What to do this week What a wonderful fall we have had, but winter is near, and this winter it might be even more important that you take the time now to mulch your trees, bushes and bulbs. We will very likely be getting heaving with the freezing and thawingRead More

Port secrecy CBRM Council met in secret camera on Thursday to discuss something related to the Port of Sydney. Under the Municipal Government Act (MGA), which our mayor sometimes worries about and sometimes doesn’t (see the 31 unannounced in camera meetings held over 22 months in 2014-15 in flagrant violationRead More

As regular readers of the Spectator know, I have an affinity for document-based research — emails, letters, court records, consultants’ reports, council minutes, issue papers, doctoral theses — I am never happier than when up to my elbows in print. But sometimes when you have an issue that you want veryRead More

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of articles on immigration and Cape Breton. Erika Shea, vice president of development for New Dawn Enterprises, says the community development organization plays two roles when it comes to immigration in Cape Breton. The first is as the home of theRead More

My cat recently died. Although his life was relatively long (for a cat, anyway) and, I would like to believe, very happy, his death was sudden and unexpected and has left me feeling deeply bereft. I keep expecting to hear his meow at the door or see his intelligent faceRead More

Did you get that mailer about provincial budget 2017-18 this week? Did yours include a personal “note” from Sydney-Whitney Pier MLA Derek Mombourquette? Mine did. He told me about the budget but he also told me that Sydney-Whitney Pier was a “vibrant melting pot of culture, optimism and most importantly,Read More

The Calculus of Cold As part of my Northern Immersion experience, my daughter and I keep Nunavut CBC on all the time. This means that more than 50% of the programming is in Inuktitut, a language said to be the second most difficult in the world to learn, next toRead More

FOIPOP Follies For the record: I received the response to my freedom of information/protection of privacy (FOIPOP) request to the NS Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal (TIR) for an “unedited” copy of Neil MacNeil’s rail fees report. I got bupkis. There are a couple of additional emails not includedRead More

Here’s the press release Kameron Coal Management Ltd issued on Tuesday: For Immediate Release – Organizational restructure at the Donkin Mine Donkin, NS, November 7, 2017 – Today Kameron Coal Management Ltd. announced an organizational restructure that resulted in a reduction of the workforce at the Donkin Mine in Nova Scotia. “TheRead More

As was noted in Fast and Curious on October 6, the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), recognized for its “work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts toRead More