It’s time for Confessions of a Bad Reporter. In this week’s episode, I have to confess that I did not attend the Port of Sydney’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) on February 23. It was on a Wednesday night, a week before I publish, and I thought I would be ableRead More

Whirlwind Tours I signed up for emails from Entrée Destinations because they promised “stories” from all parts of Canada — including Nova Scotia — and I was curious to see how they’d portray us. (Okay, full disclosure: I wanted to see how trite and clichéd their portrayal would be whichRead More

This week, I’m updating my Cabot Saint Lucia story with the reaction of critics of Ben Cowan-Dewar’s golf resort to the “unofficial” announcement that the Saint Lucian government planned to ensure beach access for locals and to cancel Cabot’s leases on coastal land known as the “Queen’s Chain.” As IRead More

Has Ben Cowan-Dewar hit one into the cat box in Saint Lucia? What I’m saying, for those of you not as familiar with the old golf lingo as I am since I googled it 10 minutes ago, is: has Cowan-Dewar actually run into an obstacle on his way to turningRead More

Innkeeping In terms of sheer words per minute, I think Episode 11 of Annette Verschuren’s Bet On Me podcast — “The Power of Place: The connection between culture and economy with Zita Cobb, Innkeeper of Fogo Island Inn” — has to be the winner. Because man, can Zita Cobb talk.Read More

Re-reading my recap of Episode 10 of Annette Verschuren’s Bet On Me podcast, I realized I’d forgotten a couple of things I’d meant to cover, so I’m going to devote a little more ink to her conversation with Cabot Cape Breton owner Ben Cowan-Dewar. At one point, the two discussRead More

Annette’s Dream I listened to all 44 excruciating minutes of Episode 10 of Annette Verschuren’s Bet On Me podcast, “A candid conversation with Cabot Co-Founder & CEO, Ben Cowan-Dewar,” — more accurately a “fawning exchange” with her “dear friend” — but I’m going to begin with my favorite line, whichRead More

The last three months of 2021 found me, as always, following CBRM happenings — particularly around waterfront development and cruise news — but also looking further afield at stories with local angles or implications. In particular, I got interested in how some Saint Lucians were responding to the arrival ofRead More

This week has found me unable to focus entirely on any one story, so no deep dives. Instead, I’m going to touch briefly on some issues I’ve been following and which I hope to write about in more detail soon.   Labor relations First, give me credit, please, for notRead More

Cruise news And now, from the “counterintuitive” department, I’d like to suggest that there are ways in which COVID may actually prove a boon to the cruise industry. It’s a theory I developed watching a “recovery of cruise” presentation from a November 2020 conference on “post-COVID” tourism in Cape BretonRead More