Sino-Nova Scotian relations I honestly don’t know what to make of Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil’s apparently chummy relations with China at a time when Canada and the People’s Republic are barely speaking (and Port of Sydney promoter Albert Barbusci has been cruelly abandoned by his Chinese backers, a factRead 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

In 2003, Peace Quest Cape Breton launched a modest campaign for a ‘Pentagon Vacation’: a two-week (336-hour) reduction in the US Defense Department’s annual budget of $379 million (all figures in US dollars)– a saving, calculating 14 days at a Pentagon Hour (PH) rate of $42 million/hour, of around $14Read More

I‘m not even going to pretend that I pay serious attention to the World Economic Forum (WEF), which is held annually in Davos, Switzerland and which attracts thousands of the world’s rich and famous — including political, business and cultural leaders — to the tiny ski resort to carry outRead 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, Reason #2,Reason #3 and Reason #4. For proof the Ethicist is in tune with the current Zeitgeist, read about US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’sRead More

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction…” Matthew 7:13   In September, I reported the case of the Kings Bay Plowshares Seven (KBP7), a group of veteran Catholic pacifist activists facing draconian punishment for ‘committing’ acts of symbolicRead More

CBRM Council has declared its support for the Blue Dot movement. Launched in 2014 with the backing of the David Suzuki Foundation, Blue Dot is a “national campaign to advance the legal recognition of every Canadian’s right to a healthy environment.” In passing its resolution of support last night, theRead More

On September 23, the town of Windsor in Nova Scotia commemorated the 100th anniversary of the training of the Jewish Legion, a battalion of the British army that fought to liberate Palestine from the Ottoman Empire during World War I. In 1918, a young Jewish man named David Ben-Gurion wasRead More

We’re baaaa…aaaaaaack How was your summer? Mine was fantastic. It was full of swimming and reading and barbecue and blackberries and crossword puzzles and G&Ts and cribbage and reunions with long-lost friends and rock-skipping sessions with visiting nephews and one glorious, heartfelt, bonfire sing-a-long to Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded MeRead More

I’ve been trying to think of an analogy for Nova Scotia’s Employment Support and Income Assistance (ESIA) program and so far this is the best I’ve come up with: The government decides that while 13 years of public school is optimal for Nova Scotian students, it is only going toRead More