Ever since reading Linda McQuaig on Connaught Labs — the “public” lab that McQuaig argues, convincingly, could have helped Canada fight the COVID-19 pandemic had it not been privatized by the Mulroney government in the ’80s — I’ve been thinking about the value of publicly owned businesses and looking atRead More

Editor’s Note: I had to make a trip to the Annapolis Valley on short notice yesterday and thought I’d simply be able to post Fast & Curious — which I’d written on Thursday — from the road. But time and circumstance worked against me, which is why you are seeingRead More

Jennifer A. Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier were recently awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on the gene-editing tool now known as CRISPR/Cas9. This award has drawn the public’s attention to a technique that has been of interest (and concern) to bioethicists for several years — certainly sinceRead More

I have been trying to determine how, exactly, we decided to locate the new CBRM central library on the Sydney waterfront and as best I can figure, it happened like this:   Architectural & Facility Planning In June 2011, the Cape Breton Regional Library (CBRL) Board initiated a study toRead More

As of Saturday, the Great Ice Wall of Irish Vale (and the Lesser Ice Wall of Irish Cove) were still attracting visitors (although no one has yet had the sense to start selling hot chocolate and popcorn, a great entrepreneurial opportunity lost in my opinion). I had thought the mediaRead More

Editor’s Note: In keeping with my chosen mode of journalism — slow — I’m starting a new feature called Cold Takes in which I’ll revisit a person, place, thing or issue that was at some point the subject of multiple media “hot takes” but has since vanished from the headlines. The idea struckRead More

Deep Dives The banner across the top of this morning’s Cape Breton Post gave me pause, I’ll admit it: The SaltWire Deep Dives: Looking at the Doctor Shortage in Atlantic Canada. Today: Where are all the doctors? “Deep dives?” I thought. “That’s my thing.” I was nervous, but I hadRead More

‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,’ is a line from Alexander Pope’s 1711 poem, “An Essay on Criticism,” although I first heard it as a line in a Johnny Mercer song recorded by Frank Sinatra. Perhaps I risk identifying myself as a fool by discussing a topic likeRead More

In writing about the provincial government’s latest rural broadband promises last week, I cited the example of Yarmouth County’s Cedar Lake Wireless Cooperative. The group received a grant of $41,879 under the province’s Municipal and Community Rural High-Speed Internet Funding Program to bring high-speed internet service to the community and, to date, has connectedRead More

The government of Nova Scotia is going to make sure everyone in the province has access to broadband internet. I know what you’re thinking — don’t tell Motorola. They think they solved that problem for us back in 2010, those crazy kids. They even used as a “case study” inRead More