The Verschuren Centre, once part of Cape Breton University, now a standalone corporation, has received another injection of public money—$6.8 million, to be exact—from the federal and provincial governments. The funding includes: $2.5 million from the provincial government $2 million from ACOA via the Canada Coal Transition Initiative Infrastructure FundRead More

I last updated my Vice-Admiral Mark Norman/National Shipbuilding Strategy (NSS) timeline back in 2019, but developments these past two weeks have motivated me to revisit it. Norman, you will recall, was the Canadian naval officer charged with one count of breach of trust for: …leaking cabinet secrets in relation toRead More

Editor’s Note: I’ve added new items to the timeline below, but my real update can be found in this new article, for which I’ve written a new introduction. Rather than repeat myself, I thought I’d let the old intro stand because it still serves a purpose: it explains why IRead More

Back in the March 30th issue of The Cape Breton Spectator, I wrote about the two-year process leading to the 2023 Synod of Bishops, called by Pope Francis in 2021, which asked Catholics across the world to join in “discerning and listening together to the voice of The Holy Spirit”Read More

Editor’s Note: This column first appeared on 19 June 2019.   What to do this week It’s been a long time coming this spring, but the apples are in bloom and it’s time to start thinking about – nightshades! Not the deadly kind, of course, but a lot of myRead More

Three Celebs and a Baby I recently swore off home reno shows after a friend pointed out to me that they are the worst thing you can possibly watch when you’re looking to improve your own living space because the key to their miraculous design transformations is the removal ofRead More

It’s been roughly a year since I wrote about two Nova Scotia housing reports, one by the Nova Scotia Affordable Housing Commission, the other by the Housing for All Working Group of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), NS Office, and after a flurry of “affordable housing” announcements fromRead More

In a December 2021 article about the difficulties facing non-profit groups trying to develop affordable housing, the CBC’s Elizabeth McMillan spoke to Pauline MacIntosh of the St FX Extension Department who had spent nine months “gathering feedback through the Build Together project, a partnership with a national non-profit based inRead More

There have been some developments—none that could be considered good—in the Bridging Finance story. As you will recall, the local angle on this tale of a Toronto-based private debt lender in receivership is that Membertou Corporate borrowed $6.8 million from Bridging to invest in Albert Barbusci’s Sydney harbor container terminalRead More

Editor’s Note: This column first appeared on 6 June 2018.   What to do this week You may think crop rotation is only for big farming operations, but you have a lot to gain from doing it too. It is just as important in a backyard garden. If you plantRead More