If the dull hum of a nuclear warhead ever mutates to a deafening and life-ending roar of a nuclear explosion, humanity will be extinguished—Tom Unterrainer, END Info 30, Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, March 2022   In 1935, retired US Marine Major General Smedley D. Butler (1880-1941), a veteran of AmericanRead More

Author’s Note: On 3 May 2019, a Thanksgiving Service was held in Westminster Abbey, attended by senior members of the Government and Royal Family, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Continuous At-Sea Deterrent (CASD)—charmingly known as ‘Operation Relentless’—of the Royal Navy’s nuclear-armed submarines. As you read this, one ofRead More

Author’s Note: In December, I interviewed Robert Forsyth and Robert Green, who served for many years in the Belly of a Beast—the British naval nuclear war machine—they now devoutly wish to see dismantled. I’ve told their stories in a separate article and you can find my entire email exchange withRead More

Editor’s Note: The subject line of this email was simply “Donkin Mine”   I am a retired psychiatrist who got to treat one of the men for PTSD who had brought out dead from the Westray mine disaster in ‘92. After the explosion the manager of that mine described itRead...

I won’t even pretend to have been aware of the 60th anniversary of the opening of the  Vatican II council (1962-1965) in April of this year. Pope (now Saint) John XXIII called Vatican II almost 100 years after the previous such council, to the surprise (and often shock) of CatholicsRead More

Obtuse angles I don’t know who “Katy Jean” is but she made my week with her nutty Saltwire column about Elon Musk’s first Canadian job. The local angle is that Musk, while studying at Queen’s, was hired for the summer by a Nova Scotian working as principal assistant to theRead More

Editor’s Note: What follows is one of the earliest compositions attributed to the legendary Cape Breton labor leader of a century ago, J.B. McLachlan. Published in December 1906 as a letter to the editor in the Halifax Herald, it was sent along to the Spectator by David Frank, author ofRead More

“War is not the only thing that, to occur, must be waged.” —Judith Lipton and David Barash, Strength Through Peace   It now seems like a bygone age, but it was only on December 15 last year that the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs presented a draft Treaty on ‘SecurityRead More

Richard Starr had already got me thinking about how centralized power is in Nova Scotia before Auditor General Kim Adair drove the point home for me on Tuesday. Starr has been tracking this province’s anti-democratic tendencies for some time now via his Starr’s Point blog, and back in early November,Read More

There’s a point I’ve been meaning to make regarding CBRM council’s in camera discussions of waterfront development, which Mayor Amanda McDougall defended to the CBC, telling reporter Tom Ayers: Discussions on the potential land deal have been held in camera for months, which is allowed under the Municipal Government Act,Read More