Sears stiffs its staff while vulture capitalists profit. Discuss

Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.

Sears stiffs its staff while vulture capitalists profit. Discuss

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner on July 10, 2017. On Friday, I was mindlessly meandering the aisles of my local Superstore, foraging for food and filling time, when I chanced on a conversation at the pharmacy. A man was paying for a prescription. “Just six dollars,” the woman behind the counter said […]

Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.

Mind your own business

This column originally appeared in the July-August 2017 issue of Atlantic Business Magazine. For each of you who has lamented the lack of business acumen among our political ruling class, or longed for a shimmering titan of industry to step from the boardroom and lead us all to the promised political paradise of tax-limited, bureaucracy-free corporatist […]

Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.

Is it always a bad idea to get government involved in journalism?

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner on July 3, 2017. “It’s always a bad idea to get the government involved in journalism.” Tim Bousquet June 27, 2017 I hesitate to disagree with Tim Bousquet, the editor of The Halifax Examiner, my colleague and boss. But in this instance I do. Not completely, […]

Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.

Can a ‘white van driver’ be a terrorist? Discuss

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner on June 26, 2017. I was watching CNN last Sunday night. It is my guilty-pleasure punishment for the sin of obsessing too much about what Donald Trump might do next. Trump had filled up his Father’s Day dissing his predecessor, Barack Obama, in 140-character vitriol. He’d falsely […]

Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.

Stephen McNeil’s 20 per cent majority: a referendum on…?

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner on June 19, 2017. So that didn’t take long. It will be three weeks tomorrow since Nova Scotians voted in a provincial general election. You may remember that election: the one in which Stephen McNeil’s Liberals came within a few hundred votes here or there of losing their majority […]

Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.

Wade Smith’s unfinished legacy: ‘It’s up to us…’

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner, June 12, 2017. “Maybe we need to look at an all-black school or other alternatives.” It was April 2006 and Wade Smith, then the vice principal of St. Patrick’s High School in Halifax, was musing to former-student-become-CBC-journalist Maggie Rahr about a recently released report on the province’s progress — […]

Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.

Since none of the above is on the ballot…

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner May 29, 2017. Who would you like to see win tomorrow’s provincial general election? Who should win tomorrow’s provincial general election? If you answered none of the above to either — or both — of the above, welcome to the club. And perhaps welcome too to […]

Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.

Four more years… but what might have been instead

This column originally appeared in the Halifax Examiner on June 5, 2017. For me, the sweetest, saddest moment of last Tuesday’s election night lasted not much more than a moment. And it didn’t happen until the tail end of the first hour of Wednesday morning. Sometime after midnight, I gave up on the TV […]

Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.

Since ‘none of the above’ is on the ballot…

Who would you like to see win tomorrow’s provincial general election? Who should win tomorrow’s provincial general election? If you answered none of the above to either — or both — of the above, welcome to the club. And perhaps welcome too to that more select group — the none-of-the-above-but-definitely-not-Stephen-McNeil club — which Progressive Conservative […]

Stephen Kimber’s freelance journalism appears in local, regional, national and international publications.

Are election campaigns any place to discuss serious issues?

Election campaigns are no place to discuss serious issues. That’s what Kim Campbell — Canada’s now-you-see-her-now-you-don’t, first-and-only-female prime minister — infamously declared in 1993 in the middle of her one and only federal election campaign as a party leader. Though I was among those who mocked her at the time, I now believe she was […]