Start thinking about outside winter coffee shops, craft markets, food trucks, etc. Charlotte street has a number of tucked-in alleyways that larger cities would have some artisan or crafter in for part of the day. Plug in a little heater, burn a log, it can be done and will work.Read More

A few years ago, one of my colleagues told me a funny story. One of his students had said to him, “It’s a good thing that someone invented universities. Otherwise, there would be no place in the world for people like you to fit in.” I was thinking about thisRead More

Briefing Today’s update ended abruptly after questions from three reporters with Premier Stephen McNeil announcing that there were a number of “things” pulling him away today (he didn’t actually name any) before promising that he and Dr. Robert Strang would be back on Friday. The two announced seven new casesRead More

Previously, on “My FOIPOP Appeal,” I explained to you that in 2015, I made a request to the CBRM for communications related to the decision to give Sydney Harbour Investment Partners (SHIP), then known as Harbor Port Investment Partners, an exclusive contract to market the Port of Sydney. Roughly 100Read More

Briefing Nova Scotia announced 15 new cases of COVID-19, two of which are school based (Citadel High School in Halifax and Park West School in Clayton Park). The schools in question have been closed for deep cleaning and contact tracing. Other schools that have been closed due to COVID willRead More

Okay, stop: FOIPOP edition Sometime on Tuesday, as I was working away on this week’s edition of the Spectator, I received a notice in my mailbox of what I assumed was a package waiting for me at the Post Office. December packages are usually well worth the trip to theRead More

I wrote about Nova Scotia’s Capped Assessment Program (CAP) for municipal property taxes at some length back in 2017, drawing heavily on a report on the subject commissioned by the Nova Scotia Federation of Municipalities (NSFM) which would dearly love to throw the CAP high in the air, like MaryRead More

That headline was misleading. I apologize. I had hoped that by now I would have a response from the CBRM to the Privacy Commissioner’s November 3 ruling about my 2015 FOIPOP request. I knew it was unlikely the municipality would simply accept the ruling and release the 862 pages ofRead More

Author’s Note: As this year unlike any other grinds to a bleak close, I offer – in the spirit not of prophecy, but satiric thought-experiment – ‘alternate universe’ visions of the near future. And bear with me, dear reader, as I first appear to lose my mind…   “The extremelyRead More

A couple of weeks ago, I reconnected (via Zoom) with an old friend in Brooklyn, NYC, and in between catching up and sharing gluten-free cinnamon bun recipes, we talked about our respective lives under COVID. She told me that she’d recently gone for drinks in her neighborhood with a smallRead More