I was unfamiliar, until very recently, with the work of Mahone Bay-based “journalist and author” Quentin Casey, who seems to specialize in a type of “journalism” (I call it “Capitalist Hagiography”) that gives me hives. Casey writes fawning portraits of rich businessmen (they all seem to be men) under headlinesRead...

Vienna Ikea Big box stores are designed for cars. I was going to say “for people with cars” but more and more I’m coming to the conclusion that our world is designed more for the vehicles themselves (and the companies that produce them, and the companies that provide their fuel)Read...

Every once in a while, if I’m in the microbiology lab in A wing at Cape Breton University, I remember the late Dr. Erwin Zodrow, walking by with a fossil or microscope slide in his hand. In his last few years of research at CBU, he had a geology researchRead More

Wildfires Working on CBRM council stories for the Wednesday edition as wildfires raged on the mainland—and not just on the mainland but in the provincial capital—was a strange experience. I knew I had nothing to add to the coverage of the fires, that’s not the kind of coverage I doRead...

Everett Knickle of Cossitt Heights Development Limited appeared before CBRM council on Tuesday, a delegation of one asking the municipality to change the terms of the 2012 purchase and sale agreement under which the company bought the 120-hectare Cossitt Heights Industrial Park on Sydney’s Upper Prince Street with the statedRead More

Last week we looked at the unsuccessful proposal for the development of Sydney’s waterfront submitted by SHIP.ED, an alliance between Albert Barbusci’s Sydney Harbour Development Partners (SHIP) and EllisDon, the Ontario-based construction company. To call the SHIP.ED proposal grandiose is to dabble in understatement: in addition to a hotel andRead More

Confessions of an inadvertent foodie I accidentally bought a $6 bag of popcorn last week. I didn’t find out the price until I got to the cash and by then I felt compelled to go through with the purchase (it’s ridiculous, I know, but it’s me). I bought it becauseRead...

Say you’re a former advertising executive turned “port developer” and February 2022 finds you in the seventh year of your exclusive contract to turn the Port of Sydney into a transshipment hub for ultra-large container vessels (ULCVs) with pretty much nothing to show for yourself. Initial deals with the ChineseRead More

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

I am not on the Port of Sydney’s media list, so did not receive the press release headlined: Port of Sydney to Host U.S. and Atlantic Canadian Ports During Port Days I actually knew the Port of Sydney would be welcoming the North Atlantic Ports Association (NAPA) and the IndependentRead More