Stephen Kimber

Why are we there? Jack Layton may not be right, but he is not wrong either. The NDP leader’s call for Canada to immediately pull our troops out of Afghanistan and press for multilateral negotiations — including with the Taliban — has roused righteous and predictable furies. His political opponents, thankful that Layton had put […]

Press, politicians and private lives In last week’s letters-to-the-editor section, reader Chris Chisholm took me to task for writing a “pile of sanctimonious crap.” Which was how Chisholm ever-so-gently characterized my column from the week before in which I’d argued the public doesn’t need, or have the right to know the salacious details — if […]

The price of speaking the truth So let me get this straight. Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj is forced to resign as his party’s deputy foreign affairs critic for the crime of telling the truth about the situation in the Middle East — which is that the only way to achieve any lasting peace in that […]

The limits of gossip… the possibilities of statistics The news that Premier Rodney MacDonald and his wife of 12 years are splitting up is one of those sad, icky stories where, as a journalist, you can’t win. By commenting on it, even to suggest it is a private matter, you help keep it alive in […]

When in doubt, call a professional I confess I had occasionally pictured this scene in my head — the climactic movie-moment when the world-weary paterfamilias — who would, of course, be played by me — passes on his lifetime’s worth of hard-won wisdom to the next generation. In the image that played in my head, […]

Past time for debating Afghanistan mission “He was a professional…” “He died doing what he loved to do…” “He wanted to make the world a better place…” “We must support our soldiers…” “We should not cut and run…” At some level, I agree with those heartfelt sentiments, which inevitably get trotted out each time another […]

One person’s root cause is another’s yesterday They say the first casualty of war is truth. Context is usually a close second. In the bomb-blasted echo chamber that is the modern 24-hour news cycle, certain phrases bounce from politicians, to anchors, to pundits, to us, and then back round again, quickly assuming a truth of […]

A dream deferred Will former Africville residents finally get their church rebuilt? An apology would be nice too. Stephen Kimber reports. by Stephen Kimber Irvine Carvery has reason to be cautious. And he is. But he could be cynical too. And he isn’t. Since 1976, when the birth of his first son taught him the […]

Arab Holy War meets Israeli Apocalypse On the evening of June 3, 1967, shortly before the beginning of that Arab-Israeli war, United States Secretary of State Dean Rusk sent an “eyes-only” cable to his Arab-based ambassadors describing a situation “as complex and as dangerous as any we have faced,” and asking them “to put your […]