Slouching toward Green Cove? I happened to visit the Never Forgotten National Memorial website in the course of  researching another story this past week, and was fascinated (and by “fascinated” I mean “terrified”) to discover that Mother Canada is still out there like some rough beast, waiting for its hourRead More

About three years ago, I produced a show for CBC’s Land and Sea on Fairy Culture in Cape Breton. Fairies meaning “little people” or in Mi’kmaq culture “Wiklatmu’j.” It was so well received that I have decided to write a book about the same project. I have several publishers interested.Read More

Out of Order As an armchair political scientist (we’re almost indistinguishable from the real thing until we open our mouths), I was quite happy to read what an actual political scientist, CBU’s Tom Urbaniak, had to say about the go-ahead at last Tuesday’s CBRM council meeting. In case you went to BostonRead More

I’ve got to start going to the CBRM board of police commissioners meetings. Thanks to Tom Ayers’ LocalExpress report, I got to experience Tuesday’s meeting secondhand and it was almost as good as being there — I could just about hear the excitement in Police Chief Peter McIsaac’s voice asRead More

Folklorist Ian Brodie’s presentation last week at The Old Sydney Society on the locally produced CJCB program “Dishpan Parade” and its spin-off, the Cape Breton Songs Contest, brought back great memories of radio, especially its heyday locally in the ’40s and ’50s. CJCB was the only game in town then,Read More

Note: Fast & Curious will be a new weekly feature in which The Spectator will take a brief look at a number of stories that piqued its interest during the week.   Oh Readers! Oh Lovers of Books! First and foremost, Spectator contributor Sean Howard has published a new bookRead More

Did you see that 28 October 2016 story by the CBC’s Paul Withers about the CBRM and its consultants? It was the oddest thing. The “news” was that the CBRM has no record of the work done for it by the first pair of consultants it hired to promote theRead More

The election is over, the votes are counted and I lost. It’s time to move on, but I can’t, because while Mayor Clarke claims the recent mayoralty campaign was the dirtiest of his career and Rankin MacSween remains stoically baffled by Clarke’s accusations, nobody is taking responsibility for the deplorableRead More

There will be no hesitation to become involved in controversy if the outcome holds promise of constructive achievement for Cape Breton. — Prospectus, The Highlander Press Company Ltd., October 1962 I tried to dig the truth out of hearings, official transcripts and government documents, and to be as accurate asRead More