Premier Darrell Dexter shot a few baskets Monday afternoon during a courtesy call at the former Holy Angels High School, which New Dawn Enterprises is turning into a center for cultural organizations and entrepreneurship. Pictured in the doorway is Blair Oake, recently retired manager of City Printers, who will manage the facility. Seated in the stands, wearing a blue shirt,  is New Dawn president (and defeated mayoral candidate) Rankin MacSween. Dexter squeezed in a series of meet-and-greets en route to the NDP's Cape Breton-The Lakes nominating convention in Eskasoni, where Mi'kmaq John Frank Toney was acclaimed. Toney's nomination, tacitly endorsed by Eskasoni Chief...

Kill the Friendly Giant. That's how Cape Breton University political science professor Tom Urbaniak describes the response of school boards and the Nova Scotia Teachers' Union when the Dexter government sought ideas for reducing the education budget. That's the tactic the CBC used a few years ago when the government announced a cut in its budget: The cuts would force it to cancel Canada's favorite children's show. Parents and children rose up, and the cuts got cut. As former education bureaucrat Wayne Fiander wrote to Contrarian recently, "the school boards and the teachers' union...

. . . . . . . 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...