I read recently of the antics of two American billionaires with a kind of horrified fascination. The first was Elon Musk, who seems to be morphing from “a brilliant visionary” (at least in the eyes of some) to a cartoon-like James Bond villain, who fires thousands of people without aRead More

A recent celebrant on CTV’s local Mass for Shut-ins began his homily with this line: If you go out into the garage and stay there all day, it doesn’t make you a car. Similarly if you go to church every Sunday, it doesn’t make you a Christian. That statement threwRead More

I didn’t really expect the 2021 Child and Family Poverty report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) to cheer me on a grey day, but I also didn’t expect it to be quite as bleak as it is. The report, by Dr. Lesley Frank, Laura Fisher and Dr.Read More

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) in Nova Scotia has performed its annual public service of crunching the numbers to determine how much a worker must actually earn to live with some modicum of dignity in this province and the answer this year, for Cape Breton, is $18.45/hour. That’sRead More

In 2012, the provincial electoral boundaries commission took 79% of Cape Breton Nova and 59% of Cape Breton South and created Sydney-Whitney Pier. The 2019 commission lopped off the Pier and added some Sydney River-Mira-Louisbourg territory and — voila! — Sydney-Membertou was born. I’m going to do some electoral genealogyRead More

I‘ve been learning about Appalachia (beginning with how to pronounce it) through a variety of means lately and what keeps jumping out at me are the similarities between that region and our own (by which I mean, variously, Cape Breton, the Maritimes and the Atlantic Provinces). These similarities include theRead More

If you follow CBRM politics, are on social media or hold local elected office, you probably know the name Rod Gale. The South Bar resident (who has written for this publication in the past) doesn’t hesitate to share his thoughts, especially on matters about which he’s passionate — like poverty.Read More

FOIPOP Update It’s been over two months — 71 days, to be exact — since Nova Scotia’s Information and Privacy Commissioner Tricia Ralph recommended the CBRM release 890 pages of documents to me in response to a 2015, port-related, access to information request. Of those pages, 28 had been previouslyRead More

Christmas is nigh and the good and the generous have been hard at work throughout our communities, making sure that each and every family awakens to everything it takes to make the day a joyful one. They’ll have food and toys and clothing and all will be fine — forRead More

Donald Campbell, Jr knows a thing or two about going hungry. The owner of That’s Right Roofing & Renovations, who recently placed third in the heavily contested District 12 race in the CBRM election, suffered physical hunger pains when he was a boy – and blames poverty, in his characteristicallyRead More