The cruise industry has been hard hit by COVID-19, which is bad news for any port that has put all its eggs in that particular basket, like the Port of Sydney which counts on the industry for up to 85% of its revenues and has funneled $20 million in publicRead More

One of the best hours I spent this week was listening to my favorite podcasters dissecting the recent attempt by a ragtag group of mercenaries to overthrow the Venezuelan government — a saga that sounded like a James Ellroy novel come to life. (Seriously, if you’ve read Ellroy’s American Tabloid,Read...

Mayor’s Notebook Did you know Mayor Cecil Clarke sends out a handful of pages from his “notebook” quarterly to a mailing list I didn’t know existed and probably won’t be permitted to join? (I’ll try, but his spokesperson has stopped answering my emails.) Luckily, I have a source who sharedRead More

I’ve speculated about it going over budget and falling behind schedule, but it never occurred to me that a virus — more specifically, a novel coronavirus called COVID-19 — would pose the biggest threat to the timely opening of the CBRM’s $20 million second cruise ship berth, but here weRead More

Ad nauseum Thanks to Tim Bousquet at the Halifax Examiner for pointing me to this article by David Roth (the one who used to write for Deadspin, not the one who sang “Jump”). It’s called “The infinite scroll” and it is an elegant though depressing exploration of the modern onlineRead More

As I said last week, I began this journey because I wanted to talk about trams and a couple of thousand words later, I’ve mostly been talking about electricity. (This is what happens when you travel with me. I hope you packed a lunch.) I’m going to bring the focusRead More

The voyage is apparently over for One Ocean Expeditions (OOE). The Polar cruise specialist founded by Westmount native Andrew Prossin, which had been canceling this season’s voyages one by one, has sent a letter to passengers stating it “will enter a formal process of business re-structure in accordance with CanadianRead More

The Port of Sydney has posted its audited financials and a Community Update. I think of it as “Fact vs. Fiction.” The audited financials deal in fact and show how much money the port made in fiscal 2019 and how much it spent:   As of 31 March 2019, theRead More

This is literally just in: The Squamish Chief reported yesterday that One Ocean Expeditions, the niche cruise line founded by Cape Breton native Andrew Prossin — the one that was supposed to be making Sydney its home port — is “restructuring.” The information came from an October 29th post onRead More

Chief Paul responds… The press release Albert Barbusci issued last week announcing his plan to establish a waste plastic-to-fuels plant in his “logistics park” in Edwardsville included the following quote from Membertou Chief Terry Paul: As active partners in SHIP, the reduced carbon footprint of our facilities is key toRead More