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

Margaret Young of Sydney writes: Thank you, Dolores Campbell, for your article on the mission begun by the Congregation of Notre Dame in 1885, now to be carried on — much altered, of course — by New Dawn. At the official announcement made by the premier, I was disappointed, althoughRead More

It definitely wasn’t yesterday, but I vividly remember my mother guiding me through the door at the back of Holy Angels Convent and down the stairs to the gymnasium (a room larger than my six-year-old self had ever seen). Grade two was just across from the gym, and down theRead More

Librarians, in my experience, are often bearers of good news. For example, last year, while spending a day in the country, I dropped into the local library just to have a look around. The librarian was friendly and helpful, and not only informed me that I could borrow items thereRead More

Having lost several hours last week browsing the online archive of Cape Breton’s Magazine, I was pleased to hear from Ron Caplan, the founder of that publication, about his latest venture. Caplan’s Breton Books has (with the help of Canada 150) created an eBook called Great Cape Breton Storytelling and,Read 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

In last month’s column, I argued, first, that ethics is concerned not with the world that we actually live in, but with the world that we ought to construct together–with, that is to say, the imaginary world that does not yet exist, but which we might yet create if weRead More

The world we find ourselves in today is often difficult, sometimes frightening and frequently disturbing. It’s hard to watch the evening news and then sleep well at night or even follow our Facebook newsfeeds without realizing that our friends have sharply divergent and incompatible political views which mirror the disagreementsRead More

Last Friday, as former Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz faced allegations of accepting kickbacks from a construction company and former Montreal Mayor Michael Applebaum was found guilty on eight criminal counts including fraud and breach of trust, Philip Slayton’s phone was ringing off the hook. Slayton’s a lawyer by  training —Read More

If you weren’t fortunate enough over the holidays to receive a copy of Canada 365 – Every Day Tells A Story, you should know that it was published to mark the 150th anniversary of our country which, of course, we celebrate this year, 2017. On 1 July 1867, the ProvinceRead More