One of the great fears of St. Lucians critical of Cabot Saint Lucia — Ben Cowan-Dewar’s newest golf, resort and real estate development — is that they will lose access to some of the island nation’s best beaches. Finola Jennings Clark, a sustainable travel writer and and vice-chair of theRead More

Backroom deals During Tuesday’s CBRM council meeting, CAO Marie Walsh revealed — very matter-of-factly — that she and regional solicitor Demetri Kachafanas had met with developer Martin Chernin after the expiration of Chernin’s waterfront pre-development contract to discuss a new proposal. She even admitted that she and Kachafanas had presentedRead More

CBRM councilors last night approved an easement to enable the construction of a pedway across the Esplanade connecting an NSCC Marconi building to be located on Charlotte Street to the rest of the new waterfront campus. The pedway will be 33 feet above the street and planner Karen Neville saysRead More

Just say no The local CBC is running a multi-part series on “street drugs” and if I didn’t know better, I’d suspect it was being sponsored by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, because the stance it takes on drugs — they’re bad and people who do them die — seemsRead More

Maxwell Hartt’s book, Quietly Shrinking Cities: Canadian Urban Population Loss in an Age of Growth really made me think. Hartt, an assistant professor in the department of geography and planning at Queen’s University, makes the case for cities accepting rather than fighting population decline and uses the Cape Breton Regional MunicipalityRead More

Housing for the People? I want to write about the recent referendum on expropriating major landlords in Berlin, but before I do, I have to take you back in time, so you’ll better understand the context in which this referendum — which passed by a vote of 56.4% to 39%Read More

Great ideas to address climate change already exist — there are thousands of them — but they need to be categorized by the degree of impact they would have on climate change mitigation. Luckily, some authors have attempted this categorization. Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse GlobalRead More

Owl’s Head Thank you Michael Gorman of CBC Halifax for this story about Owl’s Head, the provincial park whose pending protected status was removed by the former Liberal government to open the way for its sale to a golf course developer. Gorman FOIPOPed documents that show that in late 2019Read More

Board blessings A reader sent along an interesting piece of correspondence received from the Sydney Downtown Development Association (SDDA) just prior to the provincial election. Signed by board chair Jennifer Griffin, it concerns the executive director of the association, Michelle Wilson, and her foray into provincial politics. Griffin writes: DueRead More

Shore Road Sessions I wrote last year about The Shore Road Sessions, Shauna Walters’ summer series of mini-concerts in her Whitney Pier backyard. The sessions returned this year with a whole new lineup of performers, and I was lucky enough to catch the final show on Tuesday night. I amRead More