Last week I reported on the Nova Scotia Information and Privacy Commissioner’s damning critique of the CBRM’s response to my 2015 access to information request regarding the municipality’s decision to award an exclusive port promotion/development contract to Harbor Port Development Partners (HPDP). Commissioner Tricia Ralph faulted the municipality for withholdingRead More

The discovery of human remains in the derelict train station on Dodd Street in Sydney is a horrifying development in the debate about the building’s future that began in council this summer. But more importantly, it’s an indictment of our failure, as a community, to provide for the most vulnerableRead More

Editor’s Note: Sydney’s casino turns 25 this month and to mark its quarter-century, Rob Csernyik takes an in-depth look at the promises — and realities — of casino gambling in Cape Breton. In Part II, he focuses on the casino’s record for charitable contributions and job creation and explores theRead More

The coming of October goes not unheralded. Its harbingers are glorious – yellow, orange and red. They blaze across the hillside and flame against the sky. While summer, like September, has faded with a sigh. October has a beauty and a splendor that are rare. A crayon-colored prelude to November, bleakRead More

District 1 includes the former town of Sydney Mines and part of the former town of North Sydney, plus the communities of Alder Point, Florence and Little Pond. It’s shaped — well, I’m seeing a ghost, but I see a bat in the map of District 12 and am startingRead More

District 11 encompasses the former town of New Waterford plus all or part of the communities of Lingan, Gardiner Mines, New Victoria, River Ryan, Scotchtown and Victoria Mines It’s shaped kind of like a bloated Florida. There is no incumbent is this race, not because the former councilor decided toRead More

It’s taken over a year — I first requested a copy of the Ekistics Plan+Design report on the relocation of the Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC) Marconi Campus to downtown Sydney in April 2019 — and it ultimately required a FOIPOP to dislodge it and the censors have had aRead More

Since it was announced the NSCC Marconi Campus would move from its location next to Cape Breton University to the Sydney waterfront, I have been curious as to how the site was chosen — and what other sites were considered. Last week, I got the answer to the second partRead More

Here are some bits and bobs I gleaned from the Ekistics report on relocating the NSCC Marconi Campus to Sydney’s downtown but could not work into Parts I or II (I know, there has to be a more elegant way to introduce this but I am lazy, so have optedRead More

I can’t resist. I have to start writing about the CBRM municipal election — beginning with the way the CBRM is providing information about said election to voters. If you go to the CBRM website — which looks like it was designed BEFORE they invented the internet — you’ll beRead More