In December 1984, Ward Five Alderman Frank Starzomski put forth a motion calling for Sydney’s City Council to be reduced from 12 members to six. Trimming city council had long been advocated by Sydney’s Shadow Council, a group of citizens—many of them women—who monitored the actual council, although, as theRead More

As noted in my earlier article about CBRM transit, the study that will guide the electrification of our system will consider the examples of other, comparable, municipalities. During their discussion of the matter earlier this month, some councilors expressed the concern that comparing us to Halifax—which ordered 60 electric busesRead 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

Poll vaunting There’s been a lot of hand-wringing this past week or so over that New Dawn Enterprises-commissioned poll asking, among other things, about possible successors to Cecil Clarke as CBRM mayor. I saw one impassioned critique that insisted the big problem with the whole thing was that Cecil Clarke’sRead More

A CAPE BRETON SPECTATOR/HALIFAX EXAMINER SPECIAL INVESTIGATION Editor’s Note: This is the fourth and final article in a series on the push for mines and quarries in Nova Scotia. (Read Part I, Part II, and Part III.)   Sacred land On a cold day in late November 2017 a couple of dozenRead More