It’s difficult to see Education Minister Karen Casey’s decision to cut off funding for the Council on African Canadian Education (CACE) as anything but vindictive. Let’s examine the history. In 1996, after high school race riots and a critical government advisory report recommended establishing an Africentric Learning Institute to improve black students’ education, the province […]
- 03/02/2015
- StephenKimber
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Really? Last year, the McNeil government passed the Health Authorities Act, ostensibly (and laudably) to streamline the province’s health care system, but also (and shabbily) to game that system. The legislation reduced the number of health districts from 10 to two, and the number of collective bargaining units from 50 to four. But the government’s […]
- 02/23/2015
- StephenKimber
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Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy sits trapped in Cairo limbo awaiting retrial next week on trumped-up charges he spread “false news” supporting Egypt’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Meanwhile, his Australian colleague, Peter Greste — who was convicted with Fahmy on the same charges last year — is home in Brisbane after being released Feb. 1 from what […]
- 02/17/2015
- StephenKimber
- 1 Comment
It can’t happen here. It won’t happen here. It — almost — did. But what is “it”? And how do we protect ourselves against whatever it is? On Friday night, I was at Scotiabank Centre enjoying the Mooseheads-Shawinigan Cataractes Quebec Major Junior Hockey league game. During a commercial lull — the game was televised nationally as part […]
- 02/17/2015
- StephenKimber
- 1 Comment
Last week’s student march on Province House has become an annual rite of the winter season, not unlike its usual accompanying, storm-tossed February headline salad: Monday’s “Traffic Gridlock Hits Halifax,” Tuesday’s “Halifax Digging out from Biggest Snowfall” to Friday’s cheerless end-of-first-week-of-the-month news “Snowfall Amounts for February in Halifax Almost Equal to January Total.” Predictable. Depressing. […]
- 02/09/2015
- StephenKimber
- 1 Comment
When you ask Halifax Mayor Mike Savage what he takes the “most pride in” from his first two years on the job, he doesn’t mention the two balanced budgets with no tax increases, the $350 million debt at the time of amalgamation now wrestled to $260 million “while the province has gone from a debt […]
- 02/02/2015
- StephenKimber
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The irony is we might not know to be outraged if not for a man many of us are outraged at. We have a complicated relationship with those who blow whistles on bad behaviour: think Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning… and, now, Ryan Millet. Millet, a 29-year-old fourth-year Dalhousie University dental student, was one of 13 […]
- 01/26/2015
- StephenKimber
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It’s hard to imagine a 30-minute conversation with former mayor Peter Kelly that could skip seamlessly: from the rebuilding Halifax Mooseheads; to a previous life as a backbench opposition MP (“the only less relevant position being a backbencher on the government side”); to the job of Halifax mayor (“I like it, sometimes more than I […]
- 01/26/2015
- StephenKimber
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- 01/19/2015
- StephenKimber
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By this time next week, government-appointed mediator-arbitrator Jim Dorsey is expected to hand down his final report into which health care worker should be represented by which health care union. His choices seem limited. The Health Authorities Act — which the McNeil government introduced last fall as part of its promise to merge nine district […]
- 01/12/2015
- StephenKimber
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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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