I recently had a strange dream. In it, I was moving through the crowded food court at my local mall. In my dream, I had visited my favorite haunts — the tea store and the bookshop — and was on my way out to the parking lot. Suddenly, the sleepingRead More

Armored Car Reading about the acting chief of the Cape Breton Regional Police Services (CBRPS), Robert Walsh, ordering up a new, armored, emergency response SUV sparked so many questions for me, beginning with: where is the actual chief of police? The radio silence surrounding the status of Chief Peter McIsaac,Read More

Have you read latest CBRM Central Library study? Anyone outside CBRM reading about the private developer who has been given control over the project would probably write it off as fiction, but we know better, don’t we? The study in question is the service, programs and operational plan commissioned fromRead More

As previewed in last month’s column, on January 22, the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) – popularly known as ‘The Ban Treaty’ – became international law. Hailed by UN Secretary General António Guterres as “a major step toward a world free of nuclear weapons,” itRead More

Remember CBRM’s sister city, the Chinese port city of Dalian? I don’t blame you if you’ve forgotten, the relationship never really amounted to much and we basically stopped talking about it after our sister city (population: 6 million) sentenced a Canadian to death in 2019. But back in December 2015,Read More

Most people who live in a ‘free country’ like Canada believe they have the right to a healthy environment. We feel we are entitled to all that is imbedded in that philosophy — clean water, fresh air, healthy food, etc. Those of us who live in a rural setting (18%Read More

Trainspotter Looking for illustrations for my rail-related articles this week, I ran across something great: a trove of train photos by a photographer named Roger Puta. I didn’t have time to learn anything more about him on Wednesday, I just snaffled up those lovely photos of a CN engine inRead More

By a strange confluence of events, I had already decided to cover the subject of rail this week before I read the Scotia Rail Development Society editorial in Saturday’s paper. The editorial simply served to spur me on (no pun intended). Barry Sheehy and Albert Barbusci of Sydney Harbour InvestmentRead More

When you’re living in a troubled economy, there’s nothing more interesting than following the money that influenced that economy’s election results. It’s even more interesting when you’re a failed, former candidate from the 2016 municipal CBRM election, who knows all about the donations (or lack thereof), the paperwork, the expenses,Read More

There are few things more discouraging than directing all your journalistic efforts to separating fact from fiction, only to discover that a wide swath of the public prefers the fiction. How else to explain the opinion piece by Jim Guy and Mary C. MacPherson in the Saturday edition of theRead More