Hired guns CBRM Mayor Cecil Clarke’s executive assistant Mark Bettens (he of the exorbitant travel expenses) and spokesperson Sheilah MacDonald have taken paid vacation to work on Clarke’s re-election campaign. I confirmed this with CAO Marie Walsh this week. There’s nothing to stop them doing this — other than theRead...

Editor’s Note: Welcome to Campaign Trail Mix, the Cape Breton Spectator’s weekly round-up of municipal election-related news and views with the odd non-campaign item thrown in to keep things interesting. We still have a few bugs to work out — like the logo, which I made yesterday morning in GIMPRead More

Last week marked an anniversary I’m going to lay odds none of you celebrated: it’s been one year since the Nova Scotia solid waste-resource management regional chairs committee presented a proposal for Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging and Printed Paper (EPR for PPP) to Environment Minister Gordon Wilson. If youRead More

If you survived Part I of this article, you now know that Nova Scotia marked an anniversary last week: it’s been one year since the Nova Scotia solid waste-resource management regional chairs committee presented a proposal for Extended Producer Responsibility  for Packaging and Printed Paper (EPR for PPP) to EnvironmentRead More

CBRM reopened the Spar Road dump in late April because somehow, although most retail stores were closed and our consumption — one would think — had been reduced, CBRM residents were still managing to “overwhelm” garbage collectors with the sheer volume of trash they were putting out. As municipal managerRead More

Editor’s Note: I had to stop watching CBRM’s Tuesday council meeting to tune into the provincial COVID-19 update (full disclosure: I tried to watch both simultaneously with predictable results) and so can only report on half of the council meeting but I promise to watch and report on the restRead...

The May 12 virtual CBRM council meeting lasted a fraction of a minute over 3 hours. Although all current councilors and a number of CBRM staffers were in attendance, the video (which you can watch on YouTube) consists almost entirely of footage of Mayor Cecil Clarke, sitting in his office,Read...

I have long prided myself on my conscientious recycling and composting habits. Anything that is recyclable goes into my blue boxes, and anything that is compostable goes into my green bin. Consequently, while I often put out more than one blue box on garbage day, I usually have only aRead...

Two things inspired this week’s feature story: the first was an Agence France-Presse article about a Michigan township that is trying to fight a deal under which the Swiss-based food conglomerate Nestlé may be allowed to pump 400 gallons of water per minute from a local wellhead for an annualRead More

Last month, I considered the surprising popularity of the KonMari method of organizing our homes, and argued that the attractiveness of this approach to decluttering results, at least in part, from our recognition of our disordered relationship with our stuff, and that this disordered relationship negatively affects our lives. WhatRead More