Where’s the money?

An excerpt from Bitcoin Widow: Love, Betrayal and the Missing Millions By Jennifer Robertson with Stephen Kimber Where’s the money? … The hot wallets? … Gerry’s safe? … Did he have a safe? … Did you get the e-mail he promised? … Who’s his lawyer? You need to contact his lawyer … Where’s the money? … We […]

Alexa McDonough (1944-2022)

Perhaps the best way to understand the vital personal role Alexa McDonough — the first woman leader of a recognized political party in Canada — played in changing Nova Scotia and Canadian politics for the better is to remember those days in the early 1980s when she was the only New Democrat, the only woman, […]

‘The worst thing…’

There were many moments in her long political career when Alexa McDonough believed the NDP was finally on the cusp of an electoral breakthrough — none as exhilarating but none as ultimately devastating as the 1988 Nova Scotia general election. Alexa McDonough, the former leader of the Nova Scotia and federal New Democratic Parties died […]

Richard Goldbloom: What brought him to Halifax?

Dr. Richard Goldbloom, an iconic figure in pediatric care in Canada and the first Chief of Pediatrics at Halifax’s Izaak Walton Killam Hospital for Children, died on November 18, 2021, at the age of 96. He was a major figure in the development of the IWK and in the book I wrote about the hospital’s […]

From ‘Reparations’ by Stephen Kimber

July 1976 He shouldn’t have been in this hellhole on a summer Sunday morning. He should have been home sleeping it off. So why was he standing here in his one, drizzle-dampened suit trying desperately not to let his brain process the smell of shit and salt that wafted up from the sewer outfall down […]

Aphrodisiac: Sex, Politics, Power and Gerald Regan

Prologue (Excerpted from Aphrodisiac: Sex, Politics, Power and Gerald Regan) On the morning of December 18, 1998, Canadians awoke to the shocking news that Gerald Regan, the former premier of Nova Scotia and onetime federal cabinet minister — who was on trial in Halifax on charges of rape and attempted rape involving three women — had […]

The morning after: it couldn’t get worse, and then it did

Bob Sutherland was disgusted. This wasn’t Rome or Berlin; this was Halifax. And it wasn’t Canadians fighting the enemy; it was Canadians fighting Canadians. He and some of the K of C centre staff had decided to take an early morning walk through the downtown to see for themselves what the riots had done. It […]

Rescue at sea: the sinking of the Otter, 1941

Jimmy Noade cradled the injured man in his arms. What was his name? Noade remembered him only as Walker. He was the Chief Officer aboard HMCS Otter and right now he was in bad shape, his body a limp rag, his voice a pale imitation of itself. For what seemed like days, Noade, Walker and […]

The Murder of Fabio Di Celmo

Havana, September 4, 1997, 11:00 a.m. Fabio Di Celmo was apologetic. Another day perhaps, he suggested into the telephone. The person at the other end of the line was a representative of Biconsa, a division of Cuba’s Ministry of Domestic Trade with whom he hoped to make a deal. But not today. Their appointment was for noon, […]

The Happy Ending

“I hope one day you will be able to update the story with the happy ending that many justice-seeking people around the world are still working for.” — Gerardo Hernández in a 2013 letter to the author This is the Epilogue to What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five by Stephen […]