As someone curious about the cruise ship experience but with zero desire ever to board a cruise ship, I was delighted to discover the existence of Emma Le Teace, a 28-year-old from the UK who took her first cruise at the age of 11 and now cruises professionally—as in, hasRead More
Last fall, I was talking to South Bar resident and sometime Spectator contributor Rod Gale about the preponderance of provincial arts grants given to artists in Halifax. Gale has long taken an interest in the local arts scene — he’s the founder of Gobblefest, an alternative music festival held onRead More
The pier, dear Premier Stephen McNeil officially opened Sydney’s new $20 million docking pier Thursday amid a gathering of politicians from all levels and stripes. McNeil said he’s confident the cruise industry will bounce back and that the new infrastructure, to be called Liberty Pier, will also help attract otherRead More
In camera The CBC’s Tom Ayers doesn’t seem to like closed doors any more than I do and this week he kicked one open (figuratively, not literally) at the Cape Breton Regional Municipality. Ayers reported on Thursday that the CBRM Council has discussed its own compensation in secret four timesRead 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. AsRead More
Editor’s Note: Equalization has colonized a lot of space on the Op-Ed pages of the Cape Breton Post lately (and here in the Spectator too). Personally, I’m just delighted to see the issue get an airing — I feel like it got stored away in a cupboard when former CBRMRead More
Dear Premier McNeil: I am writing with regard to the issue of the Nova Scotia government’s distribution of the Federal Equalization Transfers, public concern over which has now reached a critical level here on Cape Breton Island, and in other non-metropolitan areas of the province. I was part of aRead...
How to Spend $160 The September 27 edition of the Cape Breton Post was an exciting one for me. The front page featured a Canadian Press story about the provincial budget (prompting me once again to wonder why, if Saltwire is such a heavyweight Atlantic Canadian news presence, it can’tRead...
Friday at 3:58 pm is usually when people announce news they hope will be forgotten by Monday, so I thought it a bit odd to receive a media alert at precisely that time last Friday from Elyse Mailhot, a media relations person with One Ocean Expeditions (OOE). OOE is anRead More
Confessions of a bad reporter I forgot about Ports Day — Port Days? Ports Days? — whatever it is, I forgot about it. I know, right? How does that happen? How does the most port-obsessed person in Sydney forget Port-a-palooza? I can only plead temporary sanity. This week, I was apparentlyRead More
