Editor’s Note: I’ve added new items to the timeline below, but my real update can be found in this new article, for which I’ve written a new introduction. Rather than repeat myself, I thought I’d let the old intro stand because it still serves a purpose: it explains why IRead More

It’s been roughly a year since I wrote about two Nova Scotia housing reports, one by the Nova Scotia Affordable Housing Commission, the other by the Housing for All Working Group of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), NS Office, and after a flurry of “affordable housing” announcements fromRead More

In a December 2021 article about the difficulties facing non-profit groups trying to develop affordable housing, the CBC’s Elizabeth McMillan spoke to Pauline MacIntosh of the St FX Extension Department who had spent nine months “gathering feedback through the Build Together project, a partnership with a national non-profit based inRead More

I went back and watched Cape Breton Partnership President and CEO Tyler Mattheis’ May 10 presentation to CBRM council and came away with the distinct impression that, like Destination Cape Breton, the Partnership has no real idea whether its work is producing the desired results—in this case, encouraging new businessesRead More

On April 21, Siegfried Hecker, a world-leading authority on nuclear security and proliferation, told John Mecklin, editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine constituted “a major hinge, a turning point in the nuclear world”: as “big a hinge as when the Soviet Union dissolved.”Read More

An American company named EverWind Fuels has purchased the Point Tupper “energy storage center” (read: tank farm) from San Antonio, Texas-based NuStar Energy. EverWind paid $76.9 million for the facility (which includes the tank farm; rail-loading facilities; access to an ice-free, deep-water port; and “available electricity and fresh water”) with theRead More

More than 100 years after shipyard workers in Lunenburg, N.S., shaped wood and metal to build the Bluenose schooner, the tradition of local, hand-built excellence lives on. But now, instead of fishing boats, it’s fighter jets — Brett Ruskin, CBC, 6 April 2022   It’s such an apt comparison. LikeRead More

Pennsylvania Pain I decided to write about the first thing that popped into my head this morning (that wasn’t war in Ukraine) and it was the TV series I just watched, Mare of Easttown, starring Kate Winslet. (Warning: there will be spoilers. If you haven’t watched it and plan to,Read More

The mixed-income housing development proposed for the former Tartan Downs racetrack in Sydney will contain 55% “affordable housing” units — meaning 240 of the 430 units will be rented at 80% of market rent. Kent MacIntyre of the Urban Neighborhood Development Association (UNDA), the organization overseeing the project, is usingRead More

On March 3, Canada announced new emergency measures to support Ukrainian refugees. We have opened a special pathway for Ukrainians which waives all fees and normal visa requirements, we have established a special family reunification and sponsorship pathway for extended family members of Canadian citizens and permanent residents, we areRead More