Last week I wrote, briefly, about calls from local merchants (as reported in the Cape Breton Post) for more surveillance cameras in downtown Sydney, noting that “literally every merchant interviewed” already had CCTV cameras on their premises and they didn’t prevent any of the incidents described. This week, I thoughtRead More

I have read multiple local court reports recently in which the sentence included an order that the convicted person “submit a DNA sample to the national registry” and it struck me that it’s been six years almost to the day since I first wrote about Canada’s National DNA Data BankRead More

Now that I’ve worked through my 2,800-word preamble in the form of this week’s history of Canada’s Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, it’s time to focus on the subject I actually set out to cover: Canada’s National DNA Data Bank (NDDB). As I explained back in 2017, whenRead More

Bait and Switch? How it started: Excitement is building for what’s expected to be a multi-million dollar development along the Cabot Trail by a private firm with European connections. Just two days after the sale of a beleaguered Ingonish ski hill, the facility’s new owners are hosting a public meeting.Read More

Tom Urbaniak, CBU professor and Cape Breton Post columnist, took to the pages of that publication on Tuesday to make a very interesting point about a recent, secret session of CBRM’s regional council. On February 27, writes Urbaniak: Council went into confidential session without notice to the public that aRead More

I watched the (rather heated) debate that took place on February 28 during a Public Hearing on the municipality’s proposed new Passenger Vehicle for Hire By-law, intended to replace the existing Taxi By-law. I want to do three things this week: consider the issue that has some taxi owners allRead More

Editor’s Note: When I realized I would be publishing this year on the 41st anniversary of the sinking of the Ocean Ranger, I decided to reprint this piece from 2022—the preface to Susan Dodd’s 2012 book, The Ocean Ranger: remaking the promise of oil, with permission from Fernwood Books.  Read More

On Tuesday, the US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas against the following eight defendants: Edward Constantin aka MrZackMorris aka Edward Constantinescu Perry Matlock aka PJ Matlock Thomas Cooperman aka Tommy Coops Gary Deel aka Mystic Mac MitchellRead More

I don’t know enough about golf to begin with an appropriate golf reference, so please insert whatever the golf equivalent of “catch-up football” is here, because that’s what I’m playing—I missed the Notice of Defence filed by the defendants in a lawsuit launched by the Atlantic Canadian Opportunities Agency (ACOA)Read More

Pick a lane? I live in the North End of Sydney and on a day a week or so ago when there were three cruise ships in port, I had a sudden vision of the area as a pedestrian-only district. It sounds crazy, I know, because at the moment, theRead More