Arts & Culture

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

February 2, 2023 at 12:16 pm

Working from home I wasn’t sure what I was going to write about this week and then I discovered that Craig Boudreau, head of  J. Francis Investments, vice chair of the Cape Breton Regional Chamber of Commerce, Sage of Charlotte Street, had once again taken pen in hand to shareRead More

Cartoon of the MacCormack family's backyard rink by Jack McCann

Rooted in Whitney Pier

February 1, 2023 at 12:06 pm

The year before I started school in 1960, there was a field at the bottom of Matilda Street in Sydney with a path that led to the back door of an old house on the next street over, Dominion. One of my earliest memories is of escaping the backyard ofRead More

Encounters with an Actual Cruise Junkie

Encounters with an Actual Cruise Junkie

February 1, 2023 at 12:02 pm

As someone curious about the cruise ship experience but with zero desire ever to board a cruise ship, I was delighted to discover the existence of Emma Le Teace, a 28-year-old from the UK who took her first cruise at the age of 11 and now cruises professionally—as in, hasRead More

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

January 27, 2023 at 1:15 pm

I (Not) Robot First of all, neither this paragraph nor any subsequent paragraphs will be generated by ChatGPT the artificial intelligence tool that can mimic human speech and write well enough that the Guardian believes “[p]rofessors, programmers and journalists could all be out of a job in just a fewRead More

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

January 13, 2023 at 10:30 am

Golfing in the Park [Ben Cowan-Dewar] also cited golf courses in national parks — including Highlands Links in Cape Breton, Green Gables in P.E.I., Fundy National in New Brunswick and Banff Springs in Alberta — as other examples of competing land uses. “Is there a case where golf exists inRead More

Notes from Dominion & Environs

Notes from Dominion & Environs

December 21, 2022 at 1:17 pm

Editor’s Note: I asked Spectator contributor Don Clarke to write something about what’s happening in his neck of the CBRM these days and here’s what he had to say.   Making music Last week, I spoke to Glace Bay musician Aaron Turnbull about the local music scene and his personalRead More

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

December 16, 2022 at 9:45 am

Obtuse angles I don’t know who “Katy Jean” is but she made my week with her nutty Saltwire column about Elon Musk’s first Canadian job. The local angle is that Musk, while studying at Queen’s, was hired for the summer by a Nova Scotian working as principal assistant to theRead More

SEC Says Influencers Pumped & Dumped Torchlight

SEC Says Influencers Pumped & Dumped Torchlight

December 14, 2022 at 11:51 am

On Tuesday, the US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas against the following eight defendants: Edward Constantin aka MrZackMorris aka Edward Constantinescu Perry Matlock aka PJ Matlock Thomas Cooperman aka Tommy Coops Gary Deel aka Mystic Mac MitchellRead More

A Christmas Message from the Ghost of Labor Past

A Christmas Message from the Ghost of Labor Past

December 14, 2022 at 11:49 am

Editor’s Note: What follows is one of the earliest compositions attributed to the legendary Cape Breton labor leader of a century ago, J.B. McLachlan. Published in December 1906 as a letter to the editor in the Halifax Herald, it was sent along to the Spectator by David Frank, author ofRead More

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

December 9, 2022 at 11:31 am

Eureka! I have been trying for some time now to articulate the problem with venture capital, especially as it was practiced in this province by Innovacorp—and now by Invest Nova Scotia, under the possibly capable but definitely expensive ($1,500 a day up to $18,000 a month) leadership of our premier’sRead More