My own Mulroney moment

In 1978, when I was a young freelance magazine writer, Financial Post Magazine assigned me to profile Brian Mulroney. Two years earlier, Mulroney had lost his bid to lead Canada’s Progressive Conservative Party to Joe Clark and had then taken a very different job as president of Iron Ore Canada. Financial Post editors wanted me […]

The little review that can… and does

By Stephen Kimber The Miramichi Reader, which now cheekily bills itself as “Canada’s best-regarded source for the finest in new literary releases,” actually began “as a lark” in 2015. James Fisher, an MRI technologist at New Brunswick’s Miramichi Regional Hospital, happened to be sitting around the break table one day talking books with a few colleagues. […]

Writing in the Writers’ Relay

Hello, So… I’m one of 12 Nova Scotia writer-volunteers taking part in — wait for it — a “writing relay event.” On Feb. 19, each of us will take a turn creating 200 words of a collective short story before handing off to the next relay writer. And so on. And so on. It’s a little […]

The fascination of Flora

Flora MacDonald, Canada’s first female Secretary of State, died today (July 26, 2015). She was 89. In the fall of 1979 — the year she became Secretary of State — I spent a few days following the North Sydney, NS, native around her adopted hometown of Kingston, ON, for a profile in the November 1979 issue of Atlantic Insight magazine. […]

How Stephen McNeil will turn into Darrell Dexter…

Do you remember back in the dying days of the Rodney MacDonald regime when then-NDP finance critic Graham Steele threatened the then-deputy finance minister with contempt of a legislative committee for refusing to be forthcoming about the province’s finances? Remember when the deputy finance minister shot back that Steele’s criticism was all “political foolishness?” Do […]

Kimber's Nova Scotia (Dec 30, 2007)

Kimber’s Nova Scotia December 30, 2007 Winning the wharf war More than eight years after Ottawa disastrously handed control of Digby’s vital fishermen’s wharf to outsiders and more than five years after frustrated locals first organized to buy it back, the wharf is finally in the hands of a community group. In 1999, as part […]

Kimber's Nova Scotia (Dec 23, 2007)

December 23, 2007 They like us, they really like us “It is a land of the great outdoors with breathtaking scenery: thousands of glassy lakes, pristine beaches and carpets of forest that draw tourists to see the autumnal reds and golds.” That’s us that Britain’s widely read Telegraph newspaper is gushing on about. In a […]

Kimber's Nova Scotia (Dec 16, 2007)

Kimber’s Nova Scotia December 16, 2007 The lawyers’ Christmas present There has been yet another flurry of new legal developments and even newer un-developments in the always developing, ever stranger-than-last-week saga of Nova Scotia’s development-promoting South West Shore Development Authority. In one of the most recent incidents, the SWSDA’s executive finally struck a deal with […]

Kimber's Nova Scotia (Nov 11, 2007)

Kimber’s Nova Scotia November 11, 2007 Between a rock and an empty place The Digby Courier is reporting what it calls “a noticeable increase in real estate for sale” in Digby Neck in the wake of last month’s joint federal-provincial panel report rejecting a proposed basalt quarry and marine terminal there. An American company, Bilcon, […]

Kimber's Nova Scotia (Oct 28, 2007)

Kimber’s Nova Scotia October 28, 2007 Whose quality of life? After sifting through thousands of reports and submissions from government departments, scientists, environmental groups, industry experts and ordinary citizens, the joint federal-provincial review panel’s report on a massive quarry project proposed for Digby Neck was unambiguous. The federal and provincial environment ministers should reject the […]