I had started to write this column before I’d heard news of the horrendous shooting incident in our province. Nothing I could write would have any effect on those whose lives have been lost, those who were injured or those who are left to mourn. Least of all, would anyRead More

  “Not even the apparently enlightened principle of the ‘greatest good for the greatest number’ can excuse indifference to individual suffering.” — Aneurin Bevan, In Place of Fear   “Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides…defend youRead More

“…it is hard to say who is sick and who is well…” — Daniel Defoe, Journal of the Plague Year   The coronavirus pandemic poses a clear and present danger to the most elderly and vulnerable segments of the global population, those already most prone to perish from influenza and other infectiousRead More

As of this writing, elementary and high school teachers in Ontario are embroiled in an escalating dispute with Premier Doug Ford’s government. Teachers have held a number of one-day strikes and, I understand, have many more planned. While the government has been putting forward a narrative that consists of theRead More

 “…the car, still loaded with people, made a wide U-turn and stopped; it was the end of the line.”– Paul Bowles, last words of The Sheltering Sky It was my Grandfather’s favorite story, and he swore it was true: a man horribly lost in a maze of back roads, unableRead More

Premier Stephen McNeil has been visiting Nova Scotia Chambers of Commerce — Halifax, Yarmouth, Sydney — to discuss the State of the Province with people who have paid to listen to him. The Sydney event — a Cape Breton Regional Chamber of Commerce “member-exclusive” gathering (billed as a ‘fireside’ discussionRead More

I will give Pope Francis a tip of the biretta for his latest act on behalf of some of the poorest of the poor in Rome, or as he refers to them “society’s rejects, victims of today’s throwaway culture.” He has turned the Palazzo Migliori, a 19th palace named forRead More

Never one to suffer subtlety gladly, or overpolish the written word, US President Donald J. Trump on January 3 ‘spoke’ to the world by tweet: an American flag, behind which, we soon learned, lay the body of Iranian General Qassam Suleimani (and seven other human beings), assassinated by drone inRead More

Last month, I argued that, when we think in Marxist terms about the contradictions of capitalism, perhaps the most striking and important contradiction of all is that to make the goods bought and sold to keep the capitalist machine running we are destroying the very planet we depend upon forRead More

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