As you will see in a moment, I’ve indulged myself this week not just by focusing on a court case that was decided in 2020 (and which arguably has no real Cape Breton connection unless your Cape Breton includes Mulgrave) but by following up all sorts of weird odds andRead More

Last week, I took a cooking class run by New Dawn Enterprise’s A Better Bite Community Kitchen. Called “Tomato Sauce Five Ways,” the class was held in A Better Bite’s facilities in the New Dawn Centre on Nepean Street in Sydney and led by dietician Jessica MacNeil. She taught usRead More

Over the last two years, Nova Scotians of all ages have been impacted by unprecedented grief and loss. The COVID-19 pandemic and public health restrictions have prevented people from coming together, supporting one another, or participating in many traditional rituals of mourning and celebration. Individuals have suffered physical, emotional, orRead More

I mentioned in last week’s edition that I’d seen a video of Cape Breton Regional Police Services (CBRPS) officer distributing Canadian flags to a group of local “Freedom” protesters in front of MP Mike Kelloway’s office in Dominion. I asked CBRPS spokesperson Desiree Magnus about the incident last Wednesday morningRead More

I assumed my first 2022 contribution to the Spectator would be pretty upbeat, especially since New Year’s Eve was spent in a hilarious re-watching of various episodes of Father Ted that included a few I hadn’t seen before. And thanks to YouTube documentary introducing the actors, I got to seeRead More

I spent the bulk of my time this week thinking about property taxes, but as this short month draws to an end, it’s time to address a subject I’ve been actively avoiding: the so-called “Truckers’ Convoy.” Not having been in Ottawa or on the Coutts, Alberta border in person, I’veRead More

Re-reading my recap of Episode 10 of Annette Verschuren’s Bet On Me podcast, I realized I’d forgotten a couple of things I’d meant to cover, so I’m going to devote a little more ink to her conversation with Cabot Cape Breton owner Ben Cowan-Dewar. At one point, the two discussRead More

In late August The New Yorker featured a fascinating, slightly awestruck examination of “the Costa Rica Model” of “health care that understands its community,” by American surgeon and professor of public health Atul Gawande. Gawande, nominated by President Biden to serve as assistant administrator of the US Aid and DevelopmentRead More

The Spectator‘s coverage this spring was varied, to say the least. From Albert Barbusci’s nuclear waste deal, to the workings of the Verschuren Centre to the province’s third wave of COVID with a variety of stops in between, including a feature I count among my all-time favorites — the oneRead More

Cruise news And now, from the “counterintuitive” department, I’d like to suggest that there are ways in which COVID may actually prove a boon to the cruise industry. It’s a theory I developed watching a “recovery of cruise” presentation from a November 2020 conference on “post-COVID” tourism in Cape BretonRead More