‘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

Note: This is the first of two articles about the recent firing of three Cape Breton Regional Police Service officers and I’m going to begin by saying there is much I do not know about this case — and I’m using the term “this case” to encompass both former ConstableRead More

Note: This is the second of two articles on the recent firing of three Cape Breton Regional Police Service officers. You can read Part I here — and you probably should because we’re just going to dive right in where we left off.   Were the cops involved the staffkenneyRead More

How many Catholics, I wonder, of those who continue to attend Mass at least weekly — praying, singing, listening to homilies and participating in the Eucharist — ever give serious thought to the ongoing and possibly greatest scandal in the Catholic Church’s history? Is it a case of “I’m alrightRead More

Editor’s Note: Spectator contributor Sean Howard begins the New Year with a two-part consideration of the actual legacy — both domestic and global — of the 41st President of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush. This month, in Part I, Howard considers Bush’s domestic missteps.   The death ofRead More

The Spectator’s Ethicist, Rachel Haliburton, provides convincing — and sometimes counter-intuitive — arguments as to why making the rich pay their fair share of taxes benefits us all.(Read Reason #1 and Reason #2)   As faithful readers of the Ethicist column in the Cape Breton Spectator will know, for theRead More

Nobody denies anymore the culture of secrecy and cover-up in the Catholic Church, but what if it is simply part and parcel of an even worse culture, one of pedophilia? How else to explain what has been revealed again and again as common practice among clergy? Especially as, hard onRead More