Bottom row (left to right): Ethan MacKinnon, Ben Matthews, Cormac MacQuarrie, and Drew Johnson; middle row: Henry Ryan, Max MacDonald, Nolan Walkins, Murdoch MacLeod, Trent Chiasson, Ryland MacLellan, Caleb Mattie, and Nash Campbell; back row: Neil MacQuarrie (Head Coach), Brett Walkins (Assistant Coach), and David Ryan (Assistant Coach).
-by Bill Dunphy
The Inverness Ravens U11 A baseball team won the West Hants Invitational Tournament on the weekend. After going 2-1 in the round robin, beating the Amherst Athletics and the host West Hants Coyotes, they faced off against Amherst
for the second time in the Championship Game. The Ravens came out and dominated the game, putting up eight runs in the first two innings and blowing the doors open to win 17-2. Henry Ryan pitched three innings, and Nash Campbell came in to earn the save by striking out three straight. A big win for the Inverness Ravens, who will participate in provincials in Sydney
from August 28th - 30th.
-by Beverley Phillips
It’s hard not to stop and collect a few rocks when walking along the beaches of Inverness County, and Hermine Ford is no different.
Ford is an artist who spends her year between Dunvegan and New York City. She works every day in her downtown New York studio. “Like many artists, I need to do it,” said Ford, “but I’m not a tormented artist. I like doing it.”
Her exhibit entitled From here and from away opened at the Inverness County Centre for the Arts (ICCA) on August 9th. On Sunday, August 16th, she gave an artist talk on her show, which reflects 50 years of drawings and paintings inspired by the rocks she collected from the beach in Dunvegan. “I have a huge collection of them,” said Ford. “My windowsills and bookshelves in New York are filled with them.”
Drawing those pebbles began as a warm-up exercise that Ford discovered she loved. She outlines and then fills them in with crosshatch strokes. “It’s very meditative,” she said.
And though she has been doing them for years, she doesn’t get bored of them. “As long as the form is different and I’m experimenting with colour, it works,” she said. “I’m amusing myself when I do these.”
The larger body of Ford’s work is abstract, and for Ford, the stones are already abstract. “I can identify them as real as a real thing, but I like that they are abstract,” she said.
Yet her drawings are not abstract. “I’m looking at them and drawing them as carefully as I can,” she said.
After the show, Ford spoke on the nature of abstract art. “There is a widespread misunderstanding of what art is,” she said. “People would enjoy it much more if they could see that. People see a Rembrandt, and the reason a Rembrandt is greater than a very able portrait you might find in a thrift shop or from an art student is because of its abstract qualities. The fact that it’s also extremely representational misleads people. Ingres is one of my favourite artists, and he made very pristine portraits. His drawings are incredible. Besides the fact that he’s a great realist, that isn’t what makes the drawings great. His drawings have presence. Where they are on the page, the scale that they are done in, what’s done, what’s left undone. That’s all very abstract, but that’s what makes all of the greats great.”
Her father was an abstract painter, and he would work with a model a couple of days a week. That is where Ford began drawing as a young child. From him, she learned to be very observant. “That’s what I like about the pebbles,” she said. “And I hope it encourages people to pay more attention to the world we live in.”
The show runs until September 6th. The gallery is open Tuesday to Sunday from 12:00 p.m to 5:00 p.m. People can visit it at the Inverness County Centre for the Arts at 16080 HWY-19, Inverness.
Premier Tim Houston spoke briefly to some of the protesters who gathered at the Port Hawkesbury Civic Centre to share their thoughts on a number of issues. He told Shirley Hartery with her “Premier Claudia Chender” sign that she’d regret that.
-by Beverley Phillips
In an address to the Strait Area Chamber of Commerce, Premier Tim Houston touted energy development and mining as the cure for the province’s economic woes.
At the $75-a-plate luncheon at the Port Hawkesbury Civic Centre, Houston used a medical analogy to describe the province’s state of affairs.
The diagnosis is that the province has a $1 billion deficit, possibly rising to $2 billion if labour issues need to be settled.
The treatment is more revenue. “There are a few ways you can do that,” said Houston. “Instead of raising your taxes, we are choosing to build our own economy and to build it safely.”
To do that, he championed natural gas, wind energy, and mining. “We are sitting on enough natural gas reserves,” Houston said, “to power our products, stabilize costs, and keep more Nova Scotia money in Nova Scotia for generations.”
He promises to do it responsibly. “Responsible governments insist on science,” said Houston. “Responsible governments protect the environment.”
In 2025, Houston lifted the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, ban. His government tasked Dalhousie University with overseeing its $30 million Subsurface Energy Research and Development Investment program. Of that $30 million, over $24 million is earmarked for exploration incentives. Seven companies have expressed interest in the program.
Citizens and environmental groups have decried the move, citing concerns over water use and pollution, human health impacts, and the climate crisis. Climate research says climate change is here now, and economies need to rapidly decrease their reliance on fossil fuels to minimize how much global temperatures will rise. Natural gas is primarily methane, and methane is a very potent greenhouse gas. In the first 20 years of it being released into the atmosphere, it traps at least 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide.
Nova Scotia has legislated that greenhouse gas emissions be at least 53 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 and net zero by 2050.
He then spoke about Wind West, a $60 billion project that could meet 27 per cent of Canada’s energy demands. It would be a massive integrated project of offshore wind farms and new transmission lines. “The entire world is looking at Nova Scotia,” he said. “The Prime Minister talks about Wind West all over the world in his meetings. For years, it felt like the wind was always in our face pushing us back. Now we have a chance to put it back at our backs, and we are using this opportunity to ensure that Nova Scotia will no longer be at the very end of the energy transmission line.”
With both on- and offshore natural gas and wind power, Houston said, “Nova Scotia has the opportunity to become one of Canada’s great energy provinces.”
He moved on to discussing mining for the material needed to build affordable housing, hospitals, and transmission lines. “We can import these materials from jurisdictions with weaker environmental records,” said Houston, “or we can mine those safely and responsibly here. I choose here.”
Earlier this year, Houston gave Australian mining company St Barbara permission to re-open their gold mine in Guysborough County. The company is also looking to expand operations under the name 15-Mile Mineral and Renewables with three new open pit mine sites. Indigenous groups and the St. Mary’s River Association have both expressed concerns about the environmental impact of these operations to local watersheds, which include important Atlantic salmon habitat.
In the fireside chat part of the afternoon, questions were collected and summarized from chamber members and posed to Houston. On population growth, he spoke of working with the federal government on immigration and on creating opportunities for people to move here or giving them reasons to stay here.
On how the Strait area fits into Nova Scotia’s economic future, and what opportunities have the greatest potential, Houston encouraged the audience to “think big” and said that the government “can come and add a little fuel to push their efforts forward.” He noted the military investments that the federal government is making would spill over out of Halifax to the rest of the province. But he said, “things around energy, around mining, these are tailor-made for rural areas and economic development in rural areas.” A planned media scrum was canceled, and the premier did not take questions from reporters
- Houston touts energy and mining as tailor made for rural areas in Chamber of Commerce address
- Port Hood Island church to be decommissioned
- The Inverness Science Café fished for answers to challenges faced by Atlantic salmon
- The Margaree River is reopened to angling as water temperature drops
- The grand opening of Squirrel Mountain Trail
- In shark news…
- 104 years of curiosity: remembering Alice McMaster
- Fracking debate resurfaces as Houston
tours Nova Scotia - Freeman’s Pharmacy expansion
- Province shifts employment supports
- River Stories
- Landfill Gas
- Cedric MacDonald Memorial Race
- Inverness Ravens U11 A baseball team wins the West Hants Invitational
The Inverness Oran is a locally owned and operated newspaper publication with offices located in the county of Inverness, Nova Scotia, Canada. Printed 52 times per year, The Inverness Oran caters to residents of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia as well as national and international readers.
Readers can take advantage of a flexible subscription package available for 3-months, 6-months or 12-months periods, available in a Print Version, a Digital Version, or both. First published in 1976, The Inverness Oran continues to serve and reflect residents and communities of Inverness County.