Three firefighters with Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency work to put out fires in the Tantallon area on May 30, 2023. I have come to think of it as the Betsy Boomerang — that moment when something you didn’t know, had forgotten, ignored, dismissed, avoided or pretended wasn’t something… suddenly becomes a thing that you […]
- 06/16/2023
- StephenKimber
- No Comments
I recently finished reading Hitler’s Secret Army: A Hidden History of Spies, Saboteurs, and Traitors, by British journalist and documentary maker Tim Tate. It’s a deeply researched book about ultimately unsuccessful efforts by a mutt’s breakfast of homegrown British fascist groups, lone wolves and oddball networks to undermine support for the Allied war effort, as […]
- 06/02/2023
- StephenKimber
- 2 Comments
RCMP Academy, Depot Division in 2018. As a longtime Halifax Mooseheads fan, I’ve spent some time this spring inside a downtown arena named after a bank watching our Quebec Major Junior Hockey League team compete for the Gilles Courteau trophy as their league’s best. The games on the ice have been excellent, but I often […]
- 05/19/2023
- StephenKimber
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Nearly seven months ago, on October 18, 2022, Public Works Minister Kim Masland told reporters the Houston government was about to request proposals to conduct an economic analysis of the costs and benefits of the controversial, money-sucking Yarmouth-to-Bar Harbor ferry service. “It’ll be a very broad overview of the economic impacts of the service,” she explained, adding […]
- 05/13/2023
- StephenKimber
- 2 Comments
An RCMP officer and an HRP officer stand together on Citadel Hill in a photo from a budget presentation to council in 2020. Let’s start with this… Defunding the police is, in many ways, about reinvesting in fundamental, and historically under-funded, community resources… [Our] last recommendations relate to municipal and police budgeting. One of these […]
- 05/05/2023
- StephenKimber
- 1 Comment
Photo by Tess Johnson, Naturalists Notebook. Until recently, I could not have told you the difference between an elver and one of Santa’s elves. Now, thanks largely to excellent ongoing reporting by the CBC’s Paul Withers, I know more than I ever thought I would want to know about those slithery, slimy, ghostlike creatures. (Bless […]
- 04/28/2023
- StephenKimber
- No Comments
Premier Tim Houston. “The government doesn’t want to be here. This is the place where opposition parties, where media, where Nova Scotians can hold the government to account on their record, and they don’t want to be here. This is a government that doesn’t like to be held accountable.” Welcome to today’s Political Pop Quiz. […]
- 04/21/2023
- StephenKimber
- No Comments
MLA Elizabeth Smith-McCrossin speaks with reporters at Province House on April 4, 2023. It was an unsettling, uncomfortable week in the Nova Scotia legislature, and Premier Tim Houston was clearly eager to “move forward.” Move forward from what seemed clear enough. To what was less obvious. Houston’s very bad week actually began the week before, […]
- 04/14/2023
- StephenKimber
- 3 Comments
The Mass Casualty Commission, with (left to right) commissioners Leanne Fitch, Michael MacDonald, and Kim Stanton, in February 2022. Pool photo by Andrew Vaughan/ Canadian Press I was not surprised by the numbers of people who pronounced themselves “somewhat surprised” by the sweeping and consequential content of last week’s report of the Mass Casualty Commission. Many […]
- 04/07/2023
- StephenKimber
- 1 Comment
Education minister Becky Druhan had an opportunity to address larger issues of violence in our schools and lack of mental health supports. Instead, she retreated into bland obfuscation and deflection The sign welcoming visitors to Charles P. Allen High School and the adjoining Bedford Hammonds Plains Community Centre in July 2021. (Yvette D’Entremont) I have […]
- 03/31/2023
- StephenKimber
- No Comments
STEPHEN KIMBER, a Professor of Journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax and co-founder of its MFA in Creative Nonfiction Program, is an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster. He is the author of two novels and eight non-fiction books. Buy his books
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