Featured Local Perspectives
EDITORIAL: A is for anxiety: Atlantic Canadian schoolchildren living new world for learning
The schoolchildren attending classes across Atlantic Canada today are experiencing a very different introduction to reading, writing and ’rithmetic than their parents — or even older siblings — did in years past. These days, an Apple left on a ...
RAY BATES: Our ages should not be timelines established by others
At what age do we start — or stop — being able to achieve tasks or contemplate thoughts? When I was 15 years old a law dictated that I was “too young to drive” regardless of the fact that I could easily maneuver my father’s truck and tractor. When I ...
COVID VIGNETTE: It's a pothole potpourri
In nearly six decades of driving the Old Barns/Clifton Shore Road, I've never seen it so pot-holey as this February past. Well, once or twice, years ago, it was pretty bad. So bad that, one April day, I took two knee boots, put a brick in each, stood ...
JOHN DeMONT: Searching for awe in a leaf or solar eclipse
I had missed the Carly Simon total eclipse of the sun, or at least have no memory of the one in 1972, that she sang about in You’re So Vain. So, I was determined to bear witness this week — to be able to say when some grandkid asks, yes, I was there ...
EDITORIAL: Women's sports — and Atlantic Canadians — on the world stage
Has there ever been another time in history when the world’s attention has been captured, as it has been this month, by so many spectacular women athletes and teams performing on the international stage? With the WNBA Draft three days away on April ...
WALK IN THE WOODS: Public invited to woodland conference
Anyone interested in the future of forests in Nova Scotia are invited to attend a woodland conference Saturday, April 20 in Milford. The annual event rotates between counties each year to bring it close to residents living throughout the central ...
ANNE CROSSMAN: Hats off to firefighters
Unless a fire is in a stove, a fireplace or a BBQ, I am not a fan. In truth, the flames and their destructive power terrify me. It is right up there on the Terrify-Meter with violence. Now that we have finished with that part of me, let’s move on. I ...
JOHN DeMONT: Saltwater Sean, our underwater eco-hero
There are many ways to measure fame. Sean McMullen could, for example, point to his 107,000 followers on Instagram, or the 171,000 who keep an eye on him on TikTok. The 26,000 who subscribe to his YouTube videos also underscore that he has bona fide ...
EDITORIAL: Don't let warming Earth concerns become eclipsed
The total solar eclipse on April 8 afforded a rare opportunity for people of all generations to come together to marvel at a spectacle that occurs twice a year around the planet but won’t appear in this region again until 2106. The path of ...
JOHN DeMONT: A Marblehead-to-Halifax tale of Loyalist enslavement
Seven years ago, Patrick O’Brien was at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, going through old documents, as historians are wont to do. He can still recall the jolt he felt reading the postscript to a 1799 letter from a widow in a ...