The ballots are counted, the verdict is in — and it’s time to wonk-out with the numbers from Saturday’s municipal election in the CBRM! Amanda McDougall won the CBRM mayor’s race on Saturday, with 47.4% of the overall vote (24,319 votes). McDougall carried nine districts — 3, 4, 5, 6,Read More

The coming of October goes not unheralded. Its harbingers are glorious – yellow, orange and red. They blaze across the hillside and flame against the sky. While summer, like September, has faded with a sigh. October has a beauty and a splendor that are rare. A crayon-colored prelude to November, bleakRead More

Canderel abandons SHIP? Has Canderel, the Montreal-based real estate development firm founded by Jonathan Wener, cut its ties with Sydney Harbour Investment Partners (SHIP), the firm with the “exclusive” contract to promote a Port of Sydney container terminal? Wener is no longer listed on the “leadership” page of the NovaporteRead More

The problem with the voter assistance “kiosk” established in Eskasoni First Nation is not that it exists — the CBRM’s Alternative Voting By-law gives Returning Officer Deborah Campbell Ryan the power to establish as many polling locations as she likes (provided she has “at least one”) and to determine whereRead More

Vote often? I spoke this week with a Sydney resident who lives in a household of three registered voters that received five PINs for online or telephone voting in the municipal election. One was for a brother who, she said, has not lived in the house for 18 months, andRead More

What, exactly, is the advantage to the broader CBRM of the $100,000 waterfront helipad that officially opened last week? Why, exactly, was it considered such a good use of public money that Mayor Cecil Clarke himself presented the proposal to council (which passed it unanimously)? Breton Air, the helicopter charterRead More

The mayor of the CBRM is, on the one hand, just one vote out of 13 on all matters that come before council, and as I’ve noted before in these pages, the position is barely defined in the province’s Municipal Government Act (MGA) which states: “mayor” means the council memberRead More

District 1 includes the former town of Sydney Mines and part of the former town of North Sydney, plus the communities of Alder Point, Florence and Little Pond. It’s shaped — well, I’m seeing a ghost, but I see a bat in the map of District 12 and am startingRead More

District 4 encompasses part or all of Coxheath, Westmount, Prime Brook, Sydney River and Edwardsville. It is shaped like a hand writing with a rather blunt pen. The district is home to 7,215 registered electors, 3,813 of whom cast ballots in 2016. Steve Gillespie captured 1,325 of them to winRead More

District 5 encompasses a big chunk of the former city of Sydney, including Boulderwood, the Shipyard, the Downtown and the North End. It also includes Membertou First Nation and part of Mira Road. It is shaped like an ankle boot or a duck’s head, depending, I guess, on what floatsRead More