The smiling faces on the sold-out crowd leaving the Highland Arts Theatre (HAT) last Friday night were proof positive they had been part of something truly wonderful. The HAT’s Tribute to The Rotary Show was an energetic and enthusiastic look back at the Rotary productions that were musical staples in SydneyRead More

As a matter of fact… I just heard the CBC Cape Breton Information Morning “issue panel” discuss the PC leadership race — more specifically, whether Mayor Cecil Clarke should resign to run for the leadership. I was a vocal participant in that discussion, although you may not have heard me, asRead 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

David Wells, Conservative senator for Newfoundland and Labrador, has every right to his opinion that no change should be made to our national anthem. Wells is one of 20 senators who have tied up Bill C-210 — which would change the lyrics from “in all thy sons command” to the gender-neutralRead More

What are your plans for the celebration of Canada’s 150th Birthday? Do you even have any plans? Well, here’s a wonderful idea. Why not attend the Cape Breton Chorale’s Salute to Canada Concert on Sunday, May 28th at Sydney’s Highland Arts Theatre? Directed by Rosemary McGhee with Paula Jane Francis asRead 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

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

Stealth staffing I heard Kathy Bell, director of primary health care, chronic disease and family practice with the Nova Scotia Health Authority, tell the CBC’s Yvonne LeBlanc-Smith on Thursday that while she was happy to announce Cape Breton would be receiving seven nurse practitioners, she was not at liberty to sayRead 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