Editor’s Note: I heard Oona Johnstone-Laurette interviewed on CBC Information Morning Cape Breton recently and was so struck by what she had to say about unions—she had recently participated in an all-ages panel discussion hosted by Unifor—that I reached out to her to see if she might be willing toRead More
Editor’s Note: This column last appeared on 22 July 2020. What to do this week This week is a good time to talk about pruning tomatoes and hilling potatoes. Perhaps the most talked about controversy in home gardening is whether or not to even prune tomato plants in the firstRead More
Last Wednesday, during your regularly scheduled edition of the Cape Breton Spectator, I reported in some detail on the planning department’s presentation to CBRM council of the updated Municipal Planning Strategy and Land Use By-law. Except for a side bar on rooming houses, the story relied entirely on what plannersRead More
I hadn’t really thought about the time lag between amalgamation in 1995 and the adoption of a single Municipal Planning Strategy for the CBRM in 2004 until I saw it spelled out in the CBRM Forward Issue Paper presented to council by planning director Michael Ruus on Tuesday. Knowing itRead More
Editor’s Note: I thought I’d revisit a few stories I’ve covered this year to see how things have been coming along. Blowin’ in the wind Capitalize Albany Corporation (which does not, sadly, exist purely to stamp out lowercase spellings of the New York State capital but is the city’sRead More
“History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” James Joyce, The Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man On June 25, in the dazed wake of the aborted rebellion by a mercenary army, the Wagner Group, against Russia’s military and political leadership, the BBC’s MoscowRead More
It’s been almost seven weeks since I managed a fall that pretty much put me out of commission while leaving me (obviously) to live another day, albeit weighed down by a huge, black, velcro-strapped boot on my broken ankle. What was meant to be a week-long trip to Quebec City—withRead More
Editor’s Note: The Spectator is reaching into Michelle Smith’s gardening column archive for some weekly advice that is as relevant now as when it first appeared on 10 July 2019. What to do this week The heavy work of planting should all be done by now. Until it’s time to plant coverRead More
Local elites I heard Alexander Sammon of Slate magazine interviewed about this May 2023 piece he did on the annual convention of the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) or, as he put it, of “unsung Republican heavyweights.” Sammon was a guest on This Machine Kills, one of the podcasts inRead...
Tuesday’s budget deliberations by CBRM council actually followed a regular council meeting that began at 9:30 yesterday morning, but I’m going to deal with the budget first because somebody has to deal with the CBRM budget in a timely manner and it certainly hasn’t been CBRM council. Councilors, who votedRead More
