When last I spoke to Shauna Walters in these pages, it was November 2020 and she was coming off a successful series of summer concerts, staged in her own backyard. I knew (because we’ve talked about it) that her goal was to one day launch a full-fledged spring festival soRead More

Innkeeping In terms of sheer words per minute, I think Episode 11 of Annette Verschuren’s Bet On Me podcast — “The Power of Place: The connection between culture and economy with Zita Cobb, Innkeeper of Fogo Island Inn” — has to be the winner. Because man, can Zita Cobb talk.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

Ask Marta Singh, the guest storyteller at this year’s Isle of Story Festival, how she became a storyteller and you get — what else? — a story. “The real story,” she says with a laugh, although it’s “not romantic, I’m telling you!” It had been three years that I hadRead More

Maker Faire When I spoke to Kim Desveaux this week about our impending makerspace, she mentioned something I didn’t have room for in my article but that I wanted to touch on today. A makerspace is exactly what it sounds like: a space, equipped with tools and materials, in whichRead More

With the modest aim of compiling a comprehensive list of Cape Breton cultural events (!), the Spectator has been working hard on an Events Calendar feature, which launches today. I’m using a WordPress plugin employed by many sites but I decided to spring for the “filter” add-on which makes theRead More

Twenty-three years, almost half my life, I’ve been involved in the Gobblefest music festival in one capacity or another. A lot of people give me credit as founder of the festival but I don’t see myself that way – the festival happened and continues to happen because there was aRead More

Ed’s Books and More on Charlotte Street in Sydney is a secondhand bookstore with wildly varied stock and many labelled bookshelves in lots of sections—rooms, corners, alcoves, a dead-end book alley. Last Wednesday, while I was there for this article, I almost collided with a customer hectically emerging from theRead More

It’s still a wonder to me that I can, from home or anywhere with internet access, go to the Cape Breton Regional Library’s website and search all Nova Scotia public library catalogs for a particular book I want to borrow, or just browse the collections to find something interesting, makeRead More

PR: You’re Doing it Wrong Christina Lamey, who is either CBRM Mayor Cecil Clarke’s personal spokesperson or the CBRM’s official spokesperson, depending on what day of the week it is, gave a master class in public relations on Wednesday. Proving she is worth every penny of the $75,000 we payRead More