As the temperature hit 41° C (with the humidex) on Sunday, I found myself thinking of CBU poli-sci Prof Tom Urbaniak’s recent Post opinion piece about our municipality’s woefully inadequate preparations for extreme heat: Severe, extended heat waves were previously rare around here. But our changing climate is changing ourRead More

Full disclosure: I thought 2021 was going to be vastly different from 2020 but instead, it unfolded like we’d given 2020 a 12-month extension on its contract. The COVID pandemic continued to loom large in everyone’s lives although, as you’ll see, I modified my response to it. I spent muchRead More

Low-rent Davos Last week found me feeling hopeful about our municipal government, reporting on CBU Prof. Tom Urbaniak’s suggestions for streamlining agendas and shortening meetings and involving the community on committees. And then, this happened: The Cape Breton Regional Municipality is readying a new strategic plan for the next fourRead More

Editor’s Note: I’m using this week’s Fast & Curious to cover some items from Tuesday’s CBRM council meeting. Your regular, more random, Fast & Curious will return next week.   All in the Family Tuesday’s CBRM council meeting began with Mayor Amanda McDougall explaining that council had just met inRead More

NSP Someone (you know who you are) recently got me to thinking about the history of policing in Nova Scotia, which led me to this 1990 article by Greg Marquis (the author, more recently, of a book about the murder of Richard Oland). The piece, entitled “The History of PolicingRead...

Equality I have three things I want to link together here and I have to do it quickly before I forget one (or more) of them: 1. During his “fireside” chat at the Cape Breton Regional Chamber of Commerce this week, Premier Stephen McNeil declared that he had no interestRead More

New Liberry I went to that Open House session on the new central library last night and I will have more to say next week but I just had to note that I heard no good explanation for why the public library has been stuffed, like a pimento, in theRead More

While writing last week about the CBRM Regional Enterprise Network or CBRM REN it suddenly struck me that I didn’t know what I was talking about. I didn’t really know what a Regional Enterprise Network was, so I decided I’d better educate myself. I began by looking up the existing CapeRead 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

News in the news Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s fall economic statement includes a section labeled, “Support for Canadian Journalism.” I’ve been reading it this morning, but I fear all I really need to know about it is this: Paul Godfrey, the CEO of Postmedia, which publishes the National PostRead More