That was a peculiar performance by Cape Breton Regional Municipality Mayor Cecil Clarke Friday. At a hastily called, 3:30 p.m. news conference, the mayor denounced municipal affairs bureaucrats for piling $4-5 million in new charges onto the financially strapped municipality, while rejecting his reasoned pleas for help coping with CBRM's fiscal mess. Since his election in the fall of 2012, Clarke has quietly led CBRM officials and citizens through a deliberate process to identify efficiencies in the municipality's far flung operations. They pared capital spending, and made what appeared to be an honest effort to come to provincial (and federal) negotiations...

23 March, 2014

A lot of people who ought to know better have been whistling past the graveyard in response to the Harper government's plan to scrap Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation and assign responsibility for federal development assistance to the remote and largely indifferent Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. Make no mistake: this marks the end of a direct federal pipeline Cape Breton has enjoyed since the Donald Commission Report in the Pearson Administration. Anyone who claims it's not grim news for the island is either naive or disingenuous. ACOA minister Rob Moore managed the spin with adroitness we have rarely seen from the Harper government. He...

20 March, 2014

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that New York City has become the first major municipality to adopt the new active symbol of accessibility, which Contrarian first wrote about in September, 2011. The result of a collaboration between Sara Hendren, graduate student at the Harvard School of Design, and Brian Glenney, philosophy professor at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts, the revised icon recasts the passive, static International Symbol of Accessibility (demeaningly known as the "handicapped sign"), investing it with vigor and a sense of motion. The Chronicle reports: New York, in a move that could spark similar updates worldwide, has now agreed to use...

24 May, 2013

A couple of deft touches in Monday night's swearing-in ceremony for CBRM's new mayor and council hint at Cecil Clarke's potential to be a transformative mayor for the island's predominant municipality. [See update below.] [caption id="attachment_11065" align="alignleft" width="150"] Clarke[/caption] The first is a small thing: the musicians Clarke has chosen for the event are (1) young and (2) non-Celtic. This marks a departure from the cliched tartanism that usually dominates such affairs. Check out headliner Kyle Mischiek's rap-remix of "We are an Island" on YouTube and iTunes. The freshening up of a slightly dowdy Cape Breton chestnut will bring welcome symbolic value...

04 November, 2012

In a call to CBC-Cape Breton last week, North Shore resident David Papazian spoke a widely held but rarely voiced opinion about the $38 million project to dredge Sydney Harbor in hopes that someone will build container terminal here: The money could be much better spent fostering small business here in Cape Breton which is a much better engine of growth than these sort of mega-projects that require huge amounts of capital at the taxpayers' expense, with a whole lot of expectations and dreams and hopes that — maybe not, but very likely — will become another chapter in the probably fairly...

09 October, 2011

I don't usually repeat posts, but this election is important, so for any who missed it, here is Contrarian's Guide to Strategic Voting in Nova Scotia. In the latest Angus Reid poll, 49 percent of Liberal voters and 36 percent of NDP voters expressed a willingness to consider voting for a candidate other than their true preferences, in order to “avoid a specific outcome.” If you are one of those Liberal, New Democratic, or erstwhile Progressive Conservative voters, and you want to avoid the specific outcome of a certain authoritarian demagogue getting unfettered control of the House of Commons, you may...

02 May, 2011

Here's a bit of inside baseball, of interest only to hard core Cape Breton political junkies and residents of Cape Breton North and Victoria - The Lakes. When the federal election got underway last month, local tongues wagged and eyebrows fluttered at news that twice-defeated one-term Liberal MLA Gerald Sampson was campaigning for Harper Guy Cecil Clarke. Sampson has not exactly been a hot political property since he publicly condemned Victoria County voters as "liars" following his first defeat in 2006. Nevertheless, this was a prominent lifelong Liberal working for a CPC candidate. Aye, but here's the rub: Cecil's campaign workers are...

01 May, 2011

In the latest Angus Reid poll, 49 percent of Liberal voters and 36 percent of NDP voters expressed a willingness to consider voting for a candidate other than their true preferences, in order to “avoid a specific outcome.” If you are one of those Liberal, New Democratic, or erstwhile Progressive Conservative voters who would like to avoid the specific outcome of a certain dangerous demagogue getting an unfettered majority in the House of Commons, you may be wondering how to vote Monday. This post is for you. Contrarian’s Guide to Strategic Voting in Nova Scotia With three-way races and a still dynamic vote...

01 May, 2011

. . . . . . . That schools in the Cape Breton-Victoria School District will close is obvious. Enrolment here has dropped 22 percent over eight years, with no end to the decline in sight, while costs have risen 25 percent over the same period. That Holy Angels High tops the list of candidates for closure is equally obvious. The geriatric Catholic order that owns the school wants to unload it, and has offered it to the board for $750,000. The board estimates it would need another $8 to $10 million in repairs, while newer schools nearby have lots of space. The prospect of closure has provoked the...

17 November, 2010
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