Archive for September, 2021

In Other Innovacorp News…

In Other Innovacorp News…

September 29, 2021 at 1:10 pm

Tim Bousquet of the Halifax Examiner has been making the point that the $104 million Innovacorp made on its META exit could be used to fund affordable housing in Nova Scotia. He even did the math: For the record, $104 million would pay for 80 apartments at $1,000/month rent forRead More

Revisiting the Unicorn

Revisiting the Unicorn

September 29, 2021 at 1:07 pm

This week, I’m going to continue my examination of Innovacorp’s “unicorn” investment, spurred, in part, by the Cape Breton Post’s take, which appeared in Monday’s print edition wrapped in a piece of puffery about Bob Pelley, Innovacorp’s regional manager in Cape Breton. The Post — like the CBC before itRead More

Procrastination is Killing Us

Procrastination is Killing Us

September 29, 2021 at 1:06 pm

Great ideas to address climate change already exist — there are thousands of them — but they need to be categorized by the degree of impact they would have on climate change mitigation. Luckily, some authors have attempted this categorization. Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse GlobalRead More

Tracking a COVID Vax Rumor

Tracking a COVID Vax Rumor

September 29, 2021 at 1:04 pm

I heard a strange rumor this weekend about anti-vaxxers in Halifax paying a guy — the same guy, in the story I heard — to get vaccinated for them and provide them with proof of vaccination. My first thought was that this had “urban myth” written all over it (theRead More

What Will $9M Buy CBRM?

What Will $9M Buy CBRM?

September 29, 2021 at 1:02 pm

Credit where credit is due: Tim Houston’s Tory government has followed through on an election promise and doubled funding to Nova Scotia’s municipalities, an increase of $32 million. The increase is for one year only but Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister John Lohr, who made the announcement last Friday, saysRead More

Garden tools rack. (Photo by Dereckson, CC BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, from Wikimedia Commons)

Gardening Tips: Tool Time

September 29, 2021 at 1:00 pm

Editor’s Note: We’re reaching into Michelle’s Smith’s archives for posts as useful now as when they were first published, like this one, which we last shared on 7 October 2020.   What to do this week You might need a garden shovel or something similar in the next month orRead More

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

September 24, 2021 at 11:24 am

Owl’s Head Thank you Michael Gorman of CBC Halifax for this story about Owl’s Head, the provincial park whose pending protected status was removed by the former Liberal government to open the way for its sale to a golf course developer. Gorman FOIPOPed documents that show that in late 2019Read More

Innovacorp’s ‘Unicorn’

Innovacorp’s ‘Unicorn’

September 22, 2021 at 4:51 pm

Innovacorp, the province’s venture capital crown corporation, has won the VC lottery — it bet $3 million on a Dartmouth firm that makes “high-performance materials used in the defense and aerospace industries” and collected $104 million when that firm went public in the US (it’s Meta Materials NASDAQ:MMAT). How pleasedRead More

Daycare in Long-Term Care?

Daycare in Long-Term Care?

September 22, 2021 at 4:49 pm

The Province of Nova Scotia has announced a pilot program to provide onsite childcare for nursing staff, particularly continuing care assistants (CCAs), at the Cove Guest Home in Sydney. During the CBC Information Morning Cape Breton report on the daycare pilot, Cheryl Deveaux, chief executive officer and administrator of theRead More

Waitress taking order.  (Photo by

Labour Pains: Restaurants

September 22, 2021 at 4:47 pm

Did you catch local restaurateur Danny Ellis’ bellyaching tour of local media outlets this summer? Ellis, who operates four CBRM eateries (two of which — the Portside on the Sydney waterfront and the Boardwalk Tap Room & Eatery in what used to be the meeting room in the Civic CentreRead More