Three Celebs and a Baby I recently swore off home reno shows after a friend pointed out to me that they are the worst thing you can possibly watch when you’re looking to improve your own living space because the key to their miraculous design transformations is the removal ofRead 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

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

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

Reality TV The Real Councilors of Richmond County was always going to have a hard time topping the expense scandal arc of the 2016-2017 seasons, with its investigations and forensic audit and revelations of “opportunistic and self-serving” spending on “travel, alcohol, Valentine’s Day flowers even a taxi fare paid toRead More

Equality I have three things I want to link together here and I have to do it quickly before I forget one (or more) of them: 1. During his “fireside” chat at the Cape Breton Regional Chamber of Commerce this week, Premier Stephen McNeil declared that he had no interestRead More

Motel art Artist Onni Nordman (profiled in the Spectator in October 2016) has a new exhibit at the Cape Breton Centre for Craft & Design and I can’t wait to see it. (Full disclosure: I had a sneak peek back in March when I interviewed his partner, Paula Muise, for thisRead More

I have been trying to determine how, exactly, we decided to locate the new CBRM central library on the Sydney waterfront and as best I can figure, it happened like this:   Architectural & Facility Planning In June 2011, the Cape Breton Regional Library (CBRL) Board initiated a study toRead More

I have undertaken to erect in the Town of Sydney a building intended for a Convent Boarding School for the county of Cape Breton. The need of such an institution is an acknowledged one. On several occasions during the last fifteen years I have been urged by persons from variousRead More

This is an embarrassing confession for a reporter to make but here goes: sometimes, when I read news stories, they just wash over me in a wave of acronyms and quotes and dollar figures, leaving me no better informed than I was before I began reading. This is rarely aRead More