Being a pathological optimist, it didn’t occur to me to wonder, when Nova Scotia Education Minister Zach Churchill canceled international school trips on March 4, if there would be any disruptions to my own classroom. Nor did I think we wouldn’t be back after March Break. Or that we wouldn’tRead More

The key word heard most since the COVID-19 virus took over our lives is “together” and, in the final analysis, if we don’t overcome this “together” by strictly following all the rules that have been set out for us by competent people who struggle to make us aware of justRead More

In love with Mary Brown? It is far too early to announce the winner of the “Weirdest Result of COVID-19” award but Wednesday’s announcement by Postmedia — the American hedge fund-owned, Canadian government-assisted, 200-plus outlet media chain that includes the National Post — is on my longlist for now: LikeRead More

So you have to stay home from work. What that will look like for you, financially, depends on a number of factors. As I write this, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has just announced a whopping $82 billion aid package — $27 billion in emergency aid and $55 billion inRead More

The term ‘utopia’ — the way we use it today, to refer to an ideal but unattainable state — comes from the book of the same name, written by Sir (Saint) Thomas More in 1516. The form is political critique disguised as fantasy disguised as travelogue. More casts himself asRead More

Over the last few columns, I have been exploring our disordered relationship with our material possessions. One of the reasons that so many of us, even those of us who have limited incomes, can still accumulate too much stuff results from the fact that we live in a capitalist economyRead More

On 7 November 2011, Pope Benedict XVI was presented with the first printed copy of the revised English edition of the Roman Missal by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. I have admitted to not being very happy with the translation and as the years have gone by I still hearRead More

I was listening to Intercepted, a podcast from The Intercept news outlet, on Wednesday and heard an interview with Emily Guendelsberger, a Philadelphia-based journalist who has written a book called  On the Clock, What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane. The interviewer, Jeremy Scahill, explainedRead More

For the last regular edition of the Cape Breton Spectator before Monday’s federal election, I decided to ask each of my regular contributors to submit a question I could pose — along with one of my own — to all the candidates in the Sydney-Victoria and Cape Breton-Canso ridings. SomeRead More

Dolores Campbell, the Spectator‘s commentator on social justice issues, asked this question of federal candidates in Cape Breton-Canso and Sydney Victoria: Would your party or, in the case of the independents, you consider establishing a Guaranteed Annual Income for all Canadians that would provide them with at least the basicsRead More