Kimber’s Nova Scotia June 24, 2007 Vince’s very bad week Occasional Cape Breton regional municipal councilor — and more-time Halifax computer teacher — Vince Hall “visited” Sydney last week to testify at a Utility and Review Board hearing into whether the municipal council should be downsized. Hall — who chaired a CBRM boundary review committee […]
Kimber’s Nova Scotia June 17, 2007 Oh, that call centr e I think I may have finally figured out why our provincial politicians are so enamoured with the grant-sucking, low-wage, have-phone-will-travel call centre industry. Because the business is so footloose — opening up shop in one tax-forgiveness jurisdiction one day, shutting down and moving to […]
Can Rodney recover? CBC Radio’s As It Happens was playing in the background in our kitchen Monday evening as my wife and I went about the clattering, chattering routine of preparing supper. “Atlantic Accord…” the distractingly insistent, disembodied voice declared over the din. “Broken promise…” “Unfair…” “Nova Scotians expect…” “Get loud…” “Who’s that speaking?” my […]
Kimber’s Nova Scotia June 10, 2007 They can’t say they weren’t warned Federal Tories couldn’t have been surprised when Bill Casey stood in the House of Commons on principle — and against his party — in last week’s budget vote. In truth, the veteran Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley MP has been out of step with Stephen Harper […]
The high cost of refusing to say ‘sorry’ June 7, 2007 The war of attrition the Capital District Healthy Authority seems so eager to wage against some of its best and brightest has now opened on yet another front with the opening salvo in another nasty, pointless — and expensive — skirmish. Last week, Dr. […]
Kimber’s Nova Scotia By Stephen Kimber June 3, 2007 Phoning it in Poor Vince Hall. The Cape Breton regional councillor was feeling under the weather last week so he thoughtfully called the municipal clerk’s office from Halifax to say he wouldn’t be able to attend Tuesday night’s council meeting in Sydney and he just might… […]
The Book of Negroes By Lawrence Hill HarperCollins 486 pages, hardcover. ISBN-13: 978-0-00-225507-3 Reviewed by Stephen Kimber It hit me like the text’s “sack of hammers.” Somewhere around page 389 of Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes, I realized I’d become so completely engrossed in his masterful telling of the hard life and crueler times […]
Kimber’s Nova Scotia May 27, 2007 What have they got against curling? Liverpool town councilors might want to re-think their recent decision not to install surveillance cameras downtown. Last Sunday between midnight and 4 a.m., vandals painted the town red. The back wall of the curling club was covered with what one observer called “child-like […]
Kimber’s Nova Scotia May 20, 2007 How many politicians does it take to screw up? OK, how many free light bulbs will it take to cover the cost of gassing up the SUV for the 300-plus km drive from New Glasgow to Halifax and back? That’s the question Pictou county residents were asking themselves last […]
Kimber’s Nova Scotia May 13, 200 7 The puck-buck starts here Terry Hines believes he knows how to “reclaim Windsor as the birthplace of hockey.” No, the former president of the town’s Hockey Heritage Society hasn’t discovered the “smoking puck” at the bottom of a pile of smelly gear in some musty basement that will […]
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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