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 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

District 7 encompasses too many communities to name, but let’s just say Big Pond, Ben Eoin, East Bay and all the Grand Miras — Upper, North and South — fall within its boundaries. It looks like one of the seven dwarves’ caps. District 7 is another of those CBRM districtsRead More

District 10 includes Dominion, plus parts of Gardiner Mines, Glace Bay, Grand Lake Road and Reserve Mines. I know I have already drawn this comparison (see: District 12) but District 10 is also shaped like a bat. (Or maybe I really do have a Halloween obsession.) The district is homeRead More

It’s taken over a year — I first requested a copy of the Ekistics Plan+Design report on the relocation of the Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC) Marconi Campus to downtown Sydney in April 2019 — and it ultimately required a FOIPOP to dislodge it and the censors have had aRead More

Since it was announced the NSCC Marconi Campus would move from its location next to Cape Breton University to the Sydney waterfront, I have been curious as to how the site was chosen — and what other sites were considered. Last week, I got the answer to the second partRead More

Here are some bits and bobs I gleaned from the Ekistics report on relocating the NSCC Marconi Campus to Sydney’s downtown but could not work into Parts I or II (I know, there has to be a more elegant way to introduce this but I am lazy, so have optedRead More

Once more to the polls! I have yet to decide how to cover this fall’s municipal elections in the CBRM. Back in 2016 — the year I launched the Spectator  — I chose to focus on the women running for office in part because I am one person and couldRead More

The HMCS Kingston, one of the Royal Canadian Navy’s (RCN) 12 Kingston-class Maritime Coastal Defence Vessels (MCDV), is in dry dock at the CME shipyard in North Sydney for repairs and upgrades, part of a $60 million program to give each of the ships a five-year life extension. National DefenseRead More

Operating on the “better late than never” principle, I thought I’d discuss the Nova Scotia government’s decision to continue subsidizing the disused Cape Breton portion of the Cape Breton and Central Nova Scotia (CBNS) short-line railway. In case you’ve just tuned in to this soap opera, the province has beenRead More