It’s Tuesday morning as I write and the digital “front page” of our local daily contains the following stories: Cape Breton Regional Police investigating stolen vehicle in Sydney Mines Police investigating two separate property damage incidents at hospice site in Membertou Cape Breton police asking for help in solving NeedsRead More

A spectator (you know who you are) recently referenced my June 2019 article about the Royal Cape Breton Yacht Club (RCBYC), the 113-year-old building that graced the Sydney waterfront until 3 May 2013, when it was destroyed by fire. This reminded me that I had never properly followed up onRead More

The news that Jean Vanier, who died in May 2019, sexually abused six women surely devastated his followers and admirers around the world, including, one assumes, the L’Arche community in Iron Mines, Cape Breton. (I made an effort to contact them but heard nothing back after leaving a message.) TheRead More

Over a year ago, I began creating this timeline, intending to track two separate but connected stories: Canada’s National Shipbuilding Strategy (NSS) and more particularly, the large-vessel component of the NSS. The criminal case against Vice-Admiral Mark Norman. The impetus was the upcoming trial — scheduled for August 2019 —Read More

Editor’s Note: This is the fifth in a series of articles about the conclusions of Canada’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) inquiry. You can read the first one here, the second here, the third here and the fourth here.   How might reclaiming the rightful “power andRead More

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of articles about the conclusions of Canada’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) inquiry. You can read the first one here.)   Why does the MMIWG inquiry declare a “Canadian genocide”? Why raise such a storm of controversy overRead More

‘Many or several’ A Tuesday night CTV news report about the cruise industry in Cape Breton (opening line: “It seems their ship has come in, once again, for the cruise industry in Cape Breton”), sent me scrambling for my secondary sources. First, because it seemed to contain confirmation that theRead More

When I saw the headline “Life in lockup“on the front page of Tuesday’s Cape Breton Post I was impressed — a full, front page story (and two additional pages inside) exploring life in the Cape Breton Correctional Facility? SaltWire actually doing a valuable “deep dive?” Excellent. And then I readRead More

I wonder how Pope Francis feels about having a 92-year-old armchair quarterback living in a neat little cottage somewhere behind the Vatican who suddenly decides to “unpack” the sexual abuse crisis, its causes and solutions? Retired Pope Benedict XVI has decided to share his enlightened version of the worst scandalRead More

I have been thinking a lot about John Rawls’ theory of justice, in part because I am working with a fourth-year student on her honor’s thesis, but also because I’ve been watching the college admissions scandal unfolding in the United States (a scandal I find at once fascinating and appalling).Read More