Editor’s Note: On April 28, The CBC’s Tom Ayers reported that the CBRM will actually pay $3.8 million for the Nickerson property. The $2.5 million budgeted for 2022-23 represents the outstanding balance. The Spectator apologizes for the error.   Did you happen to catch the price tag on the land theRead More

Editor’s Note: This longform piece by Michelle first appeared on 19 April 2017.   There are many reasons I farm. Foremost is the welcome diversity of the work, the many physical and mental challenges – always a new puzzle to take apart and solve. It also involves extended periods ofRead More

CBRM council voted on a 5%, across-the-board — residential and commercial — property tax cut this week. I think this chart, from the province’s Open Data portal, helps provide some perspective on this. It shows average Nova Scotia municipal residential property tax rates from 2009/10 to 2020/21. (It’s interactive, youRead More

When we left off, CBRM District 8 Councilor James Edwards (who, as noted in Part I of this article on the CBRM tax cut, is a former Canada Revenue employee), was agreeing that he too, would like to pay less tax, but arguing that to be “fiscally responsible,” any reductionRead More

This week I had a chance to visit Glace Bay’s Town House to find out what they’ve been up to lately. I was intrigued by the organization but not well informed — I was aware of the clothing depot, but not much else. But in a wide-ranging conversation with ExecutiveRead More

The Spectator will be taking this Friday off in honor of Easter and chocolate and bunnies and spring and the need for a day off, so there will be no Fast & Curious this week. We’ll be back as usual next Wednesday so really, you’ll barely have time to missRead More

Editor’s Note: This column first appeared on 11 April 2018 and you’ll notice the opening the line could have been written today. Told you Michelle’s tips were timeless.     What to do this week Well, perhaps you noticed that it snowed this week, so maybe we have to goRead More

An explainer explained As someone who has made a practice of arguing with documents (type “Okay, stop” into this website’s search bar if you require evidence), I was beyond delighted to discover that a group of around 15 “cryptocurrency researchers and critics” had recently ganged up on a 14,000-word NewRead More

The headline on a 2021 article  from the Nova Scotia Health (NSH) website declares: Cape Breton Regional Hospital’s new energy centre will be cleaner, greener and more efficient What struck me when I first read this was that it didn’t simply say the new energy center will be “clean, greenRead More

More than 100 years after shipyard workers in Lunenburg, N.S., shaped wood and metal to build the Bluenose schooner, the tradition of local, hand-built excellence lives on. But now, instead of fishing boats, it’s fighter jets — Brett Ruskin, CBC, 6 April 2022   It’s such an apt comparison. LikeRead More