Donald Campbell, Jr knows a thing or two about going hungry. The owner of That’s Right Roofing & Renovations, who recently placed third in the heavily contested District 12 race in the CBRM election, suffered physical hunger pains when he was a boy – and blames poverty, in his characteristicallyRead More

I ran across this ad for a CBRM Communications/Information Officer in the course of researching this week’s treatise on access to information. The closing date for applications is tomorrow — November 19 — so there’s still time for any of you not daunted by the list of 21 — TWENTY-ONERead More

Briefing The headline from today’s COVID update with Premier Stephen McNeil and Dr. Robert Strang is that we now have community spread in the Central Zone of the province. Dr. Strang said Public Health has been unable to trace seven of the cases announced recently to travel and they “haveRead More

Briefing Today’s COVID briefing was as much about Premier Stephen McNeil’s decision to call the house into session for one day — December 18 — in order to prorogue until February 2021, but I will deal with the disease first before returning to the politics. Nova Scotia announced two newRead More

Vaccine Dream News that Pfizer has a vaccine that is 90% effective against COVID-19 cheered people and markets alike this past week (airline and cruise line stocks leapt for joy). But there are so many caveats attached to the discovery that I’m pressing pause on my own jig of joyRead More

On 3 July 2015, over a year before I launched the Cape Breton Spectator, I made a Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOIPOP) application to the clerk of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality, Deborah Campbell — now Deborah Campbell-Ryan — requesting: Any communications between Mayor Cecil Clarke orRead More

A complaint has been filed with the Labour Standards Division of Nova Scotia against the Sydney Call Centre for breaching provincial labor laws. I should know. I filed it. I sent my four-page complaint with more than 40 supporting documents on October 2, alleging the center, which employs over 600Read More

I have recently been working on a bioethics textbook. Bioethics is a discipline largely driven by case studies – short narratives intended to make the ethical issues under discussion clear, real and urgent. Consequently, many bioethics textbooks include case studies. I want to do something different in this month’s column,Read More

If writing about poverty, homelessness, food banks and the need for a guaranteed annual income (GAI) could solve any of the problems associated with such matters, I would surely have solved a few over lo! these many years I’ve been contributing to the Spectator. The battle cry at the momentRead More

Editor’s Note: To mark Remembrance Day, we’re republishing this 2018 article by our War and Peace columnist Sean Howard.   When you see millions of the mouthless dead Across your dreams in pale battalions go, Say not soft things as other men have said, That you’ll remember. For you needRead More