Why are Canadian universities charging unconscionably high tuition fees for a virtual online education? It is bad enough that Canada, unlike the Western European Nations France, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland, does not offer free tuition to her beleaguered young citizens but Canadian universities (e.g. Dalhousie) areRead More

Nothing ventured… This week, I have a question for you: Women in this province have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic. You want to help them. Do you: A) invest $5 million in an early-stage venture capital fund focused on women-led startups; B) tear $5 million into tiny shreds andRead More

Yesterday’s CBRM council meeting was a relatively short (just under an hour) and swiftly moving affair. The agenda contained just six items, the first three of which were approval of minutes, approval of agenda and proclamations (CBRM will mark White Cane Week from February 7 to 13). So I willRead More

I’ve been bellyaching for years about how little information we were ever given about Mayor Cecil Clarke’s travel in support of the port project. His expense reports were notoriously shy on detail, as illustrated by this 2018 entry in which he doesn’t even reveal the city in which his “PortRead More

If you follow CBRM politics, are on social media or hold local elected office, you probably know the name Rod Gale. The South Bar resident (who has written for this publication in the past) doesn’t hesitate to share his thoughts, especially on matters about which he’s passionate — like poverty.Read More

When Allie MacInnis (that would be the CBRM Town Crier) posted a picture of the Hoople Block on Facebook last week, I was surprised at all the memories that came flooding back. It’s been years since I left that Ferry Street-Armstrong Court neighborhood where our paternal grandfather settled when heRead More

I recently had a strange dream. In it, I was moving through the crowded food court at my local mall. In my dream, I had visited my favorite haunts — the tea store and the bookshop — and was on my way out to the parking lot. Suddenly, the sleepingRead More

Armored Car Reading about the acting chief of the Cape Breton Regional Police Services (CBRPS), Robert Walsh, ordering up a new, armored, emergency response SUV sparked so many questions for me, beginning with: where is the actual chief of police? The radio silence surrounding the status of Chief Peter McIsaac,Read More

Have you read latest CBRM Central Library study? Anyone outside CBRM reading about the private developer who has been given control over the project would probably write it off as fiction, but we know better, don’t we? The study in question is the service, programs and operational plan commissioned fromRead More

As previewed in last month’s column, on January 22, the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) – popularly known as ‘The Ban Treaty’ – became international law. Hailed by UN Secretary General António Guterres as “a major step toward a world free of nuclear weapons,” itRead More