Confessions of a bad reporter I forgot about Ports Day — Port Days? Ports Days? — whatever it is, I forgot about it. I know, right? How does that happen? How does the most port-obsessed person in Sydney forget Port-a-palooza? I can only plead temporary sanity. This week, I was apparentlyRead More

Economic Development I heard CBRM Mayor Cecil Clarke discussing economic development with Steve Sutherland on CBC Cape Breton’s Information Morning on Thursday [The interview is no longer available online]. The mayor raised a number of issues I will write about in greater detail in next week’s edition — chief among them, hisRead More

What does $160 buy you?  Nova Scotia’s Liberal government has promised an average $160 tax cut for half the province’s population, in a surplus budget that seeds the ground for an election campaign that may begin within days. — Globe & Mail, 27 April 2017 So, if I’m a middle-class NovaRead More

“Tartan and coal” proclaimed the front page of the Cape Breton Post, rather cryptically, on Saturday and I couldn’t resist trying to guess what the headline referred to before I actually read the article: the world’s worst ice cream flavor? Sydney Academy’s Class of ’57 prom theme? Alexander Graham Bell’s terriers?  Read More

Bernie in coal country McDowell County, West Virginia is coal country. Although they got into the game a little later than we did here in Cape Breton — their first large-scale mines were developed in the mid-1800s — they made up for lost time and by the 1950s were regularlyRead More

Doing Well By Doing Good “Activist and fundraiser” Dan Pallotta will speak during the Community Impact Summit, an anti-poverty gathering to be held in Sydney next Wednesday and Thursday. The summit will bring together “business, government and non-profit sector leaders [emphasis theirs]” to “commit to specific, positive actions to helpRead More

Old King Coal I was so puzzled today when I reached into my mailbox and pulled out a 1720 edition of The Cape Breton Post.  “King coal” screamed the headline on the front page. Hallelujah, a coal mine has opened on the island! I searched excitedly to see what otherRead...

In my October column, “Roads to Hell: Nuclear Waste on the Move,” I reported on legal efforts to block shipments of highly-radioactive liquid waste from the Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories in Ontario to the Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina, a journey of over 2,000 kilometerss passing the GreatRead More

CBRM Council last week approved a budget that nixed the 2017/18 heavy garbage pickup while re-upping the CBRM Blossoming Program. The reason given for canceling heavy garbage — i.e. Cape Breton Christmas — was that the CBRM already provided such a service following the Thanksgiving floods, never mind that the post-flood collection onlyRead More

 Water, water I have a confession to make: I like listening to people discussing things they know about, no matter how dry (or in this case, wet) the subject matter. It’s a trait that seems to be growing stronger over time — I suspect it may even be a response to ourRead More