StephenKimber | Stephen Kimber

‘We found each other’

During my research for my 2009 book, IWK: A Century of Caring for Families (Nimbus), I interviewed Dr. John Crocker, a pediatric nephrologist at the Izaak Walton Killam Health Centre in Halifax. Dr. Crocker died on October 26, 2016 Dr. Crocker could be a cantankerous character — he eventually sued the hospital and the province for breach of […]

Lindell Smith: more than a symbol

First, of course, there is the symbolism. Lindell Smith is Halifax’s first black city councillor since 2000. But not just… Early in his race for District 8, a campaign worker warned the corn-roed, goateed Smith he’d have to “deal with people looking at you like you’re Snoop Dogg trying to be a politician.” Rather than […]

Job one for the new council: end developer donations

Now what? With this year’s municipal elections history, the question becomes what should our new-old council do first? Answering that question is complicated by the reality our mayor and councilors are elected individually and independently. We don’t have political parties at the local level, either traditional or uniquely municipal parties. While that can be positive […]

Voting for change, not electoral victory

It will come as a surprise to no one — least of all to Lil herself — when I predict Lil MacPherson will not be mayor of Halifax after all the votes are counted this Saturday. But that was never the point, especially for MacPherson. And that is a point the rest of us should […]

Development: now’s the time to ask

North Preston’s Miranda Cain tells Metro’s Zane Woodford the key issue in her District 2 is “lack of recreation.” Rod Brunt’s main concern, reports Haley Ryan, is cycling safety on Halifax’s “shark-infested” streets. “Our issues,” Musquodoboit Harbour’s Kim Young tells reporter Yvette d’Entremont, “are just basically the oppression of rural development.” And so it has […]

Halifax council: time for change, but what? And how?

It goes with saying the Tilt-a-Whirl that is Halifax city council has too long tilted toward men, who traditionally also happen to be white, middle-aged and middle class, usually involved in business of some sort and been recycled through at least a couple of election wash-dry cycles. There are plenty of people — count me […]

We care… so why don’t we vote?

Why do we pay so little attention to the simplest — yet most important — opportunity to influence what happens in our everyday lives: voting in municipal elections? In 2012, only 36.9 per cent of us — barely one-third of those eligible — cast ballots to choose our current mayor and councilors. The irony is […]

Justice and the sad brutishness of real life

Too often, our criminal justice system is ill-equipped to deal with the sad brutishness of real life. Consider the recent case of the 43-year-old Dartmouth man convicted of an incestuous relationship with his then-17-year-old daughter. The facts are relatively straightforward. In September 2012, the young woman — who’d been living on the streets in Ontario, […]

League Misconduct

At 2:30 p.m. on July 4, 2016, Nova Scotia Minister of Labour Kelly Regan issued a news release. Athletes playing on Nova Scotia-based teams are exempt from parts of the Labour Standards Code… It was the Monday after the Canada Day long weekend, the beginning of our traditional summers-long political disengagement. This out-of-nowhere decision hadn’t […]

Berry Good

We could begin today’s globe-girdling adventure almost anywhere and at almost any time. In eastern Siberia, perhaps. Circa 1756. That’s when a Russian explorer and naturalist first identified the delectably healthful properties of a blue-ish, tart-tasting, strange-looking, oblong fruit from the lonicera caerulea plant. Or perhaps on Hokkaido, Japan’s most northern island, during the 1940s when […]