Inspiration Village Great news, guys! Sydney is finally going to ship a sea container to Central Canada! Okay, strictly speaking, we’re not “shipping” it. According to its press release, Destination Cape Breton Association will “transform” a sea container “into a life-size depiction of the many unforgettable experiences Cape Breton Island has toRead More

Economic development is the word on the street in the CBRM these days — CBRM Mayor Cecil Clarke popped up on CBC Cape Breton’s Information Morning on May 4 to speak to host Steve Sutherland about it and CBRM Regional Council has vowed to meet once a month to discussRead More

I submitted a Freedom of Information/Protection of Privacy (FOIPOP) request to the Port of Sydney Development Corporation to ask for an account balance from the assumption fund — the trust containing monies left over from the 2012 Sydney harbor dredge. I was pleasantly surprised to receive the information from Port CEORead More

Information is a valuable commodity in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality (CBRM) — so valuable it’s kept under lock and key and even our elected representatives have trouble accessing it. Take the way the Port of Sydney Development Corporation (PSDC) has been paying its “partners” in a hoped-for container terminal development,Read More

The Port of Sydney Development Corporation will seek $460,000 in public funding for a study to “confirm the costs of upgrades to the rail line” from Truro to Sydney. In what we can only hope was a last hurrah for the Port’s interim board (Mayor Cecil Clarke, Deputy Mayor Eldon MacDonald, CouncilorRead More

The Port of Sydney Development Corporation posted minutes from two more board meetings on its website recently. (I can’t say exactly when, because I don’t check the site every day and the Port doesn’t seem to feel the need to notify me when it’s about to post a batch of freshly vetted documents.)Read More

Ed’s Books and More on Charlotte Street in Sydney is a secondhand bookstore with wildly varied stock and many labelled bookshelves in lots of sections—rooms, corners, alcoves, a dead-end book alley. Last Wednesday, while I was there for this article, I almost collided with a customer hectically emerging from theRead More

Barry Sheehy and Albert Barbusci of Harbor Port Development Partners (or Sydney Harbour Investment Partners or Blue Zen Memorial Parks) are proud of the many “partners” they’ve enlisted in their campaign to turn Sydney harbor into a mega-port for ultra-large container ships. They have “building partners” like the “American giant Bechtel.”Read More

Last month I sent two freedom of information/access to information (FOIPOP) requests to the Port of Sydney Development Corporation. One requested a detailed account of how the Port has been spending the $2.5 million left over from the $37 million Sydney harbor dredge, completed in 2012. (You can read aboutRead More

Leaving? So soon? It seems the CBRM’s chief administrative officer (CAO) Michael Merritt is hightailing it back from whence he came. Merritt was hired in July 2014 and began work in October of that year, so when he leaves in April he won’t even have been on the job a fullRead More