Slouching toward Green Cove? I happened to visit the Never Forgotten National Memorial website in the course of  researching another story this past week, and was fascinated (and by “fascinated” I mean “terrified”) to discover that Mother Canada is still out there like some rough beast, waiting for its hourRead More

On Tuesday, I received the following email from Aaron Bower, a senior communications adviser with Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC), the government branch tasked with selling “surplus” property, including that once owned by Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation: Just following up based on our last email exchange to let you knowRead More

Tourism Nova Scotia announced visitor traffic numbers to the end of September 2018 this week and it’s not happy news for Cape Breton: licensed room nights sold between January and September this year totaled 367,000 — down 6% over 2017 — and the occupancy rate stood at 53% — downRead More

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction…” Matthew 7:13   In September, I reported the case of the Kings Bay Plowshares Seven (KBP7), a group of veteran Catholic pacifist activists facing draconian punishment for ‘committing’ acts of symbolicRead 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

During last week’s CBRM Council meeting, council approved a plan — brought forward by John Phalen, manager of economic development and major projects — to lease the community room in the Civic Centre for a restaurant. The restaurateur was not named and Phalen’s Issue Paper was submitted too late toRead More

News in the news Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s fall economic statement includes a section labeled, “Support for Canadian Journalism.” I’ve been reading it this morning, but I fear all I really need to know about it is this: Paul Godfrey, the CEO of Postmedia, which publishes the National PostRead More

CBRM Council approved a raise for itself last night in response to the federal government’s decision to end a tax break that allowed elected municipal officials to collect one-third of their salaries tax free. Councilors did it without a word of debate or discussion, presumably because they’d already debated andRead More

CBRM Council has declared its support for the Blue Dot movement. Launched in 2014 with the backing of the David Suzuki Foundation, Blue Dot is a “national campaign to advance the legal recognition of every Canadian’s right to a healthy environment.” In passing its resolution of support last night, theRead More

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) In my last column, I began exploring some arguments that might be given in support of the claim that itRead More