PR: You’re Doing it Wrong Christina Lamey, who is either CBRM Mayor Cecil Clarke’s personal spokesperson or the CBRM’s official spokesperson, depending on what day of the week it is, gave a master class in public relations on Wednesday. Proving she is worth every penny of the $75,000 we payRead More

This Content Is Not Sponsored Running a fledgling online news operation on a subscription basis is not without its challenges but it has some big benefits — I don’t have to fill my pages with “sponsored content,” my entire front page will never be given over to an advertisement and IRead More

Repo Man I took a taxi from the airport recently (did I mention I was in Quebec? Quebec and Ottawa for 10 days in October). I got in late and didn’t like to ask anyone to take that drive out Grand Lake Road at 12:30 a.m. to pick me up.Read More

This is not the best moment to be erecting a wall of any sort but the time has come to put a paywall — neither huge nor beautiful — around new content on The Cape Breton Spectator. My stats show me that there are enough people reading the Spectator eachRead More

Note: Fast & Curious will be a new weekly feature in which The Spectator will take a brief look at a number of stories that piqued its interest during the week.   Oh Readers! Oh Lovers of Books! First and foremost, Spectator contributor Sean Howard has published a new bookRead More

I had not planned to write about the US presidential election but my correspondent in Colorado is still trying to make sense of last night’s results and I am going to wait until he is able to sit up and take nourishment before asking his thoughts on the Donald TrumpRead More

It’s a facet of a healthy democracy that never fails to impress me: the final handshake. Two candidates who have fought a long, hard campaign shake hands — one graciously accepting defeat, the other graciously acknowledging victory. And then there’s what happened in the CBRM on Saturday night. As reportedRead More

The Cape Breton Spectator has not failed to notice what is happening in the CBRM this week. Like so many of you, I woke on Tuesday to find the power out. But I was at the bungalow, and when I returned to Sydney, I found the lights at my houseRead More

The Cape Breton Post sure does love a shipyard. And I mean that literally, it loves a shipyard —  the one run by Canadian Maritime Engineering (CME) in North Sydney. The one partially located on a former waterfront green space. Our paper of record never tires of visiting that shipyardRead More

I was going to start this introduction to my interviews with all 10 women running in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality elections this fall by asking the rhetorical question: “Why do we need women on council?” I was then going to answer (I know, I know, you’re not supposed toRead More