I don’t know if it’s really necessary to “disclose” that I attended journalism school with reporter and author Janice Landry but I am going to do so (and yes, I am well aware that there is a fine line between “disclosing” something and “boasting about it;” I promise to walkRead More
The smiling faces on the sold-out crowd leaving the Highland Arts Theatre (HAT) last Friday night were proof positive they had been part of something truly wonderful. The HAT’s Tribute to The Rotary Show was an energetic and enthusiastic look back at the Rotary productions that were musical staples in SydneyRead More
As I write this column, I am struggling to make ethical sense of current events. How can politicians like Donald Trump shamelessly tell lie after lie, and still have a significant number of people willing to support them? How can men who make or act in sensitive and enlightened filmsRead...
“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
Summer is considered the best time for light reading, not for serious books that could actually destroy a beautiful sunny day on the beach or the deck, but I recently dove into Crimes of the Father, the 2015 novel by the prolific Irish-Australian author Thomas Keneally. Right off the bat,Read...
My neighbor and I recently paid a visit to a new distillery that has just opened up in Sudbury. The distillery, called Crosscut, is located in a very industrial part of an already industrial city and has tried to capture this industrial element in its tasting room: the floor isRead More
Fifteen years ago, my first assignment for The Cape Bretoner (a magazine that unfortunately ceased publication in 2006) was a story on homelessness in Cape Breton. I don’t recall if the 2003 winter was as severe as the past few weeks have been, but there were signs of hope andRead More
John Phalen, manager of economic development and major projects for the CBRM, went to council on Tuesday morning with a request for clarity on the municipality’s planned contribution to a new central library. His sudden need for clarity was driven not by the need for a new central library (althoughRead...
Sydney-Victoria figured in a Canadian Top-10 list this week but it’s nothing to celebrate: we’re one of the 10 federal ridings with the highest levels of child poverty in the country. The list is found in the latest report from Campaign 2000, a Canadian anti-poverty group that takes its nameRead More
A CAPE BRETON SPECTATOR/HALIFAX EXAMINER SPECIAL INVESTIGATION Editor’s Note: This is a follow-up to Joan Baxter’s four-part series on the push for mines and quarries in Nova Scotia. (Read Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV.) Cabinet shuffle Nova Scotia’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is noRead More
My neighbor and I recently paid a visit to a new distillery that has just opened up in Sudbury. The distillery, called Crosscut, is located in a very industrial part of an already industrial city and has tried to capture this industrial element in its tasting room: the floor isRead More
Welcome to this week’s installment of “Where’s Cecil?,” my ongoing effort to keep track of Mayor Cecil Clarke’s campaign appearances to judge just how much time he’s taking from his day job to travel the province in pursuit of the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Nova Scotia. AsRead More
What to do this week This week is a good time to talk about pruning tomatoes and hilling potatoes. Perhaps the most talked about controversy in home gardening is whether or not to even prune tomato plants in the first place. Some people swear by pruning, raving about how muchRead More
Poll vaunting There’s been a lot of hand-wringing this past week or so over that New Dawn Enterprises-commissioned poll asking, among other things, about possible successors to Cecil Clarke as CBRM mayor. I saw one impassioned critique that insisted the big problem with the whole thing was that Cecil Clarke’sRead More
CBRM councilors pushing for information on the progress of the second cruise ship berth ran into a wall during Tuesday’s regular monthly meeting (held on an irregular day and at an irregular time). District 10 Councilor Darren Bruckschwaiger tried his best to get Public Works Manager Wayne MacDonald to admit,Read...
This couldn’t have been more timely: just as we’re all talking about ports again, veteran journalist and sometime Spectator contributor Rick Grant got in touch to say he’d attended the Halifax Needham PC Association AGM on June 20 and had taken the opportunity to quiz the four PC leadership candidatesRead More
In 2016, consultant CPCS completed a 70-page, $80,000 report for the Province of Nova Scotia and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) entitled The Nova Scotia Transportation Sector: Global Challenges and Opportunities in which it weighed the relative merits of Nova Scotia’s existing and proposed container terminals and concluded that:Read More
In every cry of every Man, In every Infant’s cry of fear, In every voice: in every ban, The mind-forg’d manacles I hear William Blake Was the June 12 Singapore Summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un a breakthrough or a let-down, a successRead More
Welcome to this week’s installment of “Where’s Cecil?,” my ongoing effort to keep track of Mayor Cecil Clarke’s campaign appearances to judge just how much time he’s taking from his day job to travel the province in pursuit of the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Nova Scotia. AsRead...
