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

I ran across this ad for a CBRM Communications/Information Officer in the course of researching this week’s treatise on access to information. The closing date for applications is tomorrow — November 19 — so there’s still time for any of you not daunted by the list of 21 — TWENTY-ONERead More

The cruise industry has been hard hit by COVID-19, which is bad news for any port that has put all its eggs in that particular basket, like the Port of Sydney which counts on the industry for up to 85% of its revenues and has funneled $20 million in publicRead...

FOIPOP blues Since the dawn of the age of Big Data — hell, since the dawn of the age of Excel spreadsheets — tracking and collating information has become much easier for us humans. Data entry is boring but not difficult, and once entered (whether into a database or aRead More

‘Many or several’ A Tuesday night CTV news report about the cruise industry in Cape Breton (opening line: “It seems their ship has come in, once again, for the cruise industry in Cape Breton”), sent me scrambling for my secondary sources. First, because it seemed to contain confirmation that theRead More

ServiCom There is absolutely no humor to be found in the announcement that 600 Cape Bretoners have lost their jobs  three weeks before Christmas with the closure of the ServiCom call center. Even Mayor Cecil Clarke’s mixing of metaphors (he’s hoping the potential sale of the local ServiCom branch willRead More

Spin Class I like following the CBC’s Jean Laroche on Twitter precisely for moments like these, where he captures something about the way our political system works that you don’t get to see unless you happen to hang out in the halls of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly: ThisRead More

I missed it the first time I looked at the front page of the today’s Cape Breton Post, but then again, it wasn’t exactly given big play: just a sidebar next to the headline stories about flood mitigation and recovering policemen. Eventually, though, I saw it: Yes, the mayor’s “political”Read More

Welcome to this week’s installment of “Where’s Cecil?” my ongoing effort to keep track of Mayor Cecil Clarke’s campaign appearances to judge just how much time he’s taking from his day job to travel the province in pursuit of the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Nova Scotia. I’mRead More

Welcome to this week’s installment of “Where’s Cecil?” my ongoing effort to keep track of Mayor Cecil Clarke’s campaign appearances to judge just how much time he’s taking from his day job to travel the province in pursuit of the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Nova Scotia. I’mRead More