In last week’s Inverness Oran, April MacDonald wrote about a significant issue that should concern everyone living in Nova Scotia — municipal by-laws, more specifically, municipal by-laws concerning agricultural land and land use. Many people are unaware of the by-laws that need to be created because things are changing inRead More

Author’s Note: As this year unlike any other grinds to a bleak close, I offer – in the spirit not of prophecy, but satiric thought-experiment – ‘alternate universe’ visions of the near future. And bear with me, dear reader, as I first appear to lose my mind…   “The extremelyRead More

A couple of weeks ago, I reconnected (via Zoom) with an old friend in Brooklyn, NYC, and in between catching up and sharing gluten-free cinnamon bun recipes, we talked about our respective lives under COVID. She told me that she’d recently gone for drinks in her neighborhood with a smallRead More

Millions of people from around the globe have been expressing their well-founded views about the need for substantial changes because they realize in order to survive as a species we have to change what is in our heads. As an example, we collectively know the core scientific factors regarding climateRead More

Ahem… Back in May of 2019, I wrote a story with the headline, “This is what a REAL port announcement looks like,” in which I contrasted what was happening at the Port of Québec — which had announced a deal with CN and Hatchet Ports to build and operate theRead More

There is probably as much to do in Cape Breton in winter as there is in summer and fall, and this winter, what with COVID-19 and all, may be a great time to try out spending some time in our own great outdoors; you can do it without getting coldRead More

Editor’s Note: We’re reaching into Michelle’s Smith’s archives for posts as useful now as when they were first published and this week, we’re revisiting one of her lovely long-form essays, first published in November 2019.   The cat and I huddled under the blankets in the dark as the windRead More

Editor’s Note: The Spectator’s Sean Howard will be back next week with his regular, monthly column, but he sent along a press release from Peace Quest Cape Breton about an important development in the progress of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW):   On October 24Read More

Editor’s Note: We’re reaching into Michelle’s Smith’s archives for posts as useful now as when they were first published.   What to do this week This week, I want to do a checklist for putting your garden to bed for the winter. Some of the items on my list haveRead More

Editor’s Note: We’re reaching into Michelle’s Smith’s archives for posts as useful now as when they were first published.   What to do this week You might need a garden shovel or something similar in the next month or so, who knows, but generally, this is the time of yearRead More