FOIPOP blues Since the dawn of the age of Big Data — hell, since the dawn of the age of Excel spreadsheets — tracking and collating information has become much easier for us humans. Data entry is boring but not difficult, and once entered (whether into a database or aRead More

I FOIPOPed all correspondence between the CBRM planning department and Chris Skidmore — the Calgary-based developer who wants to establish an RV Park in Big Pond Centre — because I thought the planning department seemed to be rather decidedly in Skidmore’s corner on this project and I wanted to knowRead More

“Our dream is to work WITH the community to bring a new vibrancy to the area and to support the economy in a way that respects the land and the people,” — 22 February 2019 post on the Ceilidh on the Lakes Facebook page.   Here are some other interesting thingsRead More

Sino-Nova Scotian relations I honestly don’t know what to make of Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil’s apparently chummy relations with China at a time when Canada and the People’s Republic are barely speaking (and Port of Sydney promoter Albert Barbusci has been cruelly abandoned by his Chinese backers, a factRead More

The Spectator squeezed in a working holiday this past week, driving from Sydney to Québec City by way of New Brunswick’s Acadian Coast and the Gaspé Peninsula. It’s very early in the season, which has its positives — no crowds or blackflies — and its negatives — very little isRead More

If you were wondering why Andrew Prossin of One Ocean Expeditions (OOE), the Canadian cruise line specializing in Arctic and Antarctic cruises, canceled his keynote address at Sydney’s Port Days this year, you may have gotten your answer this morning: The Russian Academy of Sciences P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology,Read More

Dear Spectator Readers, Mayday! Mayday! I send up this distress call from the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey (a Celtic-knot of history, myth, magic and legend; a place of long-lost glory) in a ‘United’ Kingdom rapidly losing structural and social integrity. In much of the world, today — May Day —Read More

Celtic Serenade Donnie Campbell — or “Sydney River musician,” as the online edition of the Cape Breton Post identified him — has been awarded a 2019 Stompin’ Tom Award by the East Coast Music Association (ECMA). (Full disclosure: Donnie is my first cousin once removed on my mother’s side. FullerRead More

As part of my coverage of the ructions in Ben Eoin, I submitted an access to information request to the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) for a copy of the contract between Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation (ECBC) and Ben Eoin Golf Club Limited. I also asked for any correspondence concerningRead More

Since writing last week about the delayed development of Cossitt Heights — a 350-unit, site-sensitive, sustainable housing development proposed seven years ago for a former Sydney industrial park — I’ve gotten my grubby little hands on a copy of the Power Point Presentation shown to council in 2012 as partRead More