Blacksmith Grant Haverstock founded the FireHouse Ironworks in Whycocomagh, Cape Breton in 2011. FireHouse produces custom ironwork but from the beginning, the company has been more than just a working forge, as its web site explains: The forge at FireHouse Ironworks is a place for community members to gather andRead More

Thousands upon thousands of taxpayer dollars are spent annually promoting Cape Breton Island as a tourist haven with varying success. Yet it only took a few hours for a local DJ to create a website that resulted in an overwhelming number of tourist inquiries, a major spike in tourism, andRead More

The announcement this week that Rosemary McGhee, longtime Sydney area music teacher, is the 2016 recipient of the Katharine McLennan Award will be received with great joy by her many friends, her former students, her choir members, her chorale associates and all the others who have been exposed to herRead More

The Spectator has recruited some actual Americans living in the actual United States of America to provide insight into the 2016 US presidential election. We kick off this week with a recap of the conventions and a discussion of the US electoral map with our eye in Denver, Colorado, ShayRead More

Since its inception two years ago, The Highland Arts Theatre has featured topnotch dancing, acting and singing but a special joy for me has been the consistently delightful work of actor Hilary Scott. Her memorable recent performances include “a bewitching Robyn” in Wesley Crawford’s Dream and “a particularly excellent MarilynRead More

This was supposed to be a story in which Destination Cape Breton Association (DCBA) responded to a number of criticisms leveled at it by a number of people (three people, actually, the number is three). I’ve been working on this for a couple of weeks and on Monday, I sentRead More

What in God’s name enticed Joe Citizen to list 15 separate items in his CBRM Councillors’ Pledge? I was only required to follow 12 steps for the cure and a measly 10 to maintain my Catholic status. Speaking of God, he seems to be playing an outsized role in thisRead More

Let me be clear, right off the top: I am a big fan of the CBRM’s roller derby girls. They are that rare combination of fierce and kind, as Ali MacDougall (or Rollin’ Stone, as she’s known on the track) can attest: “Roller derby is the strangest sport,” says MacDougall.Read More

Nova Scotia’s mania for public-private-partnership (P3) school construction was brief—more of an episode than an illness—but what an expensive episode it was. It started in 1997 and ended in 2000 officially, but the 39 schools built under the P3 banner were the subject of 20-year leases, so the P3 programRead More

There will be a mayoral race in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality this fall and I for one, am glad. That’s partly because acclamations are no fun—who wants to watch incumbent Cecil Clarke debate himself?—but mostly because I don’t think they’re particularly healthy for a functioning democracy. Instead, Rankin MacSween,Read More