Note: This is the second of two articles on the recent firing of three Cape Breton Regional Police Service officers. You can read Part I here — and you probably should because we’re just going to dive right in where we left off.   Were the cops involved the staffkenneyRead 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

Well, that’s all she wrote, folks. CBRM Mayor Cecil Clarke’s pursuit of the provincial Progressive Conservative Party leadership ended after the first ballot on Saturday, when rival Tim Houston came within 54 points of winning and Clarke bowed out. It was an abrupt ending to a campaign that seemed likeRead More

Call Mr. Campbell On Friday morning, I heard CBC reporter Tom Ayers’ interview with Shannon Campbell, Donkin Mine vice president, who attended a public meeting in Port Morien last night (organized by District 8 Councilor Amanda McDougall) to discuss residents’ concerns about coal trucks traveling through their community. On theRead More

One of the great advantages of citing I.F. Stone as an influence when you launch a news publication is that you never have to attend a political event — no press conferences, no port announcements, no chamber of commerce luncheons, no public meetings. Stone’s journalism was based entirely on theRead More

Cinema Politica in Cape Breton (“Screening Truth to Power”) kicks off a planned series of five films with a showing, in cooperation with the Cape Breton Spectator, of Canadian Jean-Philippe Tremblay’s Shadows of Liberty. The 2013 documentary, based largely on Ben Bagdikian’s 2004 book, The New Media Monopoly (an update ofRead More

Economic development is the word on the street in the CBRM these days — CBRM Mayor Cecil Clarke popped up on CBC Cape Breton’s Information Morning on May 4 to speak to host Steve Sutherland about it and CBRM Regional Council has vowed to meet once a month to discussRead More

Prince Rupert CBC Cape Breton’s Information Morning had a very interesting interview with Herb Pond, mayor of Prince Rupert, British Columbia for two terms during which time the city’s struggling break-bulk port was developed into a successful container terminal, handling more than 600,000 containers a year and employing more than 3,000Read More

I’ve been doing some reading about the sub judice rule — you know it, I’m sure you do, it’s the rule invoked by public officials who say, “I can’t comment on that, it’s before the courts.” My research was inspired by Cape Breton Regional Police Services Chief Peter McIsaac, who bothRead More

The Cape Breton Regional Municipality has more police officers than it can afford. Don’t look at me, I’m not the one who said it—it’s the considered opinion of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality Task Force, or The Mayor’s Task Force, a group formed in 2013 to “make recommendations regarding theRead More