Fun with Numbers I was writing today’s date moments ago and realized that my enthusiasm for the occult ran away with me on Wednesday, when I included a note at the top of the newsletter pondering the numerological significance of 22.02.2022, which I had recorded as the day’s date. TheRead More

The CBRM council meeting on Tuesday began with an acknowledgement of the passing a former alderman in the City of Sydney. This will probably be an unpopular opinion, but I’m not sure about this tradition of noting the passing of anyone who ever served on a municipal council in CBRM.Read More

I was debating just launching into my CBRM council coverage a week late without explanation but decided that would be the coward’s way out so instead, I will confess that I missed the memo about the January 31 meeting. In my defence, the last Tuesday in January is not theRead More

Alyce MacLean, project manager for housing development with New Dawn Enterprises, appeared before CBRM council on January 31 to ask the municipality to transfer surplus municipal property to her organization for the construction of supportive housing for people struggling with mental health and addictions issues. (If you are wondering whyRead More

Words with Mayors In my coverage of CBRM council this week, I made a crack about the mayor—who was elected as Amanda McDougall and has been referred to for the past two years as Amanda McDougall—suddenly being referenced in the meeting agenda as Mayor Amanda T. McDougall-Merrill. I was actuallyRead More

Port of Sydney CEO Marlene Usher and Port board chair James Kerr proposed to CBRM council last night that the Port move from the governance structure on the left (a not-for-profit company with the CBRM as its sole shareholder) to the one on the right: When I read this priorRead More

Editor’s Note: I’m trying out my system of choosing items from the CBRM council agenda and doing some preliminary research on Tuesday afternoon, then watching the meeting and updating the article accordingly.   Item 6.2 (a) on last night’s CBRM council agenda was “business arising” from a January 17 inRead More

CBU President and Vice-Chancellor David Dingwall has issued ANOTHER open letter “to the Cape Breton Community,” this one occupying three full (expensive) pages in last Saturday’s Cape Breton Post, and it is another absolute dud of a PR exercise. It states: I want to assure you that I, as PresidentRead More

In December 1984, Ward Five Alderman Frank Starzomski put forth a motion calling for Sydney’s City Council to be reduced from 12 members to six. Trimming city council had long been advocated by Sydney’s Shadow Council, a group of citizens—many of them women—who monitored the actual council, although, as theRead More

The CBRM is one of 41 Canadian municipalities “pre-determined” to receive funding (worth $5 million)  under the third round of the federal government’s Rapid Housing Initiative (RHI), one component of its National Housing Strategy. The announcement, which I completely missed, was made on November 10, but council didn’t get aroundRead More