Labor

From Sydney to Saudi: EllisDon Gets Around

From Sydney to Saudi: EllisDon Gets Around

May 17, 2023 at 1:36 pm

I have seen the name EllisDon on signs attached to the fencing around the under-construction NSCC Sydney Waterfront Campus but I didn’t actually know anything about the company until this week, when I got interested in it as part of an entity called SHIP.ED which submitted a proposal to developRead 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

What Are You Talking About?

What Are You Talking About?

August 10, 2022 at 12:19 pm

UPDATE: Council met on August 23 and revealed that the second of these meetings involved the awarding of the food and beverage contract at the Miner’s Forum. It went to Scott Morrison, who owns Sydney’s Flavor Downtown, Flavor 19 and Flavor on the Water. (Although Morrison wasn’t mentioned by name;Read More

Donkin: A Postscript

Donkin: A Postscript

June 22, 2022 at 11:12 am

I made my thoughts on the potential re-opening of the Donkin Mine pretty clear in last week’s Fast & Curious but I feel the need to return to the topic, thanks to a Cape Breton Post story under the headline: Coal’s last chance: It may be now or never forRead More

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

May 27, 2022 at 10:20 am

Talkin’ ’bout my generator I read Henry Maxwell’s letter to the editor of the Cape Breton Post about the apparently over-sized backup generator recently purchased by the CBRM for the Myles F. Burke Police Headquarters in Sydney with great interest. That particular item has bugged me since it appeared inRead More

Christine Saulnier

Calculating a Living Wage in CB (It’s $18.45/Hour)

November 3, 2021 at 1:42 pm

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) in Nova Scotia has performed its annual public service of crunching the numbers to determine how much a worker must actually earn to live with some modicum of dignity in this province and the answer this year, for Cape Breton, is $18.45/hour. That’sRead More

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

May 7, 2021 at 11:00 am

Tattoo news This week’s story about Mildred Brown’s tattoos raised many questions for me, but one of the first that occurred was: how unusual was it for a working-class woman to have tattoos in 1929? Brown had not one but five, all professionally done. It’s a subject I hope toRead More

Canappalachia

Canappalachia

April 21, 2021 at 12:36 pm

I‘ve been learning about Appalachia (beginning with how to pronounce it) through a variety of means lately and what keeps jumping out at me are the similarities between that region and our own (by which I mean, variously, Cape Breton, the Maritimes and the Atlantic Provinces). These similarities include theRead More

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

January 22, 2021 at 9:45 am

Stealing time Rubina Ahmed-Haq and I had an argument that devolved into shouting and foot-stamping on Monday morning, although the shouting and foot-stamping were all on my side and she has yet to realize we had a disagreement. Ahmed-Haq is the CBC radio workplace columnist who, according to her website,Read More

Share a Cab?

Share a Cab?

May 22, 2019 at 11:02 am

During its regular monthly meeting on Tuesday night, CBRM Council was briefed on a program to provide a new transportation option for people trying to get from their homes in one CBRM community to work or school in another. By “new transportation option” I do not, alas, mean a StarRead More