Government

John Geiger, CEO of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. CBRM Mayor Cecil Clarke and OOE managing director Andrew Prossin in Sydney in August 2017.

One Ocean Expeditions in Hot Water?

January 8, 2020 at 12:51 pm

One Ocean Expeditions (OOE), the Squamish, BC-based cruise line founded by Westmount native Andrew Prossin in 2007, has canceled eight of this season’s cruises, leaving angry customers — some of whom have paid as much as (or more than) $20,000 for their tickets —  in its wake. I’ve heard recentlyRead More

Port? What Port? Clarke Looks Back at 2019

Port? What Port? Clarke Looks Back at 2019

January 8, 2020 at 12:49 pm

Listening to Mayor Cecil Clarke’s year-end interview on CBC Information Morning made me feel like Dorothy waking up in Kansas at the end of The Wizard of Oz. Asked for highlights of 2019, Clarke pointed to the official opening of the second cruise ship berth,  which is actually scheduled toRead More

April 23, 2015: NASA and ESA are celebrating the Hubble Space Telescope's silver anniversary of 25 years in space by unveiling some of nature's own fireworks — a giant cluster of about 3,000 stars called Westerlund 2. The cluster resides inside a vibrant stellar breeding ground known as Gum 29, located 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina. The comparatively young, 2-million-year-old star cluster contains some of our galaxy's hottest, brightest, and most massive stars. The largest stars are unleashing a torrent of ultraviolet light and hurricane-force winds that etch away the enveloping hydrogen gas cloud. This creates a fantasy celestial landscape of pillars, ridges, and valleys. (NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), A. Nota (ESA/STScI), and the Westerlund 2 Science Team [Public domain]

Earthlings Beware! Bloated US Defense Budget Includes ‘Space Force’

January 8, 2020 at 12:47 pm

The law I am signing today provides $738 billion – that’s with a “B”. That’s an all-time record. … That brings our total investment in national defense, since my inauguration, to almost two and a half trillion dollars. And what’s the good of a budget if you don’t have theRead More

Photo of Dr. Margaret Fraser by Norma Jean MacPhee, CBC

Letter to the Editor: Something ‘Very, Very Wrong’ with CB Healthcare

January 8, 2020 at 12:45 pm

On December 23, amidst all the busyness leading up to Christmas Day, I was privileged to hear an outstanding interview broadcast on the national radio network of the CBC. The program was the public affairs daily The Current and the guest was the president of the Cape Breton Medical StaffRead More

Water Part II: Groundwater Monitoring

Water Part II: Groundwater Monitoring

December 18, 2019 at 12:51 pm

Roughly half of Nova Scotians rely on groundwater for their domestic water supply. In the Annapolis Valley, that percentage climbs to 90% —  in Kings County alone it is as high as 99%. I’m starting with that fact not because I intend to focus on Kings County but because itRead More

Water Part III: Groundwater Mapping

Water Part III: Groundwater Mapping

December 18, 2019 at 12:49 pm

Editor’s Note: I was hoping to begin this third and final part of my water series with a catchy intro, but I can’t think of one, so will simply dive right in. (Dive? Water? Does that count as catchy?)   In 2010, the Canadian Council of Ministers of the EnvironmentRead More

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

Fast & Curious: Short Takes on Random Things

December 13, 2019 at 10:00 am

Don Mills I read Don Mills’ recent opinion piece in the Chronicle Herald because I thought Don Mills was a mixed-use neighborhood in Toronto and was intrigued by what it might have to say about well…anything. My disappointment in discovering Don Mills was actually just a person was lessened whenRead More

Artist's rendering, new CBRL Central Library, Sydney waterfront.

“I Don’t Know When This Business Development and the Library Became One”

December 11, 2019 at 1:38 pm

Something amazing almost happened during Tuesday afternoon’s (ir)regular monthly meeting of the CBRM council. As I predicted (call me Kreskin), Martin Chernin and Jim Wooder of Harbour Royale Development Limited (HRDL) asked for an 18-month extension to their exclusive agreement to develop the Sydney waterfront — a development that includesRead More

Also on the Agenda…

Also on the Agenda…

December 11, 2019 at 1:36 pm

As you have probably divined, the item of greatest interest to me on yesterday’s council agenda was the request to extend Harbour Royale Development Ltd’s waterfront development agreement and thereby, its role in developing the proposed new CBRM central library, but there were other items on the agenda that IRead More

When Housing is a Commodity, Not a Right

When Housing is a Commodity, Not a Right

December 11, 2019 at 1:32 pm

I moved to the Czech Republic in 1996, seven years after the Velvet Revolution (and three after the Velvet divorce, which saw the former Czechoslovakia split into its constituent Czech and Slovak parts). One of the favorite topics of conversation among ex-pats in those days was the quirkiness of CzechRead More