitement is building for what’s expected to be a multi-million dollar development along the Cabot Trail by a private firm with European connections.” — Cape Breton Post, 17 August 2019 That’s the opening to a Cape Breton Post article about Czech-born, New York-based developer Joseph Balaz (né Josef Baláž) andRead More
On 9 August 2019, the Nunavut sheriff’s office, acting on a statement of claim and warrant from the Federal Court in Halifax, “arrested” the Royal Canadian Geographic Society (RCGS) Resolute — a cruise ship operated by One Ocean Expeditions (OOE). The incident was made public on August 19, by CBCRead More
Editor’s Note: This is the fifth in a series of articles about the conclusions of Canada’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) inquiry. You can read the first one here, the second here, the third here and the fourth here. How might reclaiming the rightful “power andRead More
