Editor’s Note: The Spectator is reaching into Michelle Smith’s archives for gardening tips and this week found a column that was first published almost exactly five years ago, on 29 November 2017. What to do this week This week is a good time to get your seeds safely storedRead More
Comfort and Joy I have to tie up two loose ends from my coverage of Tuesday morning’s council meeting. After listening to—and approving—Destination Cape Breton’s funding request (which I covered in detail because opaque organizations spending oodles of public money are catnip to me— or would be, if I wereRead More
CBRM Council has agreed to increase the marketing levy on hotels and other “fixed-roof” accommodations from 2% to 3% and apply it to Airbnb and VRBO rentals. Destination Cape Breton (DCB) CEO Terry Smith made the request to council yesterday morning, explaining the changes will be governed by new legislationRead More
A tweet from Conservative MP Michel Rempel Garner caught my eye Monday morning (I’m still able to see her tweets because I’ve never been so bold as to lock horns with her online where she’s notorious for blocking anyone who disagrees with her). It said: Tomorrow morning, my bill regardingRead More
Editor’s Note: I heard from my old friend Willy Howell out of the blue this week, and realized his message was actually pretty timely, given it’s almost American Thanksgiving and Willy, an enrolled member of the Olgala Sioux Tribe, has not always had reason to be thankful to the UnitedRead More
Editor’s Note: I caught myself looking rather bleakly at the snow yesterday and decided I needed a timely reminder about embracing winter, so I re-read Paul MacDougall’s 25 November 2020 piece on coping with the cold and I thought you might like to too. There is probably as muchRead More
Growing up in South Bar, wedged between the larger centers of Sydney and New Waterford, you quickly learn that to get anything done for “The Bar” you have to work hard, organize and make a lot of noise to get any kind of action from local politicians who focus onRead More
McKenna & Co I was going to call Brookfield Asset Management (BAM) a many-headed hydra but that’s the wrong metaphor, it is decidedly more of an octopus, with tentacles everywhere in everything—railroads, ports, real estate, nuclear power—but just one head, as the Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation reported back in 2013:Read More
Genesee & Wyoming (G&W) Canada Inc, owner of the Cape Breton & Central Nova Railway (CBNS), is restructuring its Nova Scotia holdings. In September, G&W Canada established a wholly-owned subsidiary called the Nova Scotia & Eastern Railway (NSERL). On October 17, G&W Canada President Rick McLellan—who also serves as presidentRead...
Before we look at Tourism Nova Scotia’s “influencer” program—which involves paying social media personalities to visit and write about us—I thought I’d have a look at some tourism statistics and, as it happens, Tourism Nova Scotia provides stats going back to 2010 on its website. I focused on just threeRead...
