On Monday night, I attended the information session for residents of Sydney’s North End still waiting for answers about the leak at the Imperial Oil tank farm at 1 George Street on July 8. The leak occurred when a front-end loader rolled down a containment wall and punctured a largeRead More

Home Matters So, this happened: .@HomeMattersCB asks @TimHoustonNS if he supports a container pier for CBRM. Premier says he’s willing to see a business case. #nspoli — michael gorman (@MichaelTGorman) October 21, 2021 “@HomeMattersCB” is Sydney-Membertou MLA Derek Mombourquette and I groaned out loud when I read this. Mombourquette’s ownRead More

In 2012, the provincial electoral boundaries commission took 79% of Cape Breton Nova and 59% of Cape Breton South and created Sydney-Whitney Pier. The 2019 commission lopped off the Pier and added some Sydney River-Mira-Louisbourg territory and — voila! — Sydney-Membertou was born. I’m going to do some electoral genealogyRead 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

Writing in the Guardian in 2015, Sean Marshall dated the rebirth of the tram (which he, being a Toronto native, calls a “streetcar”) to the 1980s, although initially this took the form of “vintage” lines “mimicking New Orleans’ famous St Charles Streetcar line.” These heritage streetcars use antique or replicaRead More

One thing I feel absolutely no compulsion to print is op-eds by sitting politicians. My job is not to help elected officials get their carefully crafted messages to the electorate. My job is to hold elected officials accountable. So when I received a healthcare op-ed “written” by Energy and MinesRead More

Editor’s Note: Mayor Cecil Clarke’s contention that discussing council remuneration in camera (and treating elected officials as “personnel”) is a longstanding CBRM practice sent me scuttling to the “CBRM Mayor and Council” clippings file at the McConnell library, to research some of the remuneration (and related) issues council has dealt withRead More

But seriously, where’s Cecil? Did it strike anyone else odd that the mayor wasn’t at that flood prevention press conference on Monday? Sydney-Whitney Pier MLA (and Energy Minister) Derek Mombourquette and Sydney-Victoria MP Mark Eyking both thought $2.5 million in additional federal disaster funding was worth coming to town andRead More

Berth of a Boondoggle? “As for why it’s 18 months after the funding announcement and the supposed shovel-ready project still hasn’t proceeded, [CBRM Mayor Cecil] Clarke said it may have been in the addition of extra features in the design process, but admitted “I don’t have an answer.” People mayRead More