Earlier this year, the idea of a guaranteed annual income (GAI) was in the news, including in The Cape Breton Spectator where yours truly wrote about Ontario’s plan to “launch a pilot project to assess whether a basic income can better support vulnerable workers, improve health and education outcomes forRead More

This past Saturday found me driving along Route 4 listening to commercial radio. (I know what you’re thinking: did last Saturday also find you breathing and blinking at regular intervals? Did it find you wearing shoes? But you have to understand, I haven’t owned a car or listened to commercialRead More

I recently attended an ethics conference which addressed the question of how healthcare organizations and other social institutions should respond to cultural, religious, and sexual diversity in their patients, students and staff. One of the speakers was particularly interesting for me, because her talk was focused on ways in whichRead More

Has anyone else wondered why our political leaders at every level of government give lip service to representing the constituents they seek support from only when they are campaigning for office or forming the political opposition in the legislature? Ritually, leaders of political parties promise and promise and promise someRead More

Editor’s Note: This is an article I’ve been working on for over a month now and it barely scratches the surface of the issue it deals with, namely, the housing problems faced by single, non-seniors in the CBRM. If you have information to add or angles you’d like to seeRead More

Have you ever asked yourself why the world is the way it is? When I ask this question, I don’t mean to refer to what we consider to be scientific truths, such as the law of gravity or the existence of neutrinos; I mean questions like: Why are some peopleRead More

Hunger and homelessness are urban problems being tackled in interesting ways in cities on both sides of the Atlantic. In Edinburgh, for example, “social entrepreneurs” Josh Littlejohn and Alice Thomson have launched Social Bite, a chain of soup and sandwich shops where customers can pay “for a coffee or a sandwichRead More

B’Spoke Apparel: Addendum In this week’s edition, I reviewed some recently awarded CBRM tenders, including one for clothing for Transit Authority employees that was won by B’Spoke Apparel of Halifax. I noted that B’Spoke is owned by 180 Moda which is owned by Taura Lee (aka Taura Publicover). Here’s theRead More

Back in March of this year, the United Way of Cape Breton, together with the Cape Breton Regional Municipality, sponsored the Community Impact Summit at Centre 200, a coming together of “business, government and non-profit sector leaders…to commit to specific, positive actions to help citizens living in poverty,” or asRead More

In 2009, Richard Keshen, now professor emeritus at Cape Breton University, interviewed Father Greg MacLeod as part of a series of interviews with key figures in the history of the university. Keshen and MacLeod, who was 73 at the time, had a wide-ranging discussion which Keshen later divided into five sections.Read More