Is the winter garden the most beautiful garden of all? — Philip Slayton to Lynn Farrell, A Nova Scotia Garden in Winter   The Spectator‘s own gardener — Michelle Smith — is currently enjoying a well-deserved break from the rigors of weekly column writing, giving her more time to dealRead More

Rodger’s Rumspringa? A Canadian political phenomenon I will never understand is how party affiliation can be at once all-important and yet no big deal. Canada’s political parties are powerful, as the Globe and Mail pointed out in 2013: Almost all discourse in the Canadian Parliament is scripted by party staffers.Read 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

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

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

Doggone generous CBC Cape Breton’s annual Light Up a Life campaign to raise money for Feed Nova Scotia makes me awfully uncomfortable. I know I sound like Scrooge, the Grinch and Donald Trump all rolled into one for saying it, but there it is. In fact, I get so uncomfortable,Read 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

The Spectator is very pleased to report that two local photographers (who’ve both been featured right here in these very pages) are exhibiting their work at the Cape Breton Centre for Craft & Design. Japan: Two Perspectives, which opened officially on Monday, features the work of Chad Tobin and CharlieRead More

Reasonable Self-Esteem by Richard Keshen, an emeritus professor of philosophy at Cape Breton University (CBU), was published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 1996 to critical acclaim, including laudatory reviews in major academic journals like Ethics and Mind. The book sold out, not a frequent occurrence with academic works, and thisRead More

Never having served in the military, I can only image what this victory must feel like. In 2014, Cape Breton vets, like veterans across Canada, lost a valued service and a much- needed lifeline, their Veterans Affairs Office (VAO). Faced with that devastating news, veterans responded to the challenge withRead More