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...

This week, I decided to focus my attention on two (luckily related) stories I’m interested in. Stories I’ve been following for years (eight years for one, one year for the other) but following in a kind of hit-and-miss way. Like I was watching Game of Thrones, but only when IRead...

Editor’s Note: Mayor Cecil Clarke’s contention that discussing council remuneration in camera (and treating elected officials as “personnel”) is a longstanding CBRM practice sent me scuttling to the “CBRM Mayor and Council” clippings file at the McConnell library, to research some of the remuneration (and related) issues council has dealt withRead More

Slouching toward Green Cove? I happened to visit the Never Forgotten National Memorial website in the course of  researching another story this past week, and was fascinated (and by “fascinated” I mean “terrified”) to discover that Mother Canada is still out there like some rough beast, waiting for its hourRead More

In camera The CBC’s Tom Ayers doesn’t seem to like closed doors any more than I do and this week he kicked one open (figuratively, not literally) at the Cape Breton Regional Municipality. Ayers reported on Thursday that the CBRM Council has discussed its own compensation in secret four timesRead More

Changing of the (Tourism) Guard A spectator alerted me to this job posting on Career Beacon: It appears longtime Destination Cape Breton Association (DCBA) CEO Mary Tulle will be leaving as of 1 February 2019. Destination Cape Breton is the “official Destination Marketing Organization (DMO) for Cape Breton Island,” accordingRead More

For-profit prisons This has to be the most unfortunate story pairing of the month — the journalistic equivalent of steak and white wine. Or Dr. Pepper. Or motor oil. First, on 11 October, the Chronicle Herald‘s John DeMont (whose writing I frequently enjoy) wrote a puff-piece about Geoffrey Rubin, theRead 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

Dear Spectators, There’s an interesting new online publication out of Calgary called The Sprawl that characterizes itself as “pop-up journalism.” Rather than publishing regularly, to arbitrary deadlines, The Sprawl “pops up” when there’s a story it wants to cover in depth,  then disappears until the next big thing comes along. IRead More

In every cry of every Man, In every Infant’s cry of fear, In every voice: in every ban, The mind-forg’d manacles I hear William Blake   Was the June 12 Singapore Summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un a breakthrough or a let-down, a successRead More