Summer, for me, has always meant time spent in the woods. I would like to say I was the type of child who paid attention to the trees and the lichen and the moss and the mushrooms, who learned their names and their lifecycles and could distinguish white spruce fromRead...
Congratulations to the Cape Breton Fiddlers’ Association as they celebrate 50 years of great music! I’m no fiddler, but have been listening to and enjoying the music since I was a child. My grandfather, Michael Campbell, and his better-known brother John Francis (both from Iona, don’t you know) were fiddlers.Read More
TV News I decided to write something about Eastlink dropping 34 channels owned by Corus Entertainment because, although I do not have cable TV myself, I know someone who does—and who probably watches HGTV and Food Network, both slated to go as of June 27, more than anything other thanRead...
Editor’s Note: When I realized I would be publishing this year on the 41st anniversary of the sinking of the Ocean Ranger, I decided to reprint this piece from 2022—the preface to Susan Dodd’s 2012 book, The Ocean Ranger: remaking the promise of oil, with permission from Fernwood Books. Read More
It’s been almost seven weeks since I managed a fall that pretty much put me out of commission while leaving me (obviously) to live another day, albeit weighed down by a huge, black, velcro-strapped boot on my broken ankle. What was meant to be a week-long trip to Quebec City—withRead More
I read recently of the antics of two American billionaires with a kind of horrified fascination. The first was Elon Musk, who seems to be morphing from “a brilliant visionary” (at least in the eyes of some) to a cartoon-like James Bond villain, who fires thousands of people without aRead More
Ayn Rand Revisited I went through a brief period in high school when I thought Ayn Rand was someone you had to read to be considered well read (I blame a Sydney Academy debater who used to quote her regularly) and since being considered well-read was pretty much my life’sRead...
Dear Readers, It is with immeasurable sadness that we share the news that Mary passed away suddenly in the early hours of Wednesday, April 24th, at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital, seven months after being diagnosed with encephalitis. In the coming days we’ll be grappling with the questionRead More
I promised to deal with the volunteer awards that were presented during last week’s CBRM council meeting and, on the one hand, I can do that rather easily by telling you that the following awards were presented to the following people/groups: Gary MacDonald Memorial Award: Sukhmani Sahib Society, Sydney AnneRead More
Editor’s Note: This column last appeared on 10 August 2022. What to do this week Let the serious harvest begin! (Depending, of course, on what you have planted.) Many of us plant garlic, and mine is about ready. You can tell for sure when the stalk is two-thirds yellow.Read More
Watching the video of the July 20 Public Hearing on the CBRM’s new Municipal Planning Strategy (MPS) and Land Use By-law (LUB), I had to seriously interrogate myself as to why I didn’t share many of the concerns expressed by the residents who came to the podium to offer theirRead More
Meet the landlord Nicole Sullivan has a story in the Post about a CBRM landlord who has informed his tenants he will “no longer be supplying oil” to their units because “the costs have quadrupled and this will no longer be part of your rental income.” (I think he meansRead More
Editor’s Note: I heard Oona Johnstone-Laurette interviewed on CBC Information Morning Cape Breton recently and was so struck by what she had to say about unions—she had recently participated in an all-ages panel discussion hosted by Unifor—that I reached out to her to see if she might be willing toRead More
Editor’s Note: This column last appeared on 22 July 2020. What to do this week This week is a good time to talk about pruning tomatoes and hilling potatoes. Perhaps the most talked about controversy in home gardening is whether or not to even prune tomato plants in the firstRead More
Last Wednesday, during your regularly scheduled edition of the Cape Breton Spectator, I reported in some detail on the planning department’s presentation to CBRM council of the updated Municipal Planning Strategy and Land Use By-law. Except for a side bar on rooming houses, the story relied entirely on what plannersRead More
I hadn’t really thought about the time lag between amalgamation in 1995 and the adoption of a single Municipal Planning Strategy for the CBRM in 2004 until I saw it spelled out in the CBRM Forward Issue Paper presented to council by planning director Michael Ruus on Tuesday. Knowing itRead More
Editor’s Note: I thought I’d revisit a few stories I’ve covered this year to see how things have been coming along. Blowin’ in the wind Capitalize Albany Corporation (which does not, sadly, exist purely to stamp out lowercase spellings of the New York State capital but is the city’sRead More
“History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” James Joyce, The Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man On June 25, in the dazed wake of the aborted rebellion by a mercenary army, the Wagner Group, against Russia’s military and political leadership, the BBC’s MoscowRead More
It’s been almost seven weeks since I managed a fall that pretty much put me out of commission while leaving me (obviously) to live another day, albeit weighed down by a huge, black, velcro-strapped boot on my broken ankle. What was meant to be a week-long trip to Quebec City—withRead More
