As I noted in my main article this week (if you haven’t read it yet, you really must), spending a couple of days reading newspapers from 1984 was a trip. While the political spat at the heart of my story seemed entirely familiar, the world in which it was takingRead More

“The world really is impossible to manage as long as we have nuclear weapons. It really is a terrible way to have to live in this world.” President John F. Kennedy to British Ambassador David Ormsby-Gore, 21 October 1962   Over 200 blood-soaked days into Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine,Read More

Editor’s Note: Joe Noseworthy’s high school graduation photo popped up in his social media feed last month as his own daughter was graduating from high school prompting this delightful reflection on New Waterford in the ’80s.   Thirty years this week since this pic was taken! It amazes me, theRead More

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

In April 1982, when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, I was a young man of 16: old enough to fight, kill, and die for a British government I was too young to vote for. Forty years on, the UK voting age is still too high (18) and the Army recruitmentRead More

The work, my friends, is peace, more than an end of this war – an end to the beginning of all wars, yes, an end, forever, to this impractical, unrealistic settlement of the differences between governments by the mass killing of peoples — Draft of undelivered Jefferson Day speech byRead More

I was visiting my mother a few years ago, in the seniors’ home where she now lives, in BC. Mom introduced me to a well-dressed lady: “This is my daughter. She’s come from Nova Scotia to visit me.” “Oh!” the lady offered brightly, “my husband used to run oil rigsRead More

Three CBRM structures were registered as Municipal Heritage properties during last night’s council meeting:   Menelik Hall Planner Karen Neville, in her submission to council, said the value of the hall, located at 88 Laurier Street in Whitney Pier and “constructed between 1935 and 1936 by people of African descentRead More

  Sometimes it seems we are living in different worlds — Vladimir Putin, 23 December 2021 There is another world, and it is this one — French poet Paul Éluard   The curtain was raised on 2022 with the stage set for not one, not two, but three major regional conflicts,Read More

As 2021 drew to a close, Island Employment, a third-party provider of employment services funded largely by the provincial Department of Labour and Advanced Education (LAE), was making some rather startling headlines. The organization — which began life in 2000 as the Persons With Disabilities Association of Industrial Cape Breton,Read More