I hope many of you tuned into Wendy Bergfeldt’s afternoon show (CBC Mainstreet Cape Breton) last Thursday and were just as surprised as I was to hear that the CBRM is seriously considering a sports complex add-on to Centre 200 rather than a new central library. I admit that itRead More

Free Seeds! The Cape Breton Regional Library’s Seed Library is back by popular demand. The program offers free vegetable seeds to “encourage community members to start their own vegetable gardens and provide fresh, healthy food for their families and neighbours.”  It was launched in 2020 to great success: within two-and-a-halfRead...

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

If you were a cash-strapped community of communities looking to cut your greenhouse gas emissions and had $100,000 to spend, how would you spend it? Would you blow the boodle on a preliminary study for a “district heating and cooling system” in Sydney’s downtown core? A system that would serviceRead More

Jennifer Henderson at the Halifax Examiner has been following plans for a new provincial art gallery on the Halifax waterfront from a (to me) very reasonable angle — the “when are we going to talk about sea rise?” angle. The Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (TIR) has issued a requestRead...

I have recently read two interesting descriptions of libraries. One is from Michelle Wilson, the executive director of the Sydney Downtown Development Association (formerly the Sydney Waterfront District), who sees the proposed new central library as a “quality product” that can enhance Sydney’s “brand.” In a letter to the editorRead More

I have been trying to determine how, exactly, we decided to locate the new CBRM central library on the Sydney waterfront and as best I can figure, it happened like this:   Architectural & Facility Planning In June 2011, the Cape Breton Regional Library (CBRL) Board initiated a study toRead More

I need to begin by saying that despite my misgivings about the location of the planned new library and my dislike of the way it’s been tangled up in a private development, I am excited about it. I would just like to ensure that it’s around to excite future generationsRead More

John Phalen, manager of economic development and major projects for the CBRM, went to council on Tuesday morning with a request for clarity on the municipality’s planned contribution to a new central library. His sudden need for clarity was driven not by the need for a new central library (althoughRead More

Ask Marta Singh, the guest storyteller at this year’s Isle of Story Festival, how she became a storyteller and you get — what else? — a story. “The real story,” she says with a laugh, although it’s “not romantic, I’m telling you!” It had been three years that I hadRead More