Novaporte’s new face Kathleen Yurchesyn has left her post as CEO of the Cape Breton Chamber of Commerce to become the vice-president of operations and corporate development for Novaporte, the name promoter Albert Barbusci has given to his Sydney harbor container terminal project. Six years in, Yurchesyn represents Novaporte’s firstRead More

The new board chair of the Port of Sydney Development Corporation (PSDC), James Kerr, presented to CBRM council during its regular November meeting last week, a topic I touched on briefly in last week’s Fast & Curious, because Kerr announced the board had decided to make its minutes public andRead More

Yoga Mats Galore! Reading about the MV Zim Kingston shedding over 100 containers into the ocean off the coast of British Columbia put me in mind of the 1941 sinking that inspired Compton MacKenzie’s novel Whiskey Galore!  No, wait, that’s not strictly true — it put me in mind ofRead More

Barry Sheehy did something in Monday’s Chronicle Herald that I would not have believed possible: he wrote an opinion piece (“Atlantic Canada missing the boat on U.S. port-expansion frenzy“) about congestion at US ports without mentioning COVID. Sheehy — described as an author, historian businessman, veteran and part-time Gabarus residentRead More

Albert Barbusci and Barry Sheehy, the men behind Sydney Harbour Investment Partners (SHIP) and Novaporte, the Sydney harbor container port project, have splashed out on a new website and what a glossy mix of stock photos and wild claims it is. Before we get into it, though, let’s take aRead More

In the days leading up to the provincial election, all the usual suspects sharpened their pencils, marshaled their tired little troop of “facts” and wrote the editor of the Cape Breton Post in support of Albert Barbusci’s Novaporte project. Port Fest ’21 was kicked off at the end of JulyRead More

Barry Sheehy — “author, historian, businessman and veteran” — barged into my summer on Tuesday, via one of his trademark screeds for the Cape Breton Post. Although his bio acknowledges he is “involved with Sydney Harbour Investment Partners, which is marketing the port [of Sydney] for development,” he writes theRead More

Tax Sales If the list of 104 properties — including 38 buildings  — up for tax sale in the CBRM has you wondering why CBRM doesn’t look into sourcing government funding for affordable housing and refurbishing some of them, you are not alone. I have long wondered about this too.Read More

Mary Makes a Meme How it started:     How it’s going:   On the bright side, having let it it sit empty for two years (and catch fire once), the entrepreneurs who bought the building for $225,000 are hoping to sell it for $399,000.   Mary Makes Another MemeRead More

This was going to be a story about CBRM council meeting in secret with Albert Barbusci of Sydney Harbour Investment Partners (SHIP) yesterday and then, during the regular meeting last night, approving a three-year extension to Barbusci’s exclusive contract with the municipality. (I’ve removed the SHIP Exclusivity Countdown Clock fromRead More