Mary Campbell

How Big Should a Municipal Council Be?

How Big Should a Municipal Council Be?

December 21, 2022 at 1:25 pm

In December 1984, Ward Five Alderman Frank Starzomski put forth a motion calling for Sydney’s City Council to be reduced from 12 members to six. Trimming city council had long been advocated by Sydney’s Shadow Council, a group of citizens—many of them women—who monitored the actual council, although, as theRead More

Houses by Juniper Littlefield via the Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia https://www.ahans.ca/

CBRM Gets Funding for Affordable Housing

December 21, 2022 at 1:23 pm

The CBRM is one of 41 Canadian municipalities “pre-determined” to receive funding (worth $5 million)  under the third round of the federal government’s Rapid Housing Initiative (RHI), one component of its National Housing Strategy. The announcement, which I completely missed, was made on November 10, but council didn’t get aroundRead More

Photo by Jennifer C., CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Another Year Over…

December 21, 2022 at 1:15 pm

Well, spectators, this is it, the final issue for 2022. I haven’t really had time to take stock yet, I’ve been too busy covering council meetings and tying up a few loose ends, to wit: I checked with Jennifer Stairs, acting executive director/director of communications with the Nova Scotia Judiciary,Read More

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

December 16, 2022 at 9:45 am

Obtuse angles I don’t know who “Katy Jean” is but she made my week with her nutty Saltwire column about Elon Musk’s first Canadian job. The local angle is that Musk, while studying at Queen’s, was hired for the summer by a Nova Scotian working as principal assistant to theRead More

Meta Materials Revisited

Meta Materials Revisited

December 14, 2022 at 11:53 am

Editor’s Note: I know what you’re thinking—the holidays are almost here, why am I not doing a year in review or some heartwarming, holiday-themed stories, or raising money for a food bank? Why am I on about that nano-materials company in Dartmouth again? The answer is a) because I haveRead More

SEC Says Influencers Pumped & Dumped Torchlight

SEC Says Influencers Pumped & Dumped Torchlight

December 14, 2022 at 11:51 am

On Tuesday, the US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas against the following eight defendants: Edward Constantin aka MrZackMorris aka Edward Constantinescu Perry Matlock aka PJ Matlock Thomas Cooperman aka Tommy Coops Gary Deel aka Mystic Mac MitchellRead More

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

December 9, 2022 at 11:31 am

Eureka! I have been trying for some time now to articulate the problem with venture capital, especially as it was practiced in this province by Innovacorp—and now by Invest Nova Scotia, under the possibly capable but definitely expensive ($1,500 a day up to $18,000 a month) leadership of our premier’sRead More

Geoff MacLellan’s New Job and Donkin’s Ugly Sibling

Geoff MacLellan’s New Job and Donkin’s Ugly Sibling

December 7, 2022 at 1:53 pm

Really, we should have seen it coming. Former Glace Bay MLA Geoff MacLellan has never disguised his feelings for the Donkin Mine. When the Cline Group, which had bought a 75% stake in the mine from Glencore Xstrata the previous December, announced in 2015 that it had begun hiring, then-MinisterRead More

Spot the Endangered Species

Spot the Endangered Species

December 7, 2022 at 1:51 pm

Raymond Plourde, senior wilderness coordinator with Nova Scotia’s Ecology Action Centre (EAC), has, as you might imagine, some thoughts on the advisability of situating golf courses in protected areas of ecological importance. We spoke by phone last week about Ben Cowan-Dewar and his partner Mike Keiser’s plans to turn partRead More

Democracy, Nova Scotian-style

Democracy, Nova Scotian-style

December 7, 2022 at 1:47 pm

Richard Starr had already got me thinking about how centralized power is in Nova Scotia before Auditor General Kim Adair drove the point home for me on Tuesday. Starr has been tracking this province’s anti-democratic tendencies for some time now via his Starr’s Point blog, and back in early November,Read More