The numbers connected to our cruise industry are as slippery as a quarterdeck in a Nor’easter (okay, I promise, no more nautical similes). It starts as the season opens and the Port of Sydney trumpets (in the Cape Breton Post, which has never met an economic impact number it didn’tRead More

Don’t ever say I haven’t done my bit for transparency on the cruise file. I made an access to information (ATIP) request to Parks Canada to find out how much the Fortress of Louisbourg, the Alexander Graham Bell Museum and the Cape Breton Highlands National Park have made from cruiseRead More

First, the good news. The cruise ship most seen in Sydney during the 2016 season, Holland America Line’s Veendam, got an A grade from the Friends of the Earth in their 2016 Cruise Ship Report Card. The bad news? Our second-most frequent visitor, the Veendam’s sister ship Rotterdam, got aRead More

I’ll say it again: we need to talk about the cruise industry. We need to talk about its actual impact on our local economy, its environmental impact on our coastal waters,  its questionable labor practices and its crime problem. And we have to do it right now, before we pumpRead More

My first reaction to the 2014 Sydney Cruise Market Assessment Report was: why are we talking about spending $20 million on a second berth and not talking about our ground transportation problem? (My second reaction was—how do people who cannot actually write get into the report-writing business? Why would youRead More

Blacksmith Grant Haverstock founded the FireHouse Ironworks in Whycocomagh, Cape Breton in 2011. FireHouse produces custom ironwork but from the beginning, the company has been more than just a working forge, as its web site explains: The forge at FireHouse Ironworks is a place for community members to gather andRead More

Thousands upon thousands of taxpayer dollars are spent annually promoting Cape Breton Island as a tourist haven with varying success. Yet it only took a few hours for a local DJ to create a website that resulted in an overwhelming number of tourist inquiries, a major spike in tourism, andRead More

This was supposed to be a story in which Destination Cape Breton Association (DCBA) responded to a number of criticisms leveled at it by a number of people (three people, actually, the number is three). I’ve been working on this for a couple of weeks and on Monday, I sentRead More