I write today as one of the 8,800 residents of Sydney — Nova Scotia’s third-largest city, urban heart of a rich coal-mining region, industrial hub of Atlantic Canada — to ask Holland America Line (HAL): WAT IS ER MIS MET JOU? (That’s Dutch for “What is wrong with you?” AtRead...

Today is Aboriginal Day in Canada so it is quite fitting that we tell the story of a group of happy pilgrims from Membertou First Nation who will be boarding a bus on Friday, June 23, having attended Mass at St. Ann’s Church at 8:30 a.m., to begin their annualRead More

King Corn, like most monarchs, is demanding of land and resources, requiring high inputs like fertilizer, water and pest control. True, it rewards the effort with impressive yields; so much so that in an age when we thought oil was forever, with the agrichemicals it provided, corn became the dominantRead...

What to do this week If you are doing what I am doing this week, it has to do with tomatoes. By now your beans should be planted, or you are also planting them, but your squash, not yet. Squash will be bothered by the few cool days we areRead...

Lasso of Truth The box office success of Wonder Woman reminded me of the connection between her creator, William Marston, and the lie detector which reminded me that I’ve never received an answer from the Cape Breton Regional Police as to what sort of work their two “polygraph technicians” perform. ByRead More

I’ve got to start going to the CBRM board of police commissioners meetings. Thanks to Tom Ayers’ LocalExpress report, I got to experience Tuesday’s meeting secondhand and it was almost as good as being there — I could just about hear the excitement in Police Chief Peter McIsaac’s voice asRead More

Reasonable Self-Esteem by Richard Keshen, an emeritus professor of philosophy at Cape Breton University (CBU), was published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 1996 to critical acclaim, including laudatory reviews in major academic journals like Ethics and Mind. The book sold out, not a frequent occurrence with academic works, and thisRead More

Welcome to the Cape Breton Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia’s second largest municipality with a population of 98,722 and home to the Port of Sydney. The Port of Sydney is the first port-of-call on mainland North America for vessels transiting the Suez Canal and acts as a gateway to the GreatRead More

What to do this week There are tricks to beating the pest cycle in the garden. Knowing the life-cycle of the one you want to beat and figuring out a work-around is critical. Having problems with cucumber beetle? They are expanding their range with climate change and are becoming anRead More

Dean Beeby is a former Canadian Press (CP) reporter who now works for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). I have never met him — in fact, the photos that now accompany his CBC articles are the first I’ve ever seen of him — but I’ve long admired his work: heRead...