Stephen Kimber

It was, if nothing else, compelling political theatre. Even on Channel 95 in cable’s nosebleed section. And even allowing for our legislative television channel’s blandly annoying alternating medium-close-up head shots of questioner followed by witness followed by questioner. Although the static camera never strays, never zooms tight on the eyes of the witness so we […]

The dogs of bore There must be something positive we can say about the current, ongoing, never-ending, will-it-ever-please-god-soon-end saga of Belinda and Peter, Paul and Belinda, Peter and his dog, Belinda and Tie, Tie and his wronged wife, Belinda and her feigned innocence, Condi and Peter, Peter and his dog… again. And now, of course, […]

I’ve been writing about media coverage of Brian Mulroney and the Airbus scandal for years (most recently in the Sunday Daily News of Jan. 28, 2007). Here are some of the earlier columns as well as a link to a magazine profile of Mulroney I wrote for the Financial Post magazine in 1978 between his […]

Politeness will not end poverty My colleagues over in the editorial department at the Daily News got our collective knickers in a righteous knot this past week over exactly what is the oh-so-polite and proper way to express one’s… well… one’s discontent with the seeming failure of our political betters to manage to accomplish anything […]

When is a war crime not a war crime? Forget for the moment Stephen Harper’s gratuitously partisan smear of "virtually all of the candidates" in the federal Liberal leadership race as somehow "anti-Israel" for not agreeing with him that Israel must be right even if it is wrong. Forget too the predictably wounded, angry — […]

‘Bold’ leadership or caving to reality I couldn’t help but wonder whether my usually button-downed, clear-headed colleague David Rodenhiser had been smoking something illegal (perhaps in preparation for a screening of Trailer Park Boys: The Movie ) when he sat down at his computer to write his Thursday column on Nova Scotia’s new Sunday shopping […]

Reluctant Genius The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell. By Charlotte Gray. HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 448 pages, hardcover. Did Alexander Graham Bell invent the telephone and change our world forever? Or does that honour more properly belong to Elisha Gray, an electrician, inventor and founder of the Western Electric Manufacturing Company who […]

Signs of the times by Stephen Kimber On Tuesday, a beaming federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and his Treasury Board President colleague John Baird stood proudly in front of an oversized $13.2-billion stage-prop cheque made out to Canadians. While the cameras rolled and the flashes popped, Flaherty declared: "We are trimming the fat and refocusing […]

The Arar case is not the end Reaction to Mr. Justice Dennis O’Connor’s $15-million report into the wrongful arrest, deportation and torture of Maher Arar has been fascinating. And instructive. Consider the Harper government. When the then-Liberal government began belatedly, timidly asking for Arar’s release from his Syrian torture chamber in the fall of 2002, […]

Horne case isn’t over Last week’s decision in the Gabrielle Horne case has clarified a couple of key issues in the ongoing dispute at the province’s largest hospital. For starters, we now know the Capital District Health Authority had no legitimate reason to vary Dr. Horne’s hospital privileges on a supposed “emergency” basis four years […]