I’ve been paying pretty close attention to this drama I think of as the The Albert Barbusci Show, but I must have missed the episode where we asked Barbusci, our port promoter and the CEO of Sydney Harbour Investment Partners (SHIP), to identify a company with an untested method ofRead More

My judgement of port announcements has been forever damaged by what passes for them at the Port of Sydney (where the word “partner” is applied so broadly it has lost all meaning) but Tuesday’s announcement by the Port Authority in Québec has the ring of actual development about it: TheRead More

Free the information CBRM Municipal Clerk Deborah Campbell Ryan got back to me Tuesday night about another FOIPOP I submitted back in April looking for information about a matter before council. Her original estimate of the fee I would be required to pay for this (public) information was $215 andRead More

“Hopefully, the [feasibility study by Chinese construction giant CCCC] will be completed by July and we will be able to fast-track construction for opening for business in 2019,” — Port of Sydney CEO Marlene Usher, April 2016 “If all goes well, we’ll be putting a shovel into the ground inRead More

What better way to begin 2019 than by looking back at 2018 with CBRM Mayor Cecil Clarke? Clarke appeared on CBC radio’s Information Morning Cape Breton on January 3 to reflect on the year just passed and the Spectator listened with interest. In particular, it listened to the discussion ofRead More

Shout out Let’s start this out on a positive note: the staff at the Port of Sydney are really great. CEO Marlene Usher referred to them as her “small but mighty” team during her opening remarks at Port Days on Thursday and it’s true, the entire operation — including cruise,Read More

Mayor Cecil Clarke and the CBRM council will meet port promoter Albert Barbusci on Wednesday afternoon in what was supposed to have been a secret session between 1:30 PM and 3:30 PM at the Holiday Inn. Barbusci, of Sydney Harbour Investment Partners (SHIP), flew into Sydney Monday night, according toRead More

Whatever else our port promoters Sydney Harbour Investment Partners (SHIP) have been up to these past few months, they’ve finally cleaned up their internet presence. These quotes, for example, have been removed from their revamped web page: They’ve also changed their logo. From this: To this: I could say moreRead More

Shovel-ready Wednesday marked a momentous day in the history of Sydney port development: two First Nations Chiefs and a Montreal property developer came together to shovel…something. Part of me is ashamed at my inability to grasp the importance of Wednesday’s event, but part of me thinks that since neither BarryRead More

To be a marketer in 2017 in North America is to be social media savvy: to think about things like interactive media, influencer content, mobile video, chatbots and augmented reality, to name just a few of the 2017 marketing trends I cribbed from this Forbes article. So when a guyRead More