Back in May of this year, District 8 Councilor James Edwards moved that council call for a staff Issue Paper on the pros and cons of selling Centre 200 and the Mayor and 10 councilors present that night (Councilors Paruch and O’Quinn were not there) approved it unanimously. Writing thisRead More

Editor’s Note: This is Part IV of a series that will continue until I find some answers or give up, whichever comes first. You’ll find Part I here and Part II here and Part III here.   I spent my Sunday afternoon looking at microfilm at the CBU library. IRead More

Editor’s Note: This is Part I of a series that will continue until I find some answers or give up, whichever comes first. You’ll find Part II here and Part III here.   Since I began the Spectator in 2016—long before this most recent controversy over the utility poles onRead More

District 8 Councilor James Edwards placed an item on Tuesday’s CBRM council meeting agenda calling for a staff Issue Paper on the pros and cons of selling Centre 200. Opened in 1987, the 5,000-plus seat arena in downtown Sydney was built to mark the city’s 1985 bicentennial. It was homeRead More

Court Sports I had a very informative conversation yesterday with Greg Callaghan, a member of the Basketball Cape Breton (BCB) board, who was dismayed to see the Spectator framing the campaign for a new central library as a competition against the campaign for a new community court sports facility. WeRead More

I have a suspicious mind — it pretty much goes with the territory, when you’re a journalist — so when I heard about this “court facility” expansion proposed for Centre 200, my immediate thought was that somewhere in the background was a plan to bring professional basketball back to CapeRead More

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

The provincial government department responsible for moving the NSCC Maroni Campus to the Sydney waterfront says the process of acquiring land for the project is “still underway,” which is why it would answer only part of the question I asked it this week. The Department of Labour and Advanced EducationRead More

During this month’s meeting of the CBRM council,  49 minutes’ worth of discussion was devoted to a motion by District 6 Councilor Glenn Paruch that staff be directed to draft an Issue Paper on commissioning a study into the possibility of building a facility, somewhere in the CBRM, with twoRead More

Hired guns CBRM Mayor Cecil Clarke’s executive assistant Mark Bettens (he of the exorbitant travel expenses) and spokesperson Sheilah MacDonald have taken paid vacation to work on Clarke’s re-election campaign. I confirmed this with CAO Marie Walsh this week. There’s nothing to stop them doing this — other than theRead...