As noted elsewhere, I spent far too many hours this weekend reading issues of the Cape Breton Post from December 1984, in which I found very little of relevance to my ongoing series on our failure, that year, to bury the power lines on Charlotte Street, but a great dealRead More

Summer, I have decided, is a time for experimentation. When the thermometer hits 30 degrees Celsius, the only thing I want to dive deeply into is the Bras d’Or Lake, so this week, I’m going to try something a little different. Instead of covering one topic in depth, I’m goingRead More

Talking Turkey I learned recently that in Scottish Gaelic, a turkey is a “cearc-fhrangach” or a French chicken. (Chicken is “cearc,” France is “An Fhraing.”) Turkeys, as you no doubt know, are native to the eastern part of North America, not France, so why did my ancestors think they wereRead More

Okay, stop: FOIPOP edition Sometime on Tuesday, as I was working away on this week’s edition of the Spectator, I received a notice in my mailbox of what I assumed was a package waiting for me at the Post Office. December packages are usually well worth the trip to theRead More

Dorian I begin with a shout-out to those of you who have yet to get your power back and are…unable to read this. Yeah, that didn’t really make much sense, did it? I want to be very cautious writing about Nova Scotia’s Dorian experience, given the Bahamas’ Dorian experience, whichRead More