http://stephenkimber.com writer, editor & teacher Fri, 05 Mar 2010 10:56:11 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en It happened so long ago that Alexa McDonough was still the leader of a rag-tag band of New Democrats in the provincial legislature. And I was a still-young-ish reporter. McDonough had just introduced a private member’s bill to reform the ways in which political parties got financed. Its specifics have long ... http://stephenkimber.com/2010/03/1270 2010 Atlantic Book Awards Shortlists... Dartmouth Book Award (Non-fiction) Greg Cochkanoff and Bob Chaulk, SS Atlantic: The White Star Line's First Disaster at Sea (Goose Lane Editions) Stephen Kimber, IWK: A Century of Caring for Families (Nimbus Publishing) Anne Murray with Michael ... http://stephenkimber.com/2010/03/iwk-a-century-of-caring-nominated-for-book-award Wednesday’s historic agreement between the City of Halifax and the former residents of Africville, which was intended to turn the page on their bitter 40-year dispute, did not please everyone. How could it? The old wounds run too deep; the new hurts remain too raw. Make no mistake. There are legitimate ... http://stephenkimber.com/2010/02/africville-apology-an-historic-moment Nova Scotia's black history is rich and remarkable—Birchtown, for example, was North America's largest settlement of free blacks when it was founded in 1783—but that realty is rarely acknowledged. Now finally, that may be about to change... Shortly before 10 on the evening of March 31, 2006, residents along the Old ... http://stephenkimber.com/2010/02/reclaiming-black-history-acknowledging-our-own Today's announcement (February 24, 2010) of an agreement between the Africville Genealogy Society and various governments will mark the culmination of a decades-long, sometimes seemingly endless and too often hopeless struggle. The deal—like almost anything to do with Africville—will be controversial. But as we consider what it means, it is worth ... http://stephenkimber.com/2010/02/africville-a-look-back-at-the-struggle-for-redress Yes, the MLA expenses scandal is a scandal. Some of what some MLAs filed as legitimate expenses were not. A few claims may even be criminal. Let’s make MLAs pay back what they can’t justify, and prosecute those whose actions crossed the line. Let’s fix a screwed-up system. Then let’s ... http://stephenkimber.com/2010/02/mla-expenses-a-scandal-but For Family Court Judge Beryl MacDonald, the question seemed simple. Does she have the authority to order the minister of community services to provide a service the department, by policy, doesn’t offer? Her answer, delivered during a family court hearing this week, was equally simple. She does not. The legal issue ... http://stephenkimber.com/2010/02/whose-best-interests Tonight, 600 Nova Scotia Tories will gather at the Westin Hotel to pay perfunctory tribute to Rodney MacDonald, their thankfully former, now hardly ever mentioned leader. After that—if not before—conventioneers will get down to the real, if unspoken business at hand: making sure the party doesn’t blow it again like ... http://stephenkimber.com/2010/02/1172 So here is our question for today. Should the Charles Morris House—a down-at-the-heels, 240-year-old wooden structure that once served as the headquarters of Nova Scotia’s chief surveyor but today sits, forlorn, beached and abandoned in a downtown parking lot—be resurrected and spiffed up to serve as a living memorial to the ... http://stephenkimber.com/2010/01/having-our-history-and-swallowing-it-too So whose privacy are they protecting? On Dec. 2, 2008, an RCMP constable shot and killed John Andrew Simon, a member of Cape Breton’s Wagmatcook First Nation. Simon, everyone agrees, was alone inside his house, drunk and suicidal, at the time he was killed. According to what police reportedly told Simon’s ... http://stephenkimber.com/2010/01/protecting-privacy-or-covering-up