Festivals

There’s Something in the Wind

There’s Something in the Wind

May 11, 2022 at 11:47 am

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

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

January 28, 2022 at 11:55 am

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

The Latest on the Library

The Latest on the Library

February 3, 2021 at 11:21 am

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

Isle of Story Festival: Marta Singh Has a Tale to Tell

Isle of Story Festival: Marta Singh Has a Tale to Tell

May 2, 2018 at 11:21 am

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

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

April 27, 2018 at 10:51 am

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

Introducing: The Cape Breton Spectator (Cultural) Events Calendar!

Introducing: The Cape Breton Spectator (Cultural) Events Calendar!

November 8, 2017 at 12:01 pm

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

Gobblefest: Celebrating Local Music Since 1994

Gobblefest: Celebrating Local Music Since 1994

October 4, 2017 at 1:30 pm

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, Sydney, NS (Photo via Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/edsbooksandmore/)

Ed’s Books: A Steelworker’s Next Chapter

April 26, 2017 at 12:10 pm

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

Stained-glass window, McConnell Library, Sydney, Nova Scotia (Spectator photo)

The McConnell: More Than a Library

April 5, 2017 at 1:10 pm

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

Fast & Curious: Short Takes On Random Things

Fast & Curious: Short Takes On Random Things

December 21, 2016 at 12:26 pm

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