Columns and Letters

Frank's Comment: Corn on the cob: the denture challenge

Details: Last Updated: Tuesday, 16 September 2025 14:55

September 17, 2025

-by Frank Macdonald

I once spent three months on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Most of the memories have become vague, but I do recall the music and the crowds. What I seem to recall best, though, is my almost steady diet of corn-on-the-cob. There was a street vendor who sold cobs for 25 cents, boiled, with a holding stick, and when purchased, was lifted from the boiling water, deep dunked into a vat of melted butter and glazed with more salt than a Cape Breton winter road. For both its cost and its quality, it became part of my daily diet.

Thoughts of it have been brought up from the depths of memory by thoughts about the history of teeth.

There must be an evolutionary reason why most babies are born without teeth. Oh, there are exceptions, I know, new-borns who can’t wait to sink their ivories into a pizza, but generally speaking, most of us were born toothless.

Letter: It’s about effective representation

Details: Last Updated: Tuesday, 16 September 2025 14:47

September 17, 2025

Dear Editor,

As a follow-up to your front-page article on September 3rd, we’d like to briefly explain why there’s a small group of volunteers who have stepped forward over the last several years to help protect the Acadian culture in Northern Inverness County.

First, a brief history:

This all started in 1992 when the province established its first Electoral Boundaries Commission, which recommended the creation of four protected ridings; one Black riding for Preston and three Acadian ridings for Argyle, Clare and Richmond, but refused one for Chéticamp and greater area. The three subsequent Commissions in or about 2001, 2011 and 2019 also refused to recommend the Acadian area as a protected riding.

Letter: Summer activities for kids: Thinking about what could have been

Details: Last Updated: Tuesday, 09 September 2025 14:58

September 10, 2025

Dear Editor,
It’s that time of year again. The kids are going back to school, but I’m still stuck on summer and thinking about what could have been.
My family is pretty average. Both us parents work and we have two kids. They are 14 and 10. During the summer, we get a few weeks of vacation and we go camping and visit with family. In this way we had a great summer.
But I’m stuck on the times when we aren’t off work and what our kids get up to. It bothers me that my kids spent so much of their summer when we were off working on their screens. It’s not good for them, they are irritable, and they regress when they go back to school.