Why am I so interested in Business Cape Breton, the CBRM’s economic development “entity?” Because I just can’t get a grip on what it’s supposed to be — it’s neither flesh, nor fowl nor good, publicly accountable municipal body. It’s a non-profit society with a board made up of localRead More

Glace Bay Revitalization You will not be able to tell from this article, but I am working busily behind the scenes trying to piece together the timeline on the Glace Bay Revitalization project — not the 20-year timeline attached to the actual project but the months-long timeline attached to theRead More

Danny Ellis, who has signed a deal with the CBRM to rent property on the Sydney waterfront for a seasonal food and drink establishment, is a director of Business Cape Breton — the municipality’s designated economic development “entity.” According to his LinkedIn account, Ellis has been on the BCB boardRead More

I wrote last week that dealing with international waste (IW) at the Sydney Marine Terminal will involve more than simply getting in a stash of orange garbage bags. You can read the details here, but the gist is that international waste coming off vessels must be segregated from domestic wasteRead More

Remember WIPSI? I know it sounds like a toy from the ’70s — a plastic lemon you’d tether to your ankle and skip over, maybe — but it’s actually Nova Scotia’s Workplace Innovation and Productivity Skills Incentive program. I wrote about it way back in June after stumbling upon aRead More

The CBRM has an environmental assessment of a property owned by local businessman Jerry Nickerson on which it hopes to construct a second cruise ship berth. We know the assessment exists, as Nancy King points out in the Cape Breton Post, because Mayor Cecil Clarke has referred to it, asRead More

There I was with my many questions about shipbreaking in Sydney harbor and all I had to do was ask my local member of parliament. That would Mark Eyking, MP for Sydney-Victoria, who invited me to go to Sydport last Friday and take a picture of him standing next toRead More

News that the owners of the Donkin Mine have been hit with 29 safety violations and 10 compliance orders since operations began in February received markedly different coverage from the CBC and our local, pro-coal, daily newspaper. Here’s the story as it appeared on the CBC website: And here’s theRead More

Remember last week, when we were (re)celebrating luxury cruise provider One Ocean Expeditions decision to (maybe) establish a home port in Sydney, provided all its requirements could be met here? One of those requirements had to do with the disposal of “international waste” at the Sydney Marine Terminal. At the time,Read More

Year One The Cape Breton Spectator turned one on August 3! The anniversary almost slipped by unnoticed — I knew it was in August, but I’d convinced myself it was later in the month. Luckily for me, my family not only remembered it, they marked it. There was a cakeRead More