On 8 June 2016, at a “special” CBRM Council meeting, Mayor Cecil Clarke surprised councilors with the announcement that the CBRM had withdrawn from Regional Enterprise Network (REN) 6, an economic development organization incorporated in October 2014 and including the CBRM, Richmond County, Victoria County and Inverness County. CBRM councilors,Read More

Last Friday, as former Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz faced allegations of accepting kickbacks from a construction company and former Montreal Mayor Michael Applebaum was found guilty on eight criminal counts including fraud and breach of trust, Philip Slayton’s phone was ringing off the hook. Slayton’s a lawyer by  training —Read More

You know that really annoying stage toddlers hit at about age two? When no matter what you tell them, they say, “Why?” I never outgrew it. So when CBRM mystery solicitor Jim Gogan appeared at Tuesday’s nominating committee meeting to discuss changes to the Articles of Association of the Port ofRead More

On Tuesday, I watched a Drewry webinar on the Ports and Terminals market. The brief (under an hour) presentation was based on Drewry’s Ports and Terminals quarterly report, in which the Maritime research and consulting firm looked at key trends in the sector. Presenter Neil Davidson, senior analyst in Drewry’sRead More

Monday’s second coming berth announcement was a star-studded affair. Everyone who is anyone in Nova Scotia politics wanted to be there in person to see the CBRM’s $20 million concrete dream come true. Cape Breton-Canso MP (and Master of Ceremonies) Rodger Cuzner got laughs by warning those in attendance fromRead More

How to Choose a Cruise I was poking around the internets, looking for information about the cruise ships we’re expecting in 2017, and I stumbled on Cruise.Com, an online travel agency specializing in cruises. I found you could look up information about individual vessels so I checked out the CelebrityRead More

I received a copy of Due Diligence Assessment of Plans for Second Berth at the Sydney Marine Terminal! Thanks, ACOA! I thought I’d have to wait for the movie. It’s the assessment prepared by management and consulting firm CPCS for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and the Nova Scotia DepartmentRead More

First the good news: the Port of Sydney has been noticed! Granted, UK-based Affinity Research LLP thinks Novaporte is in North Sydney, but close enough. The bad news? Fotios Katsoulas, an analyst specializing in shipping data, has his doubts about the viability of the project, at least in the shortRead More

CBRM Mayor Cecil Clarke was beside himself when Sydney-Victoria MP Mark Eyking suggested the federal government’s one-third share of the funding for our second berth could hinge on the CBRM installing a permanent board of directors for the Port of Sydney Development Corporation (PSDC, until they come up with aRead More

I’m a bit obsessed with the port — and sadly, I don’t mean the fortified wine — which is why this week’s issue contains so many port-related stories. But somebody has to do something other than cheerlead. Somebody has to don the skunk suit and turn up at the gardenRead More