Ken Jessome

Cartoon of the MacCormack family's backyard rink by Jack McCann

Rooted in Whitney Pier

February 1, 2023 at 12:06 pm

The year before I started school in 1960, there was a field at the bottom of Matilda Street in Sydney with a path that led to the back door of an old house on the next street over, Dominion. One of my earliest memories is of escaping the backyard ofRead More

Politics on the Edge: Remembering Paul MacEwan

Politics on the Edge: Remembering Paul MacEwan

November 30, 2022 at 11:45 am

In early April 1974, on an unusually pleasant morning that promised to help deliver a big voter turnout, Pat and Roy and I, young volunteers all, began working Polling Station 16 in Cape Breton Nova. The poll was at the bottom of Matilda Street in Whitney Pier, where I hadRead More

Remembering a  Mysterious Summer of ’70 Tragedy

Remembering a Mysterious Summer of ’70 Tragedy

July 19, 2017 at 11:45 am

On 10 July 1970, three young Cape Breton men — 20-year-old Terry Burt of Sydney, 17-year-old David Burrows of Sydney River and 15-year-old Kenny Novak of Sydney River — were run over by a freight train on a track in Maine, about 45 kilometers from the Canadian border. It happenedRead More

Richard Keshen: ‘Reasonable Self-Esteem’ Revisited

Richard Keshen: ‘Reasonable Self-Esteem’ Revisited

June 14, 2017 at 1:20 pm

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

Ed's Books and More, Sydney, NS (Photo via Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/edsbooksandmore/)

Ed’s Books: A Steelworker’s Next Chapter

April 26, 2017 at 12:10 pm

Ed’s Books and More on Charlotte Street in Sydney is a secondhand bookstore with wildly varied stock and many labelled bookshelves in lots of sections—rooms, corners, alcoves, a dead-end book alley. Last Wednesday, while I was there for this article, I almost collided with a customer hectically emerging from theRead More

The McConnell: Upstairs and Down

The McConnell: Upstairs and Down

April 12, 2017 at 11:57 am

Librarians, in my experience, are often bearers of good news. For example, last year, while spending a day in the country, I dropped into the local library just to have a look around. The librarian was friendly and helpful, and not only informed me that I could borrow items thereRead More

Stained-glass window, McConnell Library, Sydney, Nova Scotia (Spectator photo)

The McConnell: More Than a Library

April 5, 2017 at 1:10 pm

It’s still a wonder to me that I can, from home or anywhere with internet access, go to the Cape Breton Regional Library’s website and search all Nova Scotia public library catalogs for a particular book I want to borrow, or just browse the collections to find something interesting, makeRead More

Cecil B. DeMille Theater. Photo by  Rclick-wiki (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Film + Theater = Filmed Theater

January 11, 2017 at 12:08 pm

I got my introduction to theater at the movies. There wasn’t much doing for us in Sydney, culture-wise, when I was in high school, apart from visiting the McConnell library and arguing the relative merits of Keith’s versus Moosehead beer. People watched a lot of television, but I didn’t enjoyRead More

Rod Nicholls’ Pillowman: The Best Production I Never Saw

Rod Nicholls’ Pillowman: The Best Production I Never Saw

November 30, 2016 at 12:06 pm

In February of last year, I arrived back in Cape Breton after 10 years away. The first evening home, I picked up a newspaper from my sister’s kitchen table and saw a publicity photo for the Boardmore Theatre’s production of The Pillowman. The play, a celebrated and controversial black comedy,Read More

4 A.M., Onni Nordmann, Oil on Canvas, 2013

Onni Nordman: Risking Failure For ‘The Good Stuff’

October 19, 2016 at 10:49 am

Cape Breton artist Onni Nordman is enjoying a growing reputation these days. His work is already popular in Nova Scotia, where it often appears in gallery shows and events like last month’s Lumière. And now Nordman is becoming known in Europe, where he recently had exhibitions in Munich and Helsinki.Read More