Stephen Kimber

Let the recriminations begin The cell phone rang. The cell phone never rings, unless it is one of the children wanting to know when Sunday dinner is being served — and it was now Monday morning — or unless I’m out of range of local cell phone service and I’ve forgotten to add “roaming minutes” […]

When is a legal bill legal advice? When the Capital District Health Authority doesn’t want to disclose how many of your tax dollars it’s spent fighting a losing cause My question was straightforward enough. I simply wanted to know how much the Capital District Healthy Authority had spent hiring outside legal firms to fight the […]

Inside the square Although the housing project was supposed to perform social miracles, it’s become both stigma and scapegoat. But people who live in Uniacke Square are determined to let others see their neighbourhood—the good, the bad, the surprisingly ordinary—as they do. by Stephen Kimber "Some?" he says, extending a small hand in my direction. […]

Questioning the answers I support Halifax’s 2014 Commonwealth Games bid if … If I know how much they’re going to cost. And if that cost seems to be reasonable, given all the other priorities I’d like my governments to focus their attention — and spend my money — on. Those “ifs” are critical to my […]

When spin spirals into smear On Tuesday in Washington, final arguments are scheduled to begin in the trial of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s former top aide. Libby, you may recall, is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice in connection a 2003 White House campaign to discredit former American ambassador Joseph […]

The Rodney question for the rest of us The question isn’t whether Rodney MacDonald can recover from his first-year reputation free fall and still be the premier of all he surveys the next time Nova Scotians visit the polls. He can. In the three-way, buzzer-beater game of percentage-points politics that our elections have become — […]

Can Harper recover the environment ball? Is this really what federal campaign finance reform legislation was intended to do? Give the Conservatives such a bulging war chest they can afford to buy time tonight on the year’s highest rated, most expensive TV spectacular in order to try and sack the new Liberal quarterback before his […]

Journalists ignore ‘troublesome episode’ It is one of the enduring mysteries of Canadian political journalism. Why are Ottawa journalists still so incredibly, inexplicably incurious about the fact an infamous international wheeler-dealer gave Brian Mulroney $300,000 in cash from a Zurich bank account within months after he stepped down as prime minister. And why is nobody […]

Is it because he’s black? The problem with racism is it isn’t as obvious as it once was. Segregated schools and whites-only clubs were easy targets. Trying to read between the lines of a blandly bureaucratic municipal planning report that claims putting a new landfill next door to a longstanding black community is a proper […]

Fiddling over Fage II fun, but… The radio host’s question — coming as it did on a day when the premier of our province was reduced to absurdly repeating his new the-facts-are-the-facts mantra to explain away the latest inconvenient new facts that had suddenly replaced the old, no-longer-fact facts he’d been dispensing — seemed ludicrously […]